The Tribune Company has selected a new owner to take the helm of the shipwreck that is the Cubs. Fittingly, the winning bidder is named after a debilitating ailment. That’s the perfect accompaniment for a team that has too often played as if it is physically impaired.
Once again, Frank Rich sums it up, capturing the insidious illusion of a post-racial America.
It was a day of joyous beginnings, but also a bittersweet denouement.
The beginning of Barack Obama’s Presidency marks the demise of our idolatry. For the past 60-days, Obama has been exalted not unlike a messiah. His likeness has been emblazoned on t-shirts, buttons, and even murals in a cult of personality that, honestly, is reminscent of Stalinist Russian or Saddam Hussien’s Iraq.
But the euphoria that was unleashed by his election and ascension into office will now succumb to the humbling and demystifying slough of governing. I wish it wasn’t so, because what Obama has come to embody — harmony, optimism, purpose — is enobling to our politics.
But in a few days, abstract concepts such as hope, and unity, and change, will yield to the very ponderous and divisive choices that Obama will have to make as President. People will be aggrieved or disappointed. Their unrealistic expectations will be punctured. And our soaring spirits will be curbed by the gravity of our national plight.
Things will never be quite as idyllic for Obama now that he actually has to become more than just a brand name for idealism. This is a day to remember for so many wonderful reasons. And also because things will probably no longer be so wonderful.
As inmates scratch their last day of captivity off the calendar, so we celebrate the final hours of the dreaded Bush Administration.
We thought this day would never come – not least because we never fathomed that a governor, a secretary of state and a partisan majority on the Supreme Court would collude to defile democracy, steal an election and install an illegitimate president. But eight years after George Bush wasn’t elected, his wretched reign comes to an end in less than a day.
It’s only fitting on an occasion such as this to quote the last successor to a president with approval ratings as woeful as Bush’s. Upon entering the White House in 1974, Gerald Ford to told the nation: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
Those words resonate today, although we scarcely could have dreamed of the havoc that Bush has inflicted on this country. Taking office in times of proverbial peace and prosperity, Bush leaves behind an economic calamity – possibly a rerun of the Great Depression – and a protracted war in Iraq that was launched on false pretenses, failed mightily and squandered the nation’s once-formidable international credibility. Meanwhile he stood idly by while a major American city sank into the sea. His administration desecrated sacrosanct international laws banning torture. It illegally spied on American citizens. It fabricated everything from evidence that misled the nation into war, to evidence purporting that global warming was not a threat. It declared several hundred times that it was not obligated to heed the laws of Congress. It fired capable U.S. Attorneys because they wouldn’t, in the tradition of Nixon, convert the Justice Department into an instrument for political retribution. It raided the environment. It exploited a ghastly terrorist attack on the U.S. for political gain.
I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Oh yeah, he stole an election, if not two.
One of the most galling aspects of the Bush’s tenure is that it took so long to gain a measure of justice for the colossal injustice represented by his presidency. His re-election is an eternal testament to the fact that some wrongs are never righted. And with Obama’s current distaste for a serious effort to bring Bush and his cronies to justice for their illegal acts, it appears we will never be made whole after seeing our votes negated, our laws trampled upon, our international integrity disgraced.
Nonetheless, it affords us some modicum of recompense that Bush’s last day should coincide with the memorial of Martin Luther King, Jr. who embodied a commitment to so many principles — racial justice, economic equality, peace — that were mutilated by the current Administration.
And so we close this abysmal chapter in our history, with words that Dr. King used to recite with exultation: Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty we’re free at last.
When Barack Obama delivered his lyrical victory speech after the Iowa primary last year — as he conjured up a vision of an America where partisan divisions disintegrated in a frenzy national kinship – I called a friend to say that 1) Obama was clearly the best orator and one of the most formidable political talents the Democratic Party had produced in more than a generation; and 2) I hope he didn’t really mean all this blather about blue/red unity.
Those concerns were rekindled during the campaign when I read a lengthy NY Times account of Obama’s tenure as the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. According to Obama’s progressive colleagues on the Law Review, the future president made one concession after another to the conservative faction on the publication, all in the interest of showing them that he’s conciliatory.
And, in the wake of this NY Times article yesterday, it’s beginning to sound as if Obama does, indeed, have a irksome tendency to prioritize getting along, rather than getting it right.
That’s pretty much the upshot of Obama’s remarks yesterday stating his opposition to a full-scale inquiry into waterboarding, unauthorized wiretapping of U.S. citizens, and other potentially unlawful acts that the Bush administration perpetrated during the past eight years.
In the same NY Times article, Obama said he still considers waterboarding to be torture. That would make it illegal. So apparently Obama believes that Bush Administration officials violated the law, but their conduct shouldn’t be reviewed by lawmakers.
Obama says he wants to look forward rather than backward, which is a euphemistic way of saying he doesn’t want to foment friction among Republicans and perpetuate the polarization that has crippled Congress.
Well, harmony is a virtue; but not if it sacrifices what’s right. And in his zeal to be perceived as a partisan healer, Obama is now prepared to tolerate abuses that he, himself, has defined as illegal.
It’s a bit reminiscent of the Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon, which he purported to do in the interest of national reconciliation.
Ford was generally lauded for this decision when he died in 2007, but I was always galled by that praise. After all, why would the nation ever want to reconcile itself to political leaders who brazenly violated the law and escaped with impunity?
So, Barack, why would you?
Hey Tribune Company: When disgruntled Cubs fans used to clamor for you to spend more money on the team, they didn’t mean you should fling your cash around indiscriminately. But the profligate mood at Clark and Addison continues with the announcement that the Cubs are on the verge of signing a new right fielder.
Not since a vintage edition of Connect Four sold on eBay has anyone overpaid so badly for a Milton Bradley.
I have no quarrel with the notion that Bradley can help the Cubs. When he plays, his numbers are unimpeachable — a word not often heard in Illinois. But doling out $30 million over three years to a guy who has rarely mustered even 400 at-bats in a season makes little sense to anyone not named Daddy Warbucks.
Moreover, the acquisition of Bradley perpetuates the Cubs’ penchant for zealously overstating the value of corner outfielders. They committed $160 million to Alfonso Soriano two years ago, leaving them shackled to one of the worst defensive liabilities in baseball well into the next decade. Then they heaped $50 million on Kosuke Fukudome, who can hit as well as Soriano fields.
And now to rectify the miscalculation they made on Fukudome, the Cubs have showered $30 million on an outfielder so chronically injured he could make the guy in the game of Operation look healthy.
And then there is the issue of Bradley’s notoriously combustible temperment. I don’t particularly care if he’s surly or sweet, but there’s a reason Bradley has played for five teams in three seasons. So why would the Cubs think he’s a sound investment for three more?
Obama’s obsessive “one-President-at-a-time” mantra was the right political posture to assume for most of the post-election transition. Under the pretense of deference to the current President, Obama insulated himself from the political contamination he might have incurred had he publicly worked in concert with Bush on the collapse of the auto industry, the accelerating tailspin on Wall St. or the assorted other catastrophes that have marred the last days of this already disgraced administration.
But at this point, with the Mideast reeling from another round of violence, and a perception that Israel is perpetrating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza abetted by the White House, this message about one president at time sounds as detached and negligent as praise for Mike Brown.
And even if we do have only one President at a time, no one can find Dick Cheney. So that pretty much leaves Obama to do the job.
Neither side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a monopoly on truth or righteousness. But there is no doubt that the current morass will have long-lasting repercussions that will resurface in some fashion during the Obama administration. So it would seem to behoove Obama to offer some indication now of how he will approach the problem in two weeks. That kind of signal could go a long way toward shaping the kind of policy he intends to institute, rather than letting events shape his fate.
Or worse, letting George Bush shape his fate. Americans effectively declared Bush irrelevant more than a year ago, which is why it’s grossly irresponsible for the incoming Obama administration, which will inherent this quagmire, to allow the outgoing President — who most of the nation deplores — to set a course that may dictrate or disrupt U.S. foreign policy and domestic security for foreseeable future.
Perhaps Obama’s public deference to Bush means there is no difference in his stance on this issue. Otherwise, he should get off message and get on with governing a country that currently lacks a leader.
From the Tribune account of Senator Dick Durbin’s request to commute George Ryan’s prison sentence:
“I don’t do this frequently and although I can’t recall another time I’ve done this in a case at this level, I’ve spent my public career trying to help people who feel they’ve been mistreated or wronged by government,” Durbin said at a news conference at the Union League Club in downtown Chicago.
Well, I guess after spending his career trying to help people who feel they’ve been mistreated by the government, Durbin has decided it’s time to help the guy who did the mistreating. After all, George Ryan is pretty much the personification of governmental misconduct a state that is legendary for its desecration of the public trust.
In the eight-year period that Ryan was Secretary of State and then the Governor, his henchmen systematically bartered state contracts and licenses for campaigned contributions and personal enrichment. Some of that loot ended up being blood money when a drivers license traded for a campaign contribution wound up in the hands of a truck operator involved in a crash that killed six children.
So if Durbin is truly interested in advocating the plight of those mistreated by government, he should continue to focus his energies on the roughly 12 million Illinois residents who are casualties of this state’s congenitally depraved political culture. The Senator has done a decent job in that capacity. And with the state’s finances in a shambles due to both global economic trouble and a local intra-party feud in Springfield, there are plenty of other issues that should occupy the Senator’s attention beside the fate of George Ryan.
I’m not without sympathy for Ryan’s predicament and the hardship it has inflicted on his family. It’s conceivable to me that a case could be made to commute his sentence. But Durbin’s arguments just don’t meet the threshold of credibility. It appears that Durbin feels Ryan has paid a sufficient penalty by forfeiting his pension. But it’s hard to give the guy credit for losing his government pension when he bilked the state for more than it owed him in the first place.
It’s also seems questionable whether Ryan’s current destitution will be prolonged after he is released from prison. Considering that his family’s expenses were pretty much bankrolled by cronies while he was governor — remember, this is a guy who withdrew only a few hundred dollars from his account while Governor — it seems unlikely that he won’t find a job and a decent salary from the many friends who prospered during his reign in the statehouse.
All in all, Durbin knows better — and that’s exactly what his constituents deserve.
It’s at least ironic, if not troubling, that the leaders of Obama’s new economic team subscribed to the same doctrine of deregulation that helped catapult the country into its current financial morass.
But today’s Tribune editorial is quick to rationalize that pesky flaw by claiming that “it would be hard to find anyone with the relevant experience in these areas who didn’t make similar mistakes.”
I suppose it’s true that it would be hard to find anyone with experience running the U.S. economy who wasn’t associated with the catastrophic collapse of the markets recently. Indeed, that would seem to be a good reason for Obama to fill his administration with people who haven’t been setting policy in Washington over the past 10 years.
And wasn’t that the “change” that the candidate vowed to usher into Washington?
I mean, if you’re going to hire a fireman, you probably don’t want to search for applicants an arsonists’ convention.
I fervently want Obama to succeed, and I’m not insinuating that either the Lawrence Summers or Timothy Geither appointments are miscalculations. But I do have nagging doubts about whether his appoitnments will is put the nation’s money where the new President’s mouth is.
Meanwhile, here’s another thing that won’t change in an Obama administration.
For a man who brooks no infighting within his ranks, Barack Obama could be assembling a cabinet that brings back memories of MacBeth.
Even before Hillary Clinton has been named to his cabinet, today’s NY Times reports that her aides are squabbling with the Obama camp.
Both sides were engaged in a delicate public and private dance, maneuvering for position and reputation in case the deal falls through. Aides in each camp have grown increasingly sour toward the other in recent days as the matter played out publicly.
Gee, perhaps that’s a harbinger of things to come if Hillary is hired by the man she still considers unworthy of her throne. Clinton may well make a capable Secretary of State, but she isn’t the only one in the political or diplimatic community with the savvy, prestige and aptitude for the job. So is she really worth the political fallout her appointment would unleash on the left and far right?
Beyond that, is she really worth the risk that the rivalry between her and Obama — as well as Bill Clinton’s palpable resentment toward the next President — could interfere with U.S. foreign policy and the general affairs of state?
I mean, seriously, “No Drama” Obama couldn’t pick a more Shakespearan couplet than Bill and Hillary Clinton. If they’re loyal to this President, they could be persausive ambassadors on his behalf. But that’s a big “if.”
For a man who brooks no infighting or drama, Barack Obama Hillary Clinton may make a capable Secretary of State, but are her qualifications so unsurpassed that she’s worth the political price. Consider this passage from today’s NY Times
I still can’t figure out why the Obama camp wouldworth the political fallout?
In the end, it just might have been a race about race.
In declaring victory last night, Obama paid subtle tribute to the immortal Sam Cooke, adapting a few lines from one of the seminal anthems of the civil rights movement. In some ways, it exemplified Obama’s adroit ability to occupy the shades of gray as black meets white.
Throughout his campaign, Obama’s identity as a black candidate was based on implication more than affirmation. His glorious rhetoric has often echoed with the mantras and cadences of the civil rights movement. In other words, he has talked the talk. At the same time, he has sought to differentiate himself from a tradition of black political activism that rattled some white voters with its protests and marches. He hasn’t walked the walk.
By dancing around race, Obama convinced a key bloc of white Americans to change their tune about the prospect of a black President. He harnessed the latent passions of black voters eager to embrace one of their own, while reassuring enough white voters that he was one of them.
I don’t fault Obama for this cunning compromise, which gleans the rewards of a symbolic association with black icons without subjecting himself to much of the political hazard. In fact, I think this artful balance was instrumental to his victory, which means that it was not only politically expedient, but it was morally imperative.
The only trouble is that it remains unclear whether Obama is, in fact, inclined to serve as a champion for long-oppressed and still-embattled black Americans. His career has been ambiguous on this point.
But let’s make no mistake. He owes them. His presidency has been wrought by the unrequited hopes of so many disaffected black voters who saw in Obama the embodiment of their own dreams for racial equality. They were the pivotal factor in his defeat of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and they propelled him to victory on Tuesday.
I volunteered for the Obama campaign in Indianapolis and was assigned to a polling place with a a guy named Greg. An African-American man in his 30s, Greg reached new heights of political activism by volunteering for the Obama campaign and encouraging friends and family to do the same.
As the two of us talked, I said speculated that we might all feel a bit of a void in our lives after the election, since we had spent the better part of two years funneling so much hope and emotion into the campaign. Greg agreed and said, “I guess I’ll have to start looking for a job.”
Joblessness in this country is a plight that afflicts people of all racial origins. But it disproportionately plagues African-American men. Among the many campaign debts that Barack Obama need to pay, the new President owes it to Greg and so many other black supporters to recognize his kinship with them and dedicate himself to racial equality in income, education and criminal justice, as well as at the ballot box.
Barack, Greg helped you get your new job. Now return the favor.
Thinking back on the election, I can’t member the last time we’ve heard from Howard Dean, the nomimal head of the Democratic Party. But I do wonder whether we’ve just seen the fruits of his labor.
Shunned by his party’s leaders for attempting to build a Democratic infrastructure from coast-to-coast, Dean has now presided over his party during what are arguably its two most triumphant election cycles in a generation.
Even more impressive is how they have achieved these conquests: By competing in the same Republican strongholds that Dean vowed to fight for, despite the scathing taunts and abject scorn of Rahm Emanuel and other party leaders. Whether or not Dean, himself, has been an architect of the recent Democratic renaissance (George Bush probably deserves chief credit), there is no doubt that his vision for a truly national party has been vindicated. After all, Barack Obama’s victories in Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado have been attributed mainly to his vaunted “50-state strategy” — a direct echo of the game plan that Dean sought to institute for the party as a whole.
Of course, this year’s national onslaught wouldn’t have been possible without massive resources, and here again, the Obama campaign can thank the power of internet fundraising, another idea that Dean pioneered.
This is not to say that Obama was merely recycling someone else’s formula. His victory can be traced to factors mainly his own: his charisma and his color. After all, black voter turnout was the decisive difference in catapulting Democrats over the top in states that used to be glaring red. But now we know that, in fact, Dean was right: Democrats had been unwise to write off half the country.
Why they continue to write off Dean is another maddening mystery.
As a loyal Chicagoan, I can’t help but take pride in the fact that our town was the political origin for perhaps the most miraculous electoral feat in American history. And I also can’t help but cringe at the way the Tribune has covered it.
There should be limits to civic pride. For instance, I would tend to draw the line somewhere short of Chicago’s competence in vote-rigging.
But in the Tribune’s account today of Rahm Emanuel’s appointment as Barack Obama’s chief of staff, the paper virtually revels in our town’s mastery of cut-throat politics:
Some might have harbored concern that Obama, with his message of inclusion and unity, would not be a fighter. Maybe those people missed the significance of Obama’s political upbringing in Chicago, where politics, as they say, “ain’t beanbag.” Perhaps they weren’t watching back in the early days, when he cleared the field of opponents by challenging their right to be on the ballot.
And then there was this:
We split the atom, invented the skyscraper, reversed a river, linked a sprawling continent by rail and air, butchered the world’s hogs, rose from the ashes of a historic blaze, rigged a World Series, raised graft to an art form and all but trademarked the political machine.
Yet Chicago, a city defined by superlatives and cunning, had never in its 175 years produced the ultimate American leader. Until now.
I know the financially faltering Tribune is trying to capitalize on Obama-mania. For the first time in what seems like decades, newspapers this week were a coveted item in Chicago, as everyone is vying for souvenirs. So the editors have apparently made a decision to cater to their reader’s exuberance. It sells.
And Chicago’s emergence as the center of the political world is another exciting dimension to this thrilling political story line. But, really, not everything we do is superlative:
Obama will be faced with a decision about whether to renew U.S. District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s tenure or replace him, altogether. Fitzgerald, of course, has been tenacious in his pursuit of graft-mongers like the Mayor. Just as important, he was the first law enforcement officer to mount a true effort to hold Jon Burge accountable.
This is the same Jon Burge that was involved in the torture — yes, torture — of countless black suspects, simply because they were black. Many of them forfeited decades of their lives in jail for crimes they didn’t commit. And I’m pretty sure they were part of the wave of black support that ushered Obama into the White House.
But Obama owes Daley some debts. If Obama’s Chicago connections lead him to insulate Daley and other local political bosses from accountability for their corruption, that will be one way this town does his presidency a disservice.
Let’s hope not.
Nearly a week after the fact, I’m still amazed that this country elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama as its President. Until recently, the concept of a black president seemed so unrealistic, I would have ranked it as slightly more likely than the cable guy showing up on time or Dick Cheney showing some humanity.
This is probably why it feels like the country has been suddenly vaulted into a future that I never thought would materialize. But I’m pretty sure we’re living in the present, because if this really were some idealistic future, these guys would be pumping gas.
So a quick check at the calendar confirms that Americans got ahead of themselves last week, with a black man delivered to the White House earlier than expected. And now the media is rushing to interpret the “statement” that voters ostensibly expressed at the ballot box. Apparently, the question is whether we have banished racism from the face of civilization, as well as Indiana.
I think multiple statements were made in this election. For many of Obama’s black supporters, as well as progressive whites and the majority of Latinos, the statement was “yes, we can.” And for more traditionally blue collar and conservative whites, it was “Well, I guess we have no other choice.”
No, this nation has not suddenly exorcised its racial tensions. There are plenty of voters who not only supported Obama begrudingly, but who will be quick to attribute any of his perceived failures to his skin color. The danger, of course, is that Obama’s victory will be exploited by villians on the right as a pretext to claim that racism is no longer a factor in our society.
Still, it’s some measure of progress that so many voters were willing to subordinate their admitted prejudice and cast a ballot for the guy who was every bit more qualified as he was less white. Of course, it took a nearly apocalyptic financial collapse, the drowing of a major American city and a plague of snakes, before they did it, but still . . .
Things happen incrementally. Perhaps, the most heartening moment of the last week occurred over dinner with my parents. My Mom talked about how emotional she was Tuesday night and mentioned that her lifelong friend, Nancy, felt the same way. My mother was born before the war on the northwest side of Chicago, where racism was as incendiary as the Roman candles they would burn on Independence Day. My parents were products of that culture in some ways, but they rose above those more virulent impulses. This wasn’t the first time they voted for a black candidate for office.
But the historic magnitude of last week’s presidential vote made both my Mother and her friend Nancy laugh conspiratorially about doing something their mothers would have deplored. Somehow that small tale - a kind of family timeline of racial progress — made it easier to chart how much as changed, even if there are miles to go before we sleep.
Some of the people who voted for Obama this time would not have done it as little as a decade ago. And 50 years ago, their ancestors would have sooner pulled the trigger on themselves than the lever for a black candidate.
So who knows what might happen in the next 50 years? By then, maybe even the cable guy will have shown up.
As mentioned here last week, Howard Dean deserves some fraction of the credit for the Democratic hegemony at the polls last week. Sounds like he’s finally getting some, now that he’s departing his post.
I’m sure that comes as welcome news to Rahm Emanuel, the political “savant” who loathed Dean for no good reason. And now Dean could be headed for a cabinet position, where Rahm can pointlessly attack him from across the table at the White House.
I’ve had the privilege of working with John Russonello. Now we all have the privilege of learning from him.
There’s has been a lot of discontentment about the Chicago Tribune’s recent redesign, but at least the newspaper has finally put the editorial page in its rightful place: Where virtually no one will look.
Today, I was sifting through the classifieds for a deal on used gardening implements when I stumbled onto the editorials and found the fertilizer there. You see, for many months now the paper has been counting down the days until the next Cook County Board election when voters can heed the Tribune’s advice and oust Todd Stroger from office.
I actually agree with the Tribune’s stance here. But what I vehemently deplore is the utterly two-faced position the paper has taken on Stroger, compared to his replica, the Mayor of Chicago. For the better part of two years, the Tribune has been railing against Stroger for packing his administration with friends and family, fattening the public coffers with tax hikes and generally looking like a guy who got his job simply because of his last name.
Meanwhile, the paper has repeatedly endorsed our boy-mayor – son of a political emperor – who was installed in office largely due to his name, wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on largesse to politically connected firms, gives massive tax exemptions to LaSalle Street power-brokers while the schools scrounge for money, and sputters like a child every time he is asked to account for himself.
Let’s remember that Stroger practices Daley-style politics. And Daley has been doing it since Stroger was an adolescent. In fact, scientists have confirmed that Daley still is, in fact, an adolescent. So what justifies the Tribune’s inconsistent treatment of these two guys, particularly since the news pages of the Tribune have contained as much compromising information on Daley’s administration as on Stroger’s?
If the media hadn’t declared our society “post-racial,” I’d point out that Stroger and Daley have a different skin color. But the case to oust both of these guys is a stark as black and white. Which brings us back to the color of newspapers — except at the Tribune, where when it comes to standing up the mayor, the paper is all too yellow.
As a Catholic, this is the kind of stuff that makes me recoil. Yes, that really was the Archbishop of Chicago — a sly politician if there ever was one — suggesting that Catholics face a tougher plight in this country than African-Americans.
“We are, perhaps, at a moment when, with the grace of God, all races are safely within the American consensus,” George said. “We are not at the point, however, when Catholics, especially in public life, can be considered full partners in the American experience unless they are willing to put aside some fundamental Catholic teachings on a just moral and political order.”
Last time I checked, Catholics aren’t getting turned down for jobs, stopped arbitrarily by the cops or ignored by taxis because they obey Church dogma. But those sorts of injustices are still perpetrated every day on the basis of skin color — which makes it all the more galling that the Cardinal claimed that Barack Obama’s election represents a kind of ultimate racial reconciliation in this country. It’s manifestly obvious that racism remains a deeply corrosive problem in this nation, despite signs of progress.
But just for kicks, let’s argue on the Cardinal’s terms. If the election of a black president is tantamount to the completion of the country’s racial unity, then Catholics must have been similarly embraced when Kennedy was elected in 1960 — making the Cardinal’s lament about current anti-Catholic prejudice insupportable.
All of this ignores perhaps the most glaring irony in the Cardinal’s remarks. It seems quite likely that compliance with Catholic teaching faces its biggest threat not from political culture, but from the teachers themselves. After all, it is now well-documented that George, himself, repeatedly abdicated his responsibility to root out clergy sexual abuse — and then withheld details about his inaction.
This editorial in the Sun-Times put things into perspective:
But we live in a world where the church had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting it had a problem.
Where the archdiocese’s monitoring of abusive priests has been a devastating failure.
Where time and again, parishioners have felt misled.
But here George is again, playing the victim with his preposterous claim that Catholics cannot gain full acceptance in America unless they compromise their faith. It only causes faith in George’s leadership to decline even further.
I have no question that George thinks he is doing the right thing. I just wish he was capable of questioning himself.
The reliably impeccable “Frontline” series aired a documentary last week on the late Lee Atwater, the legendary maestro of gutter politics. Even in the wake of this year’s sordid presidential campaign , the 1988 campaign that Atwater directed for George H.W. Bush stands out for its glaring indecency.
But more disturbing than the malicious, racist and blatantly false ads that Bush ran against both Democratic and Republican foes in 1988 is the familiar complicity of the media, which acquiesced in the trivialization of the debate.
In interviews with some familiar journalists, the documentary makes clear that reporters were, at best, too indolent to police the accuracy, relevance or integrity of the issues raised in the campaign. And at worst, they acted as if these standards mattered less than which campaign was winning.
For decades the treatment of politics as nothing more than an exercise in gamesmanship has been a strangely amoral convention in the media. It leads reporters to assume the posture of play-by-play commentators, rather than umpires. If the pitcher is throwing spitballs to gain an advantage, reporters are more likely to comment on his guile than to expose his fraud.
Conveniently, Atwater was involved in one of the most reprehensible examples of this tendency. The documentary recalls the moment during the 1988 Republican Primary when Bush and his opponent Bob Dole were interviewed on NBC. Asked what he would like to say to Bush, Dole snarled, “stop lying about my record.”
Dole was promptly described by the media as losing his cool. Reporters raised questions about his supposedly volatile temperament, and within a week, his campaign was in ruins. Then as now, the media described this episode as one of the all-time campaign gaffes — a veritable cautionary tale in how not to get elected.
Then as now, the media completely ignored the small but insistent fact that Bush was, indeed, lying about Dole’s record. In fact, he was lying pathologically about Dole’s record in ads concocted by Atwater.
Then as now, the media made it more permissible to lie recklessly about an opponent than to get mad at an opponent’s reckless lies.
We can find echoes of this insanity in the way Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign came to a close. While Dean was in many ways the prototype (an anti-war candidate who unleashed new enthusiasm from on-line grassroots organizing) for Barack Obama’s successful run this year, the media declared that he was unfit for the presidency the moment he screamed for joy. His message, his issues, his following mattered less to the media than his adrenaline.
In other words, there could have been no Lee Atwater without a media to abet him. The documentary was titled “Boogieman,” but long after Atwater tragically died from cancer, it’s the the media’s irresponsbility that is downright scary.
For a political operation that 1) draped itself in the mantle of “change” and 2) exhibited an agile touch with tone and imagery, the Obama team has lately shown very little of the latter in trying convey the former.
I have no qualms with Obama’s decision to populate his administration with so many alumni from the Clinton White House. As long as they’re qualified, so be it. But I’m mystified at the decision to announce these appointments in bulk. From Rham Emanuel, to Greg Craig, to Ron Klain, to Phil Schiliro, to Mona Sutphen to Eric Holder to the consideration of HRC, herself, the names of Obama’s initial appointees have mostly appeared in news stories adjacent to the words “served in the Clinton Administration.”
This cumulative echo effect threatens to cause static in Obama’s gospel message about change. After all, when people see a congo line of old faces, they’re less apt to think it will lead to something new. This is mainly a perception problem. Which means that it’s a big problem. And it’s already causing unrest from some factions on party’s left wing.
More importantly, it seems like a problem that could have been avoided if the Obama team had simply staggered the announcement of its appointees, spreading the ex-Clinton aides amid a larger shuffle of new names.
None of this necessarily undermines the integrity of Obama’s commitment to change. After all, Obama’s appointees are not free to recycle their old politics unless Obama consents. They are each subject to the direction he wants to take the country. I just hope that’s not toward the familiar no-man’s land the Clintonesque center. Otherwise, we’ll really be going full circle.
