You pays your $700 billion bailout, you takes your pick...

Version #1 - An excerpt from an article [.pdf] by John McCain in the September/October 2008 issue of Contingencies, a journal for actuaries:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. [Emphasis added.]

From an interview in the Wall Street Journal (March 2008):

As far as a need for additional regulations are concerned, I think that depends on the legislative agenda and what the Congress does to some degree, but I am a fundamentally a deregulator. I'd like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated, not just a moratorium.

Version #2 - After his recent epiphany, the Wall Street Journal (September 17th) describes McCain's latest position:

"Under my reforms, the American people will be protected by comprehensive regulations that will apply the rules and enforce them to the full," Sen. McCain said in Florida Tuesday. "There will be constant access to the books and accounts of our banks and other financial institutions. By law, it will reduce the debt and risk that any bank can take on. And above all, I promise reforms to prevent the kind of wild speculation that can put our markets at risk, and has already inflicted such enormous damage across our economy."

The sentiment is a far cry from Sen. McCain's antiregulation record. On the stump, he didn't explain how he would distinguish legitimate investment from "wild speculation" or exactly what steps he would take to eliminate the latter.

His campaign announced a new TV ad with the senator saying: "I'll meet this financial crisis head on. Reform Wall Street. New rules for fairness and honesty. I won't tolerate a system that puts you and your family at risk."

Groucho Marx said it best: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

McCain's latest about-face presents yet another variation on the perennial questions of U.S. politics:

1. Will it play in Peoria? And, related to that,
2. Is anyone outside the netroots really paying attention to this stuff?

[H/T to dday at Hullabaloo for the Contingencies link.]

Redrawing the borders

From John McCain's interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Good Morning America (July 21st). A second gaffe comes at the very end, when McCain falsely states that Barack Obama advocates that the U.S. "attack" Pakistan.

To enlighten Mr. McCain on the geography of the region, I humbly offer this CIA map:


Note the rather large country that separates the borders of Iraq and Pakistan by approximately 800 miles. Iran hasn't gotten much attention recently, so it's understandable that McCain would overlook it.

MAP: Wikipedia Commons

Another whiff of hypocrisy

John McCain continues to distance himself from these comments by strategist Charles Black, who seems to be ambivalent about the benefits and burdens of terrorism:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an "unfortunate event," says Black. "But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us." As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," says Black.

But there's a familiar whiff of hypocrisy from the McCain camp, as revealed in this excerpt from an Associated Press analysis by Glen Johnson:

The day Bhutto died in a bombing and shooting attack, McCain told reporters, "My theme has been throughout this campaign that I'm the one with the experience, the knowledge and the judgment. So perhaps it may serve to enhance those credentials to make people understand that I've been to Pakistan, I know (President Pervez) Musharraf, I can pick up the phone and call him. I knew Benazir Bhutto."

If any uproar ensued over this comment, it failed to attract much attention from the media.

It's clear that Republicans, and particularly McCain, are trying to position themselves so that terrorism becomes a win/win proposition, at least in their fevered imaginations. Either:

1. There will be no attack, in which case Bush/Cheney/McCain can claim that "we kept you safe" — assuming we're willing to overlook the 4,104 U.S. deaths and nearly 30,000 wounded in Iraq; or,

2. There is an attack and McCain can be hyped as more experienced, with more defense cred, than Obama -- hey, it's a tough world out there.

The ongoing attempt to "feminize" Obama, as developed by Maureen "Obambi" Dowd and many others, plays nicely into this grand, and unspeakably cynical, strategy.

McCain on Vietnam (but not Iraq)

In his 2001 foreword to the late David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, John McCain wrote the following about the war in Vietnam:

"It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone...

"For anyone who aspires to a position of national leadership, no matter the circumstances of his or her birth, this book should be mandatory reading. And anyone who feels a need, as a confused former prisoner of war once felt the need, for insights into how a great and good nation can lose a war and see its worthy purposes and principles destroyed by self-delusion can do no better than to read and reread David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest."

Yet this is the same candidate who has declared victory in Iraq, some five years (or 10.0 Friedman Units) in advance. And if that doesn't work, he'd embrace a whole century of U.S. occupation. Go figure.

But there's a deeper consistency here. McCain, after all, has complained that the U.S. didn't "fight to win" in Vietnam due to a lack of political will. This lack of "unshakable resolve," in turn, resulted from the failure of the civilian political leadership to rally support on the home front. Responsibility falls most heavily on liberal politicians in Washington, notably LBJ and Robert McNamara, and the antiwar movement.

McCain invokes the central tenet of right-wing mythologies about the Vietnam war: The troops were defeated at home, not on the battlefield. The various military outcomes over a dozen years may be debatable, but in this view the blame falls squarely on the civilian leadership and lack of popular support at home. Never mind that military successes are meaningless unless they achieve the political goals that are used to justify a war.*

The lack of "unshakable resolve" is McCain's variant on the infamous Dolchstoßlegende, or "stabbed in the back legend," from World War I. By that account, Germany lost the war due to the lack of will and duplicity of its politicians rather than any failures on the battlefield. Hitler later blamed the "November criminals" of 1918 — including German Jews and the socialists who agitated against the war — for Germany's betrayal. The Rambo series is a Hollywood version of the same mythology, which will certainly be resurrected by the right to account for failure in Iraq.

The fundamental problem, in this right-wing fantasy, is sheer lack of will — as if "will" is a pure abstraction, a unique virtue unrelated to the actual political motives that caused the U.S. to wage war in Vietnam and Iraq. It seems this flawed ideology of "will," the legacy of two world wars and Vietnam, is very resilient.

For McCain, "unshakable resolve" magically assures success in war. But the deeper issue is always: resolve to do what, exactly? If the end is morally flawed or morally ambiguous, the war is unlikely to generate "unshakable resolve" on the home front and within the military itself. Tactical successes in combat become irrelevant or even, as in Iraq, counterproductive. High casualties, for no defensible purpose, combine with the slaughter of civilians to undermine any initial "resolve" that an invasion may have generated.

Colonel Kurtz aptly describes McCain's version of "will" in Apocalypse Now:

"You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

If there's anything that describes McCain's policies on Iraq and the Middle East, it's that one simple phrase: "without judgment..."

NOTES

* The far right likes to think that the U.S. was never "defeated" militarily in Vietnam (or in Iraq for that matter). The Tet offensive of 1968 is often invoked as proof of that claim. While it's true that the Vietcong and North Vietnamese were unable to hold many of their initial objectives, it can't be denied that Tet was an enormous political victory for their forces. Contrary to the Johnson administration's specious claims, Tet demonstrated that the insurgency, and not the U.S., held the strategic initiative in the war.

[H/T tip to The Cunning Realist and Digby]

Missing from the cable news loops

Here's the Reverend John Hagee, the bigot whose endorsement was sought and welcomed by John McCain earlier this year.

In a recent interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Hagee shared his thoughts on divine retribution:

"I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans...I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God for that...There was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades.... The Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment."

Back in 2006, Hagee succumbed to pangs of nostalgia for the good old days of slavery:

To help students seeking odd jobs, his church newsletter, The Cluster, advertised a "slave" sale. "Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone," it said. "Make plans to come and go home with a slave." Mr. Hagee apologized but, in a radio interview, protested about pressure to be "politically correct" and joked that perhaps his pet dog should be called a "canine American."

McCain has lately distanced himself from Hagee's most extreme anti-Catholic remarks. A campaign lackey stated:

"While we welcome [Hagee's] support, it shouldn't be seen as a wholesale endorsement of all of Mr. Hagee's views."

Barack Obama has gone a lot further in renouncing Reverend Jeremiah Wright's most inflammatory rhetoric. Yet we don't see CNN or Fox endlessly looping the many outrageous videos of Hagee on subjects as diverse as homosexuality, eschatology and a Christian jihad against Iran. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other (in the words McCain once used) "agents of intolerance" also get a free ride. As Frank Rich writes in today's NYT:

Even after Mr. Hagee’s Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging the urging of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any “anti-anything” remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still “glad to have his endorsement.”

I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full “Great Whore” glory. But Mr. McCain didn’t have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr. Hagee’s videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright’s. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.

In case there's any question, here's how a President McCain's religious views will influence his political appointments (hint: Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, Catholics and non-Baptist Christians need not apply):

Denver's perfect storm

During the tense weeks following the 2000 election, every new development seemed to fall neatly into a pattern that would inexorably place the final determination before the Florida legislature or the U.S. House of Representatives. If the result in Bush v. Gore had been different, that "perfect storm" might've been realized. [1]

And so it seems once again, seven years later, as the cumbersome nominating machinery grinds toward a possible contested Democratic convention in Denver starting on August 25th.

The Democratic primaries have failed to produce an early winner even though the whole electoral system was redesigned to avert a long, internecine conflict that might produce a divided party on Labor Day. With two compelling candidates and an electorate that seems evenly split in many states, the delegate selection process could easily produce a nightmare scenario in Denver that may yet deliver the presidency to John McCain. The irony of that result, after two terms of the worst administration in U.S. history, would be overwhelming.

The doomsday scenario for Democrats seems more plausible today than it did on Monday. Hillary Clinton emerged from Tuesday's four primaries with a net gain of only 12 delegates, leaving her behind in the current count by 111 (according to CBS). Yet she has clearly blunted the impressive momentum that Obama has built up after twelve straight wins during the last month. She has exploited vulnerabilities in Obama's resume and, incredibly, argued that only she and John McCain are qualified to serve as commander-in-chief. [2] Obama remains in a very strong but weakened position.

So imagine the following sequence:

1. Clinton wins Pennsylvania on April 22, but not solidly enough to capture the lead in delegates.
2. The candidates split the remaining primaries, but due to proportional voting neither one emerges with anything approaching the 2,024 delegates needed to win the nomination.
3. The superdelegates who haven't yet committed to either candidate agree to withhold judgment until all the primaries are over.
   
4. A nasty fight develops over seating the Michigan and Florida delegates, who would support Clinton and possibly even put her over the top. But neither the party nor the courts are likely to seat delegates elected in primaries that weren't supposed to count. That result would be grossly unfair to Obama and all the other candidates who didn't campaign (or even get on the ballot) in those two states. [Variation on nightmare scenario: a lawsuit captioned Obama v. Clinton that's resolved 4-3 by the U.S. Supreme Court.]
   
5. Florida and Michigan vote again in July but neither candidate wins decisively.
   
6. Obama goes into the convention with slightly more popular votes in all the primaries combined, but the total difference is less than 1%. [Until yesterday, he led Clinton by about a million votes nationally.]
   
7. Obama wins the most states (27 so far), but Clinton has carried the most populous states (including California, New York and Texas) along with several swing states (like Ohio) that Democrats need to carry in November.
8. Neither candidate—understandably, in such a close competition—is willing to withdraw for the sake of party unity
   
9. All the while, both candidates attack each other relentlessly and raise each other's negatives, turning off many voters and demoralizing party activists.
   

Now imagine that you're one of the 794 superdelegates in Denver (and, technically speaking, none of the superdelegates is legally bound to any candidate). Here are your options if this perfect storm scenario exists:

• You could choose whom you'll support based on the total popular vote, but our assumption is that it's very evenly split. (It would be equally complicated if Clinton increases her percentage of the popular vote, or even emerges with a majority).
  
• You could choose based on the number of states carried by the candidate, which would favor Obama but ignore many of the larger states.
  
• You could go with your instincts and vote for the candidate you deem most likely to win in November. Or,
  
• The party leaders could negotiate a deal that results in the withdrawal of one candidate with the understanding that he or she would be the vice-presidential candidate (or perhaps majority leader of the Senate or secretary of an important cabinet post).

Any one of these choices will be denounced as "undemocratic" by loyalists to the losing candidate and a large segment of the voting public, and the mainstream media will have a feeding frenzy over the inevitable smoke-filled-room metaphor.

If there's an upside to all this, it pales in comparison with the dangers. But a few points are worth mentioning:

• McCain and the Republicans won't be able to focus their attack on either candidate (but see item #9 above).
  
• Participation in the primaries could remain very high, with unprecedented numbers of people taking part as voters and campaign workers (item #9 again).
• The candidates will have extended opportunities for free media as public interest in the campaigns remains high.
• Both candidates will be tested to the limit and forced to refine their messages for the fall campaign.
  

With the focus off McCain, he gets something like a free ride (with a few exceptions) while the Democrats spend money attacking each other. And McCain may have relatively little money to spend, thanks to his current dispute with the FEC. Though he wouldn't get as much free media as the Democrats, an adoring press is unlikely to ignore him.

As in 2000, a lot of contingencies have to fall into place in order to produce a perfect storm in Denver. But so far events seem to show an uncanny ability to do just that.

NOTES

[1] As I interpreted the situation back then, the constitutional process would've still produced a Bush victory, and it would've been even more protracted and controversial.

[2] The red phone ad may be counterproductive for Democrats. If the question is "who would you rather have answer the phone at 3:00 a.m.?" a lot of voters might respond "John McCain."

The postpartisan vocabulary

As the allegedly "postpartisan" John McCain scurries to make peace with the hardcore conservatives in his party, it comes as no surprise to hear him indulging his audience's preferences in political nomenclature. A case in point was a speech on Friday in which McCain denounced the two "Democrat candidates" for opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [1].

Nowadays there's nothing unusual about McCain's ungrammatical conversion of the familiar noun Democrat into an adjective. Many Republican politicians use it routinely and without hesitation, as do conservative talk-show hosts on television and radio. It's slowly infiltrating the language, exactly as intended.

The origin of this particular usage of Democrat isn't clear to me, but it's the first time I've heard it from McCain's mouth. The problem facing Republicans is made illustrated in a speech that Dubya made in February 2003 to justify the invasion of Iraq: "The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values..." So how do you talk about "democratic values" without associating yourself with, or even glorifying, your political opposition? The solution is to drive a linguistic wedge between them by dropping the -ic suffix.

The first references to the "Democrat party" likely came long ago from ideologues like Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay, or maybe even from an earlier generation [2]. But the current attempt to turn Democrat into an openly pejorative term represents a systematic application of propaganda theory. This campaign has some distinctive features:

1. It subtly disassociates the "Democrat party" from the "democratic" principles that, by implication, Republicans like Bush feel uniquely qualified to claim as their own. The reference to Democrat refers to individuals rather than concepts, and in so doing it tries to invoke traditional stereotypes about liberals, congress and corrupt machine politicians.
   
2. Through endless repetition, Republicans hope that "Democrat party" will infiltrate the political vernacular, eventually replacing "Democratic party" in popular usage. The ultimate goal is for the media to reflexively apply Democrat to the party, its candidates and its platform.
   
3. It really, really pisses off Democrats—to the point of apoplexy in some cases. At the same time, the targets are rendered helpless and defensive: they don't want to appear petty by challenging the misuse of the noun Democrat as an adjective. Besides, the same word serves them and their party perfectly well as a noun.
   
4. The campaign largely remains off the radar screen for the media, which at most views it as a minor irritant to overly-sensitive Democrats. On the rare occasions when a reporter challenges the usage, the speaker simply laughs and claims that it's just a habit or maybe a slip of the tongue, but in any case no offense was intended.
   

While this campaign may seem subtle and comparatively innocuous, the constant misuse of Democrat is designed to demonize and belittle the party and its candidates. If they can create a linguistic barrier between the "Democrat party" and "democratic" principles, Republicans can finally appropriate the adjective as part of the quasi-religious construct that Bush/Cheney used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Progressive bloggers have responded in kind by adopting Repubs or repugs (short for repugnants) as a regular part of their vocabulary.

The manipulation of language for ideological ends is hardly a new phenomenon in politics, but the process has been especially pernicious during the Rovian era—which is far from over. With McCain facing either a woman or an African American nominee, the process of linguistic swiftboating has barely begun.

NOTES

[1] McCain argued that NAFTA, like the escalation in Iraq, was a grand idea, and opposing it would be insulting to "our friends" like the Canadians. Whenever I hear a politician refer to "our friends" in other countries these days, I have to wonder whether there's any basis for that characterization--even when the "friends" in question are Canadians or Aussies. By associating himself so closely to the war in Iraq and NAFTA, McCain may again be hitching his wagon to two of the wrong horses, depending on the fate of the economy and the surge.

[2] A 2006 article in Media Matters notes that Hendrik Herzberg of the New Yorker can trace this usage "as far back as the Harding administration." It was routinely applied by Republican luminaries like Joe McCarthy and, not surprisingly, Bob Dole. The article states: "Hertzberg wrote that 'among those of the Republican persuasion, the use of Democrat Party is now nearly universal' thanks to 'Newt Gingrich, the nominal author of the notorious 1990 memo [and here] Language: A Key Mechanism of Control, and his Contract with America pollster, Frank Luntz.'" The intent, Herzberg writes, is "to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation."

PHOTO: Newt Gingrich (wearing no flag pin!) and Trent Lott in happier times. (Wikimedia)

Watching the parade

For a couple weeks now this site has gone into hibernation or, to be more accurate, an attempted sabbatical from politics after months of cerebral overload. The timing, right before super Tuesday, was dismal.

The result on the 5th, for Democrats, seemed to be a draw. But today's three caucuses, swept by Barack Obama, suggest that Hillary Clinton may have only temporarily blunted, rather than stopped, the impressive momentum that he has developed. He now has a small lead in the delegate count (not counting the superdelegates), with primaries in some major states (Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania) rapidly approaching.

My friends (who have mostly joined the Obama parade) have been taking pains to assure me that their candidate is a deeply closeted progressive who has to pass himself off as a moderate in order to get elected. More likely, given the dearth of convincing evidence either way, he's a blank screen on which people can project their own expectations (or wishful thinking) about his politics. His proposal on health care either reveals a deep conservative and corporate streak, or (as I prefer to think) it's an aberration.

For years, Hillary Clinton has been depicted in some circles as yet another closeted progressive (have you read her Wellesley commencement speech?). Even more than Bill. Like so many others in her party, the argument goes, she's had to conceal her true opinions due to the conservative marinade that this country has been steeped in for nearly 30 years.

With her longer public record, we can predict with greater confidence what Hillary is likely to do in the White House. But that's precisely her problem: we know what to expect, and many voters don't necessarily like it. On top of all that, she's been trashed so relentlessly and for so long by the political opposition and the MSM that she she can now be written off as too "divisive."

The brain reels from an overload of irony. The only truly gratifying result so far is the complete voter rejection of movement conservatives like Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney.

So voters demand "change," possibly even for its own sake. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying, the Continuum of Change now reads something like this:

• John McCain: the illusion of change, or change for the worse (100 more years in Iraq);
  
• Hillary Clinton: incremental change, assuming she has 60 votes in the Senate to end filibusters;
• Barack Obama: fundamental change of some kind of other, assuming he has the support of his party and 60 votes in the Senate to end filibusters

But the numbers, for now, can't be very reassuring for the Democrats despite two shining candidates who should easily trounce the nominee of a failed party. McCain, not exactly an unknown himself, is highly competitive in the current polling despite his close association with the disasters of the last seven years. The latest national poll for TIME:

Obama 48, McCain 41
Clinton 46, McCain 46

For now, McCain can have it both ways (despite some invective from Limbaugh and Hannity): he's still perceived as a maverick despite years of bellicose rhetoric and his shameless identification with Bush's policies on Iraq and the economy. While Obama has been annointed by the MSM, McCain enjoys a daily miracle of redemption.

The more profound question is whether Clinton or Obama can overcome the deep reservoir of sexism and racism that has percolated through U.S. politics for some four centuries. How many white voters, when faced with that blank ballot, will be unable to bring themselves to vote for a woman or an African American? How will the Republicans craft their campaign to exploit this reluctance? Will the Democrats retaliate by offering innuendo about McCain's age?

Sadly, the arch-reactionary poet e.e. cummings was wrong about most things, including this:

Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

Too bad that's not an option—at least until November 4th.

NOTES

Full disclosure: This blogger is undecided, and my final decision probably won't mean a damned thing by the time Oregon votes in three month. Lest I sound resentful, extensive reform of the whole ludicrous system of primary elections is long overdue, preferably along the lines recently proposed by the nonpartisan National Association of Secretaries of State.

[A shorter version was cross-posted on Hullabaloo.]

McCain confronts McCain

Apparently McCain is taking his cues from George Allen, who was YouTubed during last fall's gubernatorial campaign in Virginia. Does McCain think no one's paying close attention to these contraditions? Meanwhile, he grimly supports the Bush surge, apparently in the belief that a miracle in Iraq will save his campaign in time for Iowa and New Hampshire.