This is the second of two parts reviewing Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. Read Part I here. The photo is from Punahou High School, where Obama wrote his name in concrete. The "King" was added later.
I always find discussions of political experience rather reductive, as the recent discussions of Obama's experience demonstrates. The definition of experience used by Washington insiders is usually pretty limited. Unless a politician was previously a soldier, a lawyer, or a CEO, previous life experience doesn't count for much, and certainly not the experience of working day to day with the working poor of Chicago's south side projects. I'm sure that if Barack Obama had not resigned his job on Wall Street he might be considered by some to be more qualified to be President, but the decision wouldn't have fit with his values and identity.
The middle part of Obama's Dreams describes these years in Chicago, the frustrations and successes, the growth of his leadership, the struggles within him to find direction and meaning in his life, a search which ultimately leads him to Kenya and to the graves of his father and grandfather.
Dreams From My Father, written over ten years ago, gives insight into many of the issues from Obama's life that have commanded media attention during the last few months of his campaign. Of course, first and foremost is Obama's "community organizing" in Chicago. Obama took a job with a non-profit in Chicago after leaving Wall Street for work that would be more meaningful to him. His job is to work with the residents of the south side to find concrete ways to improve their lives. Rather than simply lobby the city government for improved services, Obama and his colleagues work with residents to help them do it themselves. One of Obama's projects is to organize a group of residents to secure an employment center closer to their project. Obama's organizing career coincides with the election of Harold Washington. Obama explains that the election of Washington was a seismic shift in Chicago politics, but it was also an inspiring moment for the city's black population who suddenly felt they had an ally in city hall. Still, the residents had to work to cut through the bureaucracy of the city government in order to have their concerns heard.
Living and working in a predominantly black community causes Obama to think about the divisions in the community. He seems to observe from a distance the confusion regarding color consciousness: "if you're light, you're alright; if you're black, get back." Obama doesn't seem concerned about questions of how "black" he was, even though it would come up later in his own nascent presidential campaign. He admits to "privately measuring my own degree of infection" with these questions, but in general he wonders if it isn't "an expression of self-hatred." Mostly I kept quiet when these subjects were broached privately measuring my own degree of infection. But I noticed that such conversations rarely took place in large groups and never in front of whites. Later I would realize that the position of most black students in predominantly white colleges was already too tenuous, our identities too scrambled, to admit to ourselves that our black pride remained incomplete. And to admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self hatred--for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology.
Obama's book is full of fascinating observations like these, observations about race, politics, his own efforts to understand the black community that he really didn't grow up in, while at the same time negotiating city and organizational politics. Obama also describes his friendship with "Rafiq," a black nationalist whom Obama admires in spite of his radicalism. Over time, Obama becomes distrustful of an ideological that he finds self-defeating in spite of its message of self determination: In talking to self-professed nationalists like Rafiq, I came to see how the blanket indictment of everything white served a central function in their message of uplift; how... one depended on the other. For when the nationalist spoke of reawakening of values as the only solution to black poverty, he was expressing an implicit, if not explicit, criticism to black listeners: that we did not have to live as we did. And while there were those who could take such an unadorned message and use it to hew out a new life for themselves,--those with the stolid disposisitons that Booker T. Washington had once demanded from his followers--in the ears of many blacks such talk smacked of the explanations that whites had always offered for black poverty: that we continued to suffer from, if not genetic inferiority, then cultural weakness. It was a message that ignored causality or fault, a message outside history, without a script or plot that might insist on a progression. For a people already stripped of their history, a people often ill equipped to retrieve that history in any form other than what fluttered across the telvision screen, the testimony of what we saw ever day seemed only to confirm our worst suspicions about ourselves.
Nationalism provided that history, an unambiguous morality tale that was easily communicated and easily grasped. A steady attack on the white race, the constant recitation of black people's brutal experience in this country, served as ballast that could prevent the ideas of personal and communal responsibility from tipping into an ocean of despari. Yes, the nationalist would say, whites are responsible for your sorry state, not any inherent flaws in you. In fact, whites are so heartless and devious that we can no longer expect anything from them. The self-loathing you feel, what keeps you drinking or thieving, is planted by them...
Obama finds the white hatred of black nationalism difficult to accept and personally uncomfortable. Ultimately, however, Obama's critique of black nationalism centers on the practical questions of cooperation with whites and the reality of integration on a practical level. Obama understands that his own history and family prevent him from really needing or believing in a complete withdrawal from white society. It's hard to see your mother and grandparents, whom you love, as the white devil. He describes efforts of some in Chicago to create a completely separate economy of goods and services so that no money had to be spent on white businesses. But, he explains that for most blacks, economic realities prevent them from completely withdrawing into black nationalism: he imagines a worker saying, "White folks I work with ain't so bad, and even if they were, I can't be quitting my job--who's gonna pay my rent tomorrow or feed my children today?"
As an aside, anyone reading these pages in Obama's book can't help but wonder at the simplistic criticism of his supposed association with Louis Farrakhan. Obama discusses the following and the crowds he drew in Chicago in the 80's, the allure of his message to the residents of the south side. But Obama offers a thoughtful critique, written long before his presidential or even senatorial runs, to Farrakhan and black nationalism, however unsensational it may be in the climate of "gotcha" political reporting.
There is a story from Chicago that speaks directly to Obama's campaign rhetoric about empowerment. One of his major successes as an organizer was to uncover a serious asbestos problem in the Altgeld project where Obama worked. The problem became apparent after asbestos was removed from the offices of some of the directors of public housing, while the asbestos present in the residences was to be left untouched. After a time spent organizing the residents and creating awareness of the issue, Obama organizes a bus trip to the director's office at the Chicago Housing Authority to demand answers about the asbestos problem. The press arrived, and one of the parents at Altgeld, a woman named Sadie, became a media celebrity after Obama made her answer the questions from the press. Obama says that he "changed" as a result of that bus trip, becoming more aware of the power of individuals to alter their own destiny. But is was away from all that (publicity), as wwe prepared for our meeting with the CHA director, that I began to see something wonderful happening. The parents began talking about ideas for future campaigns. New parents got involved. The block by block canvass we'd planned earlier was put into effect, with LInda and her swollen belly waddling door to door to collect complaint forms; Mr. Lucas, unable to read the forms himself, explaining to neighbors how to fill them out properly...It was as though Sadie's small, nohest step had broken into a reservoir of hope, allowing people in Altgeld to reclaim a power they had all along.
Obama's time in Chicago comes to an end when he is admitted to Harvard Law School. But first he makes a trip to Kenya, a trip which comprises the final third of the book. His sister, Auma, and his brother Roy both have visited him in the US, giving hints as to his father's history and his grandfather's. In Kenya, Obama learns of the family divisions. The paltry estate of his father is the subject of a legal dispute, pitting Obama's grandmother on one side, and the second (or step) mother of his father and Barack's children on the other. Obama, led by his sister Auma through the Kenyan family sites, doesn't choose sides. Obama is looking for his own share of the inheritance: the stories of his father and grandfather.
Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a stern man who made a small fortune as a domestic during Kenya's colonial era. He also assisted with organizational affairs, working with road crews to facilitate the infrastructure the British needed. After a lifetime of service, Onyango as he is known purchases a plot of land and builds a life there. He has a hard time finding a woman who can put up with his aloofness, and even Barack's (Obama's father is known as Barack) mother runs away. After a time, the children, Barack and his sister, attempt to run away and rejoin their mother, but they aren't successful, and Barack never attempts to leave again.
Barack is an excellent student, and a very quick learner. He succeeds in school, in spite of his laziness, although he is eventually expelled, and his father sends him to work as a clerk in Mombasa in order to teach him responsibility. He becomes involved in politics, is jailed for his involvement, gets married and has two children, Auma and Roy, whom Obama has met in the US. After a time, he finds two American women, missionaries, who offer to help Barack find a university to attend in the United States. This inspires Barack to complete correspondance courses and enables him to gain the credentials needed to be admitted in an American university. Finally, he is admitted to the University of Hawaii where he meets Obama's mother. Having left one family in Kenya, he later leaves another behind in Hawaii. As Granny explains, Onyango's opposition to the marriage in Hawaii had nothing to do with the fact that Obama's mother was white. It was that Barack already had a family in Kenya, and he doubted that he would be able to take care of both.
Later, Barack returned to Kenya and a white woman, Ruth, came looking for him. They were married as well. Barack continued in his career in public service until at the end of his life he found himself alone and underemployed. At the end of this book, Obama has had his questions answered, the story of his life and his father's is as complete as it can be. The book ends with the image of Obama sitting before the graves of his grandfather and father, both of whom are buried at the family compound in graves beside each other, while the rest of his reunited African family looks on.For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept. When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more thatn the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain I felt was my father's pain. My questions were my brother's questions. Their struggle, my birthright.
In the heat of a presidential campaign, it's easy to distort a candidate's past, invent radicalisms where none exist, fabricate associations out of mere acquaintances. Obama's Dreams From My Father not only puts some of the heated rhetoric of this campaign into a more sensible context, but it also provides a view of Barack Obama as a man, his youth and his development, his insecurities and passions. The book also shows his brilliance. The book is prefectly constructed, beautifully written, and honest.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
From Chicago to Kenya: Obama's Dreams From My Father
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Hillary's Outsourced Hate
In 1984 I took a visit to Michigan State University. I was a politically aware senior in high school. Right there in front of Beaumont Tower was a political rally. None other than Geraldine Ferraro came out to speak against Ronald Reagan and his divisive politics, his race baiting of welfare mothers, his draconian budget cuts. Of course Reagan seems tame by comparison now, to the race baiting divisiveness of the last eight years. But Ferraro was a dream. She was brilliant, unabashedly liberal. And symbolic as the first woman to grace a national ticket, a barrier breaker in her own right. In those final embers of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket, the writing was on the wall, but she soldiered bravely on, mocking the Spartans for Reagan who had assembled a counter-rally nearby with seeming glee.
Since yesterday, when I posted this at Candide's Notebooks, I've tried to refresh my memory on Ferraro's liberal creds. When I saw Ferraro in 84, I was 18 and the only kid in town who wasn't in Club Gipper and had a subscription to Harper's, I was thrilled to hear her take down Reagan's foreign policy and opposing the tax cutting regimen that was leaving no money left for higher ed--I paid attention to that, at least--and social programs after the defense department got their cut. Remember, the Mondale campaign was crucified on the honesty of pledge to raise taxes to restore the social programs liberals like us care about.
She was anti-nukes, if I remember, the big liberal issue of the day, and refreshing my memory on wikipedia (I know, the Clinton supporters are editing her entry madly right now) I found her comments on the Contras:
We're not moving toward a more secure area of the world. As a matter of fact the number of troops that the Sandinistas have accumulated since the administration started its covert activities has risen from 12,000 to 50,000, and of course the number of Soviet and Cuban advisors has also increased. I did not support the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua; it is a violation of international law. Congress did not support it and as a matter of fact, just this week, the Congress voted in cut off covert aid to Nicaragua unless and until a request is made and there is evidence of need for it, and the Congress approves it again in March. So if Congress doesn't get laid on, the covert activities which I opposed in Nicaragua, those CIA covert activities in that specific country, are not supported by the Congress. And believe it or not, not supported by the majority of people throughout the country. (not sure about the word laid there, but you get the idea)
I'd like to have more of that in our current Congress: cutting off funding for illegal administration activities. By current standards its not only liberal but downright revolutionary.
How disgusting then, to see her now, using the worst racist dog whistles, a shameless and transparent Clinton surrogate, able to burn the fiery rhetorical turpentine that the Clinton juggernaut fuels itself on now while the candidate herself remains safely outside the ring of fire. First Ferraro argued that Obama is where is because he’s black. Think about that: he is successful because he’s black. Where then, are the other black senators? Why no black president before now, if it’s such a winning strategy? Why so few black CEO’s in America, if the top prizes are set aside for them? Ironically, as Clarence Page pointed out today on MSNBC, it wasn’t long ago that pundits wondered out loud if Obama was black enough. But now according to Ferraro, his success is all due to his race. Reminds one of the criticisms against her own 84 candidacy: Mondale chose her because she’s a woman. Wikipedia also reminded me of the controversy of Ferraro being called a "witch", while now she is the paid mudslinger. The sad irony seems lost on her.
The Obama campaign has, for once, struck back, using the righteous indignation it earned itself with the unbecoming canning of Samantha Powers, to ask the logical question, why hasn’t Clinton denounced–-pardon me, denounced and rejected--these remarks? To which Ferraro responds, turning to victimhood in classic conservative style, “any attack on Obama is racist.” A remark which is, in itself, racist, and patently dishonest. But she goes further: He’s attacking me because I’m white. Classic Bush up-is-down-ism: He’s the attacker, not me.
What a shame. The great barrier breaker becomes the Clinton camp pit bull, engaging in the worst sort of politics, the kind Americans have become sick of, the kind she once symbolized a break from. Another liberal icon fallen.
Postscript: Here is Ferraro's Who, me? defense.
"I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It had nothing to do with my qualification."
Ferraro said she has a 40-year history of opposing discrimination of all kinds, including race, and that she was outraged at criticism of her remarks by David Axelrod, Obama's chief media strategist, because he knows her and her record.
"David Axelrod, his campaign manager, has chose to spin this as a racist comment because everytime anybody makes a comment about race who is white — he did it with Bill Clinton, he was successful; he did it with (Pennsylvania governor and Clinton supporter) Ed Rendell, he was less successful; and he is certainly not going to be successful with me," Ferraro told CBS' "The Early Show." "He should have called me up ... He knows I'm not racist."
Friday, March 07, 2008
Hillary Clinton: Slash and Burn Politics
(Cross posted at Candide's Notebooks)
I have always been a partisan Democrat.
But after this week, I’m not sure I can support Hillary Clinton in the general election if she wins the primary. It started with her Iraq vote. But then again, Edwards and Kerry voted the same way, and I managed to forgive them once they disavowed the vote and proved their opposition to the war and Bush’s leadership.
Then, I wasn’t happy at all about Marc Penn’s company’s defense of Blackwater.
But in the last week, Clinton’s campaign has devolved into the worst sort of dirty tricks, cheap shots, and fearmongering that we would expect from a Republican opponent. First she aired an ad showing a sleeping child and talking about the “3 AM” phone call, and who would best handle it. She said that she had crossed the national security threshhold–whatever that means, and that Barack Obama hadn’t. But, that he gave a very good speech in 2002.
Well, let’s see. There are hundreds of people in the Pentagon and Congress who would have a pretty good idea of what to do with the mysterious “3 AM phone call”. Barack Obama can appoint one of them to be his National Security Advisor. But there aren’t very many who can inspire people with their words. Can Hillary Clinton appoint someone to inspire the country? Can she appoint someone to have enough good judgement not to trust cherry picked intelligence reports?
Meanwhile, it was revealed this week that it was HER campaign, not Obama’s, that gave private reassurances to Canadian officials that the talk about NAFTA was just that. She praised John McCain’s qualifications, saying only she and McCain had crossed the "threshold" of national security. Her top advisor compared, ridiculously, Obama to Ken Starr. She’s refused to release her tax records, after public assurances that she would do so. She’s demanded to seat the delegates in Michigan and Florida–but said she would ”not accept” (as if she has the power of refusal) a caucus. But more than anything, she has simply run a mean-spirited, dishonest, and fear-mongering campaign. She seems intent on destroying her party if she can’t be the nominee.
At this point, if she were to win, I think I’d have a hard time voting for her in the general. Even Nader seems more palatable.
Gary Hart in the Huffington Post has it about right, I think:
Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Monday, March 03, 2008
Obama's Dreams From My Father; First of Two Parts
Note: This is the first of a two-part review of Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father.
As Barack Obama's candidacy grows, there will naturally be more interest in his life story, and Obama has the advantage of having told this story himself, eloquently and forcefully, in an autobiography written before his Senate career or his presidential run. Dreams From My Father isn't as famous as The Audacity of Hope, his campaign manifesto, but the story he tells in the former may ultimately win him more votes, and convince Americans that he is, after all, a different kind of candidate, different in every way from any major candidate for President in our history.
The differences become clear in the book's opening pages, which tell the story of Obama's African father. The narrative begins with his death, when Barack was 21 years old, and meanders through the memories and legends of his father he grew up hearing. Living in New York at the time his father died, Obama is reminded of an old man who lived in his apartment building until he was found dead in his apartment, a lonely ignoble death much like his father's in Kenya. As Obama describes later in the book, his father died a shell of his former self, alone, alienated from his children, struggling to maintain relevance and dignity in spite of his doctorate and prosperous past. But the stories Obama grows up with are the stories of his youthful vigor and charm, his seriousness, his promise, his charisma--qualities that might be applied to Obama himself.
From his white mother and grandparents, he hears glowing portraits, tales of strangers in rapt attention to his words.
"Your father can be a bit domineering," my mother would admit with a hint of smile. "But it's just that he is basically a very honest person. That makes him uncompromising sometimes."
She preferred a gentler portrait of my father. She would tell the story of whwne he arrived to accept his Phi Beta Kappa key in his favorite outfit--jeans and an old knit shirt with a leopard print pattern. "Nobody told him it was a big honor so he walked in and found everyone standing around this elegant room dressed in tuxedos. The only time I ever saw him embarrassed."
The shadow of Obama's father remains throughout, but this book is about Obama himself. That story begins, after the opening flashforward to his father's death, begins with his grandparents' nomadic wanderings which lead them eventually to Hawaii, to a new life, where Obama's mother meets his father and where he is born, where he is left behind by a father whose departure is never explained to him.
Obama lives in Hawaii until he is six years old, when his mother accepts a proposal from an Indonesian named Lolo. When they move to Indonesia, Barack adapts quickly and becomes close to Lolo. However, as time goes by, his mother begins to wonder if she is losing her son to a culture and identity that is unfamiliar to her. While Barack attends Indonesian schools, his mother works to inculcate midwestern values of honesty and fairness, and wakes him up early every morning to provide her own English lessons before he went to school. While he is in Indonesia, he has a bit of a racial awakening. He describes looking through a Life magazine and discovering a story of a black man who had tried to peel away his skin. As Obama describes it, it was a moment of racial awakening for him, and he began to question why television shows had so few black characters, that the Sears catalog had so few people in it that looked like him.
I kept these observations to myself, deciding that either my mother didn't see them or she was trying to protect me and that I shouldn't expose her efforts as having failed. I still trusted my mother's love--but now I faced the prospect that her account of the world, and my father's place in it, was somehow incomplete.
After a time Obama returns to Hawaii and his grandparents to attend an American school, the Punahou Academy at age ten. Obama describes the traumas and lessons of his youth, including a mement where he was unkind to an overweight classmate who was supposed to be his girlfriend, and the moment where like a typical 10 year old he bragged about his father only to have it backfire. Telling the story of his father as tribal chief, he becomes uneasy, wondering if the story is doing more harm than good. He begins to wonder what his father's identity means to his own. Obama continues his education at Punahou through high school, playing famously on the basketball team, finding his racial identity and his sense of belonging in the drug-infused seventies. Living with elderly white grandparents on a multiracial but mostly white and asian island made learning about racial politics difficult, but he sought the advice of books by Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, and the black friend of his grandfather, and his friend Ray. His growing racial pride and struggle to express it is illustrated by a story he tells from high school when a white acquaintance approaches Ray:
"Hey Ray! Mah main man! Wha's happenin'!"
Ray went up and slapped Kurt's outstretched palm. But when Kurt repeated the gesture to me I waved him off.
"What's the problem?" I overheard Kurt say to Ray as I walked away. A few minutes later Ray caught up with me and asked me what was wrong.
"Man, those folks are just making fun of us," I said.
"What're you talking about?"
"All that 'yo, baby, give me five,' bullshit."
"So who's Mr. Sensitive all of a sudden? Kurt don't mean nothing by it."
"If that's what you think then hey--"
Ray's face suddenly glistened with anger. "Look," he said, "I'm just getting along, all right? Just like I see you getting along, talking your game with the teachers when you need them to do you a favor. All that stuff about, 'Yes, Miss Snooty Bitch, I just find this novel so engaging, if I can just have one more day for that paper, I'll kiss your white ass.' It's their world, all right? They own it, and we in it..."
This and other moments in the book, like when Obama dismisses a black friend as a "tom" and is rebuked by another friend, show Obama's struggles to articulate his own feelings about race. He mentions repeatedly throughout the book that he is part of neither race, or part of both, but being raised in a white family but feeling more at home with black friends causes him so moments of tension and self doubt, feelings which at length seem to get worked out, especially by the time he goes to college and on to work as an organizer in Chicago. Even in Chicago, Obama describes feeling pulled between "two strands of black nationalism" as he begins to feel uncomfortable with the white antipathy he finds himself surrounded with at times:
Ever since I'd picked up Malcolm X's autobiography I had tried to untangle the twin strands of black nationalism, agruing that nationalism's affirming message of solidarity and self-reliance, discipline and communal responsibility, need not depend on hatred of whites any more than it depended on white munificence. We could tell this country where it was wrong, I would tell myself and any black friends who would listen, without ceasing to believe in its capacity for change.
It's less compelling reading, the nuts and bolts of community organizing in Chicago, but that section of the book provides the most insight into Obama's leadership skills and his values. Obama arrives in Chicago a wide eyed idealist, and although his idealism isn't dampened necessarily, he learns that good intentions aren't enough. The organization he's part of, in spite of their efforts and heart, never seem to actually get anyone in the projects a job, or improve the lives of people in measurable ways. It isn't until Obama learns to apply his charisma and energy into concrete political action, working the Harold Washington administration into concrete steps such as moving an employment office into the neighborhood of the people they are actually serving.
Obama's early life shows him to be sensitive, smart, and worldly. The first half of the book includes some material that has provided ammunition for right wing attacks--he did attend Islamic school for a couple of years in Indonesia, he used drugs in high school and college, he reflects on the merits of black nationalism. But anyone who actually takes the time to read Obama's story can't help but come away inspired by his unusual life, impressed by his elegant prose, overwhelmed by his insights and attention to the people around him. Next week I'll look at the second half of Obama's Dreams From My Father.
Clinton, Obama, on Education
On the eve of the primary, it's worth examining how Obama and Clinton will approach education.
Both candidates have been critical of NCLB, with Clinton saying she wants to end it and Obama planning to return to the law's original intent of providing support for low-achieving schools. Both have terrific ideas for improving college graduation rates and improving access to college. Both are superior to the McCain approach, which is to ignore education and hope the issue goes away.
Obama has had some missteps on education that appear to be intended to prove his independence from the teachers' organizations. He's touched the third rail of vouchers, indicating a willingness to compromise on the issue. And he's flirted with the idea of merit pay, which I have written about frequently. But it's interesting that Obama hasn't made any concrete policy proposals in these areas, at least none that I've seen: just a willingness to explore proposals that the left has typically rejected. But it's hard to get too upset with his position when he expresses in sensible terms like these: In interviews with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel prior to the Wisconsin primary, Clinton rejected private school choice outright, while Obama expressed some openness to private school vouchers -- if studies ever show they improve student achievement. Still, he made it clear that he's aware of the many problems with real-world voucher programs. "My view has been that you are not going to generate the supply of high-quality schools to meet the demand,” Obama said. “Instead, what you’re going to get is a few schools that cream the kids that are easiest to teach." That describes almost perfectly the problems with the Utah voucher proposal that voters in that state rejected last November.
Still he's been reliably liberal on issues like Head Start and college affordability.
Clinton has been more in tune with the unions on education issues which explains in part why she was able to secure the endorsement of the AFT. But, as my favorite education writer explains, the NEA endorsement is still up for grabs: In a press release issued after Super Tuesday, NEA President Reg Weaver said neither Obama nor Clinton has made the case that would earn them the association's recommendation. "There have been dozens of debates but less than a handful of questions about the future role of the federal government in public education," says Weaver.
He continued: "If they haven't made education a central part of their campaigns, how can we feel confident that they will make education a central part of their administration?"
Here's a fuller comparison of their plans. I think it's safe to say that whether it's Obama or Clinton, education will receive more funding and more attention from the President than it has in the last seven years.
Friday, February 29, 2008
New Obama Music Video... Way Cool
I think the thing that inspires me most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the President of the United States. You know, he's not going to be the president of the top 10%, or the president of the most powerful corporations, or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He's going to be our president. He's going to speak for us.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Fluffing Obama's Pillow
I guess the media is now taking its narratives from Saturday Night Live.
If you missed it, the weekend comedy show satirized the media treatment of Obama in a sketch where reporters asked Obama during a debate if he needed anything, are you sure, and do you pillows need to be fluffed. Hillary followed up on the line in her debate last night.
Well Obama better get ready to have his pillows fluffed.
After Bill Cunningham's attack yesterday made national headlines, as did McCain's phoney apology, Obama has been subjected to a continuous news loop of the attack being replayed over and over again. All while McCain gets to keep his good name and is praised for repudiating the attack from Cunningham. With McCain's FEC troubles, it's a good thing CNN is giving him all this free advertising.
Meanwhile CNN asks, Has the media been too soft on Obama?
UPDATE: Wow, sorry to say that NPR just legitimized Cunningham by giving him an interview and a chance to say aw, shucks, I didn't mean anything by it. He did, however, say that he had a dinner last week with Portman, Deters, and DeWine during which the speech was discussed.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Don't Cry for Bill Cunningham, Victim Extraordinaire
(Updated below)
(Second Update below)
Bill Cunningham was asked today by the McCain camp to introduce McCain at a rally in Cincinnati's Over the Rhine district. His comments made national news when he repeatedly used Obama's middle name "Hussein" and said Obama in 2009 will have "just got back from a meeting with Ahmedinajad, has a meeting next week with Kim Jong Il, and then he's gonna saddle up next to Hezbollah." (my transcribing)
McCain pretended to be shocked, and apologized. But if John McCain bothered to do any research he would know that Cunningham engages in these kinds of personal attacks on a regular basis as a way to generate controversy that will create headlines for himself and WLW. On CNN McCain is being roundly lauded for apologizing and "taking responsibility." John King of CNN reported that McCain's staff had no idea that he would be headlining the event. In fact, the Enquirer reported it as follows:
Cunningham, a conservative Republican who also hosts a Sunday night syndicated radio show, said he was asked Monday “by a McCain operative” to introduce the Republican front-runner at Memorial Hall.
Of course, now McCain wants credit for repudiating the comments that his own campaign knew were coming. Meanwhile, Cunningham is feeling used, and now says that he repudiates McCain, and won't support him in the election. But McCain obviously staged this event very carefully. He waited until Cunningham was gone to enter the hall, and claimed not to have heard the remarks. Now the offensive remarks from Cunningham are making the regular news cycle, all while McCain is shown distancing himself from it. It's all very clever, and it's exactly how the GOP will use surrogates like Cunningham to attack Obama in the coming months while keeping their hands clean.
This is par for the course for Cunningham. He assails the character of Democrats (or other celebrities) and generates controversy, then cries on the air at how unfairly he's being treated, just as he's now crying that McCain had the nerve to repudiate his character assassination of Obama. But Cunningham is a classic shock jock--in fact he helped invent the genre--using the most outrageous language he can, as loudly as he can, seeking to create interest through innuendo and insult. He calls himself "The Great American" and wallows in shallow patriotism and sanctimonious self congratulation all while serving as the shrillest note of the GOP's mighty whirlizter.
I was listening to Cunningham's show in 2004 when he made remarks about John Kerry and the raping of little girls in Vietnam. I called the station but was placed on hold, and finally hung up when it was clear the producer had no intention of taking my call. Last summer Cunningham accused the Reds' Adam Dunn, a power hitting outfielder with poor defensive skills, of being drunk in the outfield after a misplayed ball cost the Reds a game. When the 6' 6" Dunn challenged Cunningham, he relented and became contrite, but the station played up the controversy for days, replaying over and over again the controversial statements that had caused the hard feelings. Likewise, now, WLW will replay Cunningham's remarks again and again until the primary and after, giving the "honorable" John McCain valuable free air time attacking his November opponent while pretending to be above the fray himself.
Cunningham roundly attacks the mainstream media for failing to report on Obama the way they've reported on Bush, but the irony is that WLW in Cincinnati is the mainstream media. It is one of the largest radio stations in the country, certainly one of the top 4 or 5 in the entire midwest, and easily the largest in Ohio in terms of audience, reach, and influence. WLW puts out hours and hours of unabashed right-wing cheerleading day after day, indulging in the most vicious political attacks like the one Cunningham engaged in today, and railing about taxes, Democrats, homosexuals, war protesters and so on. It's red-meat Republicanism in its most extreme form, 365 days a year.
And McCain didn't know what was coming? Puh-leaze.
Update: Here's how Rob Portman praised Cunningham (h/t Crooks and Liars):
Willie, you’re out of control again. So, what else is new? But we love him,” Portman said. “But I’ve got to tell you, Bill Cunningham lending his voice to this campaign is extremely important. He did it in 2000, he did it in 2004. It was crucial to victory then and it’s even more important this year with his bigger radio audience. So, Bill Cunningham, thank you for lending your voice.”
Second Update: As predicted, WLW is using the Cunningham/McCain spat as promotional, running the clip or news about the clip on a repeated basis. In an interesting twist, Cunningham is disputing McCain's assertion that they've never met, claiming on the air that he has dined with McCain on more than one occasion, and that Joe Deters and Mike DeWine were in attendance. Cunningham views himeself as part of the GOP mainstream, and won't tolerate being treated as a fringe member of the party.
AND SOMEONE needs to tell the Obama campaign to rethink their ad buy. After Cunningham was on the radio this morning repeating his smears, an Obama ad played during the break. What an outrage.
Here's how it was reported on CNN:
A supporter of John McCain, speaking at an official campaign event in Ohio attended by the Arizona senator, called Barack Obama a “hack, Chicago-style Daly politician,” and told the crowd “all is going to be right with the world when the great prophet from Chicago takes the stand, and the world leaders who want to kill us will simply be singing Kumbaya around the table of Barack Obama.”
“At some point in the near future the media, the stooges from the New York Times, CBS (The Clinton Broadcasting System), NBC (The Nobody But Clinton Network), The All Bill Clinton Channel (ABC), and the Clinton News Network at some point is going to peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama,” said controversial conservative commentator Bill Cunningham, an Ohio native.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Previous Presidents Prove: Experience Isn't Everything
Hillary Clinton went nuclear today, comparing Obama to George Bush based on experience.
"We've seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," Clinton said during a foreign policy address at George Washington University.
"We can't let that happen again. America has already taken that chance one time too many."
Since Clinton keeps bringing up the experience issue, let's look at history, and how much Washington experience various presidents have had. Here are some presidents without much elected experience, who probably would have been accused by Hillary Clinton of needing a manual on foreign policy:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, four years as governor of New York.
Abraham Lincoln, one term in the U. S. House of Representatives
Theodore Roosevelt, two years as Governor of New York, less than one year as Vice President before succeeding William McKinley who died in office.
Woodrow Wilson, two years as governor of New Jersey.
By contrast, Richard Nixon had 6 years in Congress and 8 years as Vice-President, roughly equivalent to Hillary Clinton's 8 years as First Lady and eight years as Senator.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Kingston on Obama (Video) (Updated)
It pains me to put a scumbag like David Frum on my blog, but this video clip of Jack Kingston slandering Barack Obama for not saying the pledge of allegiance is an appalling moment in our politics. This is a concious attempt by the GOP to campaign by character assassination. That's all they've got.
It's not until about 7:55. "His hands were deliberately down." Ok, Jack. Whatever.
UPDATE: Oh my. There's obviously a memo going around. This morning the AP reports, "Conservatives attack Obama on patriotism." And the AP is obviously willing to join the cause:
"The reason it hasn't been an issue so far is that we're still in the microcosm of the Democratic primary," said Republican consultant Roger Stone. "Many Americans will find the three things offensive. Barack Obama is out of the McGovern wing of the party, and he is part of the blame America first crowd."
Opponents of Sen. John Kerry proved in the 2004 election that voters are sensitive to suggestions that a candidate is not sufficiently patriotic. The Democratic presidential nominee's campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, even though he won multiple military honors and was lauded by his superiors.
The Swift Boat campaign started as a relatively small television ad buy that exploded into an issue that dogged Kerry for months. The Massachusetts senator has conceded since losing to President Bush that the campaign and his lackluster response to unsubstantiated allegations he considered unworthy of a reaction likely cost him the election. And the term even became part of the campaign lexicon — swift boating.
Obama already is the subject of a shadowy smear campaign based on the Internet that falsely suggests he's a Muslim intent on destroying the United States. Obama is a Christian and has been fighting the e-mail hoax, which also claims he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, and he's been trying to correct the misinformation.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Debate Wrap
First: Campbell Brown is horrible.
Second: I thought Hillary's "that's not change you can believe in, that's change you can xerox"--something like that, about plaigiarism--line was garbage. That's French for bs. Glad the crowd booed.
I thought Obama answered the "ready on day one" question perfectly, saying "if I didn't think I was ready I wouldn't be running," and going on to show times when he's shown good judgement, been right on foreign policy issues. When he's good, he's good.
I thought both candidates were good on immigration, pointing out how ridiculous the idea of a wall was. And both were great at destroying Bush.
Mostly, though, more of the same. What'd you think?
PS. The ladies over at Cliff's place were swooning over Jorge from Univision. What's he got that I ain't got?! Besides style and class, I mean.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Getting Real on Obama
If Obama is really about a new kind of politics, and I hope he is--see the graphic at the top of my blog--he should start thinking about actions as well as words.
Jill challenged me on my defense of Obama's plaigiarism. Is he really right to do what he did? I was asked by Michele also, what if it were a student? Well, I've argued the rules are different for politicians. But there's more to it. If Obama is trying to change those rules he needs to act differently. This is Clinton's point: if Obama is authentic, use your own words. If he wants change, he needs to show it with his actions. A better example: Campaign finance.
Obama promised to accept public financing, and McCain has said that he would agree to it. Now Obama is hedging. Well, if Obama really represents change, he needs to, when the time is right, address this issue. Is he for change or isn't he? I don't think it's that complicated. Sure, McCain might benefit from outside groups running ads for him in an effort to subvert the intent of public financing. But the left has its own outside groups that can match them if it comes to that. Move On will rise to the challenge. If Obama really represents change, he needs to help chart a different course in how elections are run.
The most disappointing moment of this campaign, to me, was when Edwards challenged Clinton on lobbyists money in one of the debates. Obama said, "No one's hands are clean on this." Wow, that's not what change is about. Change is about saying, no, I won't take money from lobbyists either.
I like Obama, and I support him at this point (after having supported Edwards) in spite of some curious statements. Most recently, he's claimed that he might support school vouchers. Dayton blogger Scott Elliott wrote about it here, and Michele McNeil wrote about it too. Change? I guess... but it's not the change in the right direction! On the other hand, Hillary doesn't need to fear-monger, a la Bush, to oppose them, either. From Scott: Obama said he remained a "skeptic" about vouchers, but would reconsider if the research showed otherwise. There has not been a conclusive longitudinal study of the effectiveness of Milwaukee's voucher program, although a new study is underway.
Rival Hillary Clinton has been highly critical of vouchers, even warning that widespread use of them could result in public financing for kids to attend schools that teach "jihad."
And then there were the strange comments about Reagan ("I didn't say they were good ideas."), his quasi-support for merit pay, his oddly expressed desire to go after Pakistan. In spite of it all, I still think Obama's following and his energy make him a unique candidate. He's a gifted speaker and writer, and in spite of what Hillary suggests at times, words really do matter.
But so do actions. I hope his actions match his words.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Obama, Plagiarism, and Political Authorship
The accusation of plagiarism from the Clinton camp didn't hold much water, considering that Deval Patrick gave Obama permission to use his lines.
It brings up the larger point, though, of the authorship of political speech in the first place.
It was telling that Clinton's spokesperson Howard Wolfson in a conference call with reporters refused to guarantee that Clinton had never borrowed from anyone's speeches, or anyone else's words. That's because political speeches and political writing generally is always of dubious authorship. George Bush hasn't written his own speech once in his life. Is that plagiarism?
When a Bush administration official pens an op-ed for the New York Times or the Washington Post, does the Times or the Post verify authorship? Do they confirm that the official, and not a staff member, wrote the piece in its entirety?
Would Paul Krugman be allowed to subcontract his columns? Have a junior staff member write it? Of course not. But the privelege of attaching one's name to work written by others is granted to administration officials all the time. Did George W. Bush actually write the piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal under his name pledging bipartisanship with the new Democratic-led 110th Congress? What do you think? It's laughable to think Bush wrote any essay on his own, let alone something polished and sophisticated as one of the speeches he can't ever read aloud properly, let alone write.
The point is that leeway is often given to politicians when it comes to authorship, leeway that would not be granted to journalists or academicians. I'm not saying that's a good thing--I think leading papers shouldn't allow staff work to appear under their bosses' names--but it's a reality and it happens all the time. The degree may be different in Obama's case, but borrowing lines from a friend who suggested he do so hardly constitutes a scandal.
That the Clinton camp is trying to make it so shows how desperate they truly are.
UPDATE: David Frum, of all people, on Larry King just now, insisting that the question about Obama was what has he done, not what does he say. Ron Reagan took the words right out of my mouth--what about your guy?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Clinton ready for war
Clinton is ready, it appears, to tear the Democratic Party apart in order to win.
The front page story in the New York Times today by Adam Nagourney indicates as much. She is going to force the issue of seating Michigan and Florida delegates based on the votes no one showed up for in January.
If that happens, it'll be all out war in the party. If the Democrats are the part to stand up for fair elections--and I hope they are--these kinds of shenanigans can't happen.
And by the way, this just makes even more apparent what I've said all along--the initial decision to void the Florida and Michigan primaries was a really stupid decision. But it can't be undone now. See the money quote from the NYT story after the jump.
With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.
Mrs. Clinton won more votes than Mr. Obama in both states, though both candidates technically abided by pledges not to campaign actively there.
Mr. Obama’s aides reiterated their opposition to allowing Mrs. Clinton to claim a proportional share of the delegates from the voting in those states. The prospect of a fight over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations has already exposed deep divisions within the party.
Julian Bond, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called for the delegates to be seated, saying failure to do so would amount to disenfranchising minority voters in those states. But on Wednesday, such a move was denounced by the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who said many people in those states did not go the polls because they assumed their votes would not count.
Good for Al Sharpton. I have to admit, when I initially heard him speak I didn't realize it was in response to Julian Bond.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
McCain v. Obama: No Contest
I just watched Obama give a rousing, stirring, and I would say historical speech, when all of sudden I was confronted with John McCain mumbling platitudes about big government for consumption by the right wing base.
Well, John, you just keep that act up until November and see how many states you win. Not a lot. You might win Arizona, but that'll be a tossup.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Pro-Life, Pro-Obama
I've often thought that the pro-life argument made a lot more sense in the progressive camp, in a politics that embraced the support of single women and their children, of poor families, a view that saw the government as having a role in supporting families of all types in their decisions to raise children. The conservative position has always been, you're a murderer if you abort your pregnancy, but if you have the baby, to hell with you, then, too. Don't ask us to help you: you're on your own.
As an adopted child, I've always struggled with the issue of abortion. I don't think forcing women into back alleys makes good law or good morality. But I've also felt that I would never want anyone I knew or loved to abort a pregnancy, no matter how that pregnancy started. There are always parents, like mine, saints that they were and are, willing to take a chance on a child that someone else didn't want or couldn't keep because she was young, scared, and alone. So the jingoistic chants from both sides have always left me rather cold, and I've always felt that the right answer on abortion was somewhere in between the two opposites ends of our polarized debate, somewhere along the lines of Hillary Clinton's description of the ideal abortion policy, "safe, legal, and rare."
All that is prelude to a piece in Huffington Post entitled, "Why I'm Pro-Life and Pro-Obama." Unfortunately in our political discourse it's hard to find a truly unique voice and unique position, but here's an example of one. Whatever your position on the Dem primary or abortion, this piece is worth reading in its entirety. In it, Frank Schaeffer exposes the evangelical right for its cynical use of the abortion issue to win votes for the GOP, and claims that the left is actually the place for a politics that supports what the right likes to call a "culture of life."
Meanwhile, an excerpt after the jump. In 2000, we elected a president who claimed he believed God created the earth and who, as president, put car manufacturers and oil company's interests ahead of caring for that creation. We elected a pro-life Republican Congress that did nothing to actually care for pregnant women and babies. And they took their sincere evangelical followers for granted, and played them for suckers.
The so-called evangelical leadership -- Dobson, Robertson et al. also played the pro-life community for suckers. While thousands of men and women in the crisis pregnancy movement gave of themselves to help women and babies, their evangelical "leaders" did little more than cash in on fundraising opportunities and represent themselves as power-brokers to the craven politicians willing to kowtow to them.
Fast forward...
Today when I listen to Obama speak (and to his remarkable wife, Michelle) what I hear is a world view that actually nurtures life. Obama is trying to lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated. A leader who believes in hope, the future, trying to save our planet and providing a just and good life for everyone is someone who is actually pro-life.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Toughest, Baddest Candidate on the Block
I'm warming to Obama.
Stuff like this is why:
Sen. Barack Obama could withstand any last-minute "swift-boat" attacks from Republicans on his race or past drug use because winning the grueling contest for the Democratic nomination will make him the "toughest, baddest candidate on the block," he tells 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft.
Obama was interviewed on Wednesday in Washington for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast on Sunday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Asked by Kroft if he will be able to endure attacks from "swift-boating" Republicans who may use his race or his youthful drug use against him, Obama replies, "Whoever wins this Democratic primary...they're the toughest, baddest candidate on the block. And if I beat Senator Clinton, then I will be more than capable of beating the Republicans. And if I don't, then she'll be the nominee and [race or past drug use] will be a moot point."
The toughest, baddest candidate on the block. That's some serious swagger. Beautiful.
Look, how on earth can the GOP attack Obama on drug use? Bush admitted smoking pot. He's got a DUI on his record. He's a confirmed alcoholic.
I know they'll throw everything at him and hope it sticks. But they've really got no way to throw drug accusations around.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Obama video starring John Legend inspires
There's a real cult of personality developing around Barak Obama, and even though I preferred Edwards until he dropped out, it's hard not to get inspired by stuff like this:
(h/t Paddy)