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{1} "After Obama and I slipped through a security checkpoint and he momentarily broke free from the entourage, I sidled up to him and told him he seemed to be impressing many people of influence in this rarified atmosphere.
"Obama, his gaze fixed directly ahead, never broke his stride.
" ‘I’m LeBron, baby,’ he replied, referring to Lebron James, the phenomenally talented teenager who at the time was shooting the lights out in the National Basketball Association. ‘I can play at this level. I got some game.’"
--David Mendell; Obama: From Promise to Power; 2007; page 2.
This summer, I had some dealings with a man who works with investments, banking, and insurance. He is a fiscal conservative, and a social moderate – the type of republican that I am comfortable talking to. My goal was to find the best option for putting some money away for my daughters’ college education. During one of our meetings, he said that he was glad that I was honest about my near total ignorance about investments; most people, he noted, try to feign some degree of insight.
One of the things that life has taught me, and which I try to teach my children, is that when one approaches a topic that they really know very little about, it is better not to bluff. Rather, one benefits from developing a network of people they can trust, and to go to them when important questions arise.
In my own case, this is a necessary skill, because there are so many areas of life where my level of understanding is low indeed. Thus, in the past few says, while the McCain-Palin campaign appears to be playing games, I’ve taken the time to speak to a number of far better informed people than myself. I thought that some of the things that I’ve been told might be of interest to others on DU.
{2} "Every day the bucket a-go a well,
One day the bottom a-go drop out,
One day the bottom a-go drop out."
--Bob Marley; I Shot the Sheriff.
The financial crisis that is confronting our nation is complex. No single person understands it in its entirety. Any "expert" who pretends that they do is bluffing.
There is plenty of blame to spread around, if one wants to point fingers. But, without any question, the Bush-Cheney administration has been in control of the country’s economy for almost eight years. If the republicans in Washington really believed, for example, that the Clinton administration had created huge problems for the country, they had control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government for six years.
In fact, even people with as limited of insight as me know that the US economy was far better under President Clinton than the current administration. We had money in the bank then, and today, we are far in debt. More, those republicans who are fiscal conservatives have been horrified by the recklessness of the Bush-Cheney administration.
A few weeks ago, I had quoted Native American attorney-author Vine Deloria, Jr., who said that the future of the United States would be a return to either the tipi or the castle. In order to survive as a Constitutional democracy, this country needs a strong middle class. Imperfect as they may have been, the Clinton administration was aware of that. But the Bush-Cheney administration is playing on a different board, where they allegiance is to a much smaller group that seeks power on a global level. That includes a willingness to sacrifice the American middle class.
Is the Bush-Cheney bail-out proposal "socialism"? That’s a loaded word, which has different meanings in different contexts. However, the administration’s proposal – which requires creating an atmosphere of high anxiety and panic – involves having the "government" (or, tax-payers) assume the debts, rather than the profits, of the ruling class elite. And the truth is the bottom is falling out of the middle class bucket.
Those republicans who are fiscal conservatives recognize that there is no single "good answer" to the problems we face. Although they are not saying so publicly, many realize the only alternative with promise for the future of our country is to have a limited fix now, and for Barack Obama to win the election, and to institute more meaningful changes during his first year as President.
This growing divide within the republican party brings us to one of the reasons that the McCain-Palin campaign is seeking to delay the presidential and vice presidential debates.
{3} "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
--President Abraham Lincoln; June 16, 1858.
When I first heard that John McCain was demanding that Barack Obama join him in suspending the presidential campaign, and delay their first debate, my reaction could be summed up in one word: "Wow." Did the McCain campaign recognize that their candidate was functioning at so low a level, that they needed to postpone the series of debates between McCain and Obama?
This is partially true. However, as with all of politics, there are other levels beneath the surface that deserve closer attention. A year ago, many republicans were only vaguely familiar with Barack Obama. They believed that he was an electrifying public speaker, but little more. The belief that he had been groomed by a relatively small, liberal group of democrats, who had erred in attempting to advance his career by entering him in the democratic primary contest, was shared by many republicans. Those who knew more about him thought that the idea was to have him be considered as Senator Hillary Clinton’s choice for vice president.
One of the main reasons for their lack of insight regarding Obama was because those running his campaign ran a closed operation. There was less access to his inner circle than to any of the other top democratic candidates. Still, then as now, every political campaign has some degree of information leaks at the second tier of the campaign. So today, the republican party in general is aware that Barack Obama is not simply a good public speaker, who is being promoted by a small group of Chicago-area liberals. In fact, he has political skills that have been unequaled by any politician – democrat or republican – in the past 40 years, with the obvious exception of Bill Clinton.
Just as when Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, and recognized that in order to reach the goals he was aiming for, he needed to become an attorney, the republicans in Washington realize that Obama has goals that he can only institute by becoming President. These goals are not only his as an individual, or those of that small group from Chicago, but represent the values of the majority of the American public.
And just as Obama’s primary campaign stepped up the pace in the fourth quarter of the democratic primary, the same thing is happening today. Thus, at a time when John McCain has made several tactical errors – such as saying the foundations of the economy are strong – the McCain campaign wanted to delay the first debate with Obama.
But there is more. Much more. In selecting Sarah Palin as his VP, John McCain was hoping to present the foundation of the republican party as solid. Although most of the republicans in Washington recognized that Palin required intensive grooming in order to present her as being qualified to serve as vice president, they were willing to play the game.
However, the republicans in Washington, DC, know that there are a number of seats being contested in both houses of Congress. As it became evident that Palin was not capable of feigning the skills needed to be vice president, those republicans running for re-election became increasingly concerned. Some quietly advocated that McCain actually replace her on the ticket, despite knowing the obvious damage it would do to John McCain. But John McCain is stubborn at best, and he was unwilling to consider dropping her, because it would eliminate any chance of his being elected in November.
It is, of course, far too late to replace Sarah Palin. That has resulted in a fracture beneath the surface in the republican party. Close to half of those republicans running for re-election are less than happy about being associated with the McCain-Palin ticket.
One person asked me to consider how the public will respond to seeing how uniquely unqualified Palin is when she debates Joseph Biden? Take this the next step, he said: should by some chance McCain wins in November, and then Palin becomes President, what are the implications for the country? Is it rational to believe, for example, that the military leadership would view her extremely shallow views on foreign policy as safeguarding the republic?
We are at a strange time in our nation’s history. President Bush is attempting to interject a sense of panic into the national discussion of the economic crisis. A significant number of republicans in Congress are breaking away from him. And a significant number of republicans are willing to break from the McCain-Palin ticket. John McCain is desperately trying to take both sides of the internal republican divide, and as a result, his campaign is failing.
Is it any wonder that he wants to avoid tonight’s presidential debate?
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