Category: National

The John McCain candidacy: RIP.

The Arizona senator is no longer a refreshing maverick. Or any kind of maverick. He’s still a staunch “surge” supporter who impressed no one by touting his recent maximum security shopping spree in Baghdad’s central market. Conservatives know he can never be one of them: He doesn’t believe in supply-side economics, but he does fundamentally believe in “the agents of intolerance.” In the first quarter he barely raised half the money that Mitt Romney ($23 million) did.

The Straight Talk Express: It all ended in South Carolina in 2000.

Of course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s well chronicled trip to Syria was blatant, politically-motivated grandstanding masquerading as “fact-finding.” But so was that of the Republican trio of congressmen who had immediately preceded her. And then there was last year’s Syrian sortie by Florida Senator Bill Nelson.

This is obviously no way to conduct a coherent, credible foreign policy.

The U.S. needs to speak with one consistent, adult, non-partisan voice – without sending the signal that the Bashar Assads are mere props for domestic political agendas. It’s also no secret that the Bashar Assads do not play the prop without extracting a price: the opportunity to buy time and exploit America’s foreign-policy babel for their own geo-political ends.

Ultimately, however, the fault lies with the Bush Administration. It never believed in talking to its adversaries – even those outside the “axis of evil.” It thus paved the way for an Iraq Study Group to make the sort of recommendations that gives cover to those who want to free-lance for political profit in the Middle East.

Of course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria was blatant, politically partisan grandstanding masquerading as “fact-finding.” But so was that of the Republican trio of congressmen who had preceded her. And then there was last year’s Syrian sortie by Florida Senator Bill Nelson.

This is obviously no way to conduct a coherent, credible foreign policy. The U.S. needs to speak with one consistent, adult, non-partisan voice – without sending the signal that the Bashar Assads are mere props for those who disagree with the Bush Administration.

Ultimately, however, the fault lies with the Administration. It never believed in talking to its adversaries – and thus painted itself into a geo-political corner. It also paved the way for the Iraq Study Group to make the sort of recommendations that gives cover to those who want to free-lance for political gain in the Middle East.

Last week presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigned in West Palm Beach and drew a big crowd and induced a lot of buzz. The Democratic senator from Illinois called on attendees at the Kravis Center to fight cynicism and embrace a new kind of politics.

But in order to successfully fight that good fight against cynicism and on behalf of a new kind of politics, he will have to raise approximately $100 million by the end of this year. Only in America.

A recent “Newsweek” poll indicated that a majority of the public – 58 per cent – believes the firing of those eight U.S. attorneys was politically motivated.

Question: Given that all such U.S. attorneys serve at the “pleasure” of the president, why wasn’t the poll response 100 per cent?

Isn’t this debacle a subset of the sausage metaphor? Some things – such as the passing of laws, the editing of news, the making of sausage – you just don’t want to see? The process is never pretty, especially the one at the Justice Department that’s always rife with political agendas and chronic cronyism.

This is another installment of the White House Amateur Hour. An Administration utterly unsuited to deal with oversight in the new Democratic, subpoena-empowered Congress. Not even resident sage Fred Fielding could deter them from the clichéd, passive-voiced, pseudo mea culpa: “mistakes were made.”

And, realistically, if the White House is forced to dump its clueless, Texas-loyalist Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who does the president send over to satisfy Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee? Is Ramsey Clark available?

“Oil-Rich Nations Turning Attention To Alternative Fuels” read recent headlines across the country. The main, but hardly exclusive, focus was on the United Arab Emirates, the number four OPEC producer, and what it was doing to reduce demand for fossil fuels internally.

In a Manhattan Project-like strategy that puts a premium on applying the sun, the wind and hydrogen to domestic energy needs, the UAE hopes to save more high-value fossil fuels for export to markets such as the U.S.

The UAE also knows its oil won’t last forever. Yet it wants its luxurious, even sybaritic, lifestyle to survive in perpetuity. Hence its serious, prioritized approach to energy conservation at home.

Anyone else see an irony here?

This just in. Iran is insulted by the American movie “300” and is officially complaining about disparaging depictions of Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

And this from a country that still owes us an apology for holding American embassy employees hostage and threatening them with mock executions in 1979-80.

Maybe Hollywood would ante up if Iran would formally acknowledge that hostage-taking is always poor form and in the scheme of things much more offensive than unflattering movies. And then apologize.

Absent that, Iran can just make do with all those bootleg DVDs that young Persians will still watch — decadent and evil stereotypes notwithstanding.

Here we go – yet – again.

Earlier this month Iyad Abuhajjaj, 36, a Palestinian who lives in California, was detained — and ultimately arrested — in Tampa after deplaning a Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix.

Seems that on his laptop he was watching scenes of interrogations – and gruesome torture – of terrorism suspects. Both English and Arabic were being spoken. It spooked some passengers, a flap ensued with a flight attendant and he was eventually held without bail in the Hillsborough County jail.

It turns out that those scenes were from a movie, “The Strange Case of Salman abd al Haqq,” he’d been filming with some university students.

He took considerable umbrage over the incident and suspects he was singled out because of his ethnic background and thick accent.

Of course he was.

Common sense and post 9/11 reality would predispose anyone to look askance at a young Arabic male watching terrorist-interrogation torture scenes at 30,000 feet. And, no, there’s no need to apologize over rational suspicions or to feel like stereotype-stalking, ethnocentric Nazis. If anyone should apologize, it’s Abuhajjaj.

But he’ll have to issue that from the Hillsborough County jail. There was an outstanding warrant out for his arrest stemming from accusations of a death-threat and Internet-account misuse. “The Strange Case of Iyad Abuhajjaj” continues.

Imagine, it’s barely March — of 2007 — and the calculating positions, ratcheting rhetoric, rapacious fund-raising and saturating media coverage associated with presidential campaigns have been underway for months. “Hillary vs. Obama.” “Mitt and the Mormons.” “America’s Mayor’s Multiple Marriages.” “The Maverick and the Evangelicals.” “The Inconvenient Candidate.” “Brownback vs. Brokeback.”

And then imagine this: All the self-serving spin, all the special-interest warcraft, all the tabloid headlines — and this is as high-minded as it will get. Enjoy the respite.

For those wanting perspective on the permanent campaign cycle that is American presidential politics and an informed look at those who package and manipulate America’s candidates, check out Joe Klein’s year-old “Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You’re Stupid.” Author/columnist Klein is one of the more astute observers of the body politic and those who pander to it. He pulls no punches about anything – from both major political parties to the media. And he names names. There’s a reason why cable-news talking head and consultant to presidential also-rans Bob Shrum won’t return his calls.

“Polling has replaced thinking and feeling, and not just for politicians,” posits Klein. “Political journalism, especially on television, has become little more than the slavish devotion to polls.

“We are drifting,” says Klein, “toward a flaccid, hollowed-out democracy where honest debate is impossible – a democracy without citizenship.”

He also includes a piece of advice that all politicians – and probably CEOs and university presidents — ignore at their own peril.

“Given the immense power and authority of the hired guns – the pollsters, strategists and ad makers – no politician should ever go to battle without a ‘better angel’ at his or her side,” advises Klein.

Basically someone to ride herd on those hired guns and their formulaic battle plans. Someone to tell the candidate what he or she needs to hear – the good, the bad and the butt ugly.

Ronald Reagan, for example, had folks in his inner campaign circle who ultimately prevailed and allowed “Reagan to be Reagan.” Al Gore wasn’t so fortunate.

You win some; you lose some. Sen. Hillary Clinton has already seen her share.

A fortnight ago she was trashed by David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul and erstwhile supporter, who took shots at the Clinton “machine” that can be merciless in its payback. What riveted the public’s attention, however, was Geffen’s characterization of the Clintons as infamously veracity challenged. “Everybody in politics lies,” assessed Geffen, “but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”

It certainly troubled the Clinton machine. Some verbal jousting with the Barack Obama campaign resulted, which only served to give the Clinton-character issue more news-cycle legs.

Arguably, however, this embarrassing flap was more than offset by the syndicated comments of conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, hardly a Clinton water-carrier. He put her support for the Iraq war in context. There’s no need to apologize, stated Brooks, so the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party needs to get off her case.

Brooks wondered if those calling on Clinton to apologize actually had read her remarks during the war resolution debate in October 2002, when she “specifically rejected a pre-emptive, unilateral attack on Saddam.”

Sure, she was triangulating, but it can’t be ignored, underscored Brooks, that Clinton wanted “more U.N. resolutions, more inspections, more diplomacy, with the threat of force reserved as a last resort