Here's a sad commentary on the nature of the difference between Democrats and Republicans. I feel a little like Ronald Reagan did; Ronald Reagan, a former Democrat, self-described "rabid union man" and President of the Screen Actors Guild, famously said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” For me, as I have mentioned in a past post, the final straw was the unconscionable rejection of perhaps the most brilliant jurist nominated to the US Supreme Court in the past 50 years, Robert Bork.
A Retrospective of the Partisan Wars
As I hear the Democrats rail against the "divisive" and "polarizing" Republicans, while constantly scapegoating George Bush for every problem, I'm at a loss. Even after the Democrats ripping Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, the Republicans overwhelmingly approved both Clinton nominees, Ginsburg and Breyer, despite misgivings as to their judicial philosophy. In contrast, we saw half the Democrats vote against a highly respected jurist, John Roberts, and a majority of Democrats whom voted against Samuel Alito, a 16-year judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, whose nomination to that court had been then unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Barack Obama voted against both judges and was prepared to filibuster Alito.
It is beyond the scope of this post to provide a comprehensive listing of what I considered largely one-sided Democratic abuses. However, we can start with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which many Democrats still insist was simply a puritanical reaction to Clinton's private sex life. In fact, violations of sexual harassment policy have resulted in resignations of CEO's, including Boeing's Stonecipher. (Sexual harassment policy includes circumstances where others perceive a willing subordinate is being accorded preferential treatment or access.) Clinton's obstruction of justice and perjury charges were unanimously rejected by Senate Democrats. In fact, the judge in the Arkansas Paula Jones case said the following: "Simply put, the president's deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. (Monica) Lewinsky was intentionally false, and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false ... " Paula Jones appealed the court's decision, and Clinton entered into a settlement with Ms. Jones; the Arkansas judge cited Clinton for contempt of court; Clinton agreed to a 5-year suspension of his license to practice law. The idea that the treatment of Clinton was a smear is simply untenable.
Then there was Al Gore, whose boorish behavior during the Presidential debates with George Bush included things like audible contempt-ful sighs and one time when he threateningly approached Bush's podium, set a new mark in aggressive behavior. Then Al Gore decided to reject two machine counts, including the mandatory recount, which verified Bush's Florida win, and attempted to squeeze out a victory by trying to squeeze out enough votes from machine-rejected ballots in counties where Democrats controlled the election boards to reverse the election results. Even today, after reporters judged the ballots for themselves under the Freedom of Information Act and confirmed Bush's win, many Democrats continue to insist Gore "won" the election via a Supreme Court decision (ignoring the other 7-2 decision that the Florida recount process violated the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause). Then you hear about how Al Gore won the popular vote, although in statistical terms that was less than 0.5%, which would have been enough under many states to automatically qualify for a recount; moreover, the national media had announced a Gore victory in Florida while the Central zone portion of the panhandle still had polling places open, probably depressing ongoing Republican turnouts elsewhere, including northwestern Florida and California. The fact is that Gore, like McCain today, was facing an opponent with limited federal, military and foreign policy experience, but he was in a change election cycle and ran a class warfare campaign. The principal difference between Bush and Obama (beyond their political ideologies) is the fact that Bush as a 6-year governor of one of the largest states had considerable administrative experience.
But in terms of sheer partisan chutzpah, it's hard to overlook the early 2001 Democratic Senate coup of recruiting Republican Jim Jeffords to join their caucus and throw control of the Senate from the GOP to the Democrats. Then there was the bitter Democrat allegation that Bush exploited his post-9/11 popularity to add GOP seats to both houses of Congress in the 2002 elections.
In 2004, the popular concept among Democrats is that Bush won by "swiftboating" tactics over Kerry. Kerry spouted outrage over imaginary challenges to his patriotism (Obama has done the same thing over the current campaign), saying that he wasn't about to let a couple of "draft dodgers" question it. (The timing of the draft and Cheney's college enrollment period makes any allegation of draft dodging questionable, and Bush had been on the record saying that John Kerry's military service in Vietnam was more significant than his National Guard experience.) What's particularly obnoxious about Kerry's smear is that Kerry had argued some 2 elections earlier that Clinton's lack of national service experience against WWII wounded veteran Bob Dole should not be an issue. But the fact is that the controversial swiftboat ads appeared AFTER the Democratic convention and Kerry got no bounce from the convention; Kerry had picked up a core 40-45% anti-Bush core and was running against the 9/11 President during wartime. Moreover, he had a solidly liberal voting record running in a center-right country; liberal senators McGovern and Mondale had been soundly thrashed, as well as the governor under whom Kerry served as lieutenant governor, Michael Dukakis.
The SBVT ads of the 2004 did not invent John Kerry's 1971 Senate hearing. Kerry knew exactly what he was doing; he asked to leave the service early so he could run for a Massachusetts Congressional seat. A number of Vietnam veterans, in fact, were not aware of what Kerry said back then. John O'Neill, who voted for Humphrey and succeeded Kerry in Vietnam, took offense and debated Kerry on a 1971 national talk show, getting Kerry to concede he had not seen a single American atrocity on his watch. There were a handful of ads which played in a few battleground states. Vietnam veterans, who were often spat at vs. being celebrated as heroes on their return, slowly regained public support, and John Kerry in 2004 was shamelessly pandering for their political support, proudly brandishing those military awards he had once thrown away in a protect, as if his 1971 testimony had never happened!
McCain, despite having been a POW at the time with no direct experience with Kerry's service, quickly denounced the ads, but Kerry, who did not address the ads substantively but simply called them "lies", wasn't satisfied with Bush's public statements in support of Kerry's service, demanding that Bush personally rebuke the SBVT ads, although Kerry refused to do the same for the 527 organization ads targeting Bush. (Democrats seem to think ads against their opponents are more equal.)
Then there's Bush's puzzling second term, where he underestimated the political problems with a narrow mandate in suggesting a significant change to a political sacred cow like social security, has alienated his conservative base with missteps on his Texas crony Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, the immigration issue, and the federal bailout, his abysmal handling of Katrina, his overwhelmed Texas crony Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the seeming analysis paralysis in Iraq with the belated firing of Rumsfeld and an announced change in strategy taking place inexplicably after the 2006 election, with many Republicans angry, believing an earlier announcement would have saved several seats.
George Bush, regardless of his issues over the past 4 years, has been a decent, warm, charming, optimistic man, with two Ivy League degrees (including the first MBA), no hidden agendas, and an honorable, decent politician whom never (in my memory) engaged in uncivil behavior: none of the petty putdowns, the ridicule of his intelligence and mangled pronunciation, and the incessant scapegoating and questioning of his motives and integrity has ever been provoked in kind. Even as John Kerry in 2004 openly questioned Bush's competence in allegedly losing bin Laden in Tora Bora operations, Bush handled Kerry's boorish behavior with class and grace.
Past Republican nominees--Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole as well--have generally been unassuming, likeable, optimistic, decent men, not strident, aggressive, presumptuous, condescending, paternalistic. Bush's low approval numbers have not improved, despite the success of Petraeus' remarkably successful strategy in Iraq, to the point that Iraq was barely an issue during the Presidential debates, mostly in terms of Obama's demagoguing operational costs in Iraq as a zero-sum game with the domestic budget (vs., say, a proactive investment against a regional war, including acquisition of oil resources by radical elements), and he's taken further hits with the oil spike and the federal bailout. It's almost as if he's retreated to a bunker to serve out the last 18 months of his term, probably with as bad, if not worse ratings than the unpopularity of Truman, LBJ, or Nixon. But the one-sided nonstop disrespectful scapegoating of Bush by the Democrats and the regular potshots from the late-show comics (e.g., Jay Leno suggesting Bush's memoirs will be pop-up books) is the real story of what sets for a poisonous political atmosphere, not Karl Rove's political skills in turning out motivated traditional values voters and conservatives.
Review of the Pelosi Address Before the Initial Bailout Vote
I have not commented to date on the unconscionable partisanship that the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, showed in her remarks just before the vote--a vote for which she was demanding 100 votes from the House Republicans (there are some minor differences between the prepared text and what she actually said on the floor):
$700 billion. A staggering number. But only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country. Policies that were built on budget recklessness. When President Bush took office, he inherited President Clinton's surpluses...And with his reckless economic policies, within two years, he had turned that around.
And now eight years later, the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an anything goes economic policy, has taken us to where we are today. They claim to be free market advocates, when it's really an anything goes mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline...
Democrats believe in a free market....But in this case, in its unbridled form, as encouraged, supported, by the Republicans...it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos...
The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardize the economic security of the nation...These were the Democratic demands: to safeguard the American taxpayer, to help the economy recover, and to impose tough accountability as a central component of this recovery effort...Today, we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership ... In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a New Direction to a better future.In the prepared speech, whereas Pelosi goes out of her way to identify several different Democrats and Secretary Paulson for being "flexible", but the only positive reference to Republicans, other than to ask for their votes, is this solitary statement: "Over the past several days, we have worked with our Republican colleagues to fashion an alternative to the original plan of the Bush Administration...we must act now, with the bipartisan spirit of cooperation which allowed us to fashion this legislation."
Republican Minority Leader John Boehner suggested that Pelosi's comments were counterproductive, which, of course, Barney Frank and various other Democrats and liberal media promptly ridiculed this observation, noting Pelosi's speech wasn't part of the bill itself. That isn't really the point: If you're thin-skinned, you won't have a long political career. The point is, Pelosi wanted political cover for the vote, which meant roughly 100 votes. Public opinion was highly negative on the bailout, and the solution, proposed by the Bush administration, was not a conservative-based solution. Paulson was dismissive of House Republican concerns about the bill. Boehner was trying to convince other GOP Congressmen to support the bill despite personal opposition to it. Pelosi's rhetoric was unprovoked and presumptuous--and not helpful.
Congressman John Lewis' Unconscionable Blast at McCain/Palin
To fully appreciate the utter contemptibility of John Lewis' character attack and smear of McCain, one needs to be cognizant of two salient facts: (1) John McCain wrote a book called Why Courage Matters; one of the primary examples John McCain discusses is the story of John Lewis' leadership in the nonviolent civil rights movement; in fact, John Lewis' website prominently promotes McCain's praise of him; (2) John McCain, asked by Pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback Civic Forum who are the 3 wisest people he would listen to (remember that Barack chose the same white grandmother whom he had thrown under the bus in his famous race relations speech when he said he couldn't disown Rev. Jeremiah Wright), listed John Lewis.
So John Lewis, in response to unsubstantiated rumors of negative shouts about Obama at the McCain/Palin rallies, had this to say:
What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division... George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate... never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans...Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire...They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy.McCain, in fact, has refused to let his campaign use the Rev. Jeremiah Wright issue during the campaign, something I myself believe is a legitimate issue. Obama is not responsible for what Wright, Ayers, Rezko, etc., have said or done in the past but that he would sit down and talk to anti-American and/or anti-Israeli Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad without preconditions, but Obama wants everyone to know he does have the judgment to know when to draw the line: when radio talk show host Don Imus, who runs a summer camp for kids with cancer and blood disorders, made an ill-advised joke on his program about the Rutgers women's basketball team having some "nappy-headed hos", Barack Obama was one of the first in the country to call for Imus' termination. Thank God for Obama's judgment; he thinks it's important to listen to a foreign leader whom calls for the destruction of Israel, but it's equally important to prevent anyone from listening to Don Imus, thus depriving him of a right to make a living, because of a stupid mistake for which Don Imus apologized in person. Strange thing--I didn't hear him calling for Jeremiah Wright to be fired after that post-9/11 sermon when he infamously said "God damn America", blaming the victims of the terrorist attacks, or when he spouted crackpot government conspiracy theories against blacks.
It seems that there were a few news reports that one or more persons at two Palin rallies, in Clearwater and Scranton, in response to hearing Obama's name, called out "Kill him". These have been clearly debunked.
Here is an account of the Clearwater incident:
"One of [Mr. Obama's] earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," [Palin] said. ("Boo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group, that, quote, launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol," she continued. ("Booo!" the crowd repeated.)"Kill him!"proposed one man in the audience.It's obvious from context the man was referring to Bill Ayers, not Barack Obama. That's what Washington Post reporter Milbank told Politico .
How did the Associated Press report the incident? "Someone in Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted 'kill him,' on Monday, meaning Obama."
As to the Scranton incident, agent Bill Slavoski reported that he and other Secret Service at the rally did not hear the outburst and had not found a single source to corroborate the account of the one Scranton reporter whom reported the incident.
Reaction of the Obama Campaign to Lewis
Spokesman Bill Burton distanced the campaign from John Lewis' comparison of the McCain campaign to segregationist George Wallace and his policies but did not rebuke the charge that McCain was running a hate-based, divisive campaign, and suggested Sarah Palin's rhetoric of Obama's palling around with a past domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, was incendiary.
I have not written much in my posts about Bill Ayers. There's a part of me that wants to believe that people are human, make mistakes and are redeemable. But Stanley Kurtz makes a powerful case that the Obama campaign is knowingly low-keying the level of interaction between Obama as Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) head and Ayers. And, may I comment at this time that I'm already weary of Obama's constant attempts to try to co-opt his adversaries and/or low-ball his culpability? I mean, stuff like John McCain was appreciative of one CAC initiative, Annenberg was a Republican, Illinois Republican Governor Jim Edgar was involved, etc.
There are a couple of items I find interesting in Kurtz' discussion of the CAC: (1) the board rejected projects dealing with math/science, which I find doesn't square with Obama's current education rhetoric; (2) the program in the end found no statistical difference in achievement between CAC and non-CAC project schools. But the clear picture here is Ayers' vision of schools as a base for political action, e.g., against racism and social inequity and a view of parents as community organizers whom challenge school principals. It's also clear that Obama and Ayers collaborated on granting project funds to external groups like ACORN vs. more intrinsic educational achievement projects. Kurtz notes that the CAC implied a share of the credit for certain improvements in Chicago Public Schools, but he attributes it more to the reformist efforts of Paul Vallas, then CEO of the school system.
Obama, however, in his criticisms of the McCain critique of the Ayers' relationship misses the point. The fact is, he did know the man for years before Ayers admitted his principal regret over the Weather Underground years was that they had not been more successful in their domestic terrorism objectives. It's more of a pattern of behavior--Obama refused to end his relationship with Rev. Wright, even after Wright's infamous remarks were widely reported. When he did decide to throw Wright under the boss, it was after criticisms Wright made to the National Press Club about Obama's criticism of him being nothing more than political expediency--nothing even comparable in nature to Wright's inflammatory rhetoric that shocked Middle America.
Why was it that Obama, a politically ambitious young man, was associating with people like Ayers, Wright, and Rezko? I seriously doubt Obama was in the Chicago area and didn't know why Rezko really, really wanted that piece of land near Obama's mansion and was contributing so much money to his campaign. I think the American people want to know how he can claim to be all-inclusive--when his pastor for 20 years, his spiritual advisor, was preaching almost the polar opposite? Why was Obama, when he headed the CAC, focus on things like political action vs. nonideological curriculum reform?
I think Palin has a way of communicating that connects with Middle America. "Palling around with terrorists" is probably too strong; I seriously doubt, for instance, that Obama and Ayers were drinking buddies. But especially after the 1993 Twin Towers bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, why, as a simple matter of prudence, wouldn't a politically ambitious person keep his distance from someone like Ayers?
Obama's Response to McCain
But, as John McCain pointed out, his rallies are not the vigilante mobs that John Lewis implies.
OBAMA: I mean, look, if we want to talk about Congressman Lewis, who is an American hero, he, unprompted by my campaign, without my campaign's awareness, made a statement that he was troubled with what he was hearing at some of the rallies that your running mate was holding, in which all the Republican reports indicated were shouting, when my name came up, things like "terrorist" and "kill him," and that you're running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say "Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line."
There's no much even the most ardent Obama supporter can do to defend him here. Obama either admits that he didn't do due diligence vs. relying on hearsay (I guess they don't teach the concept of hearsay at Harvard Law School) or he's deliberately misleading the American people. There were only two allegations made (Clearwater and Scranton). The "terrorist" and "kill him" comments (which were apparently solitary shouts from a rally of thousands), if they occurred, occurred after the name of AYERS was raised, not Obama. Why in the world would Obama think that people were calling him a terrorist vs. somebody else? Everybody knew at the time that the McCain campaign was raising the topic of Ayers. So somewhere in his mind, Obama knows both his name and Ayers will come up in a GOP stump speech, but if the term "terrorist" is mentioned, they're naturally referring to Obama vs. Ayers? I have no idea on earth where defensiveness is so over the top as to make that inference. To me, that in a nutshell tells me enough about Obama's character than 100 stump speeches.
As for John Lewis: whatever heroic things he may have done 40 years ago doesn't excuse his unprovoked character assassination of McCain and Palin. McCain and Palin have led dozens of filmed rally appearances. McCain has attacked Obama on matters of policies and experience. McCain has gone out of his way to rebuke some supporters at his own rallies, whereas Obama constantly mischaracterized McCain's positions, e.g., saying "millions" will pay more in taxes under McCain's health insurance reform, mischaracterizing the proposed cut in the highest business income tax bracket from 35% to 25% as a giveaway to oil companies. It would be one thing if there had been a group chant that threatened Obama's life; but to exaggerate single unverified shouts at 2 events and release a polemical rant before getting one's facts straights. I mean, even ignoring the evidence discussed above, how would he know it wasn't a planted Obama operative seeking to make trouble for the McCain campaign?
Both John Lewis and Barack Obama must make full, unconditional apologies for their smear of John McCain.
