In praise of thoughtful speaking

James Fallows, present-day journalist and once-upon-a-time Presidential speechwriter, deplores the rhetorically lazy habit of ending speeches with the phrase "...and God Bless the United States of America" (or its shorter variant, "God Bless America")...and takes the President-Elect to task for same:

I love the Irving Berlin song. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. But a little chunk is hacked away from the national brain each time a president gets out of a speech not with a thought or original phrase but with this mindless pablum. This has become the political equivalent of "Have a nice day!"

Isn't this how presidents have always talked? God, no. You didn't get it from George Washington. You didn't get it from Abraham Lincoln, either in the hands-down winner as Greatest Inaugural Address Ever, his second or in that work of political haiku, Gettysburg Address. You didn't hear it from FDR.

Many of these titans spoke of God -- but when they did so, it was with some actual thought-content. For instance, from the close of Lincoln's Second Inaugural:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...

Sorry to hear Obama talking this way (James Fallows)

Speaking of intelligent speechifying invoking God, you really should read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address if you haven't recently (or ever--as was my case.)

It's a corker.

A little more Lincoln:

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Election year reminder

If you aren't checking out the curated political coverage at Real Clear Politics, why on earth not?

I think there's something in there about him being a Harvard grad, too

On 9/14/08 8:17 AM, XXX wrote:

According to The Book of Revelations:

The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, he will destroy everything.

Hey, XXX – I hope this note finds you well. We are all okay, but always wish there were a few more hours in the weekend and a few less in the workweek...

I have seen the above repeated in a lot of places lately... Makes it easier for me to believe that old saying about the Bible being one book that everybody has in the house but nobody reads.

Revelation doesn’t describe or even use the term “anti-Christ” (though it is used elsewhere in the Bible); the figures of evil in Revelation are beasts that, when you read about them (see below) don’t really even sound like human beings to me, much less like a 40-year-old Muslim male. (Also: The Muslim faith was not founded until many hundreds of years after the last book of the Christian Bible was written...)

I’m not a big fan of Obama, to be honest. I was a Republican for most of my adult life before switching my registration to Independent a few years back, and I think there are plenty of valid reasons to prefer McCain, Barr, or not voting, over voting for Obama.

Arguing that he is some kind of Secret Muslim Anti-Christ is just silly, though.

- bc

New International Version, Revelation chapter 13:

¹ And the dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea.

The Beast out of the Sea

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.


²The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.


³One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast.

⁴Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?"

⁵The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months.

⁶He opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven.

⁷He was given power to make war against the saints and to conquer them. And he was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.

⁸All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.[b]

⁹He who has an ear, let him hear.

¹⁰If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity he will go.
If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,
with the sword he will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.

The Beast out of the Earth

¹¹Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon.

¹²He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.

¹³And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men.

¹⁴Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.

¹⁵He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

¹⁶He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead,

¹⁷so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

¹⁸This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

The laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is

If only the Democrats could contain their sense of entitlement to govern in a rational world, and their consequent distaste for wide swathes of the US electorate, they might gain the unshakeable grip on power they feel they deserve. Winning elections would certainly be easier – and Republicans would have to address themselves more seriously to economic insecurity. But the fathomless cultural complacency of the metropolitan liberal rules this out.

The attitude that expressed itself in response to the Palin nomination is the best weapon in the Republican armoury. Rely on the Democrats to keep it primed. You just have to laugh.

The Palin nomination could still misfire for Mr McCain, but the liberal reaction has made it a huge success so far. To avoid endlessly repeating this mistake, Democrats need to learn some respect.

It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.

Democrats must learn some respect (Clive Crook, writing in The Financial Times, 7 September 2008)

O tempora, O mores

A study by University of Maryland economists makes the case that her endorsement alone was worth more that one million votes in the Democratic primary.

Life in the post-political age

Over at Joe Bageant's place, an "anonymous political consultant" asserts that we are now in a post-political age:

It should not come as a surprise that the dominant ideas and mores of popular culture have become the dominant ideas of our society. Popular culture is the breaker of customs, prejudice, tradition and relevant historical knowledge.

It is a result of this dynamic that the two consistent winners in American politics over the last 30 years have been the cultural left and the economic right. Despite the massive organizing drive of the religious right over the past three decades, they are further away from reversing the cultural liberalization of American society than when they started. 

On [the other] side of the ledger, organized labor outside of a few urban pockets and industries is no longer a relevant force in American life. The ever greater electoral activism of both of these groups is generally misunderstood as a show of strength; in fact, it is the exact opposite. It is the desperate fight of the losing side of the American economic, cultural and political scene.

In essence the same forces that make it possible for the rapid acceptance of ideas such as gay marriage are the same force which can create a society that will accept massive social inequalities.

Joe Bageant: Life in the Post-Political Age

The list is life

Wasn't surprised to find that when this story ran, it was on Bloomberg news. If any company would have an exquisite sensitivity for the cash value of data, presented in a form that's useful to the user, it's Bloomberg.

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's supporters are giving him more than just record amounts of cash. They also are providing personal information that may make his donor list the most powerful tool in U.S. politics.

Even if the Democratic presidential candidate doesn't succeed in his White House bid, this data will make Obama a power broker in the party for years to come. For the interest groups or Democratic candidates he chooses to sell it to, it would provide a gold mine of information and access to potential donors.

Almost 2 million people have entered personal information on Obama pages on social-networking Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace and his campaign's mybarackobama.com, offering home addresses, phone numbers, their views on specific issues and the names of friends. The data have allowed Obama, 46, to raise more than $200 million, fill sports arenas with supporters across the nation and motivate millions more with custom-tailored messages.

"It's gigantic," said Laura Quinn, chief executive officer of Catalist, a company that maintains a database of 280 million Americans. The list is as "transformational" as the advent of political advertising, she said.

Bloomberg News: Obama's "Gigantic" Database May Make Him Party's Power Broker

Parts of the story we're not hearing

If we’ve learned any new rule in the 2008 campaign, it’s this: Once our news culture sets a story in stone, chances are it will crumble. But first it must be recycled louder and louder 24/7, as if sheer repetition will transmute conventional wisdom into reality.

When the Pennsylvania returns rained down Tuesday night, the narrative became clear fast. The Democrats’ exit polls spelled disaster: Some 25 percent of the primary voters said they would defect to Mr. McCain or not vote at all if Barack Obama were the nominee. How could the party possibly survive this bitter, perhaps race-based civil war?

But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama.

Those antiwar Paul voters are all potential defectors to the Democrats in November. Mr. Huckabee’s religious conservatives, who rejected Mr. McCain throughout the primary season, might also bolt or stay home. Given that the Democratic ticket beat Bush-Cheney in Pennsylvania by 205,000 votes in 2000 and 144,000 votes in 2004, these are 220,000 voters the G.O.P. can ill-afford to lose.

How McCain Lost Pennsylvania (Frank Rich, New York Times, 27 April 2008)

How to lose a sure thing

After listening to four hours of Pennsylvania election commentary on CNN (the TV was on as background noise while I worked), I now feel qualified to opine publically about anything and everything. I couldn't possibly do worse.

Coverage of this election cycle has been generally awful, and with rare exceptions (see: David Gergen) last night on CNN was more of the same.

There's just not enough to talk about to fill the hours of airtime on a 24/7 cable news channel, so that's a guaranteed font of babbling vacuity... but with the newspaper business in deep malaise and decline, the journalists who used to turn out crisp reporting and analysis on deadline seem to be missing in action.

So.

Hillary came within six tenths of a point of getting the 10 point victory she needed to "stay alive" in the primary... when you're virtually eliminated mathematically from being selected as the nominee, I'm not sure what kind of life it is, but she's still in it.

Last fall, if you had presented me with *any* scenario in which the Republicans won the White House in November, I'd have dismissed you as a fantasist or a paranoid, depending on your point of origin on the political spectrum.

I did allow at the time, however, that if any political party could figure out a way to lose a sure thing, it would be the Democrats.

Damned if they aren't working on it.

This bitter, brutal, and fratricidal primary looks to continue for several more weeks, if Hillary can raise enough money on the strength of her showing last night. And if enough bitterness is engendered between and among Clinton and Obama partisans, that could be the margin of defeat for the Democrats in November, right there.

John McCain must not be able to believe his luck.

Thought for the day

James Fallows, surfacing briefly from dealing with some family concerns out in California, weighs in on the depressing banality and irrelevance of the most recent Democratic debate:

Whatever else happens the next time we choose a president, there has got to be a better way to see candidates operate under pressure than the grotesque system that has metastasized during this electoral cycle. It makes candidates into mere props for bullying anchormen-narcissists. It does no one except the anchormen any good. I mentioned earlier the oddity of Jimmy Carter and GW Bush finding common cause about China policy. Maybe the RNC and the DNC can join hands in freeing political debate from the destructive grip of the networks. And if they can't do that, maybe we should just go all the way and have the candidates compete eating pails full of maggots on Fear Factor. That's the logical extension of where we're headed.

Sorry if you read this before breakfast, but the man has a point.

Visiting the Land of Make Believe

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

Story behind the story: The Clinton myth (Politico)

Ron Paul and those newsletters

WOLF BLITZER today, speaking in gerund phrases, examining the Ron Paul newsletter controversy, interviewing the Republican presidential candidate, who claims not only that he had no hand in writing numerous racist and homophobic items that appeared under his name over a period of years, but that he does not know—or care—who did write them.

Mr Paul is probably not himself a racist, and many of the sentiments he expresses in his CNN interview are admirable. It is equally plausible that the hateful items published in his newsletter, so different in style from the congressman's own speech and writing, are not his handiwork. But his protestations of ignorance, both about what was being disseminated on his behalf and who was responsible, are much harder to credit...

...[A]ccording to numerous veterans of the libertarian movement, it was an open secret during the late-80s and early-90s who was ghostwriting the portions of Mr Paul's newsletters not penned by the congressman himself: Lew Rockwell, founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and members of his staff, among them Jeffrey Tucker, now editorial vice president of the Institute...

...[I]f the person responsible for spreading venom under his name for many years remains a close associate, it suggests that Mr Paul is at least prepared to countenance pandering to racists, however respectable his own views. The candidate owes his supporters a far more complete explanation than he has thus far provided.

Democracy In America blog - The Rockwell Files - 11 Jan 2008

Indeed.

When the best-case scenario is "I didn't know what was going out under my name," and the worst-case scenario is somewhere on the spectrum from Dr. Paul being a passive enabler of racists to cynically pandering to racists to actively holding and espousing racist beliefs...

Ugh.

I've defended Dr. Paul in the past from accusations of extremism--including on this blog--and I still maintain that a certain percentage of nutty supporters do not, of necessity, a nutty candidate make.

But a much fuller and much more transparent explanation for this sordid business of the newsletters is called for. What we've heard so far are nothing but credulity-straining evasions, particularly repellent coming from a man who claims to espouse a philosophy that values personal responsibility.

I am disappointed, and embarrassed, to learn this evident truth about a man I thought I admired.

TalkingAboutPolitics.com

I developed my taste for bare-knuckled politics growing up in North Carolina, where both local and statewide races were often entertainingly tawdry and replete with dirty tricks.

One of the formative political experiences of my young adulthood, in fact, was the 1984 U.S. Senate election between Jim Hunt, the Democratic governor of the state, and incumbent Republican Senator Jesse Helms.

Both sides pulled out all the stops--it was the costliest and arguably the dirtiest Senate campaign in U.S. history at the time--but Helms won in a squeaker.

Today I was delighted to discover that two veteran political consultants who met during the 1984 campaign -- Gary Pearce, who was Hunt's man, and Carter Wrenn, who was Helms's -- are publishing a blog together these days. It's called TalkingAboutPolitics.com, and while it has a definite Old North State flavor, their observations about party and process transcend regional and state boundaries.

Brother Bubba says check it out.

Middle management ranks senior management... in the U.S. Army

Followup to an earlier post:

On Aug. 1, Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff, flew to the sprawling base at Fort Knox, Ky., to talk with the officers enrolled in the Captains Career Course. These are the Army’s elite junior officers. Of the 127 captains taking the five-week course, 119 had served one or two tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly as lieutenants. Nearly all would soon be going back as company commanders. A captain named Matt Wignall, who recently spent 16 months in Iraq with a Stryker brigade combat team, asked Cody, the Army’s second-highest-ranking general, what he thought of a recent article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled “A Failure in Generalship.” The article, a scathing indictment that circulated far and wide, including in Iraq, accused the Army’s generals of lacking “professional character,” “creative intelligence” and “moral courage.”

[...]

General Cody looked around the auditorium, packed with men and women in uniform — most of them in their mid-20s, three decades his junior but far more war-hardened than he or his peers were at the same age — and turned Captain Wignall’s question around. “You all have just come from combat, you’re young captains,” he said, addressing the entire room. “What’s your opinion of the general officers corps?”

Over the next 90 minutes, five captains stood up, recited their names and their units and raised several of Yingling’s criticisms. One asked why the top generals failed to give political leaders full and frank advice on how many troops would be needed in Iraq. One asked whether any generals “should be held accountable” for the war’s failures. One asked if the Army should change the way it selected generals. Another said that general officers were so far removed from the fighting, they wound up “sheltered from the truth” and “don’t know what’s going on.”

Challenging The Generals (Fred Kaplan, New York Times Magazine, 26 August 2007)

The Economist on conservative American malaise

The Republican Party is only the most visible part of the American right. The right's hidden strength lies in its conservative base. America is almost unique in possessing a vibrant conservative movement. Every state boasts organisations fighting in favour of guns and against taxes and abortion. The Christian right can call upon megachurches and Evangelical colleges. Conservatives have also created a formidable counter-establishment of think-tanks and pressure groups.

[...]

Yet today this mighty movement is in deep trouble. Veteran activists are sunk in gloom (“I've never seen conservatives so downright fed up,” says Richard Viguerie, a conservative stalwart). And the other side is cock-a-hoop. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, describes the shift from conservatism as “breathtaking”.

[...]

In 2002 the electorate was equally divided between Democrats and Democratic-leaners (43%) and Republicans and Republican-leaners (43%). Today only 35% align themselves with Republicans, and 50% with Democrats. The Republicans are doing particularly badly among independents (the fastest-growing group in the electorate) and younger voters. The proportion of 18-25-year-olds who identify with the Republican Party has declined from 55% in 1991 to 35% in 2006, according to Pew. Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, notes that the share of Republican voters aged 55 and over has increased from 28% in 1997 to 41% today, whereas the share aged 18-34 has fallen from 25% to 17%. No wonder Ken Mehlman, a former Republican Party chairman who oversaw George Bush's 2004 victory, is now advising hedge funds on how to deal with a Democratic-leaning America.

The American Right: Under the Weather (The Economist, August 9, 2007)

None of the above

Wow. Not all that surprised, but, wow.

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals. Such dissatisfaction underscores the volatility of the 2008 GOP nomination fight.

AP Poll: GOP pick is "none of the above" (AP via Yahoo News)

GOP rally cheer, early in the third quarter of 2007:

Who do you want?

SOMEBODY ELSE!

When do you want them?

REAL SOON!

The road to Des Moines

Tom Tancredo, who has about as much chance of getting the Republican presidential nomination as I do, had the line of the night in the GOP debate:

Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado said he had witnessed, in the course of his campaign, candidates move to more conservative positions on guns, abortion and immigration. “You know it’s beginning to sound like a Baptist tent revival meeting here,” Mr. Tancredo said. “And I’m glad to see these conversions. But I must tell you, I trust those conversions when they happen on the road to Damascus and not on the road to Des Moines.”

The stage was like the Beijing Zoo last night, what with all those pander bears.

Giuliani, who is polling best against leading Democrats at this point, is not backing away from his pro-life, pro-gay rights, and pro-gun control positions. Unless Republican politics have undergone a complete transformation, he will never survive the primary process.

Ségo ou Sarko?

On the eve of the French election, an online quiz at Le Monde - are your opinions more in line with Ségo or Sarko?

Basic French is required (the quiz is an interactive slideshow and can't be translated by, e.g., BabelFish) and slightly more than basic knowledge of French politics and society. But it's kind of surprising how little command of language is required to read a country's newspaper of record (I speak Menu French), and what a shallow grasp of events is sufficient to understand political issues. or at least political positions.

The longer I think about that the deeper and more worrisome it seems.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I answered with Sarko on 13 of 20 questions (65%).

A tip of the enrevanche chapeau to Greg.

Etes-vous Ségo ou Sarko ?
LEMONDE.FR | 02.05.07

©

WFB on GOP

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.

The Waning of the GOP (William F. Buckley, Jr. writing in National Review, April 28, 2007)

Even the computers at gop.com are against him

I just got perhaps the (unintentionally) funniest piece of e-mail ever.

It's a campaign message from President George W. Bush and is evidently authentic. (Even though I quit the Republican Party a little while back, just try getting off the damn mailing lists.)

Subject: Laying the Groundwork for Victory

Message text: Error: the server didn't return any data for the contents of this message.

Screencap below. I vow to you this is exactly as I received it.

Click for full-size.