Precedent, Of A Sort

A few days ago Jon Schwarz of The Intercept noted if

Trump Tower was wiretapped during the 2016 presidential campaign, as President Trump claimed in several tweets Saturday morning, he can do much more than say so on twitter: Presidents have the power to declassify anything at any time, so Trump could immediately make public any government records of such surveillance.

Schwarz reminds us that in at least one instance, a President has "used wiretaps to track the actions of their political adversaries," which may be the first time in recorded history Barack Obama has been compared to the man who complained "Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg."  Forty-eight years ealier, there was

significant government surveillance involving a presidential campaign in the past, although it’s unlikely Trump will want to remind America of it.

During the 1968 contest between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, President Lyndon Johnson was attempting to negotiate a peace deal to end the Vietnam War.

Nixon was worried that if this happened just before the election it would help Humphrey, who was Johnson’s vice president. Recently discovered notes by one of Nixon’s top campaign aides show that Nixon asked him to “monkey wrench” the peace talks. Via Anna Chennault, a top Republican fundraiser, the Nixon campaign sent messages to the government of South Vietnam not to go along with Johnson’s plans.

Johnson knew that this was happening at the time, and believed that it constituted “treason.” He ordered the FBI to wiretap the embassy of South Vietnam in Washington, which picked up Ambassador Bui Diem communicating with Chennault. (Presidents could and did directly order wiretaps prior to the establishment of the FISA court in 1978 to prevent executive branch abuses of its surveillance power.) The FBI also began conducting general surveillance of Chennault.

Johnson and several top officials, including Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, struggled with what to do in a fascinating phone call on November 4, 1968, the day before the election.

Johnson speaks of not wanting to be “a McCarthy” and worries about the certainty that “we’ll be charged with trying to interfere with the election.”

Rusk also equivocates, telling Johnson that “I do not believe that any president can make any use of interceptions or telephone taps in any way that would involve politics. The moment we cross over that divide we are in a different kind of society. … We get a lot of information through these special channels that we don’t make public. For example, some of the malfeasances of senators and congressmen and other people. … I think that we must continue to respect the classification of that kind of material.”

Clifford chimes in with another concern: that Americans just couldn’t endure learning how the world actually works. “I think,” Clifford frets, “that some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story, and then possibly to have a certain individual elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubts that I would think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

In the end, Johnson decided not to reveal what he knew about Nixon’s shocking subterfuge.

"The fact that Nixon did ally with a foreign government for advantage in a presidential election," Schwarz observes, "certainly doesn't mean that Trump did the same.

Fair enough, but there is a parallel between the actions of Johnson and those of President Obama, now the second time in recorded history the two have been compared.

"By mid-September of last year," The Washington Post reported in January, "White House officials had decided it was time" to employ a "naming and shaming" approach after being informed by the intelligence community that the Russians had breached cybersecurity in an effort to influence the upcoming elections.  (On October 7- the day the Access Hollywood/Trump sex tape was released- the DNI issued a formal statement accusing the Kremlin.) However

they worried that doing so unilaterally and without bipartisan congressional backing just weeks before the election would make Obama vulnerable to charges that he was using intelligence for political purposes.

Instead, officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security.

Obama dispatched Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official.

Specifically, the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions.

Though U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical that hackers would be able to manipulate the election results in a systematic way, the White House feared that Russia would attempt to do so, sowing doubt about the fundamental mechanisms of democracy and potentially forcing a more dangerous confrontation between Washington and Moscow.

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

he Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Democratic President learns from wiretap  that GOP presidential candidate is consorting with the enemy to fix an election, and does nothing. Democratic President learns from wiretap that a foreign power is intervening in an election, probably to get GOP presidential candidate elected, and ultimately does nothing.   Both Republicans win.

There is no pattern without a third, which might not be the worst scenario, however. Recalling the 1980s when Francis Fukuyama optimistically forecast that liberal western democracy would be the "final form of human government," historian of Eastern Europe Timothy Snyder states (emphasis his)

What had happened was one story, the story of communism, the teleology of communism had turned out not to be true. The conclusion we should have drawn was, Well, those kinds of grand narratives are not true. The conclusion that we drew instead was our grand narrative is true. It’s just true that capitalism or globalization leads to enlightenment and prosperity and democracy. Therefore, we can fold our hands.

I think we got it exactly wrong. I think that explains, to a great extent, why we are where we are now. It means that we’ve been complacent about watching authoritarianism return elsewhere, and it means we’ve been surprised that authoritarianism is possible here. Of course it is, and of course it always was.











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That's Really The Point Of It All

George F. Will wrote yesterday

The government should not be closed; the debt ceiling will be raised. Republicans should, however, take to heart the last words of H.L. Mencken’s summation of Theodore Roosevelt: “Well, one does what one can.” Republicans can give Democrats a ruinous opportunity to insist upon unpopular things. House Republicans can attach to the continuing resolution that funds the government, and then to the increase in the debt ceiling, two provisions: Preservation of the ACA requirement — lawlessly disregarded by the administration — that members of Congress and their staffs must experience the full enjoyment of the ACA without special, ameliorating subsidies. And a one-year delay of the ACA’s individual mandate.

The GOP would love to delay the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act.  Chris Van Hollen- though he won't admit to it- understands why a delay in implementation of the health care law would be political gold for the Repubs.  Ezra Klein explains

The individual mandate "compromise" is also looked on with some derision. Republicans assume that it will be attractive to Democrats because the policy is unpopular. But they haven't thought through the way the law works. "If you were to delay just the individual mandate, the premiums would jump much higher," says Rep. Chris Van Hollen. "That would sabotage the entire purpose of the exchange."

When Chief Justice Roberts in 2012 fashioned the majority opinion which saved the individual mandate, he rejected the commerce clause (basis of much progressive legislation) as its justification while striking down the Medicaid provision.  And liberals/Democrats hailed the decision and conservatives/Republicans criticized it, all because the individual mandate was upheld.  If the individual mandate were delayed, premiums rise precipitously, the exchange would lose support and favor and the Affordable Care Act would be doomed.

And that is the point of the GOP strategy.    Two days ago, Digby noted that prominent Republicans, including actor and conservative activist Ronald Reagan, strenuously fought creation of Medicare

But by and large, conservative opposition was muted. Once Medicare was passed, conservatives didn't choose repeal of Medicare as their hill to die on, nor did they decide to attach Lyndon Johnson's name to the program in an attempt to destroy both. And that's how today Republicans can try to claim with a straight face that they are the true defenders of Medicare. Few today would know that when Medicare was first introduced, it faced angry opposition.

Imagine if Republicans had taken up the full politicized revolt against Medicare that they have against the Affordable Care Act. If they had, LBJ would be remembered more for "Johnsoncare" today than for the Vietnam War, and his face might adorn Mount Rushmore. Every election cycle for a generation or two, Democrats would take great pains to remind voters just how much the opposition had stood against Johnsoncare, preferring to see the elderly die in misery and squalor. 

Democrats own Obamacare. Republicans know it.  Republicans have been willing, and appear willing yet again, to destroy the nation's economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.   Sabotaging the Affordable Care Act and with it, health care for tens of millions of Americans, is- at worst- mere collateral damage.


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Neglecting History

Paul Rosenberg at Open Left eviscerated a segment served up by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on June 25. Following is Rosenberg's edited version, while the transcript is here and video below:

It turns out that a lot of things that have happened in the less than two years of this administration are the biggest or first or most important in generations. On the occasion of the Wall Street reform announcement today, Taegan Goddard at "CQ Politics" wrote, "Not since FDR has a president done so much to transform this country."

Even before today`s historic Wall Street reform agreement, President Obama, of course, did what politicians have been trying to do for more than 60 years. He passed health reform, which, for the first time, establishes government responsibility for the health care of American citizens.

Consider also the stimulus bill. It didn`t just throw a lasso around our entire economy and yank and yank it back from the brink. It also pumped about $100 billion into the crumbling embarrassment of our national infrastructure and transportation system.

It was the largest investment in infrastructure since Ike....

But presidential legacies are complex. Not even the Reagan administration`s legacy is pure as the conservative-driven snow. But Taegan Goddard at "CQ Politics" was right today about nothing this big happening since FDR.

The list of legislative accomplishments of this president in half a term even before energy reform which he`s probably going to get to is, to quote the vice president, "a big freaking deal." Love this administration or hate it, this president is getting a lot done.

The last time any president did this much in office, booze was illegal. If you believe in policy, if you believe in government that addresses problems, cheers to that.

Not only that, he calmed the sea, fed 4,000 people, destroyed a fig tree, walked on water, and turned water into wine! (Rachel especially liked that one.)

Maddow may be only 37, but that doesn't excuse her for not reading about the achievements of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (noted by Rosenberg), which included:

Civil rights
* Voting Rights Act of 1965
* Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965

War on Poverty
* Upward Bound
* Head Start

Education
* Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
* Higher Education Act of 1965

Health
* Medicare
* Medicaid

Arts and Culture
* National Endowment for the Arts
* National Endowment for the Humanities

Consumer protection
* Cigarette Labeling Act of 1965

Environment
* Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965
* Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965
* Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965

On a darker note, another former President had a far greater impact than President Obama has had, or is likely to have. As part of a "Reagan Revolution: Home to Roost" series, Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America's Future explains:

So with the conservative government of Reagan and then later under the all-out anti-government conservative administration of George W. Bush we have had the opportunity of seeing just what happens when these "free market" ideas are given free reign to replace democracy. Anti-government zealots were put into positions inside the government and used that power to take apart the protections that We, the People had painstakingly built.

Taxes were cut to "defund" government in order to "starve the beast." The strategy was create huge deficits so the public would later demand cuts in government benefits. In the meantime the deficits would be used as an excuse to cut government oversight, inspections and enforcement of rules restricting the activities of big corporations. But all they did was create huge deficit that added up to massive debt.

Katrina was the first clear, public demonstration of the governing offered by conservatives. When they talked about replacing progressive ideas of "we're in this together" and "watching out for each other" with "personal responsibility" they meant it. And the country saw what that meant to real people in real trouble.

More recently we have been hearing about disaster after disaster and catastrophe after catastrophe, all caused by businesses running out of control, aided by conservative government that relaxed or just stopped enforcing regulations and laws. Each catastrophe is beyond the scope or willingness of private businesses to repair, requiring public intervention, at great cost. (But never any suggestion of "clawback" - or getting back the profits that were made while creating the catastrophe.)

We all certainly know about the Wall Street financial crisis caused by the big banks and insurance giants. We heard about the SEC ignoring warnings about Bernie Madoff and Goldman Sachs and all the others. We've seen hearings about the things that WaMu was doing, and loans going to people who couldn't read, and brokers making up incomes on "liar loans" and ratings agencies giving top ratings to "designed to fail" bond deals that investment banks and hedge funds had put together so they could make huge "swap" bets against them when the loans went under... The government, under control of "free market" conservatives looked the other way the whole time.

They brought down the economy of the whole world, requiring government bailouts that added up to more money that has been spent by our government in the history of the country. And now they are fighting tooth and nail to keep We, the People from passing financial reforms to bring Wall Street back under control.

Just recently there was the West Virginia mining disaster caused by deregulation, sweet deals between the company and regulators and lack of enforcement. The CEO of the Massey Energy had literally bought himself a judge, who then voted in favor of Massey Energy. Corrupted absolutely, 29 dead later.

And now, the huge, huge catastrophe in the Gulf.

This is the Reagan Revolution coming home to roost....

Although George W. Bush was a far more conservative and confrontational president than was Ronald W. Reagan, the undermining of American society, including the diminution of the middle class, either began or was given its biggest boost under the 40th President. Two-thirds of the most far-reaching social safety net (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security), federal aid to education, and application of federal power in the cause of civil rights should be attributed to Lyndon Johnson. And Rachel Maddow believes an astonishingly weak health care bill, a trimmed stimulus bill that has helped bring unemployment down to 9.7%, a reshuffling of the Minerals Management Service after the greatest environmental disaster in American history, and a feeble financial services reform bill (not yet passed by Congress) are evidence of "nothing this big happening since FDR."

If this were FOX News reporting on a Republican president, it at least would be understandable. But from Rachel Maddow, it was surprising, disappointing, and remarkably lacking in perspective.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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More Limbaugh Nonsense

Disingenuous as ever, Rush Limbaugh, the day after inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the U.S.A.. briefly returned to his theme of Democrats as racists. On a rant about statements of broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw praising the election of Mr. Obama, Limbaugh stated

You are no different today than in the 1960s, except Mr. Brokaw conveniently forgets that the rednecks and bigots he's talking about were Democrats: Bull Connor, J. William Fulbright. All these segregationists were of the party that Tom Brokaw salivates over today.

Forget that Tom Brokaw, obviously a fan of our new President, does not "salivate" over the Democratic Party and rarely, if ever, does. it is only Barack Obama about which Brokaw was commenting, and frequently has. The Democratic Party to which Limbaugh refers was a party of urban, northern liberals and conservative southerners.... was a party including conservative southerners. Now, decades later, white southerners vote Republican and the Republican Party has become an arguably regional party based in the southeast while the Democratic Party has developed a more national appeal. And the GOP does not win in the south because of non-whites. Even in 1964- over 40 years ago- the Repub Party had assumed the mantle of the white right-wing of the South, as Barry Goldwater won five southern states (including 87% in Mississippi), his native Arizona, and no other.

Democrat Lyndon Johnson's effort on behalf of civil rights helped seal the deal for his party in the South, reflected in his comment after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "we have lost the South for a generation" (insufficiently pessimistic as it was). The seeds were sown earlier, perhaps most poignantly when at the Democratic National Convention in 1948, Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey embarked on an (successful) effort to insert a civil rights plank in the party platform. The Dixiecrat Party was formed by segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina after Humphrey famously asserted

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.


And where did Hubert Humphrey end up? As Vice-President to Lyndon Johnson and Democratic presidential nominee in 1968. And Strom Thurmond? As a Republican Senator until he retired in 2002 at the age of 100. One of his biggest supporters, we recall, was Repub Senator- and Minority Leader- Trent Lott, who, at Thurmond's birthday party in 2002 infamously declared

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.


The Democratic Party is in the midst of a modest comeback in the south, partly because of a slight moderation in the region's politics, but probably due more to the growing political power of blacks. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh's invocation of the names Bull Connor and J. William Fulbright was completely in character. It was a part of his ongoing effort to tar the Democratic Party- and its voters, who nominated Barack Obama- with the brush of racism, in the only way Rush knows how- few facts, details, or context, but a lot of narrow-mindedness.

Vice-Presidential Consideration

In an article on salon.com on 6/6/08, Walter Shapiro argues that Barack Obama is unlikely to select as his running mate any of the usual suspects. Shapiro notes that the practice of the nominee choosing the V.P.-designate began only in 1960 and frequently has produced "a national embarassment- or worse." Think Agnew, Eagleton (a little unfair- but it was an embarrassment), Ferraro, Quayle, Lieberman, Cheney.

By contrast, through 1956 the convention iself selected the head guy's running mate. And in 1960, that process led to a fight among four giants: John F. Kennedy, Estes Kefauver, Al Gore Sr., and Hubert H. Humphrey.

Think about that a moment. We all remember John Kennedy. Then there was Albert Arnold Gore, whose son became Vice-President before being elected President in 2000, of whom it was said "never ran a negative campaign." The Tennessee senator who helped create the Interstate Highway System, was dedicated to fighting poverty, opposed the Vietnam War, and was one of only three southern Senators who refused to sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto. He supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after he had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964- but later wrote in his memoirs of his regret over his position.

The other two senators opposing the Southern Manifesto? Lyndon B. Johnson and Estes Kefauver. That was Estes Kefauver, a supporter of antitrust activity and opponent of "the concentration of U.S. economic and political power under the control of a wealthy, exclusive elite." He served as chairman of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses), whose televised hearings in 1950-1951 threw light on the danger of organized crime before American society, a la The Sopranos, began to glorify La Cosa Nostra.

And then there was Minnesota Senator, and Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, who tirelesly fought for justice for the less fortunate in American society. At the Democratic Presidential Convention on July 14, 1948, Humphrey helped spark the walkout of Strom Thurmon's Dixicrats with a speech in which he declared

To those who say -- My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say -- To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

Years later, we have a presumptive nominee whose slogan is "we are the ones we've been waiting for" and little experience by which to judge him; and a vanquished candidate, the spouse of a former president, who during the campaign compared her opponent unfavorably to the presumptive Republican nominee. The decline in the caliber of the national candidates of our party is disturbing. And stunning.

A Clarification On Obama

On February 3, 2008, two days before Super Tuesday, I posted a blog explaining my (reluctant) preference for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama- or, rather, my preference for the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, rather than for the individual herself. I believed, and still believe, that she would be the better president, notwithstanding her recent reprehensible comment implying that John McCain is more qualified than Obama to be president.

I was, though, not fully satisfied with my explanation, not in the reasoning, but rather in the inartful way in which it was expressed. I had been searching for a way to assert my dissatisfaction with a campaign which had downplayed race, but accentuated a generational divide; placed almost mythical faith in "hope"; basked in the mythology of Camelot and implied contempt for the administration of President Johnson; and believed naively in the possibility of conciliation, both in the United States Congress and abroad, rather than in muscular realism.

And then, behind in my reading, I recently read "Forever Young," an article in the February 27, 2008 "Washington Diarist" column in the New Republic by Leon Wieseltier. It is a phenomenal article which expresses far better than I did, or could, the reasons I believe a Clinton Presidency would be more successful than an Obama Presidency. Therefore, I am here not only linking to the piece but reprinting it below, without further comment because anything I might add could only detract from the insight and elegance by which it is expressed.

The New Republic

Washington Diarist
by Leon Wieseltier
Forever Young
Post Date Tuesday, February 12, 2008

What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world. Different circumstances call for different talents, different sensibilities, different approaches to power. "Leadership" comes in many forms. A sterling individual may be historically inappropriate; and a person whom it is impossible to admire may accomplish significant things. The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)

One of the striking features of Obama's victory speeches is the absence from these exultations of any lasting allusion to the darker dimensions of our strategic predicament. He makes no applause line out of American defense. And jihadist terrorism is only one of the disorders in an increasingly disordered world. The most repercussive fact of our time is surely the transformation of China. The "metrics" are all staggering. Quantities, quantities, quantities. China already has the power to wreck the American economy. However many tanks and fighters it has, its hoarding of American dollars is itself a kind of arsenal. And the bounty of wealth that it promises American business, the fantasy of greed-fulfillment that it represents, makes it almost impossible to conduct a serious discussion of the implications of this emerging world power for American principles and American interests--certainly not in Washington, where, when it comes to the art of dodging debate, Beijing is better than Bandar. What China wants, China gets. Not even the gold medal in tyranny that Beijing will win in its Olympics will make a difference. Meanwhile the authoritarian Putin has punkishly succeeded in restoring Russia to its inglorious heritage, reminding the world of the old formula that capitalism plus state power equals fascism. In Iran, none of Ahmadinejad's domestic troubles seem to have modified the state's sense of ascendancy, or its will to nuclearize itself, or its appetite for instability in its region. In Iraq, the streets are safer but the sects are not sweeter. In the Korean peninsula, diplomacy has gone ominously cold. In Palestine there are two Palestines, and one of them belongs to Hamas. In Darfur--well, you know, because everybody knows. In Latin America, the failures of liberal economics have sullied the reputation of liberal politics. And so on.


All this even before we attend to the elimination of poverty. And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world? You might think that in such conditions he is even more of an historical necessity-but why would you think that all that stands between the world and peace is one man? George W. Bush was not single-handedly responsible for getting us into our strategic mess and Barack Obama will not be single-handedly responsible for getting us out of it. There are autonomous countries and cultures out there. The turbulence that I have described is not caused by misunderstandings. It is caused by the interests of powers and the beliefs of peoples. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas-does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in? With what trick of empathy, what euphoria, does he hope to join the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds in Iraq? Yes, he made a "muscular" speech in Chicago last spring; but I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. My problem is not with "day one": nobody is perfectly prepared for the White House, though the memory of Bill Clinton's "learning curve" is still vivid, which in Bosnia and Rwanda cost more than a million lives. My problem is that Obama's declarations in matters of foreign policy and national security have a certain homeopathic quality. He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff.

"False hopes?" Obama told a crowd in New Hampshire. "There's no such thing." How dare he? There is almost no more commonplace trait of human existence (and of African American existence) than false hopes. I want universal health care, but I do not want to be relieved of the little that I have understood, and learned to accept, about the recalcitrance of the world. After Bush, who is not for a fresh start? But there is something unfresh about Obama's movement for freshness. We have been this young before. "She starts old, old," Lawrence wrote, in his discussion of the Leatherstocking Tales, "wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America." So can we agree on a ground between cynicism and myth? Or must we have Camelot once more? After all, being young again is also a way of living in the past. There was something mildly farcical about the Kennedys' endorsement of Obama-of this candidacy that is alleged to signify an alternative to the dynasties, and a break with ideological antiquity; but worst of all was its brazen delight in mythologization. (Thanks to the Obama campaign, millions of Americans now hold that John Kennedy was a great president and that Lyndon Johnson was not responsible for making civil rights and voting rights into law.) I understand that no one, except perhaps Lincoln, ever ran for the presidency on a tragic sense of life; but if it is possible to be too old in spirit, it is possible also to be too young.


© The New Republic 2008

Maybe Too Little; Certainly Too Late


Early in the Democratic presidential race, before there were Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, and Edward Kennedy, before most of the talk of Martin Luther Kind, Jr., bipartisanship, and the politics of hope, there was Iraq. Senator Hillary Clinton had voted in favor of a resolution authorizing President Bush to take military action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq while State Senator Barack Obama, speaking from an anti-war district in Chicago, Illinois, had spoken out against the resolution. With the war the biggest issue among the American people and especially among Democrats, Obama had been on the right side, Clinton on the right side.

As a Presidential candidate, Obama emphasized the differences he had 4-5 years earlier on Iraq with the Senator from New York. Although for many months behind Clinton in national polls of Democrats, Obama early on was a highly credible candidate in part because of the stance he had taken. Later came Oprah, celebrityhood, and a commanding lead in the quest for the nomination.

At the debate on February 26, 2008 in Cleveland, Ohio, Obama highlighted this distinction while defending the approach he has taken toward Gulf War II, once he was actually able to effect the course of the war. He eloquently declared:

And the fact was this was a big strategic blunder. It was not a
matter of, "Well, here is the initial decision, but since then we've
voted the same way. Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out. The question is: Who's making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch?

Near the end of the debate, co-host Tim Russert asked the candidates "before you go, each of you have talked about your careers in public service. Looking back through them, is there any words or vote that you'd like to take back?" and Clinton responded:

"Well, obviously, I've said many times that, although my
vote on the 2002 authorization regarding Iraq was a sincere vote, I would not have voted that way again."
Sensing he had something, Russert followed up "But to be clear, you'd like to have your vote back?" and Clinton reiterated "absolutely. I've said that many times."


But of course she hadn't said that many times. Or at all. Sure, Mrs. Clinton had implied it several times, and it was clear that she had learned that her vote was wrong both in terms of policy and politics, but she hadn't so stated.

It reminded me of October, 1968. Hubert H. Humphrey was headed for defeat in the presidential race, in part because of his loyalty in supporting President Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War, when he finally found his voice and advocated a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam. His poll numbers went up (aided by an actual halt ordered by Johnson) and Humphrey barely- by under 1%- lost an election he likely would have won had the campaign lasted one more week.

The analogy isn't perfect. Clinton was not Vice-President and she acquiesced in the policy of a Republican, not Democratic, President. And Hillary Clinton (like Barack Obama) is no Hubert Humphrey. Still, it struck me that had the New York Senator conceded a year ago that she would have liked to have taken her vote back, she might have blunted Obama's argument, and perhaps even his candidacy. Now, of course, it is too late.