John McCain – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #17: They Will Campaign Against Us Until We’re All Dead – and Maybe After

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from July 9, 2008

From the day Richard Nixon was nominated in 1968 until Tuesday afternoon, forty years later, when John McCain began running this “Love” commercial, Republicans have been running against us. All of us who share a history of opposing the Vietnam war and working to elect an anti-war president. Against everything we ever were, believed, dreamed, voted for, marched against, volunteered to change, spoke about, created, sang, wrote, painted, sculpted or said to one another on the subway or the campus or anyplace else from preschool parent nights to Seders to the line at the supermarket.

How is it possible that what we tried to do is still the last best hope to elect a Republican? They used it against John Kerry. They used it against Max Cleland. They did it every time (well, almost) they were losing policy battles in the Clinton years. They called CSPAN and said unspeakable things. And now they are using the history of people my side of sixty to run against a man who was, if my math is right, seven years old during this notorious “summer of love” which – I might add, had nothing to do with those of us working to end the war. In fact, there were two strands of rebellion in those years. The Summer of Love/Woodstock folks and the political, anti-war activists.

At the 1967 National Student Association Convention in Maryland, I saw a room full of students boo Timothy Leary off the stage, literally. We didn’t want to “turn on, tune in, drop out” we wanted to organize against the war. The anti-war movement was not a party. I know that’s not a bulletin but it is so hard to see all of us reduced to a single mistaken stereotype. Those who chose to find a personal solution weren’t nuts; communes and home-made bread were a lot more immediate gratification than march after march, teach-in after teach-in, speech after speech. “If you’re goin’ to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Tempting, romantic – and not us.

Even more painful is the fact that the cultural and political divide is still so intense that research (I assume) told the McCain guys that this commercial would work. That our patriotic, committed efforts to change our country’s path, and the cultural alienation that drove others toward the streets of San Francisco, combine to become a stronger motivator than all the desperate issues we face today, this side of those 40 years. Perhaps even worse, these Bush years have dismantled so many of the successes we did have, so that in addition to facing, yet again, this smear against the activism of 1968 (and I repeat, that wasforty years ago — longer than most of the bloggers I know have been alive) there’s the awareness of what we did that has been undone.

I need to say here that I grew up on the shores of the Monongehela River in Pittsburgh and my classmates were kids who mostly went into
the steel mills or the Army after high school. I knew plenty of supporters of the war. I went to prom and hung out at the Dairy Queen with them. But it never occurred to me to demonize them, to hold against them their definition of patriotism.

I’m not writing off or looking down upon those who did support the war; I’m saying that this cynical, craven abuse of the devotion of people on
both sides to the future of their country is reprehensible and precisely the kind of behavior that has broken the hearts of so many Americans, on those both sides of the political spectrum, who just want their candidates to lead us in hope for what our country can be, not defame others whose dreams aren’t quite the same as theirs.

FOR THE RECORD: POWELL ENDORSES OBAMA, PALIN YUKS IT UP, THAT RED-BAITING CONGRESSLADY FROM MINNESOTA

Between cooking for holidays, playing hooky at a pumpkin farm with friends and their kids, and work, I’m late writing about this, but it’s such an event that it felt unseemly not to acknowledge it. Colin Powell is highly regarded, and if you wonder why just listen to the interview with him on the sidewalk outside Meet the Press. Thoughtful, civil and committed, he related a broad and sometimes moving inventory of the reasons behind his decision. In addition to this sidewalk news conference, here’s a bit of the statement on Meet the Press itself. (skip it if you saw it – 3 graphs down)

"In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He’s crossing lines–ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He’s thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate."

It’s great that he’s saying it, but it’s also a bit pathetic that it takes a former general and secretary of state to open his mouth and say "cut it out." I saw that one blogger – and I’m so sorry that I don’t recall who, ran a bit of the Army McCarthy hearings along with this:

Hard to believe that people in America still sound like that, isn’t it? Back to the Fifties.
It’s this kind of talk that led Secretary Powell to speak as he did today; it’s this kind of talk that has been part of this campaign for some time.

And Sarah on SNL? She was funny and a good sport; it humanized and demystified her as a threat. Good for her, I guess, but she is a threat and she is scary and she says hateful, vicious and provocative things and none of that was apparent in this image-cleansing performance. It troubles me because the threat of her is in her firm position in the far-right, the scary, nutty, closed-ranks "base" that gets people to yell "Kill him" and "off with his head" and "terrorist" like a citizen in 1984. She lies, she uses half-truths to build anger and hatred and code words that give people embarrassed to vote against a black man an excuse to do so. To turn her into a "way hotter in person" cheerleader with a sense of humor is a dangerous, dangerous thing to do. Rehab by comedy.

My biggest fear right now though, as someone who fears deeply for a McCain-led nation, is what Obama calls "remember New Hampshire." People for whom voting is a tough logistical effort, or who are waiting in lines that are too long, or who are kind of committed but might decide things are ok without them — that these people won’t vote – will let things falter on overconfidence. I hope that we all remember that as cute as Sarah Palin might have been, the issues that drove Secretary Powell to do what he did are the issues that will determine the rest of our lives, and those of our children — and those of our country and the world that is watching so intensely to see what we will do.

BARACK OBAMA, JOHN MCCAIN AND “THE HEALTH OF THE MOTHER”

I’m so used to horrible attitudes toward abortion that I didn’t adequately react to John McCain’s debate response last night. Did you see it? Mocking the idea of "health of the mother" in hand gestures and a voice of dismissal. I don’t think I need to say anything except to thank, for probably the only time in my life, Fox News, for the best edit on YouTube. It speaks for itself.

SCARY TIMES: DO WE FACE A NEW GREAT DEPRESSION (AND DOES SARAH PALIN STILL MATTER?)

Every decision my parents ever made was influenced by the Depression. What we ate, what we wore, where we shopped, when and how we took vacations, what we "needed" vs what we "wanted" and, in their own lives, what careers they followed and where we all lived. They had been teenagers in the Depression, and although both went to college (on scholarships and several jobs at once) neither studied what they’d wanted to. I’ve talked about all this before – my mother refusing even to talk about her life then, my dad so concerned when any of us made a job change or took any professional risk.

I felt it too. I still read menus from the price to the item, skipping the ones that are too expensive. Ditto with price tags on clothes. I’ve always clipped coupons and bought things on sale, shopped at big box stores and always, always read the unit prices of things. And, as an American Studies major I took several courses dealing with the Depression. I needed to know more about it not only as a student but as a daughter.

I know that this is not the Great Depression. I know that there are more protections in place, even if too many of them have been removed in the past eight years. But the economic chaos of the past week has been scary on more than one level. Of course I worry about us, getting near retirement age. But my bigger worry is the impact such a colossal change will have on the lives of the younger people we love. Our sons, first of all, at the beginning of their careers. And all the families in this community who mean so much to us – just starting families and facing years of tuitions and outgrown winter coats and activity fees. I also think about just-retired or nearly retired "elders" so well represented by Ronni Bennett’s blog, and all the people living from paycheck to paycheck — who will be endangered by cuts in hours and devastated by the loss of their jobs.

And this is where Sarah Palin comes in. And John McCain. Because every day the level of negative language rises, the indulgent response to enraged constituents yelling things that should not be spoken in an American election or any other time: threats and bigoted characterizations and more. This kind of language is far more dangerous in a bad economy. Hitler was successful partially because the German economy had so badly frightened people, men like "Father Coughlin" (that’s his picture) preached racism and anti-Semitism on the radio during the Depression with substantial response. There other, less prominent hate-mongers too – and they had a real following. People needed someone to be angry at and were vulnerable to that sort of demagogery. It’s a very scary shadow over the economic crisis, the campaign, and the souls of the American people. NOW, go read Josh Marshall on why the ghost of Father Coughlin haunts him, too. And read this very thoughtful post about a tough electoral decision.

The consider what sort of leader allows such things – and doesn’t stand up and tell his/her supporters to cut it out? What does that say about their leadership once they’re in office?

Oh Oh Obama – McCain Was So Bad it Was Hard to Watch

The Ohio uncommitted focus group dials on CNN during tonight’s debate were riveting. Among other things, almost every time Obama stood up to respond the dials went up. Almost every time McCain stood up, the dials went down. If they are at all accurate McCain was having a terrible night. I would give my right (well, maybe my left) arm to be in the spin room tonight and hear what the McCain people are saying to justify this.

The big problem is that it was so uncomfortable to watch. McCain was — well — icky. You didn’t feel sorry for him you just wanted him to stop so you didn’t have to look. Obama was excellent but the thing was so hard to watch that I don’t know if it’s possible to feel good about it. When McCain says you need a strong hand on the tiller it sounded like a commercial for the other guy. I’m just kind of grossed out by pitiful McCainitude. Nobody on TV is saying what I’m seeing though; Buchanan says Obama was being presidential but he didn’t see McCain as pathetic as I did.

The Republican commentators on CNN were actually being pretty hard on McCain’s "looking to the past" and was also "condescending to voters" according to the Republican consultants. They’re being really hard on him. AND they all seem to be assuming that Obama won – "had to stand toe to toe with John McCain and surpass him — and he did." says Gloria Borger. David Gergen says he was "very presidential" BUT "he is black and the polls may not be accurate." He’s talking about the "Bradley effect" issues – people misleading pollsters because they’re embarrassed to say that they won’t vote for an African American. It will be tragic if that’s the case.

Finally, the CNN post-debate poll tonight of 38% D/ 31% R indicates a rout: 54% of independents say Obama won the debate. 30% said McCain so that’s not even all the Republicans. Oh and CBS’s poll has 59% saying Obama won.
The details tell a lot. Here’s a breakdown:
Who did best job?                      Obama 54% McCain 30%
Who did better on the economy? Obama 59% McCain 37%.
Who expressed his views more clearly? Obama 60% -McCain 30%
Who was more likable?                Obama 65%-McCain 28%
Who would better handle Iraq?    Obama 54 % McCain 47%
Your opinion of Obama:                Positive went from 60% to 64%
                                                Negatives went down — from 38% to 34%
McCain’s favorables stayed at 51% and unfavorables at 46% but he DID win one category: Who would better handle terrorism? McCain 51% Obama 46%. The results are astonishing – Obama in almost every category.

I’m still frightened about race though; I think Gergen is right. These results look great. But when you canvas in Virginia and see how people respond — the reasons they give for "not liking" Obama, you can see it; feel it. And we don’t know how many intentionally didn’t answer the door; how many are better actors and keeping their true feelings hidden. What happens with those voters will determine our future, internationally, politically, economically and racially. This time, more than usual, we’re not just electing a president here – we’re redefining our country.

Sarah Palin, Rape Kits and Birth Control

When you first heard that Wasilla, AK and its then-mayor Sarah Palin were charging rape victims for the cost of their rape kits (evidence collecting) you didn’t quite believe it, right? This video is the first of a series being produced by "The Wasilla Project" and was called to my attention by Nerdette, a sharp cookie whose blog "Not My Gal" is usually on top of these things. After I watched it I went back to this CNN version of the story:

It’s kind of slippery but, partly because I’ve been working on the issue of very scary threats to the right to planning ones pregnancies, and to actual birth control and family planning, I’ve very aware of the Palin perspective on these important life decisions. Watch both videos and see what you think. And if you want to learn more, stop by Birth Control Watch and see for yourself what informs a lot of the thinking behind Sarah Palin and that guy she’s running with.

SARAH PALIN, SARAH PALIN, SARAH PALIN AND THE DANGERS OF A DESPERATE PARTY

This photo says it all. I took it yesterday, on our second Sunday canvassing for Obama in Virginia. When I got home I decided to review the stats for this blog and discovered that no post has drawn either the traffic or comments as those I’ve written about Sarah Palin. Friends tell me the same is true of theirs. I don’t think it’s brilliant writing that’s doing it. Sarah Palin has captured a large chunk of this presidential campaign as well as either the imagination or the rage (depending on perspective) of many American voters.

The Tina Fey stuff is funny, and effective, as I’ve mentioned before. The mean stuff is plenty mean. The "middle-class hockey mom" stuff is more effective than I wish it were, especially since the Palin family is worth over $2M and they made close to $200,000 last year. None of this matters as much as it should. She draws huge crowds. She’s cute. Those who support her either believe she is a wonder of accessibility and straight talk or have twisted themselves like pretzels to find reasons to justify her presence. For me, at least, it’s kind of sad.

What makes so many people prefer a less-educated, less-experienced candidate with a limited academic past, no curiosity or sense of exploration, untrammeled ambition and not much of a history over far more capable, experienced leadership? I remember when I was a kid and my mother’s adored Adlai Stevenson ran for president in 1952 and 1956, people called him an egghead, he was accused of being too cold and not able to connect to voters. And some analysts have compared him to Obama – two Illinois candidates too smart for the room.

I don’t see it. Obama appears to me far looser and more accessible- and more well-rounded in experience and education – and he’s younger and more available to young voters; Stevenson was a different man at a very different time and he was running against the man who, at least partially, won World War II. Even so, the question really is, how far have we evolved since then? AND how much have we learned from voting for the guy we’d "rather have a beer with" when that guy was George W Bush? AND in times so very dangerous that by the time each post is replaced at the top of the que, markets around the world have gone down once more and international tensions risen – will we still, as a country, opt for the "mavericky mom" who is not, at least on paper and on the stump, capable of understanding, much less solving, our problems? (OH and that guy who’s running with her…..)

As I write this, Palin, just introduced by Joe Lieberman (%#@!!**&) to a huge Florida crowd screaming "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah", continues to draw the faithful to great emotional response. It’s hard to know if, when people go into the voting booth, this emotion will translate into votes – or the reality will hit them and they won’t be able to do it.

My other fear is that because the race is moving toward Obama, acts of desperate chicanery will be part of the election day landscape. Here are some things that are already happening;

Republicans purging voter rolls, particularly of young first-time voters
De-listing voters whose homes have been foreclosed – with the claim that since the voters no longer have an address, they can’t vote.
Closing polling places in Democratic areas and intimidating officials
Trying to keep absentee ballots from newly registered voters
Names missing from voter rolls that affect legitimacy of absentee ballots

If you’re an attorney or law student, you can help with these things and the others that will happen.

We Americans will be tested in many ways in the next few years: economically, militarily, educationally, diplomatically and more. The first test, though, is this: As we face these challenges and all the others certain to emerge, and we think about our kids and what we want to leave for them, will we be able to take a deep breath and vote for "the smart guy" or is the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin the canary in our coal mine – warning us that our electorate is, even after W, not ready to choose the most capable and visionary, who has inspired so very many of our next generation to enter the fray, when they can elect Tina Fey light and her "old guy" running mate instead?

PARIS HILTON ON THE OBAMA COMMERCIAL – AND IT ISN’T GROSS

OK so you’ve probably seen this but just in case I’m posting it here (probably like half the web.) I’ve (embarrassingly) never heard this woman speak before. I thought she’d sound horrible but she’s not half bad. And the ad? Pretty funny, huh?

THEY WILL CAMPAIGN AGAINST US UNTIL WE’RE ALL DEAD – AND MAYBE AFTER

How is it possible that what we tried to do is still the last best hope to elect a Republican? They used it against John Kerry. They used it against Max Cleland. They did it every time (well, almost) they were losing policy battles in the Clinton years. They called CSPAN and said unspeakable things. And now they are using the history of people my side of sixty to run against a man who was, if my math is right, seven years old during this notorious “summer of love” which – I might add, had nothing to do with those of us working to end the war. In fact, there were two strands of rebellion in those years. The Summer of Love/ Woodstock folks and the political, anti-war activists.

Even more painful is the fact that the cultural and political divide is still so intense that research (I assume) told the McCain guys that this commercial would work. That our patriotic, committed efforts to change our country’s path, and the cultural alienation that drove others toward the streets of San Francisco, combine to become a stronger motivator than all the desperate issues we face today, this side of those 40 years. Perhaps even worse, these Bush years have dismantled so many of the successes we did have, so that in addition to facing, yet again, this smear against the activism of 1968 (and I repeat, that was forty years ago — longer than most of the bloggers I know have been alive) there’s the awareness of what we did that has been undone.

I need to say here that I grew up on the shores of the Monongehela River in Pittsburgh and my classmates were kids who mostly went into the steel mills or the Army after high school. I knew plenty of supporters of the war. I went to prom and hung out at the Dairy Queen with them. But it never occurred to me to demonize them, to hold against them their definition of patriotism.

I’m not writing off or looking down upon those who did support the war; I’m saying that this cynical, craven abuse of the devotion of people on both sides to the future of their country is reprehensible and precisely the kind of behavior that has broken the hearts of so many Americans, on those both sides of the political spectrum, who just want their candidates to lead us in hope for what our country can be, not defame others whose dreams aren’t quite the same as theirs.

WHO WANTS HILLARY? WHO WANTS BARACK? WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE? WHAT’S AT STAKE?

You really need to read this guest post at Political Voices of Women, Catherine Morgan‘s remarkable combination of editorial and aggregator. There are links there to more than 400 women who blog about politics – and guest posts. And (full disclosure) yes, sometimes that includes to my work. But I digress.

On Wednesday, April 23, just after the Pennsylvania primary, Slim, whose blog is called No Fish, No Nuts, was Catherine’s guest blogger. Slim’s post, which first appeared on her blog, wrote a loving but sad analysis of the Clinton supporters at her county convention where local Democrats elected their delegates. Listen to this:

Obama’s voters are looking toward Obama as a standard
bearer, as a point man for the change they want to see in the country.
Hillary’s supporters, at least the older women among them, are voting for their
surrogate: because they want to see a woman in the Oval Office before they die,
and because they themselves were denied so many opportunities for advancement
in their own lives.

I do not doubt that they also desperately believe in
Hillary Clinton, but their investment in her goes much deeper than politics.
Hillary Clinton is proof that they had it in them all along, the fire, talent
and creativity, and they could have been leaders but for the glass ceiling that
seemed to rise only inches a decade.

Slim also wrote that she was reluctant to offer these observations but that given polls showing many Clinton supporters saying they will vote for McCain if Obama gets the nomination, and some the other way around, she felt that times were so desperate that she had to weigh in. In her view, "We cannot afford another 4 years of war, debt and economic stagnation,
the prescription of a McCain presidency. So we Dems cannot allow
Clinton voters (or for that matter, I add, Obama supporters if it goes the other way – though they report this feeling somewhat less frequently) to take their ball and go home come November."

To that I say "amen!" I was a member of the "Children’s Crusade" that was the 1968 anti-war presidential campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy. We worked like demons through New Hampshire, did so well there that it was considered a win even though, technically, we lost, then saw Bobby Kennedy enter the race against us. We persisted, as did his supporters, until his assassination in June of 1968. After that, many of his supporters joined us, working still to try to elect a president who would stop the war. And then.

The riots in Chicago. The nomination of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president and for way too long a staunch supporter of the war. And then. Many, many of my colleagues and friends indeed picked up their footballs and went home. To stay. Not only did they not work for Humphrey – that would have been very hard after what had happened in Chicago. They didn’t even vote for him. Or vote at all. And that, my friends, is how we got Richard Nixon. Which is how we got Watergate. Which is how we got Jimmy Carter– who made such a mess that we got Ronald Reagan. Who took apart so much social safety net, environmental and regulatory and other federal function that we thought more was impossible. Until we got George Bush. Who decimated much of what was left, including much of our hope. Until now, when we have two candidates who stand for so much.

Of course that’s simplistic, but what really really upsets me is that every time we educated activists, in our righteousness, take a walk because things aren’t perfect, we aren’t the ones who get hurt the most. People who are poor, whose kids go to bad schools, whose unemployment insurance runs out too soon, who no longer can afford even in-state tuition or, for many, community college tuition, to say nothing of HEALTH INSURANCE (an issue which reaches up into the middle class) — and of course the war, where low-income people do most of the enlisting…these people are the ones who are hurt the most.

We let our singular perception of what’s perfect become the enemy of the good – or at least better than bad – that we could help to bring into being. It’s infantile. It’s sad. It’s shameful. And unless all of us in the blog universe who feel this way make a lot of noise and take lots of friends to lunch no matter WHO gets the nomination, it’s going to happen again.

Thanks to Slim for her great post that inspired this rant.