The Cherry Orchard

I’ve tried to resist getting too drawn in to the 2008 Presidential Election drama. Give me Hillary, give me Obama, give me John Edwards — any of them will feel like life-saving medicine after 7 years of what’s-his-name. I have been following the debates and the soundbites, but I start to feel disgusted as soon as it all starts to seem like a sporting event. Just give me a President who seems to have the basic skills for the job and who doesn’t lie to me every single day, and I’ll feel a lot better than I feel right now.

So I’m not getting too wrapped up in the Barack vs. Hillary headlines of the last two weeks, but I do want to say that Barack Obama is starting to win me over. I understood both sides of the argument over whether or not a US President should agree to meet and negotiate with a wide range of foreign leaders unconditionally (as Barack says) or whether we should maximize our advantage by seeking helpful preconditions in some cases (as Clinton says). I don’t mind the fact that Clinton chooses to emphasize the importance of pressing for advantage, but I do like it very much that Obama is articulating a larger principle: a simple, honest and open approach to foreign policy expresses America’s ideals best. I like it that Obama risked (and withstood) the criticism of other politicians in order to make this point.

And he risked and is currently withstanding even more criticism for his recent remark about renewing the battle against Al Qaeda — the original Al Qaeda, the one led by Osama Bin Laden, not the separate group that has now settled in George Bush’s Iraq — even if this means violating the borders of Pakistan.

Some find it hypocritical that a candidate who generally stands for diplomacy over war would suggest what could amount to “a war with Pakistan”. Nobody wants war with Pakistan and it’s very difficult to imagine that Barack Obama would act impulsively or recklessly against any other nation. But Obama is reminding us of a simple and important fact: our current administration has failed to weaken the organization that attacked us in 2001 and has credibly pledged to attack us again. Why shouldn’t our next President do what our current President has failed to do and defend ourselves against the group that threatens us the most?

It’s amazing how much criticism a politician has to take for speaking the plain and simple truth. Nobody wants war with Pakistan. But we remain “at war” with Al Qaeda — again, the real Al Qaeda, the first Al Qaeda — and it’s clear that Bush and Cheney, for all their bluster and military posturing, have no idea how to fight that war. I’m glad Barack Obama can recognize a real enemy when he sees one, and I’m encouraged that he can see through all the surreal nonsense of the last six years and talk about the possibility of taking action.

First impressions of the Democratic party’s presidential candidates on parade: they’re all fine, and there is absolutely no reason to consider this a two-person or three-person race at this point.

John Edwards got the most votes in a well-attended Daily Kos poll, and I agree with this result. The blow-dried southerner appears serious, unflappable and appropriately angry about the current state of things. Another candidate who made a good impression on me is New Mexico’s Bill Richardson, more for his earnest body language and focused message than anything else.

Hillary Clinton did just fine, and I have no doubt that she’d be a hardworking, intensely practical President. I admire her very much for her courage and positive attitude. However, she has yet to prove that she can raise voters’ passions as well as she can raise funds, that she can appeal to outsiders as well as knowledgeable insiders, and it’s starting to seem clear that her stiff public persona remains a barrier to her electability.

As for Barack Obama, I’m sorry but I’m still not on this bandwagon at all. His performance last night was mechanical and safe, and I really, really, really don’t care that he has a Kennedy-esque mystique. In fact, I am more and more offended by the idea that anybody should consider this candidate a front-runner just based on his good looks and charisma. He did not particularly distinguish himself in last night’s debate, which adds to my impression that the buzz-to-substance ratio is too high here. Obama cerrtainly has a right to press his candidacy along with the rest of this pack, and there’s still plenty of time for him to win me over. But he’s not going to do it by standing there looking handsome, and I’m sorry to say that seemed to be his core strategy during the debate.

Of course I like Dennis Kucinich, and I’m glad to see him on this stage, just as I’m glad to see him working hard on various fronts in Congress. Kucinich would have been the evening’s designated oddball candidate if Alaska’s Mike Gravel were not there to play the angry clown. Gravel’s just fine, but he’s not going to be our next President.

Chris Dodd is running? I missed that press release. I don’t see him playing much of a role in this election, nor Joe Biden, but maybe I’ll turn out to be wrong.

One final thought: regardless of which of these politicians wins the nomination, they are all doing good work on behalf of significant causes. I’m glad they’re all around, from the staid Dodd to the blustering Gravel, and the only thing that would disappoint me now is if the party were to begin to converge on a front-runner too early. We’ve got a lot more debating to do.

Oh, finally: this stuff is pretty good.

So the Scooter Libby verdict is in. Like many Americans, I am happy to hear that Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff has been found guilty (and I’m happy to rub this in Fox News’ face by displaying their write-up of this news). But, of course, the wrong guy is going to jail.

Scooter Libby lied under oath about the justification for the Iraq War, and he’s now facing up to 25 years in jail. Libby’s boss also lied repeatedly to the American people about the justification for the Iraq War, but since he did not lie “under oath” he doesn’t face criminal charges for perjury.

It sure seems to me that anytime a United States Vice President speaks to the American people about a decision to go to war, his words are “under oath”. What oath? Gee, I don’t know … the oath of office, maybe? It’s sad to see a hapless bureaucrat like Scooter Libby face jail time for his boss’s crime, based on the technicality that he lied under oath whereas his boss simply lied.

Enough about that. I still hope — naively, perhaps — to see both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush eventually cooling their heels in minimum security prison for their dishonest and harmful leadership of our country’s foreign policy. But maybe I need to let go of my anger and think about where this country will head next. This is a subject I touched on in a brief piece I just wrote for the PBS blog, Remotely Connected.

The subject of this article is an engaging documentary about an earnest but underfinanced young politician named Jeff Smith trying to beat the odds and get nominated by his Missouri district’s Democratic party to run for U. S. Congress. Does money really count for everything in modern electoral politics? If not, why do we hear so much about certain candidates “locking up” their nominations by fund-raising? If not, why did Tom Vilsack give up? If not, why does the press coverage speak of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the only two viable Democratic Party presidential candidates?

I don’t want the race for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination to be “locked up” in fundraising bonanzas. I want at least ten candidates in this race. I want to hear debates — big, loud, angry, intellectually substantial debates. I want John Edwards to keep throwing curve balls. I want to get Al Gore back in the game (and if I could choose any favorite among them all at this point, Al’s my man). I even want to get Yellin’ Howard Dean and John “Investigate and Indict” Murtha into the mix.

It’s only March 2007, and our two front-runners for the Democratic nomination are already too bland, too careful, too poll-conscious for my tastes. Voters, let’s reject the idea of an early victor and demand a better race.

Of course, bringing this whole thing back to my earliest point of the article, I have to say that I don’t think the next American president will be a Democrat. I’m guessing the next President will be a Republican — John McCain, perhaps, or Tom Ridge, or Condoleeza Rice. That’s because I’m still guessing (and hoping) that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be out of Washington D. C. and safely ensconced with Scooter Libby and a bunch of other felons in a minimum security prison sometime before the next Presidential election takes place. I’m still guessing Cheney will resign and go to jail first, and whoever Bush picks to replace Cheney will be our next President, because I think Bush will resign and go to jail soon after.

So our next President will be a Republican. But the winner of the 2008 Presidential election will be a Democrat. You heard it here first.

It’s ironic that, several months after starting this blog with the express purpose of allowing me to vent my thoughts and frustrations on political and global issues, I find myself so overflowing with things to write that I end up writing nothing at all. (And, yes, that is my excuse for not posting much here in the last couple of weeks).

I’ve spent more time in the last few weeks reading up on politics and keeping up with the latest news than I have in many years. I check several of the political blogs listed on the front page of this site many times a day (most often Daily Kos and Huffington Post), and I watch a lot of Jon Stewart (when I need to laugh) and Bill O’Reilly (when I need to get pissed off). But my characteristic ability to mouth off freely about politics is stunted. I have too much to say, and I don’t know what to say first, and sometimes it’s easier to just talk about books instead of “dwelling in the real”.

I’m sure this won’t be a permanent condition, though. The upcoming USA midterm elections have many people on edge (witness the hysterical tones of every political blog, television news show and newspaper these days), and I certainly can’t remember ever feeling like so much was at stake in an non-Presidential USA election. I believe our current Iraq policy is a disaster, and I do not believe our President or Vice-President have the courage to admit their mistakes. Thus, we need to elect a Congress and a Senate that can take decision-making power away from the Executive branch, and this is why November 7 is so important. I will not be able to rest easy until I am sure that George W. Bush will spend his last two years as a lame duck.

Let’s say the Democrats do take the House and the Senate — what next? Well, first of all, impeachment proceedings can wait, and may not even be worth the trouble and the distraction. Instead, I want the new Congress and Senate to quickly pass legislation withdrawing past Congressional support for our current Iraq war, and to set a firm timetable for the fastest exit possible. I’d then hope for the beginning of a new kind of battle, which we can call a Diplomatic War (because the United States electorate really does love war, so let’s call it a war) to build an international coalition that can continue to work with the moderates in Iraq and contain damages to the best possible degree. Our current administration has gotten an F in diplomacy from day one, so the new Congress and Senate will have to work hard to establish new diplomatic channels that do not fall under the influence of the Executive office.

I pray that we wake up on Wednesday, November 8 and discover that we have elected a new government of the United States of America.

I used to hope for things like world peace. My expectations have been battered lately; the most I can hope for right now is a fresh start. Hmm, five days away …

I don’t want to spend too much time writing about electoral politics here– I’m much more fascinated the undercurrents and assumptions that influence popular politics. But I do occasionally have something to say about electoral strategy, as in a short piece I wrote for Daily Kos last night. Here’s what I posted:

As opponents of the Iraq war across the USA hopefully await our chance to take back the White House in two years, we still hear disturbing rumbles that Democrats cannot find a clear position on the Iraq war, both past and future.

For instance, I have now heard from two different sources that Hillary Clinton can never be President — not, surprisingly, because she was married to Bubba, or because she’s a liberal woman. Hillary’s biggest problem right now, apparently, is that she voted to go to war against Iraq in 2002.

Democrats and liberals need to get past the unfair and inaccurate charge that we are “wishy-washy” on future policy in Iraq, or that politicians are “flip-floppers” because they voted to go to war in 2002. How do we get past this? Mainly, we need to focus on the terrible performance of the Bush/Cheney administration, their lack of planning, their lapses in judgement.

The lack of seriousness with which the Bush/Cheney administration has been conducting this ongoing war resonates with all Americans, red state or blue. For many Americans, the Iraq war didn’t go wrong when the tanks started rolling, but it went wrong when Baghdad fell and the occupying troops failed to prevent — or even encouraged — widespread looting. And it went more horribly wrong when we discovered what had been happening in Abu Ghraib.

Democrats, let’s stop arguing over who voted for or against the war in 2002. This war was an aberration and an injustice before it began, but that’s not why Americans hate this war. We hate the war because it is a disaster and a failure, and that’s not something any Democratic politician must bear responsibility for.