Category: National

Here’s another suggestion. To separate from the pack, presidential candidates might consider going refreshingly candid and saying, in effect: “Of course, health care, education and jobs are important. They’re always important.

“But everything, ultimately, is moot if we don’t soon figure out our place on this planet. Do we remain a Brobdinagian misfit perversely accommodating those who misread, misunderstand or just flat-out hate us? We can, of course, continue to blame craven “Old Europe,” the feckless United Nations and mutant Muslims, but we can’t pre-empt everything and everybody.

“On September 12, 2001, we had most of the world with us. Then we lost the moral high ground. That’s the real tragedy. And we’re no safer for our poorly planned, occupational response. Bravery and heroism are not synonyms for intelligence and enlightened self interest.

“We still ask nothing of Americans – except our military families. As a result, our foreign policy is still largely oil driven. As a further result, we’re still in bed with autocrats and dictators worse than Fidel Castro. It makes the spreading of democracy, still a work in voting-inertia progress here at home, look hypocritical.

“And the 45-year-old, Cold War-era, economic-and-travel embargo against Cuba just reminds the rest of the world — at the worst possible time — that the U.S. can be petty, arrogant and inhumane. This counterproductive policy has got to go. Now.

“Until we address all this — and actually talk (which doesn’t mean appeasement) to everyone that impacts us — we’re fooling ourselves with business-as-usual political pandering over values, taxes, ‘outsourced’ jobs, political correctness and entitlement programs.”

Let’s put North Korea into context. It’s an economic basket case with a fruitcake dictator and some plutonium and a few nukes. Kim Jong Il’s nuclear arsenal is classic leverage, which actually does make sense. Leverage for food and fuel and leverage against regime change. It’s what can happen to a charter member of the “axis of evil.”

But here’s the good news. Religion is not part of the equation. North Koreans don’t do suicide bombings or videotaped beheadings. They don’t see a side order of virgins as a suitable enough reward for incinerating and impaling the innocent.

They may be disingenuous or inscrutably weird. But they can, ultimately, be talked to. They have a return address and, for all their plutonium-enrichment work, are militarily vulnerable.

While talk in this case isn’t cheap, it remains pricier than necessary. We still need to establish diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.

The State of the Black Union was held recently at Hampton University in Virginia. The annual gathering charts how far blacks have come and assesses obstacles that still undermine progress. The highlight was a panel discussion featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton, former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress.

Question: Were Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, Thomas Sowell, J.C. Watts, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele and Joe Brown all busy? Or just too candid?

Remember when Sen. John McCain was the “maverick” presidential candidate? Nothing epitomized it more than telling off Jerry Falwell & Co. during the 2000 campaign. Ever since, he’s been deconstructing that label in anticipation of another run – one in which he can’t afford to alienate true believers on the right.

Most recent case in point: His presidential campaign, which is currently chasing Mitt Romney’s for organizational heft in Florida, has announced the endorsements of Cuban-American U.S. House members Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. They are among South Florida’s most dogmatic Cold Warriors when it comes to Cuba.

Maverick?

Is James Garner available?

While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dominate the current Democratic presidential landscape, still waiting in the wings – possibly anticipating a deus ex machina draft moment – is Al Gore. If The Polarizer and the Clean-Cut, Inexperienced One prove problematic in an election that is the Dems to lose, the party could still turn to the man who had a half million more votes than George W. Bush in 2000.

An Oscar nomination and Nobel Prize nomination hardly hurt in a celebrity-driven culture. More to the point, he was vehemently opposed to the Iraq invasion from the start – not the start of the campaign. He has mainstream environmental credibility, and he’s no novice in matters international.

It would be much less of a comeback than that of Richard Nixon in 1968.

For what it’s worth, here’s the Gore take of James Carville, the dean of Democratic strategists, in a recent piece in Rolling Stone magazine: “

The United States doesn’t mind helping out in Africa. It really doesn’t. That’s why the Millenium Challenge Account was created in 2002. It helps poor African countries whose leaders are really trying to do the right thing.

Ghana recently received a five-year, $547 million grant for agricultural development. It has free – and regular – elections and a government, headed by President John Agyekum Kufuor, that isn’t compromised by corruption. Its economy is relatively robust.

President Bush put the Ghana grant – and 10 others worth a total of $3 billion – into perspective. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to send taxpayers’ monies to countries that steal the money.”

Many Americans across a spectrum of hues have been on a self-congratulatory bender over the presidential candidacy of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. He’s an experience-challenged, 40-something, bright African-American who is a very viable presidential candidate. We have come a long way, haven’t we?

Or not.

Look at the hue and cry that resulted from innocuous comments by another presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, Chairman of the Foreign Relations committee and a member of Congress since 1972. In a throw-away line to the “New York Observer,” he referred to Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Forced to say something that showed assertiveness but not thin skin, Obama put out a statement that criticized Biden for being “historically inaccurate.” Obama mentioned former presidential candidates Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton, and that none would ever be considered “inarticulate.”

That wasn’t Biden’s point. The operative word is “mainstream.” Obama isn’t fringe, as in Chisholm and Moseley Braun, nor is he a professional provocateur and race-card careerist, as in Jackson and Sharpton.

At a time when much of America seems enamored of the “fresh new face” presidential paradigm, Obama seems a godsend from central casting. That’s what Biden was getting at. Nothing more.

Obama knows that too.

We now know that the Transportation Security Administration has reported that some 3,700 uniforms and security badges are missing or stolen. That figure includes 53 uniforms and nine ID cards issued to TSA employees at Tampa International Airport. Los Angeles International reported the biggest number: 789 missing items.

But we’re told not to panic – or even fret. That’s because any card-activated access to secure areas would be electronically decommissioned – provided an employee reported the missing credentials in expeditious fashion. And, since TSA employees work in teams, they’re bound to recognize someone unfamiliar. In fact, count on it.

Still fretting?

There was no apparent epiphany for Sen. Bill Nelson on his recent road trip to Damascus, even if he did discern a “crack in the door” for better relations with Syria. But his diplomatic freelancing did achieve his goal.

His resume now includes another “fact-finding” sortie to the Middle East and a — however confusing and ineffectual – high-profile, one-on-one with Syrian President Bashar Assad. That still matters if you still entertain hopes of a place on the undercard of the 2008 Hillary/Obama Democratic smack-down. He still does.

Dream on.

In the post-Karl Rove era, the Republican Party will have a lot of soul-searching to do if it wants to reverse the message sent in last month’s mid-term elections.

Syndicated, conservative columnist David Brooks recently offered up some sound advice for GOP strategists looking to re-tool the party’s approach to the issues – and the electorate. Two of his suggestions:

*”Don’t focus on groups, focus on problems. If you have persuasive proposals to address big problems, the majority coalition will build itself.”

*”Raise taxes on carbon emissions and use the revenue to make the tax cuts on capital gains and dividends permanent. This would spur energy innovation and encourage investment.”