Flags are easy.

When twenty children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the country was outraged.   President Obama spoke at the memorial and many tears were shed.  Calls for gun control were immediate; the need for stricter rules seemed obvious.  Finally, many of us naively thought, some action would be taken.   None was.  After some verbal missteps by its leader, the NRA moved forward with confidence and legislators in Washington and elsewhere caved.  Gaining better control of this heavily armed country is very hard.  The NRA and more importantly the gun manufacturers, using the Second Amendment and friendly or intimidated legislators as their weapons of choice, have spent whatever is necessary to keep the cash register ringing.  Guns don’t kill, people do, they tell us.   They dish up this cruel non sequitur, and we as a nation let them get away with.   Hunters should have a right.  I know, I know — but would the world end if they had to find an alternative sport?

Well we’ve had yet another mass shooting, this time in an African American church in South Carolina and this time tied to racism.  As it happens, despite years of criticism, a Confederate flag flies over their state house.  They are not the only southern state to hold on to that symbol of what is often called America’s “original sin”.  Here in North Carolina, the controversial image can be found on vanity license plates and Georgia incorporates it into their state flag.  Supporters of the South’s war flag have always claimed that, rather from having any racial connotations, the image merely celebrates the state or region’s proud history.  For them, keeping it in place has always been a highly emotional issue. 

With the discovery that the Charleston shooter posed with the flag and other white supremacy symbols, voices began to gather demanding — at long last — the removal of the flag or its image from public places.  Within days the chorus grew and the governor of South Carolina, along with its two US Senators (one is running for president) called for its removal from the capital.  Legislators immediately agreed to place this issue on their agenda, a process that might take months with no guarantee of success.  North Carolina’s governor who is standing for re-election next year asked that the flag image be removed from state issued license plate.  Major retailers including giants Walmart and Amazon announced they would no longer sell Confederate flags.  Wow.

It is far too early to tell if all this support for taking down flags, discontinuing the license plates and taking them off the market will continue.  I’m not holding my breath.  Of course, unlike guns there is no NCFA (National Confederate Flag Association), no big revenues at stake.  Guns may “not kill”, but they make billions.  As one flag maker told an interviewer, we make all kinds of flags — a diversified product line — and it’s probably not a reach to assume that discontinuing one of many would not constitute hardship.  This practical dollar denominated difference between guns and flags tells you a lot.  Removing flags — even if some still fight tooth and nail — is relatively easy.  If and when the flags come down and the license plates are “cleaned”, many Americans are likely to pat themselves on the back and say “job well done”.

Not so fast.   I may argue with the notion that guns don’t kill, but would be the first to agree that flags are not, in and of themselves, lethal.  The alleged shooter in Charleston may have been “inspired” by a Confederate flag but he used a gun to kill those peacefully assembled for Bible study.  In his recent, perhaps precedent-setting garage podcast interview with Marc Maron, President Obama talked about race.   It took place only days after the shootings.  He noted that a great deal of progress has been made and that anyone who doubts it should ask a Black man who lived through the 1950’s or 60’s.  Nevertheless, the president said that our country lives with a legacy of racism, “in our DNA”.  He then went on, “We’re not cured of it.  And it’s not just a matter of not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public.  That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.  It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 200 or 300 years prior.”  Needless to say, his use of the “N word” (standing for the never saying the impolite word in public) shocked many, but its directnes was refreshing.

I’m all for removing those flags and symbols, images that both glorify and incite.  But focusing on the flags is a distraction.  It takes our attention away from gun control in general and from our continued and serious problem with racism.  This president knows everything about that.   Multiple and “heartfelt” disclaimers not withstanding, much of the opposition to him from day one has been all about race.  In fact, that racism is always piously denied makes it all the worse.  Bill Clinton was also subjected to irrational vitriol from his first to last days in office.  It’s no coincidence that he many in the civil rights community lovingly referred to him as our “first Black president”.  There is no getting around it, if you happened to be born as an African American in this country you are more likely to attend crowded and below part schools, be stopped by the police, overpopulate our jails and most certainly you don’t have the same opportunities as your White counterparts. 

Focus on the flag also averts our attention from, what was reported this week on the first/home page of the NY Times.  “Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center.”  Domestic terrorism, much of it race hatred based, is a huge threat, one recognized by law enforcement.  The Times story went on to say, “A survey to be published this week asked 382 police and sheriff’s departments nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from violent extremism in their jurisdiction.  About 74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39 percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence….”

We may take the flags down, but that won’t erase the hatred that caused the killing in South Carolina or the many acts of violence that police and other authorities have prevented in the last years.  What brought Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal office building in the 1990s — killing 168 people — still drives extreme right wingers and supremacists across the country.  What happened in Charleston is part of a much larger story.  Until 9/11, Oklahoma City was the largest and most costly terrorist attack in America.  Taking down flags, like not using the “N-word” in polite society, might make us feel better, but they won’t solve the problem.  Sure they are a low cost solutions, but as the adage says, “you get only what you pay for”.  Cheap doesn’t get you much — surely, not nearly enough.

Why not Joe?

Earlier this month, the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson posted a web column entitled Why Joe Biden Should Run (referenced briefly in my June 15 blog).  Davidson makes a compelling case and my reaction is: Biden indeed, why not?   I watched Hillary Clinton’s Roosevelt Island campaign debut.  Lot’s of good lines clearly aimed at a different time than when Bill first ran in 1992.  Centrist “New Democrat” talk doesn’t cut it with today’s activist and frustrated Democrats.  But as Frank Rich pointed out in a NY Magazine commentary, “her leftward tilt is mostly pandering” One can only hope that’s not the case, but at this juncture it’s certainly hard to say for sure that her new populism is more than rhetorical.  As I’ve written before, her message on income inequality with its implied critique of the 1% seems out of sync with the Clinton clan’s mega speechmaking fees, recently minted fortune and lifestyle.  She certainly is aware of the problem as reflected in the NY Times report that the they are agonizing about the optics of an August holiday in the pricy Hamptons. 

Joe Biden is no youngster and he has just suffered a terrible personal blow in the loss of his promising and beloved son Beau.  But there are many reasons why Biden may be exactly the right person.  Populism doesn’t ring false out of the mouth of a man who all these years in — and unlike many of his colleagues — remains a person of modest financial means.  No one could or would question his feel for the middle class or for those who can’t even cross over that relatively low economic bar.  In a time of posturing and opportunistic grandstanding, Biden always seems true to his essential self, his inner core, and as a result true to us.  He says what he thinks, sometimes refreshingly off script, and lacks the pretense and disingenuousness so often found in our political class of often-shallow cardboard figures.  This is not to suggest that he is faultless or totally immune to the ways of our politicians, but somehow he stands out.

Few, if any, Americans are better prepared than the Vice President.  He came to his present office with a deep knowledge of foreign and domestic affairs.  He has long been skeptical of our interventionism, something that has probably deepened in recent years.  If reports are correct, he has been a constant voice of moderation.  While chairing the Foreign Relations Committee, he advocated splitting Iraq into a federation of three more natural interdependent states.  While dismissed at the time, its an idea that seems more compelling all the time.  He has been at Obama’s side as a full partner in shepherding our economy back to its present health.  Decades in the Senate, including a stint chairing Judiciary, exposed him to every domestic problem that we have or have had over the years.   He has often been the president’s point man whether in dealing with the Iraqi government or with individual situations at home.  Without question Hillary Clinton has an impressive resume; Joe Biden’s is if anything deeper and broader.

All of which makes him an interesting choice, but it’s not the most compelling reason to think he might be a strong candidate and an excellent president.  Biden has an honesty and integrity that makes you feel he’s a person you can trust.  At a time when most Americans look at their leaders with mistrust, that’s an important attribute.  Republicans talk “family values”; Biden lives them.  Just take a look at Beau Biden’s funeral service, especially the family dynamics, and you’ll see what I mean.   Biden lacks the soaring oratory of Barack Obama, but then so does Hillary and so do all of the other contenders in both parties.  And Obama has his weaknesses — he’s better before large audiences than in intimate settings and, as Davidson points out, Biden can be a very effective debater.

Davidson’s case notwithstanding, the real question is not why Biden should run but rather will he?  My guess is that he won’t, and that’s really too bad.  The reasons are obvious.  Joining the race would put Obama in a very conflicted position.  Despite the heat of the ’08 campaign, Hillary agreed to join the president’s team and her husband became one of his most effective “explainers” or policy.  Also, the president having broken the “color’ barrier, must feel some obligation to helping break the glass ceiling.  It’s the latter that may ultimately make me, regardless of my reservations, an enthusiastic Hillary supporter.  So we know why Biden won’t run, or isn’t running right now, but in fact we desperately need a viable alternative to the Clinton candidacy.  A Biden race would give Democrats a real choice and a challenge would test Hillary’s metal.  Unlike Sanders and company, Biden has universal name recognition and probably a very broad following.

In an email a few days ago, one of the most astute commentators I know wrote me, “I also worry that the Democrats have no Plan B should things go wrong.”   Ah, Plan B.  And that is really the most compelling reason for Joe to run.  At this point we still have virtually all our eggs in one basket and that’s plain scary.  Biden wouldn’t merely be a Plan B, he would make an excellent Plan A.  That’s why he should consider entering the race.  And isn’t that what Democrats and liberals are all about — the right to chose.

God and the environment.

American candidates and officeholders, most especially but not exclusively those on the right, eagerly invoke God at every given opportunity.  They decry imagined wars against religion in general and Christianity in particular.  They bemoan the fact that faith doesn’t play a greater role in the nation’s public life.  Why doesn’t God have a central presence in everything we do as a nation, they ask.   And then along comes the Pope, spiritual leader of the largest religious group in the world, suggesting that we humans are doing harm to the environment.  How dare he take a “political” stand, and of all things, on science?  Why doesn’t he keep in his appropriately cloistered place?

It’s my understanding that integral to religious teaching, certainly Judeo-Christian teaching, is that we are not proprietors of the earth, but its stewards.   Destroying the earth or endangering it in any way is to sully God’s — the creator’s, — work.  Whether or not you or I may believe in the idea of creation or necessarily in the existence of God, there is no doubt that the Pope who does speaks within a long tradition of faith.  And it’s the most basic faith.  The problem is that he has put the entire climate change, God invoking, deniers on the spot.  He has exposed them of emperors with no clothes, as the falsest of prophets.

It’s interesting that the Rich Santorum’s and Mike Huckabee’s of this world want us to break down the wall between church and state while expressing dismay that the pope should dare poke his religious head into what amounts to a life-and-death public issue.  Could there be any greater concern of religion than that?  Could there be any more important or appropriate “teacher” on the subject than one of the world’s foremost, if not the foremost, religious leaders?

Cutting back, for example, on budgets for education or standing in the way universal healthcare are terrible, even cruel, things to do.  But denying global warming boarders on the criminal.  It puts at risk the entire planet and billions of human beings.  Budgets can be restored and healthcare can be expanded, but climate change is subject to points of no return.  The clock is ticking.   We’re living in the twenty-first century “for God’s sake” and dismissing Darwin as a just another “theory” or denying what the best scientific evidence has concluded is a reality simply boggles the mind.

Obviously the Pope, who teaches the messages of the past, lives in the present and looks to the future — everyone’s future.  He speaks truth to power knowing that it’s just the kind of truth that the prophets spoke in ancient days.   I’m not a Catholic and not a theist, but I do welcome and appreciate the message of this noble man.  At this moment, and on this critical subject, he offers the very best of what religion has to offer.  Regardless of who we are and what we believe, he deserves all of our deepest respect.

Am I ready yet?

Remember — and this surely dates me — the unending parade of clowns emerging center ring from that tiny circus car?  It was always my favorite.  I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I keep on thinking of that car in watching the continual parade of announced and expected GOP presidential candidates.  Now, don’t get me wrong, these (all but one) men aren’t (Donald Trump notwithstanding) clowns, but they sure are a crowd.  How will primary voters keep track of them, much less differentiate between their similar, largely rightist views?  I guess the good news is that Republicans will have a real choice.  Like them or not, they have a considerable bench.

Despite having a president in the White House, and perhaps because of it, we Democrats don’t have a lot of clowns emerging from a little car.  Indeed, we have a strikingly small bench.  It’s hard to shine when a sitting president looms large and focus is on what his administration does and says.  That’s in part why so many Vice Presidents have taken to the stump when their number one’s time was up.  In recent years, only George H.W. Bush has been able to pull it off.  Of course we have had a nominee-in-waiting for all of Obama’s years.  He prevailed over Hillary Clinton only by a small margin, decided not to make her his running mate but did give her a major place at his table — keep pretenders close.

Some months back, I reported being asked, “Are you ready for Hillary”?  Not so much, I thought at the time and that was probably a shared view.  We hadn’t even entered the fourth quarter of the Obama’s tenure — a fellow Democrat with still much to accomplish.  That alone gave me pause.  It’s not that I don’t admire her, and I certainly am more than ready for a Ms. President.  It’s that in all honestly, I wasn’t that excited about Hillary, much less another Clinton presidency.  Being excited is important.  I was excited about Bill in 1992 and even more so by Barack Obama in 2008.  I happily voted for, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry, but without excitement.  They all lost.  Does America care if I’m excited about a candidate?   Of course not, but excitement, a feeling of shared mission and, yes, passion is what drives us to the polls.  The point isn’t that I was excited about Bill and Barack, but that very many others were as well.

Am I excited about Hillary now?   The answer is, not yet.  Again, I’m not alone.  Amy Davidson’s recent New Yorker piece, “Why Biden Should Run” is just one expression of that unease.   Can I get excited about Hillary?  I think so — hope so — but it will depend on where she stands on the considerable issues we face and also on what kind of a candidate she will be in 2016.  She ended strong in 2008, but it took some time and most of all a serious challenge.  Her “strong finish” came too late.  So I, like Davidson, have been deeply troubled by the lack of a truly credible challenge to her 2016 nomination.   Sure, it’s a relief to see Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee step forward — Jim Webb might join.  These are all good men, but not one has much name recognition and all fall short on mass charisma.  Interestingly, O’Malley alone has been a career long Democrat.  Webb and Chafee were Republicans (before they were Democrats) and Senator Sanders, while organizing with Democrats, is still an avowed independent socialist. 

What does that say about the Democrat’s bench?  For sure, it reflects having a two-term sitting president but also how few in the party sit in governor’s mansions.  Governors — Carter, Clinton, and Dukakis, not to mention Roosevelt — are staples on any party’s bench.  It also tells you that few Democratic senators have built much of a national profile and those who have are either too old, too young or have expressed no real interest in the presidency.  One can’t blame them; it’s tough to get there and worse once elected.  That grey hair on a still young Obama’s head, a trait shared by most of his predecessors, evidences the unique stresses of the job.

Forgetting name recognition and charisma for the moment, I have to give Bernie Sanders special credit for his passion and for presenting an unvarnished and uncompromising liberal point of view.  He’s getting some very good press and a bump in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls.  He has next to zero chance of winning the nomination or even a place on the ticket.  I’m old enough to remember the doomed George McGovern campaign (on which Hillary worked).  He was one of the most decent and courageous of American politicians.  Perhaps even more so that him, Sanders candidacy is LOA — Lost on Arrival.  Chafee is probably in the same position.  What’s interesting about him, more so than Jim Webb, is that his candidacy speaks volumes to how conservatively monolithic the Republican Party has become.  The Chafee’s (father and son) were from the so-called Rockefeller Wing of their party, a group that has gone from being an endangered species to extinction. 

Can Bernie, Martin, Lincoln and Jim “Who” present a real challenge for Hillary “Clinton, of course”?  I seriously doubt it.   Can their challenge force her to be more progressive rather than middle-of-the-road?  Perhaps, and that would certainly be a good thing.  We know a lot about Hillary’s past; we have yet to hear where she wants to take the country going forward.  She started that process this past weekend on Roosevelt Island, but it was only a beginning.  Her past has much to admire, but also areas of real concern.  While the time was not yet right to pull it off, she certainly was an early and impassioned proponent of healthcare reform.  It was she, not Obama, who brought it into the 2008 campaign.  So she surely deserves some credit for the ACA.  Hillary has been a consistent and substantive fighter for minority and (most especially) women’s rights.  She devoted substantial time and prestige during her tenure at State to raise and address women’s issue around the globe.  On the other hand, she has always been a foreign policy hawk.  That drove her to support invading Iraq and to be on the aggressive side of the Administration’s internal debates about other challenges in the region.  She supported deploying more troops in Afghanistan and is said to have favored much greater involvement in Syria.  The latter is especially troubling.

As my last post suggested, I don’t have high hopes for serious debate in 2016.  I certainly hope that immigration and, most especially, income inequality will be on the table.  But again I fear more posturing than a serious conversation.  Income inequality especially is a big part of Sanders’ campaign.  Clinton should have no problem with immigration and indeed is very popular in the Latino community that cares so much about paths to citizenship.  She reiterated her support of it in the New York speech.  Income inequality presents a greater challenge, which accounts for all the focus on the Clinton foundation and speaking fees.  If few Americans are members of the business 1%, even fewer are among those who command $100,000 plus for an hour at the lectern.  Ask a leading author or academic what she is normally paid for speaking, even keynoting a large conference.  Of course, we have had rich presidents who championed the economically stressed — most notably FDR and JFK — but Hillary and Bill are poster people for our current income disparity relative to pay for work done.  She will be hard pressed on that subject.

Do Americans care about her newfound wealth or how it has been amassed?  That remains to be seen.  As I’ve written before, the obscene compensation or corporate CEOs and top executives in contrast to that of the average employee appalls me.  Equally disturbing the revolving door (see Mark Leibovich’s, This Town) that has allowed former elected and appointed officials rake in millions, often lobbying the very people with whom they served.  Would Bill Clinton be making the fees that have made him multi-millionaire virtually over night had he not been president?  Of course not.  Will financial machinations sink Hillary’s candidacy?   It’s hard to say, but it’s probably one of the reasons that I remain unexcited about her.  I hope she will find a way to assuage my concerns.  This will be an important election,  I know we say that every time, but it seems even more so for 2016.  We’ve seen what Republican control can do, what their Supreme Court appointees can do.  Living in North Carolina, I see it up close and personal.  We can’t afford to blow the upcoming vote.