It’s an easy one, folks. The good and bad news all in one: Barack Obama is a hack.
As he announces he may “refine” his views on Iraq, as he steps back from NAFTA protectionism, as hc “clarifies” his positions on capital punishment, gun control, abortion, capital gains, etc., etc., we now see writ large close to the most conventional politician to come down the pike in some time. How much of this backpedaling is for real? I am almost certain not even Barack knows for sure. As commenter Terrye writes below, he could “go back to position#1″ the moment he’s sworn in.
Still, there is some reassurance that the candidate of amorphous “change” is in reality the candidate of “politics as usual.”
The bad news is that public doesn’t seem to know it– or if they do, they don’t care. A large number appear to regard Obama as a demi-god and his campaign is clearly reveling in it. They are floating the idea of changing the venue of his acceptance speech from Denver’s Pepsi Center to the much larger outdoor Invesco Field. I’m not going to indulge in the obvious comparisons. But I am disturbed by this development. 76,000 people blindly screaming “Yes, we can!” in a giant stadium is not an image I relish seeing in a free society.
They have a right to, in a way, since Obama has pulled what is obviously a “bait and switch” on Iraq. Who can be surprised that the candidate is now tacking to his right as fast as he can on troop withdrawal? As I have said before, Obama is the New Nixon, only a slicker PR man than Tricky Dick. Sort of a combination of Bill Clinton and Nixon. New politics? Feh!
Another sign that we are headed for a particularly vindictive and hideous election season is this post on Pagan Power which features a screen shot of the comments from an official Obama Website. These comments contain the famous photo of napalmed children of the Vietnam accompanied by the accusation that McCain is a War Criminal.
Talk about going for the throat!
Of course the Obama site contains the usual “non endorsement” disclaimer on comments, but the very fact that this stuff is there is another indication that the Obama campaign may be playing both sides against the middle (figuratively and literally) regarding McCain’s military record. I don’t know the extent, if any, the campaign or its minions are orchestraing this behavior, but I’m watching.
LAT editor Russ Stanton informs us their problem is about length: “The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don’t have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day,” Stanton said. “We’re going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter.”
Okay, Mr. Pirandello, it is so if you think so. On the other hand, some of us might think it has something to do with the content itself, which at the LAT veers consistently toward the most fuddy-duddy and predictable liberalism. Why even bother to read it? The Wall Street Journal, as opposed to the LAT, seems to be doing just fine, thank you, and appears to be growing in length. Word is out they may soon even be publishing a Book Review section. Ever try reading the LAT Book Review these days? It’s like the slush pile from the New York Review of Books circa 1977. [Hey, you ungrateful cur? Didn’t the LAT Book Review make your career with its rave of The Big Fix back in 1972?-ed. You would bring that up.]
What the LA Times needs is a serious over-haul, something absolutely non-traditional. It won’t happen.
Just as David Petraeus is making us feel good about our military, along comes Wes Clark to remind us that no institution is perfect. The erratic former general is apparently not backing down from his comments about McCain’s five years in the Hanoi Hilton not qualifying the Senator for the presidency.
At first I agreed with Rick Moran and many others that this is essentially a sideshow. But let’s review the meat of what Clark said: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”
Undoubtedly not. But what is arguably a serious qualification for president is McCain’s behavior, his steadfastness, for five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. It has overtones of The Bridge on the River Kwai. Although not as overtly heroic as the film, McCain showed character traits under extreme pressure - dealing with torture, standing with his men, etc., - that demonstrate superior leadership capability. What befits a president more than that?
Clark skipped over this obvious part. (Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive seems to have seen it pretty clearly.) Why? Well, I submit the former general is suffering from the sin of envy. Not the most stable personality in the public arena - Clark’s own run at the presidency in ‘04 imploded in a matter of days - the former general may not harbor the most generous feelings toward McCain, who has parlayed his military career into a lengthy sojourn in the Senate and now a presidential nomination.
So… John McCain as Sir Alec Guinness…? Well, maybe that’s pushing things too far. Sir Alec gets my vote for one of the greatest actors of the Twentieth Century…. But it’s time for Wes Clark to review this song.
To be an Israeli leader is probably rarely fun, but at this moment it may be less fun than ever. And I’m not talking about Olmert’s possible corruption. I’m talking, of course, about Iran - to bomb or not to bomb, that is the question. Were Israeli’s recent military exercises in the Mediterranean a scare tactic or the real thing? Do they know themselves?
Given the tragedy of Jewish history, what Israeli leader would not take Ahmadinjead, Khameni, et al, seriously? And yet from afar the Iranian leadership often seems like delusional religious maniacs or con artists doing a monumental job of exploiting their own people. It’s hard for the Western mind to think they actually believe all this Mahdi nonsense. It must be a joke, right? Meanwhile they’re on the brink of nuclear weapons.
UPDATE: Speaking of Iran, on PJM this morning, Sheryl has an absolutely mind-blowing report on a jaw-dropping prevarication by that “great historian” Pat Buchanan.
Sheryl and I attended the Republican Jewish Coalition dinner at the Reagan Library last night. The speeches at these events are usually pretty dreary but they had three good ones by Steve Poizner, Dennis Prager and the very youthful Josh Mandel - an ex-Marine now Ohio politician who is a coming super star for the Republicans. Kudos to their California head honcho Larry Greenfield.
Not surprisingly, however, our Prius was the only hybrid I could see in the parking lot for the event (attended by 600 people). Still a lot of Lexus SUVs (not the hybrid type) among the upscale Republican crowd. Well, tough cheese for them. I got 57 mpg on my way home! (It’s about 30 miles from the library to my house.)
In his latest New Yorker entry “Preparing the Battlefield” [in Iran] Seymour Hersh seems to be competing for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest numbers of anonymous sources in one article. The first sentence alone presents a trifecta of the unnamed: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.”
They are never identified.
It goes on in a similar mode for the next seven pages almost to the level of self-parody. So I have some questions for The New Yorker editors. How do you fact-check Hersh and do those methods coincide with your overall policies (if any)? Do you know the names of his anonymous sources? Have you queried those sources to see if the writer fairly represents their opinions or to discover whether they are disaffected civil servants with an ax to grind? When dealing with an issue as incendiary as war with Iran, it should be standard journalistic procedure to do so. I would hope the editors of The New Yorker agree readers deserve a high level of transparency on such life or death issues.
In general mainstream media outlets are rather opaque about their fact-checking, particularly regarding their “anonymous source” standards, even though it is those sources who are most useful to a writer who wishes to manipulate the facts. Until those standards are made clear in a public manner and in a way that readers can feel confident they are being followed, articles like Hersh’s must be read as fiction. And not very good fiction at that.
UPDATE: Ron Rosenbaum analyzes Hersh’s (spotty) track record.
