THE DALY SHOW

Silly Season Part 2

This is a posting of the past week’s political doings in which I actually defend both Barack Obama and John McCain and I disclose why the race is so tight and who Obama picks.

LAS VEGAS, NV (July 29, 2008) – In a past posting I describe this time in the presidential race as the Silly Season. It’s in full swing now. It will get worse as candidates, their campaigns, and the media try to compete with the Olympics.

The two biggest episodes of silliness were McCain’s erectile dysfunction moment and the reaction to Obama’s overseas trip.

McCain was asked why erectile dysfunction pills are covered by health insurance when birth control is not. McCain stammered and looked like a deer in the headlights. The video made him look stupid, but in reality it was the reporter who should have been embarrassed.

FactCheck.Org explains it in detail here.  Clearly, the reporter was misinformed. A report from 2002 shows that 86-percent of insurance plans covered female contraceptives; only 2-percent didn’t.

In fact, we should give kudos to McCain for not saying anything. He could have thrown in a cheap funny line. He didn’t. He said nothing because it wasn’t an issue. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is using the issue in an ad.

Johnny Mac is not off the hook here, though. His campaign has had plenty of ad mistakes, too.

For instance, a McCain spot chided Obama for cancelling a visit to wounded troops. FactCheck.Org explains this one, too.

The whole Obama trip was an exercise of the media and the entertainers (better known as cable and talk radio commentators) flopping all over themselves.

Even one of my favorites, David Brooks, criticized Obama’s speech as too lofty and not enough policy substance compared to past Berlin speeches. He wrote:

When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked.

I’m not doubting Brooks’ facts. But he misses some key points.

First, Obama is not president yet. Kennedy and Reagan were in office when they gave those speeches. Sure, it seems like Obama has been anointed thanks to the media coverage, but he is still a candidate and he would have looked too presumptive if he had declared specific policy dictates.

It’s the same acknowledgement we gave Mitt Romney during his “religion speech” which failed drastically compared to JFK’s. Romney was only a candidate running for the GOP nomination at the time; he was not anywhere near the presidency. As a result, he didn’t play to America’s sense of religious freedom; he played to the Christian Right and their myopic and, at times, stifling methods. Romney was more concerned about separating Americans into believers and non-believers rather than uniting us.

That leads to a second point. The Obama speech answered the needs of Europeans who are wary of George Bush’s America that seems to divide the world into those who are with us or against us. Europeans don’t want another American politician dictating to them. They want to see if America will work with Europe. Let’s be clear here. We need the rest of the world to like our government again. Obama succeeded.

And third, the GOP has only itself to blame for this trip and the German speech. They criticized Obama for not having enough foreign policy experience. Well, he might have proved them wrong. I’m not saying his visit is any indication that he will be the salvation of the world or that his lack of experience shouldn’t be questioned. But clearly, Obama has hit the right chord with the rest of the world, too.

So, why isn’t Obama running away in the polls? The answer is Hillary. The anger from Hillary supporters has kept the race close. When I hear and examine the reasons for Hillary-folk siding with McCain, it simply boils down to Barack is not Hillary.

Frankly, that will come to an end soon. Like a jilted girlfriend, she and her supporters will get over it and make friends. They’re going to see what the rest of the country wants: the opposite of George W. Bush. McCain, like it or not Republicans, is more W. than Obama is.

We can decipher all the political science reasons that give us a president. But clearly the reasons are much simpler surface issues such as he’s not the last guy. Bill Clinton was more vigorous than G.H.W. Bush who was tired and threw-up fainting on the Japanese PM. Our current Bush won enough votes from people who wanted a chance from Clinton Gore. Go back 30 years and we see that Jimmy Carter was a reaction to the Nixon years.

I’m not certain that Obama will pick Hillary as a running mate. If he did, the race is over. But he made some shrewd comments in his Meet the Press one-on-one with Tom Brokaw. He said he is looking for the right person to help govern, not to win. Sure, that might be empty rhetoric, but it also gives him a presidential tone. Furthermore, if he picks Hillary then she is chosen not as an electoral factor, but as a partner in government.

As a result, I am not certain he won’t pick her. Clearly he needs her supporters. And more than anything he needs Bill on the stump for him. If I had to bet, I say he picks her – and him.

If he does pick her and as long as he continues to sidestep the silly season, then Obama becomes our next president. But remember, we still have more than three months and that’s a long time.

Why David Brooks Is So Good

I love the way this guy writes and thinks. You should read him often — or just read his latest one.

LAS VEGAS, NV (July 17, 2008) – Great writing is succinct and precise. It doesn’t waste the reader’s time, yet it leaves the reader wanting more.

That’s how I feel about David Brooks. Read his column called Activist Age.

What struck me was the column’s vast amount of content in such a short space. And then I realized this: If this is the only column you read this political season, you will still have a sound and solid idea of what will be happening in American politics over the next few years.

He nails the five main problems we face that, in truth, our leaders have neglected over the past 10 years. (To that list I would add the problem of unfair election financing.) I’m not saying Brooks should run for office, but I think this column should be the blueprint for the next President and the next Congress – be they Democrat or Republican.

Brooks is so good that you forget that he’s labeled a conservative columnist with a liberal newspaper. The truth is this: truth is neither liberal nor conservative. The reason Brooks is so successful is that he doesn’t pander to any political sect like so many columnists and pundits try to do. They play to an audience’s comfort needs; Brooks penetrates their intellect.

As in this column, he blends a traditionalist’s view with a modern, forward thinking insight. He hits neo-conservatives and libertarians between the eyes. Get ready, boys, for more government in your lives. Brooks shows how the myopic notions of these GOP wings have been clearly out of touch with the history of the Republican Party. And without a doubt, if John McCain were truly a Teddy Roosevelt, there would be much less hullaballoo driving Barack Obama.

But Brooks is also careful to point out that drastic change in government did not happen under liberals. They happened when a conservative responded to the people and not to special interests.

You can also catch David Brooks on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS most Friday nights.

Disclosure: I have never met David Brooks and I have no financial gain from saying nice things about him.

Silly Season

This is a posting that warns you what to avoid and how to endure the campaign wackiness known as the Silly Season.  You can also read this at Vegas Community Online.

LAS VEGAS, NV (July 16, 2008) – We’re now in the Silly Season.

Political consultant/analyst Michael Murphy Sunday on Meet the Press coined the phrase. It’s the time before the political conventions and the announcements of the Vice Presidential candidates.

He’s right. No one’s paying attention to the real issues. Instead, the candidates, their staffs, and the media act like school children waving their hands to get the teacher’s attention.

As a result, the media and the pundits are picking over every little word that is spoken or written. What nonsense about Jesse Jackson. The Reverend Jackson doesn’t like Obama talking about responsibility when he himself has shirked responsibility by fathering babies out of wedlock.

The New Yorker inspired frenzy with the satirical front cover also fails to mention cogent issues. Instead, the editors are poking fun at the right-wing nut-cases (that’s redundant many times) who seem to think Obama is working for Osama, Saddam, and a resurrected version of the 1960s Black Panthers.

The best response to the New Yorker cover was, again, from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. He said Obama should have responded that he’s not upset about the cartoon depicting him as a Muslim because only crazed Muslims respond angrily to cartoons. Brilliant.

Granted, this is high brow humor. You can say that the majority of the people in America are too stupid to understand the joke. It’s hard to argue against that. However, I think most people are also too busy dealing with the economy to be thinking about the cleverness of an insider magazine.

Speaking of the economy, here’s another example of the silly season. Phil Gramm, the former Senator, said America is going through a “mental recession” and we’re a bunch of whiners. That cost him his gig with the Mac camp. Now you understand why Gramm could only win an election in George Bush’s Texas.

Here’s the truth. Gramm was right one out of three times – which is only a good average for a baseball hitters and politicians. First, there is not a recession …technically. We haven’t had two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Second, he’s wrong that this down-turn is mental. It’s real; just look at gas and food prices. That’s not to say some irrational fear hasn’t caused some volatility in commodities and stocks.

But Gramm is right about the whining. We’re not getting our clocks cleaned by India and China because of unfair trade practices. No, we’re being taken to the cleaners because we lack the education of Chinese and Indian workers who will work for less.

Here are the issues no one is really talking about yet – that should be talked about: taxes and the wars. And here is the reality on both.

John McCain says he won’t raise taxes. If you speak to any respected economist –and I have – then you will know that taxes are going up in 2009. And it doesn’t matter who is president. You can’t deny the math. We have an incredible deficit that is growing because we’re fighting two wars. The reason we’ve been able to fund the war and our debt is investors from China and Dubai. We could be beholden to them. They are the creditors and we are the debtors. Granted, they will probably not hurt their biggest customer, but they have started to gain a foothold into our economy.

Unless we want more economic power to leave us, then we need to own more of our country. And that means paying taxes and reducing our debt. Sure, reducing taxes stimulates growth. But we’re facing a looming Social Security and Medicare nightmare that we have not addressed.

Meanwhile, Obama says he will work to bring the troops home in 16 months. He has softened this stance over the past week. (More on flip-flopping later.) It won’t happen. We have no idea what the situation on the ground in Iraq will be 16 months into the new Administration. The chances of democracy, and therefore stability, flourishing there are as probable as Tiger winning the British Open this year.

Furthermore, we’re in Iraq to protect the oil. If you think we only went into Iraq to overthrow a dictator because he was ruthless to his people, then why haven’t we invaded The Sudan to defend Darfur? The main reason we’re in Iraq is to keep our economy flowing.

Let me be clear before the right-wing whackos (again that redundancy) call me a liberal shill. Oil wasn’t the only reason we’re in Iraq. We needed the intelligence. By starting a war, we were able to gather the world’s jihadist nuts (another redundancy) into one place to bring them out of the shadows. The effort has succeeded in many ways. However, it’s a rather cruel way to do it – especially if you’re an Iraqi citizen. Many of your countrymen are sacrificed to root-out the bad guys.

Back to the main point. Unless we come up with an alternative to oil to run our cars, our homes, and our businesses in the next year or two then we’ll definitely have troops in Iraq for a long time.

Let’s calm down over flip-flopping. Both candidates will look like a mackerel pulled from the Atlantic during the silly season. Obama is running to the center. McCain, oddly enough, has to run to the right to gather the core of the GOP. As a result, both candidates will say what it takes to please the majority of voters. The candidate who is the most artful at articulating the nuances will eventually gather steam after Labor Day.

How do you combat this?

My first suggestion is FactCheck.org. This is a non-partisan, non-profit website I highly recommend. They take apart both sides. The Washington Post has a blog called The Fact Checker which is also very good. However, if you think it might be too liberal (which it isn’t) then stick with FactCheck.org. These are both free.

Another suggestion: start thinking globally. One site to research is Stratfor. Their intelligence is fairly reliable, based on my experience. The editors and writers look at issues through a geopolitical framework; where a country sits geographically will help determine how the country responds politically, economically, and militarily. Stratfor is a subscription service.

So is The Economist. I think it’s the best news magazine in the world. It’s London-based, so it has a partial European view of the world. So, Americans will get a slightly different angle on stories. But more importantly, The Economist looks at things economically.

Stratfor and The Economist are good checks on the mainstream media here. They won’t necessarily contradict the reporting stateside, but merely fill in the gaps.

Remembering Jesse Helms

This is a posting recalling my time covering Jesse Helms. To folks who consider themselves conservative and who consider me liberal, this might surprise you.

LAS VEGAS, NV (July 5, 2008) – In 1984 I was fortunate to cover Jesse Helms’ senatorial re-election campaign. I was working at WCTI-TV 12 in New Bern, NC.

Jesse beat the popular Democratic Governor Jim Hunt. It was a nasty campaign. The worst example was Jesse’s henchmen concocting stories that Hunt was connected to pedophilia.

Despite that, I write somewhat glowingly about Jesse and that campaign in my book that teaches you what media bias is and how to overcome it.

Jesse Helms, the former GOP senator from North Carolina, taught me to win the information war when I covered his 1984 re-election campaign. He was considered a myopic, backwoods politician by most people from the Northeast. He was calling the New York Times liberal and dishonest long before most right-wingers did. But when I covered Jesse, he was gracious, answering all my questions without rancor. Why? I was a local television reporter and attached directly to the audience he needed—the conservative, white, Christian, North Carolina voter. Without them, he would never be elected. Without them, he would never have his place on the national and international stage. He didn’t have to be president of the United States to put his stamp on the world; he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Jesse could make enemies with all the reporters from the Northeast, but he had to make friends with me. And he made you think having a beer with him would be a pleasure, although I never found out. But when I told my friends back north about the “other” Jesse Helms, they thought I had gone haywire.

Granted, history will record that Jesse was a firm opponent to civil rights laws. Was he a racist? You can make arguments both ways. You can also say that Jesse engineered the law that stops foreign aid to countries that allow abortions; an arrogant and short-sighted law that has only increased the world’s population and hunger problems.

However, here’s what I can say about Jesse. He was always true to his constituents. He followed their beliefs. Sure, his constituents might have collectively been racists and uneducated religious zealots. But in the purest sense of being a politician, Jesse allowed their voices to be heard on a national and, in some cases, an international stage.

Unlike too many politicians today, who pass laws for narrow-minded big money interests, Jesse, for the most part, solely worked for his constituents – even if it meant going against his own party which he did on many occasions.

One reason he could: Jesse had no illusions about becoming President. As a result, his focus was entirely on the majority of voters in post World War II North Carolina, which was still white, rural, tobacco country, not yet the modern state that would attract high-tech business and retiring baby-boomers from the North.

So yes, I liked Jesse because, simply put, he was easy to cover. First, he was always a great sound bite. I knew a story with Jesse on-camera was going to be a good one. Second, many upward striving politicians really make journalists work because they’re constantly changing their positions. That’s why we hear so many flip-flop charges on a national level.

Look at Joe Lieberman. He was nearly Vice President and yet six years later he could barely win his party primary in Connecticut. Why? He was no longer a Connecticut politician, but a national politician who had lost focus on the people who were putting him in office.

You can say the same about Obama and McCain who will change their positions over the next five months. I’m not saying they’re right or wrong. You make that decision: just understand where they’ve been and who they’ve been serving.

Some of you may be thinking I went soft on Jesse because he was nice to me. Well, you have to respect him for that. Think about it. Jesse got a fair shake from a reporter who was originally from the north and who graduated from a typical liberal, northeast college. Jesse is a good teacher when it comes to handling the media. Now let me defend myself. I was no push-over. Jim Hunt, a very good politician in his own right, got his chance to take shots at Jesse, too.

However, I think my respect for Jesse comes from the way he played politics. He was Dick Butkus with a southern drawl. His public brawn camouflaged his superior political intellect.

Politics, for me, is a contact-collision sport that is not for the faint of heart. I want the candidates to fight. Of course, we want a fair fight. For example, I may have disagreed with the Swiftboating of John Kerrey, but I believe those folks had every right to voice their opinions. First, that’s the way the laws are set up. I’m not saying they’re good laws since they seem to help incumbents more. Second, the Swiftboaters showed that Kerrey’s campaign failed to respond to something that was so important to voters.

In the current campaign, I also have no problems with Barack Obama pulling out of the federal campaign finance laws. The McCain campaign will call him a flip-flopper; they have every right. They also know that Obama has the financial advantage. Obama knows he’s going to need that extra money to quickly respond to the 2008 version of Swiftboaters.

I even think Jesse would have agreed with that.