March 22, 2008
Obama Leading In Latest Gallup National Tracking Poll - Wright Controversy Had No Major Impact
After over a week of speculation by the mainstream media over whether the Rev. Wright "scandal" would wreck Barack Obama's campaign, the numbers are in. The result? It won't.
Obama took a hit in national polls earlier in the week, but as I stated a few days ago, the hit was short term and he is now once again leading in Gallup's national tracking poll.
CBS poll:
- 69% of those who saw or heard about the speech said Obama did a good job.
- 71% said Obama did a good job explaining the Wright situation.
- 70% said the Wright controversy has had no impact on who they support.
Out of the remaining 30%, 14% actually said that the situation has made them MORE LIKELY to support Obama.
Back Story on the Richardson Endorsement
from the new york times | March 22, 2008First a Tense Talk With Clinton, Then Richardson Backs Obama
By Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny
“Let me tell you: we’ve had better conversations,” Mr. Richardson said.
The decision by Mr. Richardson, who ended his own presidential campaign on Jan. 10, to support Mr. Obama was a belt of bad news for Mrs. Clinton. It was a stinging rejection of her candidacy by a man who had served in two senior positions in President Bill Clinton's administration, and who is one of the nation’s most prominent elected Hispanics. Mr. Richardson came back from vacation to announce his endorsement at a moment when Mrs. Clinton’s hopes of winning the Democratic nomination seem to be dimming.
But potentially more troublesome for Mrs. Clinton was what Mr. Richardson said in announcing his decision. He criticized the tenor of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. He praised Mr. Obama for the speech he gave in response to the furor over racially incendiary remarks delivered by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
And he came close to doing what Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have increasingly feared some big-name Democrat would do as the battle for the nomination drags on: Urge Mrs. Clinton to step aside in the interest of party unity.
“I’m not going to advise any other candidate when to get in and out of the race,” Mr. Richardson said after appearing in Portland with Mr. Obama. “Senator Clinton has a right to stay in the race, but eventually we don’t want to go into the Democratic convention bloodied. This was another reason for my getting in and endorsing, the need to perhaps send a message that we need unity.”
In many ways, the decision by Mr. Richardson, a longtime political ally of the Clintons, was as much a tale about his relationship with them as it was about the course of Mr. Obama’s campaign.
Mr. Clinton had told his wife’s campaign that he had received several assurances from Mr. Richardson that he would not endorse Mr. Obama. One adviser who spoke to Mr. Clinton on Friday said that the former president was surprised by the Richardson endorsement, but described Mr. Clinton as more philosophical than angry about it.
Mr. Richardson looked anguished when asked in an interview if his relationship with the Clintons would withstand endorsing Mr. Obama. In doing so, Mr. Richardson was not only taking sides in the most bitter of political fights, but rejecting the candidacy of a close friend.
“There’s something special about this guy,” Mr. Richardson said of Mr. Obama. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but it’s very good.”
Mr. Clinton helped elevate Mr. Richardson to the national stage by naming him his energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations. And Mr. Clinton left no doubt that he viewed Mr. Richardson’s support as important to his wife’s campaign: He even flew to New Mexico to watch the Super Bowl with Mr. Richardson as part of the Clintons’ high-profile courtship of him.
But Mr. Richardson stopped returning Mr. Clinton’s calls days ago, Mr. Clinton’s aides said. And as of Friday, Mr. Richardson said, he had yet to pick up the phone to tell Mr. Clinton of his decision.
The reaction of some of Mr. Clinton’s allies suggests that might have been a wise decision. “An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.
“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.
Mr. Richardson said he called Mrs. Clinton late on Thursday to inform her that he would be appearing with Mr. Obama on Friday to lend his support.
“It was cordial, but a little heated,” Mr. Richardson said in an interview.
Mrs. Clinton had no public schedule on Friday, and spent the day at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, played down the importance of the Richardson endorsement, suggesting that the time “when it could have been effective has long since passed.”
Mr. Richardson called Mr. Obama about two weeks ago to tell him that he was “99 percent with him,” Mr. Obama’s aides said. The announcement was delayed because Mr. Richardson had been scheduled to go on vacation in the Caribbean. Even though Mr. Richardson had promised Mr. Obama that his mind was made up, Mr. Obama’s aides said they grew worried that the furor over the racially inflammatory remarks made by Mr. Obama’s former pastor might lead Mr. Richardson to reconsider.
But Mr. Richardson, who had sought to become the nation’s first Hispanic president, pointed specifically to the speech that Mr. Obama gave in Philadelphia on Tuesday in explaining why he endorsed him.
“Senator Barack Obama addressed the issue of race with the eloquence and sincerity and decency and optimism we have come to expect of him,” he said. “He did not seek to evade tough issues or to soothe us with comforting half-truths. Rather, he inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility.”
He added: “Senator Obama could have given a safer speech. He is, after all, well ahead in the delegate count for our party’s nomination.”
Mr. Richardson said he was dispirited by the tone of the Democratic nominating fight, reflecting a sentiment that has been increasingly voiced by party leaders. Unlike many others, though, Mr. Richardson placed the blame on Mrs. Clinton.
“I believe the campaign has gotten too negative,” Mr. Richardson said, speaking to reporters in Portland. “I want it to be positive. I think that’s what’s been very good about Senator Obama’s campaign — it’s a positive campaign about hope and opportunity.”
Mr. Obama and Mr. Richardson appeared together on stage of the Memorial Coliseum in Portland on Friday morning. Mr. Richardson was still wearing the beard that he grew during what he called a period of decompression after leaving the presidential race.
On their own, endorsements in contests like this — with two such well-known candidates — do not necessarily move votes. Mr. Obama won a boost of publicity after he was endorsed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; Mrs. Clinton, however, then won the state’s primary.
But the audience now is less primary voters than superdelegates — uncommitted elected Democrats and party leaders — whose votes will be critical in helping Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama get the 2,024 delegates needed to win the nomination.
Mr. Richardson is the 62nd superdelegate to endorse Mr. Obama since Feb. 5, compared with fewer than five who have moved into Mrs. Clinton’s column since then.
The move by Mr. Richardson could give license to other superdelegates who had been holding back, at the request of the Clintons. His endorsement could prove particularly potent with this group because of the way he chastised Mrs. Clinton for the tone of the campaign, and his call for the party to unify around one candidate.
It also came at a moment of vulnerability for Mr. Obama, in which he was dealing with questions about his former pastor. Mr. Richardson’s decision to step out was a signal to primary voters and superdelegates that he did not believe Mr. Obama had been hurt politically by these events — or at least that he was willing to use whatever influence he has in the party to limit the damage.
At this point, the number of Democrats whose endorsements could shake the race is down to Al Gore, the former vice president and presidential nominee; John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who dropped out of the race last month; and Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker. Aides to Mr. Edwards and Mr. Gore said that they did not expect either man to endorse anyone in the immediate future, if at all. Aides to Ms. Pelosi said she was unlikely to endorse at all.
Bill Clinton 'a modern-day Joe McCarthy'
from an article by Tim Shipman in Washington | Last Updated: 1:16pm GMT 22/03/2008Bill Clinton has become embroiled in a new race row after he appeared to question the patriotism of Barack Obama, his wife Hillary’s White House rival.  | |
Supporters of the Democratic frontrunner promptly branded Mr Clinton a modern-day version of Joe McCarthy, the red-baiting senator who led a government witch hunt for communists in the 1950s.
Discussing the prospect of a presidential election between Mrs Clinton and the Republican candidate, John McCain, the former president told a group of war veterans in North Carolina: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country.
"And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."
His words were immediately interpreted as a dig at Mr Obama, whose pastor, Revd Jeremiah Wright, was exposed last week for delivering sermons in which he told worshippers "God damn America."
The Illinois senator responded to the Wright controversy by giving a speech on race in which he denounced the words of his pastor but asked voters to understand the frustrations and anger of black Americans.Retired General Tony McPeak, a former US air force chief of staff and co-chairman of the Obama campaign, hit back, saying: "I grew up, I was going to college, when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I’ve had enough of it.
"It’s a use of language as a disguised insult. We’ve seen this before, this little clever spin that’s put on stuff."
March 21, 2008
A Time for Conscience; A Time for Action: Governor Bill Richardson Endorses Obama!
(an email sent out by Governor Richardson)
Dear Friends,
During the last year, I have shared with you my vision and hopes for this nation as we look to repair the damage of the last seven years. And you have shared your support, your ideas and your encouragement to my campaign. We have been through a lot together and that is why I wanted to tell you that, after careful and thoughtful deliberation, I have made a decision to endorse Barack Obama for President.
We are blessed to have two great American leaders and great Democrats running for President. My affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver. It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall. The 1990's were a decade of peace and prosperity because of the competent and enlightened leadership of the Clinton administration, but it is now time for a new generation of leadership to lead America forward. Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.
Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama gave an historic speech. that addressed the issue of race with the eloquence, sincerity, and optimism we have come to expect of him. He inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility. He asked us to rise above our racially divided past, and to seize the opportunity to carry forward the work of many patriots of all races, who struggled and died to bring us together.
As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by his words. I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants--specifically Hispanics-- by too many in this country. Hate crimes against Hispanics are rising as a direct result and now, in tough economic times, people look for scapegoats and I fear that people will continue to exploit our racial differences--and place blame on others not like them . We all know the real culprit -- the disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration!
Senator Obama has started a discussion in this country long overdue and rejects the politics of pitting race against race. He understands clearly that only by bringing people together, only by bridging our differences can we all succeed together as Americans.
His words are those of a courageous, thoughtful and inspiring leader, who understands that a house divided against itself cannot stand. And, after nearly eight years of George W. Bush, we desperately need such a leader.
To reverse the disastrous policies of the last seven years, rebuild our economy, address the housing and mortgage crisis, bring our troops home from Iraq and restore America's international standing, we need a President who can bring us together as a nation so we can confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad.
During the past year, I got to know Senator Obama as we campaigned against each other for the Presidency, and I felt a kinship with him because we both grew up between worlds, in a sense, living both abroad and here in America. In part because of these experiences, Barack and I share a deep sense of our nation's special responsibilities in the world.
So, once again, thank you for all you have done for me and my campaign. I wanted to make sure you understood my reasons for my endorsement of Senator Obama. I know that you, no matter what your choice, will do so with the best interests of this nation, in your heart.
Sincerely,
Bill Richardson
(and from the nytimes)
In a statement, Mr. Richardson hailed Mr. Obama’s judgment and ability to be commander-in-chief — qualities that Mrs. Clinton has called into question in recent weeks on the campaign trail.
“I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world,” Mr. Richardson said in the statement, provided by the Obama campaign early Friday morning.
“As a presidential candidate, I know full well Senator Obama’s unique moral ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”
In his statement, Mr. Richardson, who served as ambassador to the U.N. under Mr. Clinton, said “there is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama has the judgment and courage we need in a commander in chief when our nation’s security is on the line. He showed this judgment by opposing the Iraq war from the start, and he has shown it during this campaign by standing up for a new era in American leadership internationally.”
Lifelong Republican Pennsylvania Mayor Changes Parties to Vote Obama
Camp Hill mayor switches parties to vote for Obama
by ELLEN LYON, Of The Patriot-News | Thursday March 20, 2008, 6:03 PM
Camp Hill Mayor Lou Thieblemont switched his lifelong Republican registration this week so he can vote for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in Pennsylvania's April 22 primary.
"I'm sick and tired of the politics of fear in this country. He's the only one who doesn't do that," Thieblemont said of Obama. "He's the only candidate who's said he'd talk to our enemies and try to get some common ground."
A retired airline pilot, Thieblemont, 62, said he doesn't believe the Bush administration's claims that the United States is safer now. "We're all alone in the world. We have basically lost all our friends in the world with comments like 'bring it on.'"
March 20, 2008
'But most of all, it depends on you.'
"I can no more disown [the Rev. Jeremiah Wright] than I can my white grandmother," Barack Obama said in the most powerful sentence of his extraordinary speech about race on March 18 in Philadelphia, "a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me ... but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
Too often in this campaign, Obama's rhetoric has been gorgeous but abstract, ear candy for the educated. But this simple statement, equating his black surrogate father and his white surrogate mother, was something any fair-minded person could understand: almost every one of us has an uncle or a grandmother good for at least two jaw-droppers every Thanksgiving. Yes, the Senator was comparing apples and freight trains: Wright's hate speech was as public and consequential as the grandmother's stereotypes were private, but Obama came to this comparison only after he had unequivocally condemned his pastor for having "a profoundly distorted view of this country."
The rhetorical magic of the speech—what made it extraordinary—was that it was, at once, both unequivocal and healing. There were no weasel words, no Bushian platitudes or Clintonian verb-parsing. Obama was unequivocal in his candor about black anger and white resentment—sentiments that few mainstream politicians acknowledge (although demagogues of both races have consistently exploited them). And he was unequivocal in his refusal to disown Wright. Cynics and political opponents quickly noted that Obama used a forest of verbiage to camouflage a correction—the fact that he was aware of Wright's views, that he had heard such sermons from the pulpit, after first denying that he had. And that may have been politics as usual. But the speech wasn't.
It was a grand demonstration of the largely unfulfilled promise of Obama's candidacy: the possibility that, given his eloquence and intelligence, he will be able to create a new sense of national unity—not by smoothing over problems but by confronting them candidly and with civility. Unfortunately, that hasn't always been the case. In recent weeks, he has been boggled twice by policy advisers who have been caught in the act of telling difficult truths—on trade and Iraq—that the candidate himself denied on the campaign trail. Perhaps now, having learned how cathartic truth-telling can be, Obama will summon the courage to tell Pennsylvania audiences that free-trade agreements like NAFTA have only a marginal impact on the loss of manufacturing jobs and that it will be impossible to end the war in Iraq in 16 months.
What, if any, impact will the speech have on the campaign? Probably not as much as it should. It was delivered in the morning, to a minuscule television audience. It deserved a full hearing, but most Americans heard it in sound bites and from headlines—and I imagine that for more than a few, the headline will be 'Obama Refuses To Disown His Anti-American Pastor.' This is where inexperience really hurts—not Obama's inexperience but the public's inexperience with him. For many Americans, the Wright flap is the third thing they've learned about Obama. The first two were that he is black and has a "funny" name. All too many voters don't get beyond first impressions, but it's not impossible. In 1992 the first thing most Americans learned about Bill Clinton was that he'd been shagging a lounge singer named Gennifer Flowers. The second was that he'd avoided the military draft during Vietnam. But Clinton—a politician as extraordinary as Obama—managed to survive and, intermittently, prosper.
Whether Obama survives now will depend on the most important and overlooked part of his speech—the final section, in which he challenged the public and, especially, the media to stow the sensationalism: "We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day ... and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words," he said. "But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election we'll be talking about some other distraction ... And nothing will change ... Or, at this moment in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.'"
And that is the existential challenge of 2008: whether we will have a big election or a small one. Will we have a serious conversation about the enormous problems confronting the country—the wars, the economic crisis, the looming environmental cataclysm—or will we allow the same-old carnival of swift boats and sound bites? The answer depends on the candidates, of course, and on the media—where cynicism too often passes for insight. But most of all, it depends on you.
Superdelegates Await Impact Of Obama Race Speech
It is imperative that we all begin contacting our elected representatives and other superdelegates - encourage them to vote for conscience and change - encourage them to vote for Obama. zjm
The Wall Street Journal reports that after Sen. Barack Obama's "race-relations speech this week," the remaining "fence-sitters" among the Democratic superdelegates are waiting to "see how their constituents react to his attempts to soothe racial tension." Superdelegates are "watching to see whether the senator's oratory will assuage white voters outraged at Internet videos showing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. suggesting that America be damned for its treatment of blacks. Separately, many worry that black voters will be outraged by a sense that Sen. Obama is being unfairly judged."
The Washington Post reports the "question is which will last longer -- Obama's eloquent words about racial divisions and reconciliation or questions about his relationship with a man whose words have shocked the country." In his column in the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz says, "On the nightly newscasts and in the morning papers, many journalists did try to grapple with the complexity of Obama's Tuesday address about the roots of racial tension. But when the story hit the Cuisinart of talk-show debate, it got whipped into a single question: Did Obama adequately distance himself from the radioactive reverend? Not surprisingly, most liberals loved the speech and many conservatives -- though not all -- lambasted it."
Obama said on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, "In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates. And if I bring something to this conversation, it's going to be because I do what I did yesterday, which is hopefully open up a new conversation about a new direction in the country."
How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? Wrong question. How did Mary McGrory and Barack Obama get Iraq right?
senior writer at Slate | Thursday, March 20, 2008 Editor's Note: To mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Slate has asked a number of writers who originally supported the war to answer the question, "Why did we get it wrong?" We have invited contributions from the best-known "liberal hawks," many of whom participated in two previous Slate debates about the war, the first before it began in fall of 2002, the second in early 2004. We will be publishing their responses through the week. Read the rest of the contributions.
How did I get Iraq wrong?
I was a Johnny-come-lately to supporting the Iraq war, persuaded in the eleventh hour by Colin Powell's famous speech to the United Nations laying out the "evidence" that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons in violation of U.N. Resolution 687. (Then, as now, I eschewed the misleading propaganda term weapons of mass destruction.) In fact, we all learned later, Saddam hadn't stockpiled these weapons. What can I say? Powell was duped, I was duped, and other, more seasoned journalists (including the late Mary McGrory, who wrote one of her last columns about the speech) were duped, too. My column "Chatterbox Goes to War" is painful to read five years later, and not only because it contains the fatuous pronouncement, "No honest person can dispute, after reviewing Powell's satellite photos and telephone intercepts, that Iraq still has" chemical and biological weapons. The painful truth is that even if those words had been true, they wouldn't have constituted an airtight case for invading Iraq.Far less forgivable, in retrospect, than my smug certainty that Iraq possessed dangerous weapons was my reasoning that this offense left us no alternative to war. We had to invade, I wrote, "because the Bush administration and the United Nations threw down the gauntlet." Had the Bush administration kept secret the "evidence" that Iraq had ignored our warning, I argued, it would have been preferable to resolve the matter diplomatically. But since the "evidence" was now common knowledge, the United States was obliged to bear arms in defense of its own credibility. In essence, I concluded that the Bush administration had compelled me to support the invasion by maneuvering my country into what felt like an untenable position. What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.
I'd much rather, dear reader, that you read my columns prior to "Chatterbox Goes to War," in which I knocked down various arguments proffered by the hawks. (See, for example, this column, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one.) These have worn much better. A larger question, though: Why should you waste your time, at this late date, ingesting the opinions of people who were wrong about Iraq? Wouldn't you benefit more from considering the views of people who were right? Five years after this terrible war began, it remains true that respectable mainstream discussion about its lessons is nearly exclusively confined to people who supported the war, even though that same mainstream acknowledges, for the most part, that the war was a mistake. That's true of Slate's symposium, and it was true of a similar symposium that appeared March 16 on the New York Times' op-ed pages. The people who opposed U.S. entry into the Iraq war, it would appear, are insufficiently "serious" to explain why they were right.
Fortunately, this Lewis Carroll logic hasn't prevailed where it matters most: in the race for the Democratic nomination. The front-runner, Barack Obama, is winning primary votes partly on the strength of his having opposed the Iraq invasion. Another person who ultimately proved right on Iraq is Mary McGrory. Yes, she got conned along with the rest of us about Saddam's purported stockpile, but if you read her follow-up columns, you'll realize that she never took the next step and declared herself in favor of war. In her Feb. 13 column, she wrote:
[E]veryone needs a respite from the encircling apprehension and dread. Beginning with the president, all should take a deep breath and reassess. Colin Powell is working overtime to close the loop on Iraq's ties to al Qaeda. In his masterly U.N. speech he made the case against Saddam Hussein, but not the case for war. He needs a rest. The orange alert has worn everybody out.
McGrory repeated this sentiment in her March 6 column, addressed to readers who'd misconstrued her Powell column. A couple of weeks later, McGrory suffered a stroke, and 13 months later she died. But she leaves behind a lovely anthology, edited by her friend Phil Gailey. It can be read more profitably than this pile of tired mea culpas.
March 19, 2008
'Obama is the new politics' - William Greider
Blues for Obamafrom The Nation | William Greider
Win or lose, whatever happens next, Barack Obama is now established as one of those rare, courageous teachers who leads the country onto new ground. He has given us a way to talk about race and our other differences with the clarity and honesty that politics does not normally tolerate. Whether this hurts or helps his presidential prospects is not yet clear, but he has done this for us and it will change the country, whatever the costs to him.
His words should discourage the media frenzy of fear-driven gotcha. His speech in Philadelphia on Tuesday may also make the Clintons re-think their unsubtle exploitation of racial tension. But nobody knows the depth or strength of the commonplace fears streaming through the underground of public feelings. No one can be sure of what people will hear in Obama's confident embrace, beckoning Americans in all their differences, leaving out no one, to a better understanding of themselves.
The essence of the blues, as I learned to understand, is what Barack Obama accomplished in that speech--the beautiful and hopeful wrapped in pain and sacrifice, the despairing truths about the black experience in America that mysteriously exalt the human spirit when we hear the music. We don't need to understand why or define the meaning. In this case, Obama himself is the expression of what we are feeling. His speech will live on as a complex, exalting memory, whatever happens, because what he said about us is true.
Remember, this is a very shrewd politician, not just highly intelligent and worldly, but wise about himself. He must have understood fully the nature of what he was doing in this speech because all of his life he has coped successfully with the dangerous cross-currents of race. In that speech, Obama was taking all the risks onto himself, going where no one had dared to go before in politics with awareness he might personally pay a price. That is what leaders do, isn't it?
First, Barack Obama did not speak to Americans as though we are children. His discussion assumed that people could relate to a sophisticated explication of the American experience. He did not repackage the realities of race into uplifting myths. Above all, he did not leave anyone out of this generous approach, not his white grandmother for her folk fears of black strangers, not the cruel narrative of the African-American struggle, not the white working class whose immigrant stories have their own legacy of suffering and resentment. Nor would he renounce his friend and mentor Jeremiah Wright, the minister who expresses deeply felt anger and disappointment at the American story.
If you understand the risks Obama undertook, you can see the beauty and pain in what he did. He could not back away from the risks without betraying himself and all those people who are part of him. On the other hand, he was putting at risk his own great promise as a politician. In psychological terms, what's extraordinary is his refusal to split off himself and his own experience from those others. So he embraced them, knowing the risks. Then he tells us--audaciously--that we are capable of doing the same. Yet most of us do the opposite in everyday life, defining ourselves in contrast to the others we are not, idealizing our own selves by demonizing the others. Obama knows all this. He still insists we can do it. He has seen it happen in life.
Could Obama be right about Americans? The proposition itself is thrilling to hear. We feel ennobled by his hopeful account of who we are, but also a little scared. Obama didn't let anyone off the hook. He threw the choice back at the people. But what if he is wrong? We are scared to find out. His hopefulness makes us feel nervous for him.
Obama sounds like cool blues. The calmness of style, the strength of his self-confidence, pull us through the nervousness. If have the opportunity to hear him in full and think about it, they will recognize the strength it took for him to open his arms this way, casting aside all defenses and evasions. With the hope and everything else he stands for, this guy is one very strong character.
Obama is the new politics, I believe, whatever happens this year. His way of talking and thinking will shape the future because I think he has got it right about the country.
Obama's Lincoln Moment
From the Los Angeles TimesTim Rutten March 19, 2008
One hundred and fifty years ago this June, a lanky Illinois lawyer turned politician gave a speech that changed the way Americans talked about the great racial issues of their day.
The lawyer was Abraham Lincoln, and the speech was the famous "House Divided" address with which he accepted the Republican Party's nomination as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost to Stephen Douglas, but the address changed the national conversation on slavery and, two years later, Lincoln was on his way from Springfield to the White House.
America's political story is studded with such addresses -- historical signposts that divide that which went before from all that followed on an issue of crucial national importance. Franklin Roosevelt's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" speech fundamentally changed Americans' expectations of their government in times of social and economic crisis. John F. Kennedy's address on Catholicism and politics to the Greater Houston Ministerial Assn. in 1960 forever altered the way we think about religion and public office.
Sen. Barack Obama, another lanky lawyer from Illinois, planted one of those rhetorical markers in the political landscape Tuesday, when he delivered his "More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia, near Independence Hall. The address was meant to dampen the firestorm of criticism that has attached itself to the senator's campaign since video clips of race-baiting remarks by his Chicago church's former pastor began circulating last week.
But instead of offering a simple exercise in damage control, Obama chose to place his discussion of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's incendiary comments in a wider consideration of race in America -- and the results were, like those Kennedy achieved in Houston, historic.
Just as every seasoned political hand in 1960 knew that, sooner or later, Kennedy would have to tackle the question of his Catholicism head-on, it's been clear for some time that Obama would have to speak explicitly to the question of race in this campaign. Still, polished orator that he may be, no one could have predicted an address of quite this depth and scope.
"That was the most sophisticated speech on race and politics I've ever heard," said CNN's Bill Schneider, the only network pundit who actually has taught American political history at elite universities.
It was all the more remarkable because, while Kennedy presided over what may have been the greatest speech-writing team in electoral history, Obama -- like Lincoln -- wrote his address himself, completing the final draft Monday night.
Obama did what he had to do, unequivocally repudiating Wright's extreme rhetoric. But what was truly radical about his analysis was his implicit demand that black and white Americans accept the imperfection of each other's views on race. Embedded in such acceptance is the seed of that "more perfect union" toward which this country -- unquestionably great but itself imperfect -- must strive.
It was a concept that Obama subtly invoked near the beginning of the speech by pointing to the fact that although the Constitution "was stained by the original sin of slavery," the "answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution -- a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time."
Theologically, original sin is the source of man's fallen nature and the root of his imperfection. Obama went on to build on that concept, invoking the authority of his own mixed heritage -- son of a black immigrant father and white mother, raised by a loving white grandmother -- and refusing to reject either Wright, a man of good works as well as extreme rhetoric, or his loving grandmother, who was prone to racial stereotypes. Obama demanded that black anger make an allowance for white anxiety and that white resentment make a place for black grievance.
No candidate for national office has ever spoken so candidly or realistically about race as it is lived as a fact of life in America. As he put it Tuesday, "The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country ... is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."
A Moving Moment in our Nation's History
March 19, 2008Are we listening, America? On Tuesday morning, Barack Obama delivered the speech of his life about the most divisive issue in America in this day or any day -- race. He spoke for millions of Americans of good will and open minds -- Americans who have struggled to find just these words -- challenging us to heal our painful racial wounds by first admitting the deep roots, complexities and truths of our grievances. The grievances of black America are not imaginary, he said. And the anger and frustrations within segments of the white community cannot always be dismissed as bigotry.
Speaking to white Americans, Obama said, "The path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people."
But speaking to African Americans, Obama had this to say about resentful white people: "When they are told to bus their children to a school across town, when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job ... when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."
Until all of us come to understand this more tangled truth about race in America and "work through" it, as Obama said, we will never seriously take on the great problems that trouble us all.
"If we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners," Obama said, "we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education or the need to find good jobs for every American."
In the last two weeks, issues arose on the campaign trail that threatened to recast Obama as "the black candidate" rather than as a candidate who happens to be black (and white, for that matter). Most alarming were the indisputably objectionable remarks of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Race moved to centerstage and was seized on by some to confuse and divide us. So Obama, in that exceptional way he has of brushing aside polemics, stepped up to a podium in Philadelphia and challenged us to see all the shades of gray, to embrace our greater and shared humanity.
It was a moving moment in American history to hear a man who could be president dissect the rancorous matter of race with such candor, and it called to mind other piercing addresses by the likes of FDR, Kennedy and King.
Obama's speech won't sway everybody -- within two hours Rush Limbaugh was sneering that Rodney King said it just as well with "Why can't we all just get along." But among those Americans who sincerely yearn for relief from the divisive and diversionary politics of the last couple of decades, this was a speech to move the head and heart.
Running for president inevitably is an act of self-revelation, and with this speech Obama peeled off many more layers and revealed something close to his true essence. He is the man in the middle, bi-racial and bi-cultural, inclined by both nurture and nature to understand if not always forgive both sides. He rightly denounced the many offensive comments by Rev. Wright, yet he refused to disown Wright or his overall message of self-determination.
"I can no longer disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me ... who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
What American does not see his own family and community -- and perhaps himself -- in that confession?
Obama on Tuesday spoke to our better angels.
And maybe America moved a little.
Invited to Wrestle in a Racial Mud Pit, Obama Soars Above It - The Washington Post
By Courtland Milloy, Wednesday, March 19, 2008Before Barack Obama took to the podium yesterday, I was pretty angry at how slimy the presidential campaign had become. And my plan was to write a screed about those whites who want Obama to "transcend race" while they get to hold on to their racist ways.
In the latest episode, inflammatory snippets of sermons by Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ Church in Chicagp, had been fashioned into a political bombshell by Obama's opponents. Right-wing TV commentators then detonated it with ignorant vitriol, including an insinuation by Pat Buchanan that Wright was a black David Duke, the former leader of the white terrorist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, and that Obama was the disciple of a hateful man.
I could go on and on.
Then Obama spoke, and I had a mind-altering experience. After hearing him deliver what was essentially a treatise on faith, hope and charity, I no longer wanted to risk getting stuck in a racial tar pit with Buchanan or any of the others. I just wanted to hop on that Obama bandwagon and head for new America.
The desire to rise up out of the racial muck was intensified with every conversation I had about the speech.
Rep. Elijah E Cummings (D-Md.), who co-chairs the Maryland for Obama campaign, hit the nail on the head when he told me: "Obama has the ability to elevate our thinking beyond the chicken-yard scratching and biting. He calls on us to soar like eagles. And if he can't always take you there, he can sure dare you to go."
Edwin Chapman, an African American physician who lives in Mitchellville, said: "The big challenge for Obama was not to be portrayed as the black candidate and not to be perceived as denying his blackness. It would not have worked if he had done like Tiger Woods and called himself a 'cablinasian.' It worked because Obama came off as a Renaissance man."
Another friend, Sidney Strickland, an African American attorney and co-founder of a bank in Laurel, said: "He spoke frankly about the racial divide, the gap in black and white perceptions of reality. And because of his personal story, rooted in having a black father and white mother, he was able to offer himself as the bridge."
Yet, as Obama made clear in the speech, the racial gap is huge, and it would be a stretch indeed for anyone to even imagine that it could be spanned entirely by one man in a lifetime. He certainly knew about the breadth of the gap inside my head.
"Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race and racism continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways," he said. "The memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away, nor has the anger and the bitterness. . . . That anger is not always productive. Indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems. . . . But the anger is real, it is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm."
Then Obama went on to say something that almost made me audaciously hopeful. He had the courage to connect slavery to black suffering today.
"Many of the disparities that exist . . . can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation," he said. He went on to connect the achievement gap with the legacy of inferior, racially segregated schools that still haven't been fixed "50 years after Brown versus Board of Education."
He noted that legalized discrimination had prevented blacks from owning property or getting jobs or loans to purchase homes. The result has been the inability of countless blacks to accumulate wealth and pass on the benefits to their children. Obama linked a lack of economic opportunity to crime and poverty.
Of course, some still could not handle the truth. Brit Hume of Fox News, for instance, thought Obama was "blaming whites" -- even though Obama specifically called on African Americans to take responsibility for their lives.
That was enough to make me want to wallow in the muck again. But Obama had made a point that was bigger than Hume or Buchanan or even himself. To get where you need to go, you've got to know where you came from. And even if Obama doesn't make it all the way to the White House, I sure like where he's taken me so far.
Washington Post: Obama's Road Map on Race
By Eugene Robinson Wednesday, March 19, 2008Once again, the conventional wisdom proved stunningly unwise. Barack Obama was supposed to be on his heels, forced into a backpedaling, defensive crouch after racially charged remarks by his former pastor, delivered from the pulpit years ago, suddenly became the hottest story of the presidential campaign. But instead of running away, Obama issued a challenge to those who would exploit the issue of race: Bring it on.
Yesterday morning, in what may be remembered as a landmark speech regardless of who becomes the next president, Obama established new parameters for a dialogue on race in America that might actually lead somewhere -- that might break out of the sour stasis of grievance and countergrievance, of insensitivity and hypersensitivity, of mutual mistrust.
"My goal was to try to lift up some truth that people talk about privately but don't always talk about publicly between the races," Obama told me in a telephone interview later in the day. He delivered his speech, titled "A More Perfect Union," in Philadelphia just yards from Independence Hall.
As expected, Obama categorically denounced the incendiary sound bites from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons that have been played endlessly on cable television in recent days. Wright displayed "a profoundly distorted view of this country," Obama said in his speech, "a view that sees white racism as endemic."
But Obama didn't stop there. He went on to specify what was wrong with Wright's preaching about racism in the United States: "It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress had been made; as if this country . . . is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."
The consensus among the commentariat was that Obama, as a matter of political tactics, should want to shift the conversation away from the subject of race as quickly as possible. He told me that the decision not to turn away, but to give a major speech on the issue, was his.
"What was fascinating over the last three or four days was to see how Reverend Wright's admittedly offensive comments . . . were packaged in sound bites in a way that didn't contribute to understanding between black and white Americans but only expanded the chasm between them," he said. "I thought it was both a challenge and an opportunity to use this moment to describe, to black and white, why there is this chasm."
And that may have been the most significant aspect of the speech: the fact that Obama proposed a conversation, not a monologue. He not only laid out the reasons some African Americans might feel alienated or resentful but also the reasons some white Americans might feel the same way.
"Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race," Obama said in the speech. "Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they built it from scratch. . . . So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college . . . when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."
These resentments have "helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation," Obama told his audience. "And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."
Obama called on African Americans to embrace "the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past," and to take "full responsibility for our own lives." And he's absolutely right.
This amounts to a new set of talking points for a discussion about race: Don't be paralyzed by history but acknowledge its effects. Recognize that whites have legitimate grievances that are not racist. Don't cling to victimhood as an all-purpose excuse. Accept personal responsibility.
Obama told me that he doesn't intend to make race a major theme of his campaign. "I don't think that we are going to be gnawing on this bone at every stop," he said. But I believe he might have pulled off something that seemed almost impossible: He not only ventured into the minefield of race and made it back alive, but he also marked a path for the rest of us to follow.
Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage
There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.
Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.
Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.
It was not a moment to which Mr. Obama came easily. He hesitated uncomfortably long in dealing with the controversial remarks of his spiritual mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters’ business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business. The distinction seems especially urgent after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state.
Mr. Obama acknowledged his strong ties to Mr. Wright. He embraced him as the man “who helped introduce me to my Christian faith,” and said that “as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.”
Wisely, he did not claim to be unaware of Mr. Wright’s radicalism or bitterness, disarming the speculation about whether he personally heard the longtime pastor of his church speak the words being played and replayed on YouTube. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright’s comments were not just potentially offensive, as politicians are apt to do, but “rightly offend white and black alike” and are wrong in their analysis of America. But, he said, many Americans “have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.”
Mr. Obama’s eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.
Mr. Obama spoke of the nation’s ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.
He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation,” he said, “the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years.”
At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. “In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game,” he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary.
He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition,” he said.
Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street” and more than once “uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.
We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.
March 18, 2008
'A More Perfect Union' - Barack Obama Elevates the Presidential Race, Calls Out the Best in All of Us
This is the most important and powerful speech I've heard in my lifetime - One of the great 'calls to action' in American history. Truly humbling, and deeply moving. Made me not only proud to be an American, made me proud to be a human being. zjm
March 17, 2008
On American Hypocrisy
Obama's Minister Committed 'Treason' But When My Father Said the Same Thing He was a Republican Heroby Frank Schaeffer | Huffington Post
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.
Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
And this:
In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....
Then this:
There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...
Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).
Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.
Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."
We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.
My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.
The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.
Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.'
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back
Happy Anniversary Hillary! Five Years Ago You Sent Us to War in Iraq
Clinton's Iraq Vote - Five Years Laterby Jon Weiner | Huffington Post
The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war provides an appropriate moment to revisit Hillary Clinton's argument in favor of authorizing Bush's use of force, and to contrast it with the case made at the time by Bush's opponents.
In the last few years, Clinton has defended her vote by arguing that "if I knew then what I know now, I would never have given President Bush the authority" to attack Iraq. But a majority of Democrats in the House knew enough "then" to vote against the resolution - as did 21 out of 50 Democratic senators.
In Clinton's Senate speech, still posted on her senate website, she began by accepting Bush's premise that "if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." The question, she said, was whether war was the appropriate means of stopping those developments.
In supporting Bush, Clinton claimed to be taking a middle path between two extremes - on the one hand, those who believed we should go to war only if the UN Security Council approved it, which she considered absurd, and on the other, those who favored "attacking Saddam Hussein now." But not even Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld favored an immediate attack at the point the Senate debate occurred -- October 2002 - so she was rejecting an argument no one was making.
Probably the biggest concession she made to Bush was accepting his argument that war was a legitimate response to the attacks on 9-11, which had occurred just one year earlier. Although she did not explicitly agree with Bush's statements linking al Qaeda to Iraq, she did say her vote was justified by "last year's terrible attacks," and that "in balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am."
Other Senators rejected precisely those arguments. Russ Feingold voted against the authorization to use force in part because of what he called "the President's singularly unpersuasive attempt . . . to interweave 9-11 and Iraq." He criticized the "shifting justifications for an invasion," noting "the spectacle of the President and senior Administration officials citing a purported connection to al Qaeda one day, weapons of mass destruction the next day, Saddam Hussein's treatment of his own people on another day."
Ted Kennedy raised a key issue Clinton never considered: going to war against Iraq, he said, "will jeopardize the war against terrorism" - against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. "One year into the battle against Al Qaeda, the administration is shifting the focus, the resources and the energy to Iraq. The change in priority is coming before we have eliminated the threat from Al Qaeda."
While Clinton accepted Bush's claims regarding Saddam's possession weapons of mass destruction, others rejected them. Jim Jeffords, Republican of Vermont said, "There is much speculation about his weapons of mass destruction, but no evidence that he has developed nuclear capability and less that he could deliver it."
Robert Byrd opposed the resolution on other grounds, arguing that "The newly bellicose mood that permeates this White House . . . is clearly motivated by campaign politics. Republicans are already running attack ads against Democrats on Iraq." The criticism of Clinton was implicit but obvious.
In the House, Nancy Pelosi proved to be prescient about the course of the war: "There is no political solution on the ground in Iraq," she declared. "So when we go in, the occupation which is now being called liberation could be interminable. And so could the amount of money, unlimited, that it will cost -- 100, 200 billion dollars." (Of course the war is now costing more than ten times that.)
As for the dangers arising from a long occupation, that problem was foreseen by none other than Henry Kissinger. He testified at a Senate committee hearing before the war vote that he was "viscerally opposed to a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country at the heart of the Muslim world by Western nations who proclaim the right to re-educate that country." In Clinton's speech, she never considered that argument.Jon Wiener is a contributing editor to The Nation and professor of history at UC Irvine.
Quotes From Sunday
(On Ferraro's race comments) It's like saying Secretariat wouldn't have won the Kentucky Derby if he wasn't a horse. Well, of course Barack is--Barack is who he is, and he's been successful be--for who he is, because he is a black man who has triumphed over these racial politics. And the Clinton folks are trying to bring him back down to earth by reminding people and saying, `He's just a black man after all.' Richard Stengel | Time Managing Editor
If you look at the Clinton campaign, the way it's operated, it's been a campaign of fight and divide. If you look at the Obama campaign, it's been a campaign of unite and fight. And fight for the things that the American people really want.
Senator Bill Bradley
(responding to the Jeremiah Wright story on ABC's 'This Week') "He (Obama) has repudiated and denounced those comments. What else can he do? He’s not going to renounce the good Lord Jesus Christ!"
Donna Brazile | DNC
