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?
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.
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.
