The Cherry Orchard

So Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of my city, has ended his affiliation with the Republican Party and may run for President as an independent. This is an interesting proposition, and since I’ve been aware of Mike Bloomberg (as a businessman more than as a politician) for over a decade and a half, I’ve got some thoughts (and a bit of newsworthy gossip) to offer.

In 1992 I was the youthful Manager of Software Development for a start-up financial database company, Loan Pricing Corporation, based in New York. We specialized in information systems for the banking industry, and our role model was a vastly successful company called Bloomberg, which had managed to sell cute little television sets with dedicated live financial news and pricing feeds to every stockbroker on Wall Street. Mike Bloomberg’s name frequently came up in meetings, because we yearned to replicate his success, and occasionally these references would take on a reverential “What Would Bloomberg Do?” tone.

My company also did business with Bloomberg (we were one of their countless data sources) and I remember a curious story making the rounds about Mike Bloomberg’s surprising insensitivity towards women in the workplace. My friend Steve, an economist and journalist, attended a meeting with Mike at the Bloomberg offices and came back wide-eyed. In the middle of the meeting, an attractive secretary walked in with refreshments, and after she left Bloomberg held up the conversation to watch her walk away with a salacious grin on his face. He then made a remark that, Steve said, caused everybody in the room — both men and women — to feel extremely uncomfortable. Others at my company who had worked with Bloomberg concurred with Steve — apparently this was a routine he was famous for, and it made everybody uncomfortable, but that was Mike. Our role model was a sexist slob.

This certainly gave me a bad first impression of Mike Bloomberg, and years later when he ran for mayor of New York City I wondered if these stories would surface and cause him problems. He broke no law, of course, but he did offer a disappointing key to his personality that might cause voters and journalists to doubt his judgement. I was surprised that no such stories ever surfaced, and I have to assume that this brash entrepeneur has matured and is no longer behaving in public like Michael Scott in “The Office”. And that’s all I’m going to say about this story, because I’ve come to have a slightly better opinion of Bloomberg, who has been my major for the last six years.

It’s not his politics but, ironically, his plain-speaking and modest personality that I’ve come to feel better about. New York City mayors tend to be loud publicity-seekers — Rudy Giuliani, Ed Koch and John Lindsay come to mind — but Mike Bloomberg’s public appearances since becoming mayor have shown him to be mild, sensible and humane. He seems to seek the middle ground on most issues and never leaps towards the types of broad-stroke politics that define his predecessors. He also gets points for speaking at my daughter Liz’s Forest Hills High School graduation a few years ago — as a good Democrat, I sat on my hands when others clapped, but I have to admit his speech was refreshingly humble and appropriate to the occasion.

Clearly the man has grown up a lot — haven’t we all? — but the fact that I’ve come to not dislike his public persona doesn’t mean I agree with his politics. Until this week I’ve had no idea where he stands on the conduct of American foreign policy in the Middle East, for instance, and some Google searches have only shown that he is against a withdrawal timetable for Iraq (which doesn’t impress me much) and that he dislikes our administration’s “go-it-alone” approach to foreign policy (that brings him closer to my heart).

I’m a long, long way from supporting Mike Bloomberg for President — in fact, I’m quite sure I’d never support him for President– but my instincts and initial impressions tell me he’s more clued-in than most Republican candidates, and I like it that he avoids the stink of cloying “America Is So Great We Can Do No Wrong” chauvinism that seems to infect so many in his former party.

I don’t think Mike Bloomberg will be our next president and I don’t think I want him to be. But I’d take him over the frenetic Rudy Giuliani in a minute, and over the slick flip-flopper Mitt Romney in two minutes. I’m sticking with the Dems for 2008, but the opposition just added an interesting surprise player who may shake things up. I’m all for that.

Here’s an amazing fact: according to every USA television news show I watched yesterday, including ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, Nightline, The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News and yes, even my favorite, Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, there is nothing much going on in the Gaza Strip at all. No story. No coverage.

I caught a few moments of video footage from Gaza, finally, on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, where they used the video as an opportunity to deliver some dumb cliches about Hamas as an irrational “death cult” that supports the use of pregnant women as suicide bombers. I guess the “right to life” angle is what got the story some TV time on Fox, which is more than it’s getting anywhere else.

I don’t even have a theory as to why this big story is being ignored on TV (thankfully, my local newspaper the New York Times is doing a better job). I don’t see that this disinterest serves any political agenda. Maybe the only explanation is an existential one. When real news happens — events that are shocking and upsetting, like a military takeover by a fundamentalist political organization in a massively overpopulated and depressed region of a horribly war-town part of the world — our journalistic community is stunned into silence. I’m guessing they’ll start reporting this news by Wednesday of next week or so, at which point they can begin using the safe past tense instead of the scary present tense.

I wish I had something useful or intelligent to say about the Hamas rout in the civil war that erupted so quickly in Gaza. Because I continue to believe (against all public opinion on all sides, apparently) that a humane peace settlement between Israel and Palestine is both possible and necessary, this is obviously a major setback for the moderate position. Here are some wide-ranging links:

Sabbah’s Blog

Jewlicious

Darwinian Conservatism

Statesman Journal (including photo gallery)

Heathlander

From Occupied Palestine

What do I think? I think life must be pretty hellish over there, for one thing. And I think Israel and Palestine are a long, long way from the beginnings of a peace settlement. And I also think — I know — that eventually peace will prevail in the Holy Lands. But not anytime soon.

I’m back, after an early summer avalanche of work commitments that forced me into the blogger’s equivalent of triage.

As always, when I don’t post about the daily developments in my country and in the world here, it’s not because I have nothing to say but because I have too much to say (and, sometimes, not enough time to think). Let’s see, what’s been happening in our favorite region, the Middle East, since my last post:

– Violent anarchy abounds in the Gaza Strip, and the descriptions seem to indicate a near collapse into civil war.

– For a few days it looked like another all-out summer war between Israel and its neighbors was breaking out. I’m glad these sparks have subsided, though it’s hard to feel glad about anything at all that’s going on in the Holy Lands.

– USA/coalition military leaders have informed the government of Iraq that they are failing to meet the designated “benchmarks” for legislative action that the American home front considers essential if we are to continue to provide troops. Every news report I’ve read about this meeting fails to clarify the obvious truth here, which is that the elected Maliki government’s failure to establish control represents not a failure of execution but a failure of will. A realistic appraisal of the future of Iraq seems to point to eventual Shiite domination, and Shiite/Sunni tensions clearly trump all other concerns for Iraqi government leaders. In other words, Iraq’s elected leaders do not seem to believe the center will hold, and everything else we are seeing is a manifestation of this fact. It’s pointless for American analysts and commentators to describe this situation as a failure when in fact the lack of concerted leadership in Baghdad appears to be a tactic.

That’s a way-too-quick summary, so mainly I want to say that “I’m back” and will try to write more clearly next time. The “Gonzales Watch” is certainly coming back as well.

Let’s take a moment to salute a brave woman who endured a “tour of ridicule” that must have been more difficult than many imagine. In an age when a stunning number of intelligent American citizens say that they feel powerless to influence the direction of their own elected government’s foreign policy, Cindy Sheehan’s bold and heartfelt personal protest against our conduct of the Iraq war proved them all wrong. Here’s Cindy’s farewell diary on Daily Kos. I hope she gets some well-deserved rest and perspective, but I also hope we’ll eventually hear from her again.

I don’t praise the Bush/Cheney administration often in these pages, but I am glad to hear of a meeting that signals a positive new change in USA foreign policy. For the first time in decades, there has been a high-level meeting of US ambassadors and Iranian ambassadors over the future of Iraq.

Some may question why I want my country to begin an open dialogue with a hostile nation that is escalating the world’s nuclear arms race as well as spreading deeply offensive lies about the history of Germany’s genocidal campaign against Jews during World War II. Well, no matter how offensive another nation, organization or person is, I believe the best policy is to keep an open dialogue with that nation, organization or person. Talking doesn’t hurt. And even if the lies flow on all sides, some truths might sneak out as well.

I watched coverage of today’s talks on both CNN (which welcomed the development) and Fox News (which presented one commentator saying that we should not honor Iran with a high-level meeting since they are clearly working to destabilize Iraq). Another commentator correctly pointed out that it is the USA-led coalition in Iraq that Iran is trying to destabilize, not “Iraq” itself — their goal in Iraq is clearly to support a Shiite-dominated government that offers fewer concessions to the Sunni majority than the coalition government offers. It’s a fact that they are arming our enemies. But we should not make the mistake of believing Iran is motivated by a love of “chaos” or violence. Iran’s policy is entirely pragmatic and, for their interests, sensible. Iran is a Shiite nation, and they back Iraq’s Shiite majority for obvious reasons.

Let the talks begin. I hope there is a follow-up session soon, and I’ll be sure to cover it here when there is.

In yesterday’s Rose Garden speech (aptly covered by Crooks and Liars) President Bush answered questions about the incredible Alberto Gonzales scandal by asking America to be satisfied with a closed-door “internal investigation” that the Justice Department is apparently conducting. Why on earth should we be satisfied with an internal investigation when so much evidence has already been revealed in Congress?

I never intended this blog to turn into “the Gonzales watch”, but my instincts tell me this big story is going to keep getting bigger. If the President continues to hold the position that there has been no significant wrongdoing at the Department of Justice despite the absolutely gigantic amount of evidence to the contrary, Congress needs to respond by examining this misstep as grounds for impeachment.

Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales’s last loyal holdout, has now testified that she broke the law in asking job applicants political questions and making hiring decisions on that basis, but “I didn’t mean to”.

Ms. Goodling, whose prim and pained demeanor is reminiscent of “Angela” on The Office, also testified that Gonzales has given false testimony about the current scandal, and that he has engaged in conversations with her about the current scandal that seem to cross the line into witness-tampering.

Why is Alberto Gonzales still the United States Attorney General?

George W. Bush, today:

“I get criticized a lot from different corners, and that’s just part of what happens when you’re President.”

No, it’s really not. Our besieged administration is still trying to pretend that the United States of America still has any confidence in its leadership, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This wall of defense has become so thin that often the personal angle is the Bush administration’s only remaining talking point. For instance, the White House’s official reaction to Jimmy Carter’s blessedly honest statement that this administration’s foreign policy has been the worst in the nation’s history is to attack Carter for committing a social faux pas, as if their biggest concern is how this will affect dinner place seatings at future ex-Presidential gatherings.

I love it that Jimmy Carter is willing to speak the truth, and once again I sincerely appeal to the insiders of the Bush administration to consider the common sense behind an honorable resignation. We are at war, and our country cannot afford another year and a half of confused no-confidence leadership.

I try to keep it fresh here at the Orchard, but sometimes I have to dredge up a story of my own from a few weeks earlier, just because it is my self-appointed role to ask the more established members of our journalistic community to do a better job at reporting the news, and everybody — EVERYBODY — seems to be missing the obvious subtext of the weird showdown taking place in Washington DC right now between the executive and legislative branches over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

So, Take Two. As I said before. To repeat myself. THE ALBERTO GONZALES AFFAIR IS NOT JUST ANOTHER SCANDAL, and THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL. Disgraced government officials come and go, and it’s not shattering news when a key member of any US president’s cabinet gets into trouble. But it is shattering news when:

1) that US president is facing intensive investigations of his conduct in office and is stonewalling key pieces of information relevant to these investigations.

2) the disgraced government official is the Attorney General, with vast power to influence (or impede) the progress of criminal and civil investigations involving the White House.

3) this disgraced government official refuses to resign against an absolute barrage of damning testimony and evidence against him, including (now) a highly unusual congressional vote of “no confidence” against him.

One plus one plus one equals three. And it is as clear as glass that the reason Alberto Gonzales is refusing (against all rational advice from both Republicans and Democrats) to resign is that the Bush administration is terrified of what a less sympathetic Attorney General could investigate.

I said it before, and I cannot be the only American doing the math here. Why do the major news outlets not explain this equation to the American people? I truly don’t understand.