Left Flank

Lee Atwater's career provides a serious reframing of the last few decades of American political history. Instead of taking it president-by-president, or party-by-party, now there's the campaign help angle. I'm pissed that paid hacks do have such influence.

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Tonight's presidential debate (.mp3 file) was newsworthy, yet ultimately irrelevant. Principally devoted to foreign policy, with a timely addition related to the current Wall Street financial crisis, neither candidate strayed far beyond previously consumer-tested talking points. That late edition favored Senator Obama, and he scored well before surrendering his advantage to McCain's one and only policy strength. And, as far as the performance aspect, although both candidates avoided their worst caricatures - McCain's grumpiness, Obama's lecturing - both also displayed stylistic weaknesses and strengths. John McCain often appeared unnecessarily rude and patronizing to Obama, but also put in his best live performance; Senator Obama spoke haltingly in response to attacks and often deferred, but also, like his nomination acceptance speech integrated bullet arguments within the flow of his presentation. Obama needs to punctuate his prose with stronger ledes and he is still as aloof as Fate. In that famous Kennedy-Nixon debate on September 26, 1960, television viewers pronounced Senator Kennedy the telegenic winner, while radio listeners noticed Vice-President Nixon's arguments. Tonight, Senator McCain is the performance winner, but the transcripts will reveal Senator Obama's nuance. National security prompts an unconscious sentiment to favor the aggressive, regardless of the merits of that disposition, and McCain, I believe polls will show, seems more commanding.

Yet, in the transcripts is where I will probably be most disappointed. Admittedly, as an expatriate and a student of International Relations, even my American foreign policy views take cues from a global, not a national perspective. American foreign policy since the fall of the Soviet Union has drifted, and after September 11, 2001, lurched from tense bipolarity to a jingoistic bravado about just how confident America is about its place in the world. It's a transitional period from bipolarity to multipolarity, and presidential campaigns are not the time to debate where America sits on the continuum. Energy independence, which means something in elections, is absolute nonsense in reality. Campaigning against the State Department and direct negotiations works in the election, but is nonsense. Wars, like World War Two and the Cold War, are good as rallying cries, but not as models for the August war between Georgia and Russia. Israel is always America's ally in the Middle East, but since its occupation of the West bank and Gaza and its acquisition of nuclear technology, its support and existence is no longer an unalloyed asset. Beijing's importance is controversial. Iran is a fact with nuclear technology. And, American foreign policy goes beyond all the topics in tonight's debate, including the Iraq War, to how the White House views the whole world, not just an episode at a time. President Bush had a terrible vision of the world fighting against «Terror», but now Washington's view of the world is no broader than the borders of Iraq. An accelerating frequency of crises resulting since 1992 from news cycle politics has forced the commander-in-chief to trade global priorities for pragmatic compromises, just to clear the weekly schedule. Neither McCain nor Obama challenged this myopic fixation focused on the one place where Washington is still important, the opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Finally, the Wall Street debacle hijacked this debate. I was listening for what the candidates would do about the financial sector, and I was really dismayed by the unrealistic responses to Jim Lehrer's repeated queries about the impact of the debacle on the two candidates' platforms. But, in a broader sense, the Wall Street debacle has already done what the debates are billed as doing; it has become a test of leadership styles. These past two weeks are more instructive (and, I will blog later) about the two candidates than these debates could ever be. John McCain eventually won tonight because he should have. Foreign policy is the only topic where he has ever shown passion or ability. Where his instincts and boredom take him in subsequent debates is an appealing entertainment item, but the results will be foregone conclusions. Unless Obama foams at the mouth or stutters in tongues, or if McCain channels his inner grumpiness, the talking points, the attacks, and the sometimes irrelevant anecdotes about his itinerary will only increase, until Obama sounds like a German philosopher by comparison. Or, like my mother says, Cindy McCain will steal the spotlight with a $10000 dress, jewel, and cosmetics set. Hank Paulson gave us the October surprise in September, and now America can watch as all candidates reprise the best lines from this horrendously long, incredibly- and now foolishly- expensive, ultimately pointless election. The next four years are mortgaged to irrelevance.

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According to disputed sources, President Lincoln worried his little speech wouldn't «scour» at Gettysburg in 1863. Even more nail-biting anxiety - for Obama supporters - and anticipation waited for Hillary Clinton at the DNC podium tonight. She delivered.

What I liked, and what was a recurring feature throughout tonight's speeches, were the historical flourishes connecting watershed events in Democratic party and American political history. Montana's governor, Brian Schweitzer, evoked President Kennedy. Keynote speaker Governor Mark Warner concluded with Thomas Jefferson's quote from a letter to John Adams: «I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.» Evoking the elder, post-partisan Jefferson as he reconciled with the statesman, John Adams, who was both his ally and nemesis at different points in their careers, both sidestepped the party's more libertarian spirit and Jefferson's enigmatic and checkered political tactics. Clinton managed to honor both women and African-Americans, evoking both Harriet Tubman and the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention for women's rights. «If you hear the dogs, keep going./If you see the torches in the woods, keep going./If they're shouting after you, keep going./Don't ever stop. Keep going./If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.»

These were my three favorite speeches, amid some other rather lackluster performances. The dross only made Clinton's surprisingly entertaining delivery, which seemed to combine craft and personality in a way I've never witnessed before in her oratory, all that more golden. The messages from each, energy, future versus past, and struggle and diversity, are difficult for the Republicans to counter without scorn. Yet presidential historian Michael Beschloss did find a way to criticize Clinton's accommodation with Obama.

She said some pretty brutal things about Barack Obama and his equipment to be - his experience to be president that are being aired in those McCain commercials.

And so what she said for Obama tonight - you know, he'll bring health care, he'll do all these wonderful things - it was great, but it was pretty generic. She could have said those things about Chris Dodd, if he had been nominated.

I think what it really needed more, if it was going to be really a huge help to Obama, would be, «I did say certain things early in the campaign, but because of what Obama has done in this campaign, I've seen him grow. I've come to question what I said against him. I have a new view that's a lot more positive.»

I would argue that the Obama campaign has decided tactically to let the McCain campaign go negative, and face an electorate buoyed by a positive message, larded with concrete anecdotes about themselves amid their circumstances. The ethereal generality of the Obama campaign's tactics exceeds even the aura of the Kennedy Camelot reinvention. It's a strategy, and one has to admire the nerve of the Democratic nominee.

One train wreck is avoided. But now, Barack Obama has to assume, as Clinton tried to do, the best parts of the Democratic legacy without being weighed down by its errors. And, somehow that assumption must compensate for his lack of executive experience. He should pointedly distinguish himself from John McCain, policy for policy, soundbite for soundbite, to elevate his stature by reducing McCain to the level of his post-Vietnam lobbying career, divorce and convenient remarriage, and his post-2000 accommodation with the right-wing of the GOP. The bar keeps rising.

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A Newshour segment on nonprofit media led me to the ProPublica site. I hope critical mass explodes in three years.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. We strive to foster change through exposing exploitation of the weak by the strong and the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

An example of the zine's analysis on the recent FISA telecoms immunity debate:

Critics say the compromise essentially guarantees immunity to the companies, because the companies received such written assurances. Earlier this year, the Senate intelligence committee declared in a report that lawmakers and staff had examined the classified written communications between the executive branch and the telecoms who'd participated in the program. And all those letters «stated that the activities had been authorized by the President» and all said that the program was lawful.

«The only question the court has the power to review is a question that we already know the answer to,» says Kevin Bankstrom, a senior attorney with the Electronic Freedom Foundation and one of the lead lawyers in a suit against AT&T for its alleged participation in the program. «Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity,» Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) said this afternoon. In a statement this morning, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) says he opposes the bill and complains that it «would dismiss ongoing cases against the telecommunication carriers that participated in that program without allowing a judicial review of the legality of the program.»

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One comment by Jeffrey Wasserstrom on Frontline's Young and Restless in China (watch the program online) surprised me.

What is different is that many young Chinese, unlike their parents and grandparents, have been able to live most or all their lives with relatively little to do with the government, or at least the government's presence has been far subtler than it was in the past.

Yet, almost all of this middle-class Chinese Gen X's and Y's were not that different from South Koreans. Or, for that matter, Americans.

Another refreshing aspect of the program is the soundtrack.

C'mon with me brothers, make money and get your bonus

Haha! The choice is yours

Quit playin' around brother, broken bonds with our parents
I do what I do for my brothers that stand by me

What do I have to say for you to understand?
Time is of the essence, hip hop is a piece of meat
Time is running out like sand running through a sieve

The market is there for you to open up
The champagne is waiting for you to open up
The car door is ready for you to open up

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