Saturday, October 25, 2008

“Joe Sixpack”

Sure, there’s something appealing in the idea of a common-sense approach in the White House; one imagines a practical, rational form of government that cuts through all the red tape, needless complexity and petty compromises.

The problem with that vision is that it also depends on having someone (a) with a high degree of ethics and honesty, and (b) sensible enough to surround themselves with smart, ethical advisers.

The McCain/Palin campaign has not managed on either point.

McCain himself has changed so radically from the character he exhibited in the 2000 election that it’s deeply saddening. This may well be his last run for President, and to see his national political career end this way has been painful. This will negatively affect his legacy forever, and there’s no way around it now—he’s either stuck with this course of action, or he’ll have to effectively torpedo his own campaign in these last few days.

McCain had a reputation for intelligence, but in this campaign he has rarely exhibited the wisdom necessary to hold this office—and after the disastrous legacy of GWB, we really need someone with some inherent sense of intuitively choosing the right thing to do. We need wisdom in the White House, in order to deal with other nations, to deal rationally with the financial crisis that this administration has saddled us with, to navigate our way towards reducing the massive federal debt that the GOP has driven us to.

And so, we look to his running mate, who, it turns out, has an established record of behaving in a less-than-ethical manner, and shows no signs of enlightenment. In the last few weeks, she has proven herself to be a vapid poser, and as more details have come out about her tenure in Wasilla and Juneau, she comes off as an entitled interfering busybody with a holier-than-thou attitude reinforced by her army of cronies.

Worse, after the report came out regarding her firing of her Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, in which it was found that she had violated the State Ethics Act in several ways, she came out in front of the cameras and lied chirpily and blatantly to reporters on at least two occasions, expressing relief that the report said that she hadn’t violated the State Ethics Act—precisely the opposite of what the report said.

This is the sort of lying you would expect from a six-year-old caught red-handed with a pair of scissors, surrounded by cat hair, with a traumatized wide-eyed now-patchily-balding cat being held in a bear hug. You would give her The Look, and say, “You know you’re not supposed to give the cat a haircut!” And in response, the six-year-old looks right at you and shouts “I DIN’T.”

Pathetic.

Palin doesn’t have a record of being very bright. She scored below the 40% percentile across the board on her SATs. Her grade-point average in her senior year of high school was 2.2. She had an undistinguished higher-education record, which took her through three changes in major and five different institutions in six years. It’s no wonder she came out against scientific research with this spectacularly clueless remark yesterday:

Some of these pet projects—they really don’t make a whole lot of sense, and—and, sometimes, these dollars, they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good—things like fruit-fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!

What Palin might have been able to gather, from the most minimal looking-at-a-magazine kind of fact-checking (and remember, according to her, she reads all of them), is that Drosophila melanogaster (the common fruit fly) is a staple of genetic research. With four fully-mapped and fairly well understood chromosomes, high reproductive rates, short lifespans, and several other technical advantages, they are ideal for studying genetic expression and transcription and protein activity. They have many genes in common with humans, and have been used to make inroads into understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, autism, Parkinson’s disease, addictive disorders, immune disorders and aging.

Of course, Palin doesn’t know this, or doesn’t think that any of this has anything to do with the public.

That Palin is a factor in this election is unfortunate. The Presidency takes a remarkable toll on those who serve in that office. Granted, GWB hasn’t aged much in the office, but one doesn’t get the feeling that he concerns himself much with the day-to-day decisions. But Clinton certainly aged quite a bit in his eight years, and other presidents have shown the signs of stress over their terms.

So we have to consider the possibility that McCain might not make it through a full term. He’s 72 years old, and in good health for his age, but it’s one of the most stressful jobs in the world, and we have to consider the possibility that at the bare minimum, the 25th Amendment might come into play.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, reads in part:

. . . In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. . . .

This is, unfortunately, a bit vague. The 25th Amendment, passed in 1965 and ratified in 1967, addressed this lack of specificity with four sections: (1) If the President is removed from office, resigns or dies, the Vice President becomes President; (2) If the Vice Presidency is vacant, the President nominates a new one who has to be confirmed by a majority in both the House and Senate; (3) If the President informs the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House in writing that “he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” until he writes them again to tell them he can take up office again, the Vice President becomes Acting President; and (4) If the Vice President and a majority of Cabinet officials (or some other body that Congress appoints) declares in writing to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House that the President is unable to perform, the Vice President becomes Acting President (note that the President can write a rebuttal and resume office, but that a re-rebuttal can be lodged by the Vice President and the others, and if this is done, a special session of Congress must be called to decide the issue, within twenty-one days, by a two-thirds Majority in both the House and the Senate).

I’m concerned by (1), obviously, as I would be in any Presidency, but I’m also concerned about (3) and (4) in the case of a McCain presidency. To my knowledge, we’ve never had a sitting president go through something like chemotherapy, which can have significant neurological effects, including increased emotional instability and cognitive degradation. These dissipate over time, but can last years. What if McCain’s recurrent cancer requires chemotherapy? What if that chemotherapy knocks that 70-plus-year-old guy for a loop? Heck, I’ve seen chemotherapy knock people a third his age and ten times his energy for a loop. And then who do we have running the country?

Palin? No, thanks. We’ve already had a moronic liar in the White House. The last thing we need is a more idiotic, more photogenic liar there, one who has shown that she doesn’t have the capacity to act ethically in an executive role, one who has shown that she doesn’t have any real curiosity about the world around her (aside, perhaps, from what she can personally shoot), and she can’t even answer ridiculously simple questions honestly and forthrightly. Her choice was disastrous for the McCain campaign, and hopefully Alaskans will vote her out of office in their next election as well.

And then, she can court offers from that other bastion of lying, moronic idiots, and become yet another vapid, vicious commentator on Fox “News.”

The GOP owes John Edwards an apology

By now, you’ve all heard that the McCain campaign blew $150,000 on clothes and makeup for Governor Palin. $75,000 at Neiman-Marcus, $50,000 at Saks. Nearly $4,500 on makup. The highest-paid staffer on the McCain campaign is Palin’s makeup artist, Amy Strozzi, who was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October. Another staffer who got over $10,000 for those first two weeks for “communications consulting” is Angela Lew, Governor Palin’s hairstylist for the campaign.

Look, I don’t really care how a campaign spends its money (within reason). Clearly, candidates have a vested interest to look their best on the campaign trail, particularly in front of the uncompromising eye of the television camera and photojournalism.

The problem here, of course, is that the GOP—including John McCain—has lambasted far more modest personal-grooming expenditures. In 1993, Senator McCain spoke out in favor of the Congressional Spending Limit and Election Reform Act of that year. I think his motives were good at the time—he was speaking out against the abuse of campaign funds that he saw happening. He felt that using campaign funds for mortgage payments, personal automobile expenses, country-club expenses, vacations, and so on, was inappropriate, and I tend to agree with that. The problem here is that he included clothing purchases in his amendment. As he said at the time:

I point out that Senators and Members of Congress currently earn $139,000 a year, which means that Members of Congress are in the top one percent of wage earners in the country. [As of 2008, this figure is $169,300. Governor Palin’s salary is $125,000.] So let there be no mistake, Members of Congress do earn a good wage, a wage that does not leave them poor.

I think it is worth contrasting a Member's salary and perks with that of a typical American family. According to the U.S. census, in 1990 the median family income in America was $30,056. [The most recent figure, based on data gathered in 2007, is $50,233.] With that $30,056, the average American family was expected to put a roof over their head, feed their children, and send them to school. It seems to me that we should be able to survive as well at a salary level of $139,000 per year.

The use of campaign funds for items which most Americans would consider to be strictly personal reasons, in my view, erodes public confidence and erodes it significantly. [ . . . ]

If we in Congress learned one thing from President Clinton's $200 haircut last week, it should be that the public does not approve of its elected officials being treated as royalty. We should be no different.

Senator McCain is entitled to change his mind on this issue; after all, he had no experience with a presidential campaign at the time. Admittedly, going from complaining about a $200 haircut to blowing over $16,000 a week on his running mate’s makeup and hair does tend to elicit political whiplash, but I’m not particularly upset at John McCain about this.

What bothers me the most is the near-silence of the GOP on the matter. Remember John Edwards’s $400 haircut? The subsequent mocking he took in the right-wing media, referring to him disrespectfully as “the Breck girl”?

If the tables had been reversed, oh, the outrage! If this had been a female Democrat running as Vice President, describing herself as an average hockey mom? Oh, those liberals! Out of touch with American values! Elitists!

Yes, indeed. Quelle horreur.

So, as usual, it’s perfectly okay when the GOP does it, but not when Democrats do it. And as usual, they seem to be completely and depressingly unaware of their own hypocrisy.

Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist who has worked with the McCain campaign, and quite a patently asinine liar (see this YouTube video, where Blakeman seriously attempts to defend the McCain ad that claimed that Barack Obama supported legislation supporting “sex education for kindergarteners” when in fact the legislation supported educating kindergarteners about avoiding sex predators using age-appropriate terminology), was asked about the campaign expenses for Palin’s wardrobe and makeup, and responded:

You know what the outage is today? [It’s that] Barack Obama is taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit Grandma. Forget about the energy that is wasted, what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a private trip when this guy should be humping his bags on—on a commercial plane or taking a smaller plane. Taking a 767 of campaign money from people who could least afford it is more of an outrage in my opinion.

This is so far below “appalling” that I’m not sure there’s a word for it that doesn’t involve the word “anus” in some way.

First off, this isn’t just a junket to “visit Grandma.” By all accounts, Madelyn Dunham—she’ll be 86 tomorrow—is seriously ill. You would think the “family values party” would respect taking time out to make such a visit—and you would think any human on the planet would recognize that health crises do not follow a schedule, that they happen when they happen. As far as a commercial flight or a smaller plane—do you seriously think the Secret Service would allow him to take a commercial flight? As for the smaller plane, it would probably cost more to charter a small jet plus pilots qualified to fly it that is still capable of making the flight to Hawaii, and it wouldn’t allow him to keep working during the flight with his campaign staff.

I doubt there is a single contributor to the Obama campaign that resents this side-trip to visit his seriously ill grandmother. I doubt there is a sane American in this wonderful country who thinks that there’s something wrong with this.

But then, Rush Limbaugh is not sane—and not much of an American, either. On his show two days ago, he spewed:

Who announces days in advance they’re rushing to the side of a loved one who is deathly ill, but keeps campaigning in a race that’s said to be over, only to go to the loved one’s side days later? See, I think this is about something else. See, I think this is about something else. You know what’s really percolating out there? And I’ve been laying low on this because it just—it hasn’t met the threshold to pass the smell test on this program. But this birth certificate business, this lawsuit that a guy named Phillip Berg filed in Philadelphia in August for Obama to produce his genuine birth certificate, and he still hasn’t replied, he hasn’t done so.

That’s even below the Blakeman barrier. Granted, it’s not as far as some of the absolutely insane blogs, such as “Shelley the Republican,” which routinely uses phrases like “It’s all part of the lie-beral plan to destroy the American economy and set up a Communist dictatorship in the US headed by a murderous, left-handed, gay, negro, crackhed [sic] voodoo priest whose name I ain’t gonna mention.” But it’s still uncomfortably close to that sort of mental instability.

Back to the point. I think the GOP (Blakeman and Limbaugh especially) owes both John Edwards and Barack Obama huge, formal, public apologies at this point. Hypocrisy is never pretty, and it’s not doing the party any good at all.

The “Barack mugging”

And finally, a word about one other ugly incident that’s happened this week.

A 20-year-old College Republican from Texas, volunteering for the McCain campaign in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, went to police Wednesday evening and reported that she was approached from behind by a six-foot-four black man with a five-inch knife after she’d made a withdrawl from the ATM. She claimed that she’d given him $60 and started walking away, whereupon he saw the McCain sticker on her car, pushed her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, punching and kicking her while threatening to “teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter.”

Whereupon he pinned her hands down with his knees and scratched the letter B into her cheek with his knife.

She got calls from both Senator McCain and Governor Palin, and the right-wing blogs went crazy reporting this.

Honestly, I don’t know why. From the moment I saw the picture, the “hey, wait a minute” lobe of my brain kicked in. One would think that an attacker in the dark, dealing with a struggling woman half his size, would probably not take the time to round off the curves of the B so nicely. And the victim was awfully polite to not flinch away from the pain so as not to mess up the B at all—no straight gashes or crooked strokes that indicate any sort of avoidance at all. Even the black eye looked as though it was simply makeup; there was no evidence of the swelling you’d expect, and the bruising looked suspiciously monochromatic.

The first thing that popped into my mind was Tawana Brawley, the fifteen-year-old black girl who claimed that she had been assaulted and raped by six white men (some of them police officers) in a small town in New York in 1987. She had had swatstikas and racial epithets written on her body in charcoal. But inconsistencies cropped up fairly quickly, and nothing in her story has been confirmed to date.

Other cases came rapidly to mind as well. Susan Smith, who claimed that she’d been carjacked in 1994 by a black man who had driven away with her two little boys—but Susan, it turned out, had rolled her vehicle into a nearby lake with the two boys inside, drowning them deliberately. Charles Stuart, who claimed that a black gunman forced his way into his car in 1989, robbed him and his pregnant wife, Carol, and then shot him in the stomach and his wife in the head—but Charles, it turned out, had done the shooting himself.

So my skepticism surfaced instantly. Not so in the GOP. And sure enough, more inconsistencies surfaced, and she eventually admitted that the attack hadn’t taken place, and that she’d done the calligraphy herself. (That would have occurred to me immediately had I known at the time that she’d told police that the attacker had been sitting on her chest at the time—originally, from the orientation of the letter, I’d assumed he’d been positioned over her head).

That Miss Todd is emotionally disturbed is unfortunate, and I do hope she gets the treatment she deserves. What’s more concerning is how emotionally disturbed many of the right-wing blogs showed themselves to be over the whole incident. Many of them (including the aforementioned “Shelley the Republican”) have not posted any sort of retraction after their incendiary initial reports. There just doesn’t seem to be any sort of regret or embarrassment on their parts. While even the Drudge Report and Fox “News” reported on the hoax as details came out, disturbingly few of the independent GOP groupies out there have mentioned this since.

I despair for this electorate, and I think another American would have been nauseated by the state of things as well:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

—Thomas Jefferson

The “base” that McCain and Palin have been firing up in these last few weeks with the hogswallop about “palling around with domestic terrorists” or cries of “socialism” and other such ridiculous canards steep themselves in ignorance, in hatred; they surrender themselves to fear, and claim that God is on their side. They pray for the deaths of who they perceive as their enemies, they ignore the hypocrisy of their own party, they slander all those they oppose, often without having a rational reason for their opposition.

“Base,” of course, has more than one meaning—and the meanings that come increasingly to mind are “the lowest part” and “without moral principles.”

I hope our next President is Barack Obama. But I worry a lot about the people McCain and Palin have been stoking up, and whether one of them might take the rhetoric too much to heart and take a shot at him.

If so, it will be the darkest day in the legacy of the GOP.