Remote War

At last count, about 4,024 US troops have died and 30,000 more have sustained injuries, a substantial number among them will suffer lifelong disabilities.  We glibly call them “ours”, but I knew not a single one of the dead, nor do I know any of the wounded.  I’ve encountered none of their families, and chances are neither do you.  They are not in our circle, don’t attend our school, don’t work or worship with us.  In the real time world we occupy in relative comfort, “our own” are someone else’s.  Perhaps most Americans missed out on the Bush tax cuts, but not a single one of us will be asked to add even one dollar to our April 15 tax bill to fund the conflict.  The money has been borrowed: to be paid at a later date, again by some unidentified other, probably not by us.  Even in the short-term, as the Fed lowers rates to keep the economy from falling off the cliff, the borrowing isn’t costing us as much as it should.  In sum, Iraq is a war being waged and paid for by others and, if we’re really honest about it, something totally remote.  It does not touch our personal lives.  To underscore that point, as Frank Rich pointed out in his most recent column, we aren’t even reading or hearing much about it these days in the press.  Indeed, based upon recent polling, the pundits have ordained that the upcoming election will be more about the economy (stupid) than the war.  And I have a bridge for sale, if you’re interested.

It is in this context of unreality that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker came to the Hill this week to report on status of the distant war that fails to touch most of our lives in any measurable way.  At least they had the honesty (albeit calculated) not to claim that we’ve have turned any corner or are seeing light at the end of the tunnel.  What they presented instead was something fragile and reversible.  It was a transparently implied “best not to upset the applecart” warning, fully expected and an open-ended trap.  Don’t you feel like we’re watching one of those excruciating circular dramas?  The antagonists change names chameleon-like, disappearing and reappearing, to suit the playwright’s purposes in a moment of time.  I distinctly remember Rummy talking of dead-enders but equally of criminals in those halcyon days of proclaimed triumph over tyranny.  Now, if the duo from the Green Zone is to be believed, the very same criminals seem to be back in Basra.  Like John McCain, we can’t quite decide if they are Sunni or Shiite.  The enemy is a moving and changing target, except of course for that ever-present constant, Al Qaeda in Iraq (now AQI), depending on the narrative in total retreat, but never completely gone.  And what about all those deadenders?  Not to worry, they are currently our (well-paid) best friends.  Elliot Spitzer, eat your heart out.  In the unlikely event that AQI fails, we always have Iran to fall back on.  This of course is the same country whose President was recently greeted by Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad with pomp and public hugs?

It’s hard not to think of Viet Nam every time I watch one of these predictable hearings – always far more theater than substance.  The Democrats by and large (Joe Lieberman still sits on their side of the table) oppose continuing the conflict and valiantly try to get the designated “performers” to define an endpoint, even an imperfect one.  The Republicans on the Armed Services Committee and less so on the Foreign Relations Committee cheer the great progress made in these post surge months.  Fragile and reversible, much to applaud.  Some of these cheerleaders are disingenuous but that doesn’t mean that they are really clueless.  Regardless of party, everyone up there knows there is no good solution.  All most know from the Viet Nam experience that when we leave, perhaps even if it happens precipitously, the sky is unlikely to fall.  Whatever damage there is has long since been done; whatever destabilization will continue with us or without us.  One thiing we do know, there is a definable and measurable difference between how John McCain and either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will move forward come January 20.  Richard Nixon, who came to office with no illusions about winning in Viet Nam, nevertheless escalated and stayed the course for more than four additional years.  It is not hard to imagine what John McCain, who contends this conflict is winnable (and we’ve made progress toward that end), will do should Americans decide to transition from Bush to him.  He may chafe at mention of those hundred years but, for even the younger among us, he has a lifetime in mind.  If for nothing else we have to rationalize having the world’s largest US Embassy in what will continue to be (in the best of circumstances) a second or third tier strategic ally or trading partner. 

So the choice in November will be clear and, despite the pundits turn toward the economy as issue number one, I think the war will still prevail.  Most Americans, albeit with scant personal sacrifice, want out.  They sense (more than 80%) that the country is headed in the wrong direction and the Bush war, articulated or not, is ultimately the root cause.  In the long run, however, when and how we exit is almost less important than what has become of us as a nation.  As my father said in his speech at the 1963 March on Washington, we can’t be a nation of onlookers, but that’s exactly what we are.  At best.  There may be signs, still small, that some of us are waking up to that message.  The unprecedented rise in voter registration and participation in the primaries thus far is certainly a sign of some life, and more importantly the taking of some responsibility.  64% of the eligible voted in 2004 up for 60% in the Bush v. Gore election.  We’ve seen worse but still disgracefully lag other democracies. 

Voting is a start, but doesn’t go much beyond making a nominal financial contribution when the basket is passed down the row at church, sometimes less.  The question we have to ask ourselves is why we haven’t been out on the street and down to Washington to protest what most of us seem to feel is something unjust.  We castigate the rage of a Rev. Wright who speaks out, sometimes with offensive vitriol, without asking ourselves why we are so quiet and complacent.  Are we really comfortable with the horrendous collateral damage of our policies, some of them blatantly moved more by economics than by any conceivable or acceptable moral compass?  Would that the discussion about the seemingly awful and “unpatriotic” things he said, had been not merely about race (albeit long overdue), but also about our national character of comfort and convenient remoteness.  That is a discussion we all need to have – the ultimate checks and balances, not about our government, but ourselves.

Martin and Bobby, what if?

1968 was one of those years you’d like to forget but feel impelled, almost obsessed, to remember.  The casualties and deaths in Viet Nam were mounting with every passing day.  Lyndon Johnson made his “I shall not seek, nor shall I accept” speech.  The stock market experienced one of its inexplicable bubbles.  And, of course, both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated but a few weeks apart.  It’s been forty years.  Historians, but even more so all of us, like to speculate on how different the things might be if someone of note had not left us.  This is ever more the case when people of special gifts die in the prime of life.  How would music or poetry be different had Mozart and Shelly survived into old age?  Neither Martin King nor Bobby Kennedy had that kind of genius, but both embodied unmet potential, which is what made their violent deaths so traumatic, searing the spring of that year into our memories.  To be sure any “what if” is pure speculation, but in these cases perhaps less so than with others.  In my view, the world with King would not have been very different; with Kennedy it might have gone in a totally different direction.

When Martin King was slain in Memphis, he was already an iconic figure who had delivered his definitive speech.  It wasn’t that the civil rights movement didn’t have a long way to go, but that he had already had provided it with sufficient fuel to make the trip.  In fact, at the time of his death, he was already spending much of his energy on Viet Nam where his voice was important but not in the same way.  There is little doubt that Barack Obama would not be headed for a possible nomination and election without what King did, especially with his emblematic “I have a dream” speech.  But its unlikely that an African American would have come to this place any earlier even if he had lived.  In some profound way, the martyred Martin, is probably vastly more powerful and influential than would Martin be in the fullness of his years.  We take the dead seriously, while tending to dismiss or find fault with the living especially when they are purveyors of inconvenient truths.  We can embrace selectively from the dead; we’re forced to see the blemishes of the living.  The dead don’t make mistakes, don’t speak out of turn, don’t disappoint.  We can and do control their narrative for our own purposes, which is exactly what we have done with Martin.  In that sense, he still lives and has been with us all the way to where we are.

In contrast, at death Bobby Kennedy was still unfinished business.  Unlike Martin, whose ideological train had left the station, Bobby’s had yet to be boarded.  Much more so than King, he was a-work-in progress who had been transformed by his life’s experiences from the Joe McCarthy staffer and Cold Warrior into a committed proponent of the underdog and opponent of what he had come to believe was a disastrous and misguided war.  His campaign was about ending it and changing the direction of the country.  He had not won the nomination, but seemed on his way to doing so.  Had he lived the rancor of the Democratic convention in Chicago which split the party and the country would unlikely have been.  Richard Nixon might not have been elected President.  The war might have been brought to a speedy conclusion.  As a result, the world we have today might well have looked very different.  RFK in death is sorely missed, but whatever power he had went with him in that Los Angeles kitchen.  There is memory but no myth, accomplishments but none of them “Martinesque”.

What was and what would have been are two different things.  What was, is enduring, what might have been, ephemeral.  Our unborn descendants are likely to remember Martin, will be able to recite his words much as we do those of Lincoln.  He made all the difference he could and so much more.  Bobby’s memory will dim with each passing year, another of those candidates who aspired to, but never reached, the Presidency.  If he has any further lasting power, he owes to Jack, the myth he was near not the one he created for himself.  In that sense, what happened in June, the unmet potential and the perhaps intended consequences, is much more poignant than what happened in April.

The late Joseph Campbell spent a lifetime exploring and teaching us about the power of myth.  How right he was.  I celebrate Martin Luther King and the power of his myth on this 40th anniversary of his life and what is because of him.  I will grieve on June 6th for Robert F. Kennedy, for what might have been and what happened in its place.  Take a moment and search for the talk he gave on this day informing a campaign stop audience of King’s death.  Listen to it and you will understand both my celebration and the mourning still to come. 

Martin and Malcom

I was among those fortunate enough to literally have a front row seat i when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his emblematic March on Washington speech.  His dream that a future generation would be judged more by the content of their mind than the color of their skin is what brought us Barack Obama.  At least that is the comfortable narrative which we “White” Americans embrace.  It is understandable, and many of us who watched his speech earlier this week felt once again that we were witnessing history; a straight line from Washington to Philadelphia.  But it wasn’t only Martin who brought him and us to this point.  It was also Malcolm.  African American progress was born of King’s moral outrage and non-violent strategy, but also of Malcolm X’s anger along with the calls for Black pride and power.  It was both that made it possible for Clarence Thomas to sit on the Supreme Court; for Charlie Rangel and John Lewis to sit in the halls of Congress.  Outrage and anger, the first can and does make us uncomfortable, the second instills us with fear.

Beyond having been there on that August 1963 day, I also know something about preaching and the discomfit the pulpit can bring to the pew.  Not only did I do it myself, but spent all of my childhood and many of my adult years listening to my father (who also addressed the March) making his congregation squirm in their seats.  Nothing is more tradition-bound than the church or synagogue.  For many Americans, particularly White Americans, it is a place of quiet dignity, up tight and predictable.  In fact, these days it is mostly a place where the words heard are more likely to be of moral comfort and moral outrage.  We sit, we stand, we kneel, we recite, we sing – all in predictable fashion.  “How nice it was this evening for this morning.”  Some tweaking notwithstanding, it’s pretty well as it was in our parents and grandparents day, a powerful link for past.  But tradition is not monolithic.  Mine may be vastly different than yours.  The African American church has a tradition of its own, one that comes not out of so many years of domination that we can’t remember beyond them, but from years of suppression that remain an immediate vivid memory and painfully real.

For sure Martin preaches in Black churches, perhaps he even predominates, but so too does Malcolm.  In truth, you can often find both embodied in one preacher, a tug of internal war that reflects both hope and desperation.  It is true that the pews are now peopled by some who have achieved great success, broken into worlds once denied them.  But the sad reality is that in no case was that a foregone conclusion.  Barack Obama remains the only African American Senator, Clarence Thomas the only Black Supreme.  Because of Martin and Malcolm both men and others like them can focus on the positive, “normalcy” if you will.  In that, they embody what we all hope will be, and “hope” is the right word.  What they do is both necessary and, however personally well earned, a luxury of the accomplished.  Both Martin and Malcolm, would feel vindicated by their coming of age, even if they wouldn’t necessary agree with what normalcy has put into their minds of mouths.  But Barack and Clarence are the exception and not the rule.  While we look to them for leadership and as our own role models in some profound color-agnostic way, most African Americans remain left behind.  Like Obama’s grandmother, despite all our good words and works, we sometimes are unnerved by their presence or more likely are happy to avert our eyes from their plight.  Most of those who sit in the pews of African American Churches are not the products of affirmative action or any other benefits achieved in somehow making it through the cracks in the still formidable wall of “our world”.

This is the reality which Jeremiah Wright and other Black clergy face looking out from their pulpits.  The churches in which they preach remain locked in a tradition of anguish and anger, or perhaps more accurately rising above both without losing sight of where thei assembled once were and often still are.  There is much joy and animation in those places, a sense of being and self respect.  They are home where one can say whatever one really thinks and not be judged or misunderstood for it.  They are family in the best sense of that word, the kind of family we all hope for, the kind of non-judgmental reception that makes us feel whole and right.  Jeremiah Wright wasn’t a slave, but he’s old enough to remember humiliation and indignity up close and personal.  In that, he sometimes is more Malcolm and Martin, but consider the caring institution he built.  On balance, he is probably more the latter than the former.  What’s remarkable about this church is not that an often-angry Jeremiah spoke out in prophetic rage, but that the Senator from Illinois, who may someday be our President, came through that place.  The man of hope was neither swayed nor spoiled by the anger he sometimes heard from its pulpit.  However, he was reminded from where he and we came.  Rather than being outraged by what he heard, we, who pay lip service to free speech, should rejoice that finally hope can prevail over anger.  We should grab hold of it.

Yes Martin and Malcolm, we both, Black and White, are slowly, albei sometimes imperfectly, moving on.

Ready on Day One

Hillary Clinton is one of the bright lights in American politics.  She is super bright and has proven herself to be an able senator, widely respected by her colleagues.  She represents her adopted state well and ran a smart initial campaign focusing much of her effort on Upstate New York, where Democrats are weakest.  She came to that race with a well-oiled political organization that, without a presidential campaign to manage, was able to employ its considerable skills and experience on her behalf.  Her reelection campaign was a cakewalk, but well deserved.  She had performed.  That history, combined with the expected strategic support of the man widely, and rightly, considered the most talented politician of his generation, was the context in which the 2008 race began more than a year ago.  For the many months of seemingly endless campaigning leading up to Iowa, the Clinton campaign was constantly described by pundits one and all as “flawless”.  She held a commanding lead in the national polls; smaller but nonetheless impressive in the early states.  Her nomination and election were widely assumed (probably by the candidate herself) to be inevitable.  She had raised a considerable war chest which included $32 Million earmarked for the general election, another expression of confidence.  Indeed, from day one her speeches were aimed as much, if not more, at the general election as at a competitive primary.

Given those overwhelming odds, its surprising that so many candidates entered the race, perhaps the best group of contenders seen in modern times.  Virtually all were credible potential presidents.  But given the inevitable, what were they thinking?  In retrospect, that so many smart people entered the race should have served as an early warning that something was missing in the Clinton juggernaut.  That something first became evident when Barack Obama won Iowa and, through the Internet that Howard Dean had used so effectively four years earlier, had amassed a competitive war chest of his own.  Dean, we all remember painfully, failed in Iowa because of a faulty ground operation; Obama won because of a vastly superior one.  That, too, was a hint of things to come.  The press latched onto the Illinois Senator and began to write Clinton’s epitaph.  New Hampshire changed all that and inevitability was back on track.  The tight schedule that followed worked in her favor; the turnaround story further fueled by some impressive big state victories.  But, to the great surprise of both the Clinton organization and the press, Super Tuesday was big but by no means conclusive.  Obama performed decently where Clinton won and, most significantly began to take a commanding lead in caucus states.  It turns out that his ground organization in Iowa was not an anomaly but part of a fine-tuned machine.  It had both reach and depth.  Local supporters organized systematically for months ahead and then were augmented by the national campaign workers in the final weeks.  Jim Doyle, the veteran politician Governor of Wisconsin, marveled last night on how the nationals integrated seamlessly with the locals, something he had never before seen.

Over confidence has always been the Achilles Heal of politicians.  Not taking the caucuses seriously may ultimately prove a fatal flaw.  But there is something even more significant at play.  Ironically it is an echo of George Bush’s Iraq invasion – no planning for the day after.  Clinton expected to finish off all her opponents on Super Tuesday and apparently made no plans for the day after.  That included expending her war chest and having inadequate organization in place for the races ahead.  Perhaps Bill Clinton’s machine was something of a wonder in 1992 and 1996, but 2008 may prove that Obama’s is better, perhaps substantially so.   And that brings me to Senator Clinton’s most consistent campaign claim – “ready on day one”.  Performance, not words, is what’s required.  Well, if performance and, assumably, management are at issue, this campaign would suggest that perhaps it’s Barack Obama who will be ready on day one.  Apparently a large number of voters think that to be the case.

The Big Picture

It’s the Republicans who have given new political meaning to the cliché, “a picture is worth a thousand words”.  So it was particularly striking last night to see the contrasting images projected by John McCain and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  McCain made his victory talk standing before a small array of aging politicians.  Clinton in Texas and Obama in Wisconsin were enveloped by thousands of bright excere uited and mostly young faces.  Some younger voters were present at the McCain event, but they were out of the picture, separated by the stage from which he spoke. Clinton and Obama, while also on a platform, spoke from within their midst.  It was a stunning snapshot of where we’re headed in the months ahead, regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination.

2004 seems a distant memory, but many of us pointed to a highly motivated and expanding electorate, thinking that we could recapture the White House.  The flawed candidacy of a wooden standard bearer, and a message that was more against than for anything, left us both disappointed and bewildered.  Those 2004 expanded numbers pale in comparison to what we are experiencing today.  150% more voters came to the polls yesterday in Virginia than turned out the last time around.  That is an astounding statistic.  Both Clinton and even more so Obama are drawing huge crowds – 18,000 with another 2,000 outside for him last night in Madison.  An extraordinary percentage of primary voters are first timers.  All of this bodes well for the country.

It wasn’t only a difference in image that separated yesterday’s winners John McCain and Barack Obama.  The Arizonan couched his remarks in a “time of war” cloak, standing ground against the enemy.  It is of course his perceived strength; a reflection of both his resume and primary interest.  His vocal cadence last night was subdued and serious, if not dour.  This is no “Happy Warrior”.  Apparently convinced that he will face Obama in the fall, he characterized the message of “hope” as a “platitude”.  Some Democrats also feel it lacks sufficient specificity.   But McCain has hung his hat on what the vast majority of Americans see as a failed policy in Iraq.  It is driven by much greater conviction than Rudy’s hanging his candidacy on Florida, but perhaps no less flawed.  The fact is that the majority of Americans, regardless of party, want out.  More importantly, I think McCain misses the underlying mood and yearning of his fellow citizens.  In the most recent polling 71% thought we were on the wrong track, a number that has fluctuated little (never below 68%) for well over a year.   In the context of a country governed by the platitudes of claimed victories (including McCain’s own with regard to the surge), voiced hope takes on profound substance.  Just ask a seemingly blind sighted Hillary Clinton about its power.  Those faces around both Democrats last night were full of hope and they are our future.

Barack Obama insists that the central issue in this campaign is not so much about any one policy but about clinging on to the past verses embracing future — a new mindset and a new direction.  He has maintained a laser like focus on his “can do” message just as did Bill Clinton with the economy in 1992.  Past and future: think about his first televised debate with John McCain and the image you’ll see on your screen.   Make no mistake, that will be a picture which truly speaks louder than a thousand words.

Gender and Race Redux

A number of good female friends have referred me to articles or op-ed pieces pleading the gender case for Hillary Clinton.  It is an easy one to make, and more importantly an understandable one.  As said in a recent post, I too am torn by the choice presented to us in this election cycle.  That both the gender and race barrier have to be broken if America is to finally fulfill the high-minded promise of the Declaration of Independence is indisputable.  Progress remains excruciatingly slow and generally we like to make it serially, one at a time.  It wasn’t only Gerry Ford who couldn’t simultaneously “walk and chew gum”.  So this election has caught those committed to both civil and women’s rights off guard.  Historic opportunity is at hand and we’re faced with an impossible and unanticipated choice; a real conundrum.  Perhaps so, but it may also be that, in the very option given us, we’re further along than any of us dared to believe.

I would argue that 2008 might well mark the moment when the choice between gender and race was rendered irrelevant.  Looking at it objectively, for me the argument that one is “entitled” to a shot at the Presidency more than, or before, the other is a non-starter.  Sexism has deep roots beginning in the first chapter of Genesis where the he-God creates man in his image.  The subjugation of the children of unwilling African slave immigrants is an indelible stain on our past and present.  Perhaps you can make a case for who had it worse – black women often suffered a double blow – but that really is silly.  The “my hurt it greater than yours” is a childhood playground argument.  Deep and devastating wounds are ultimately race and gender agnostic.

The only issue in this primary season is who, among two excellent finalists, will make the better President at this moment in time.  Like most Democrats, I will support the party’s nominee, and do so with a good conscience.  In fact, if that nominee were named Biden, Dodd, Edwards, Kucinich or Richardson I would as well.  We’ve had an extraordinary candidate field this year.  And the choice we have is not really about issues – there is little daylight between Clinton and Obama even on healthcare.  Let’s remember that party platforms and candidate speeches are simply directional signposts.  While we have surely learned the power of Executive Orders of late, fundamental initiatives require legislation.  That means amassing sufficient public support and votes on the Hill.   

For me this primary season is not about race or gender nor is it about policy.  The former has been taken out of the mix and with regard to the latter; John Edwards would be on his way to the White House.  He has been the policy initiator; Clinton and Obama the followers.  No this election is about who we are and how we feel about ourselves.  It is about taking that now delayed bridge to the future – reality not words.  That future is not merely one of substance it is also one of tone.  In fact, I don’t think we can alter the substance without changing the tone.  However she may deny it and express her independence, Senator Clinton is campaigning to restore what indisputably were the good times of her husband’s tenure.  So they were, but they also initiated a level of acrimony that has poisoned the nation’s internal discourse.  We have replaced conversation with shouting.  Bill Clinton may not have started the barnyard fight, but his partisans were, and are, more than willing participants.  The crossfire of militant right and left talk radio is equally distasteful.  At times of conflict, who started it is beside the point.  We have all been its collateral damage.

It’s not that we’re mad as hell and can’t take it any more, it’s that we can’t take being mad any more.  We want out, we want to delete the ugliness from our collective lives, reduce if not eliminate the red and blue divide.  We are damaged and in many profound ways demoralized.  That runs contrary to the essential optimistic national DNA.  And it isn’t a matter of some romantic notion of nirvana, or that substance doesn’t matter.  A positive outlook, some semblance of shared direction, is what has always fueled our economy, defined our self image and established our standing in the world.  Does Barack Obama speak of hope, of change and of the future over the past?  You bet he does.  He has set the underlying conversation of this election.  Would Hillary Clinton be a good President?   I think she has the potential of being one of our better chief executives.  The problem is that we need something more; not the potential of better but of greatness commensurate with our desperate current need.  Not gender over race or race over gender but a unifying, and yes an inspirational, leader.  That isn’t something to which you’re entitled, but something you embody regardless of your name, background or sex.  To me that still translates into Barack Obama.  In the end, I remain confident the majority of Americans will come to the same conclusion.  If not, and regardless of how disappointed, I will readily admit to having been wrong from the start.

A Formidable Candidate

Anyone who underestimates John McCain does so at her or his own peril.  I remember watching him conduct early New Hampshire town halls more than a year ago.  It wasn’t only that he answered questions; he engaged with the audience – he connected.  Whether or not one buys into the message, the idea of "straight talk" resonates at this moment in our history.  His and its political potency is demonstrated in a comeback that pales Bill Clinton’s in comparison.  McCain’s “fall” in the early stages was attributed to being on the wrong side of the war debate, but I think his rise speaks to a yearning for authenticity felt by a majority of Americans, regardless of party.  If you have any doubt, consider the counterintuitive victory over Romney among those in Florida who consider the economy our most pressing problem.  Voters opted for the “real deal” candidate without economic credentials over the “Jell-O” candidate, a private equity man who shifts with every prevailing opportunity and wind.  Unless something dramatic happens, McCain will be the Republican nominee.  He will be a very formidable candidate.

McCain, and even more so the McCain-Huckabee ticket now being bandied about, offers an unambiguous choice against Hillary Clinton, but most especially against Barack Obama.  In the upcoming months as the debate of ideas takes hold and the hype of horserace dims somewhat, the differences will become clear.  These are serious candidates and they will insist on substance. Americans will be forced to look at where the nominees stand and what they represent.  If, as I continue to hope, Obama emerges on the Democratic side, the oratorical choice between past and future will be given new and more vivid force.

There is no way one can argue that McCain represents the new.  His maverick streak and reputation notwithstanding, he has hardly been a bystander during the so-called Reagan revolution.  That includes virtually 100% support of Bush, for whom he vigorously campaigned in 2004.  He is anti-choice and committed to remaking the courts, one of the core beliefs that he included in his victory speech last night.  He is a serial tax and spending cutter who believes in as little government as possible – "government should get out of the way". as he puts it.  If he does indeed select Huckabee, be assured that we would see even more cracks in that “wall of separation” between church and state.  And let’s not minimize the importance or potential of a running mate.  If we haven’t learned that lesson, shame on us.  If elected, McCain would be the oldest incoming President, one who has a history of serious medical problems.  Succession is and must be an issue whomever he selects.

McCain will be running on national security.  He vigorously supported our country’s two most unpopular and disastrous wars: Viet Nam and Iraq.  He was a heroic victim of the first, which has become the central leitmotif of his narrative.  His unyielding commitment to “victory” in the second is informed by a visceral “not again, not this time”.  It is not just business, it’s very personal.  If George Bush was seeking to complete his father’s unfinished business, McCain is desperate not to experience Saigon redux, even if once again self inflicted by wrongheaded policy.  Of course part of what makes McCain so potentially potent is that his years of sacrifice have effectively inoculated him from all but the most elliptical critique of another misguided war.  Americans don’t suffer the overt criticism of heroes like McCain lightly.  It won’t be easy.

Florida does deserve a footnote: Rudy Giuliani.  The pundits will feed us all kinds of reasons why his candidacy evaporated in this election cycle.  All of them may have merit.  Some of us actually had Rudy as our Mayor and to us the reason for his fall is probably much less complicated.   “America’s Mayor” is an alluring romantic myth; his honor is something totally different.  Perhaps New Yorkers elected him twice (not guilty), but he would never have made it to any other City Hall.  The idea of Rudy was intriguing to people in New Hampshire, where he spent a lot of time and money before “refocusing” solely on Florida.  The reality was less compelling, if not tedious.  He bombed badly in that primary.  So, too, in Florida; they loved Rudy until he moved in and they had to live with him.  If Mitt Romney comes off as plastic, Rudy’s incessant smile (evident in all his TV interviews) is a transparent cover-up of the inherent nastiness that New Yorkers grew to hate, especially in the years between his reelection and 9/11.  Remember the old “What’s my Line” quiz show –“will the real Rudy stand up?”  He did, and that began his fatal decline.