Voting and Waiting

The first time was 1948. I was 24 and had fought in a war, but the voting age was 21 then, and I cast my first ballot for Harry Truman, a centrist choice between Republican Thomas E. Dewey ("the little man on the wedding cake," Teddy Roosevelt's daughter Alice had dubbed him) and the liberal Henry Wallace, who had been Truman's vice president before being dumped from the ticket.

Clare Boothe Luce had pronounced Truman a "gone goose," but the man from Missouri ran a "Give 'em hell, Harry" campaign and won the White House after serving more than three years there in the wake of FDR's death in 1945.

All this ancient history comes back to mind today after my sixteenth vote for a president (more often for a loser than not, thanks to the Bushes) and recalls the range of emotions on Election Days for someone who believes politics really matters.

The two Eisenhower victories were days of resignation, even though I had been a volunteer speech writer for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. In the next decade, to my surprise, I learned to "like Ike" very much.

In the nail-biter between JFK and Nixon in 1960, I went to an afternoon movie to make the time pass but, even so, had to stay up all night to get the final result. It was worth it.

But in 1968, after working for Eugene McCarthy to try to end the war in Vietnam and being tear-gassed at the Democratic convention, I voted but refused to campaign for Hubert Humphrey and regretted my "purism" when Nixon won by less than one percent and went on to give us Watergate.

Since then, Election Days and Nights blur together except for 2000, and the less said and thought about that the better.

Today will be long and hard, but age has taught me to be patient, even in the face of an historic moment I never believed I would live to see. But, as in 1960, the waiting will be worth it.

Michelle Obama/Sarah Palin: Cool/Hot

Last night's debate showed a contrast between two men of different generations, speaking styles and body language. Tonight the TV screens offered disparity of another gender, between Michelle Obama with Larry King and Jon Stewart, and Sarah Palin out on the stump with John McCain.

Comparing these 21st century women calls up the distinction Marshall McLuhan made in the early days of TV between cool and hot personalities, citing the differences between JFK and Nixon.

Palin's hotness is not erotic but, in McLuhanese, an aggressive style that works on the listener to get a pre-determined reaction that leaves no room for ambivalence or ambiguity, eliciting primal responses such as "Kill him" to her attacks on Barack Obama.

Little wonder that conservative David Brooks calls her "a cancer on the Republican Party" out of a populist tradition with prejudices that "scorn ideas entirely."

Michelle Obama, on the other hand, is the essence of cool, shrugging off McCain's calling her husband "that one" as part of the political game and just smiling when Jon Stewart tried to get a rise out of her about Palin.

Cool media and personalities, McLuhan asserted, are inclusive, inviting watchers into their world instead of manipulating them to their own purposes. If the Obamas get to the White House, they could turn out to be the coolest couple since JFK and Jackie.

Obama's Binds

He wanted it to be New Politics vs. Old Politics but, as the states dwindle down to a precious few, Barack Obama is being tied in political knots by ancient divisions of race, culture and social class that are being exploited by the Clinton campaign, with some unexpected help from Obama's former spiritual adviser.

You can dress up the differences, as David Brooks does, in new demographic garb, as the educated/less-educated divide, but that only puts a new gloss on the resentment and mistrust that have always fueled have-not hatred of those perceived to be privileged.

Half a century ago, the war hero known as Ike twice defeated the "egghead" Adlai Stevenson, so called because he spoke in coherent sentences. JFK barely beat Nixon, who was born wearing a jacket and tie, but LBJ's disastrous Vietnam war gave the Uriah Heep of presidents new life to act humble and "Bring Us Together" against the voluble Hubert Humphrey and then the cerebral George McGovern.

Ronald Reagan made an art form out of folksy to wipe out Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale and, with an intermission for Bill Clinton's down-home act, we got the man you would like to have a beer with, George Bush, over the wonkish Al Gore and the stiff John Kerry.

So Barrack Obama's dilemma is nothing new in American politics, except for the piquant touch of a self-made man of mixed race being eliticized by a former First Lady and an Admiral's son with a very rich wife.

"You can't beat brains," JFK liked to say, but to get to the White House, you are well-advised to hide them. If he can survive his current ordeal of being bitten by demographic ducks, Obama would bring something to the presidency that hasn't been seen much lately.

After Bush, do we really want another jerk running the country?

Which Hillary?

In desperation now, the Campaign That Couldn't is giving us a montage of Hillary Clintons--defiant, angry, scolding, sarcastic--in Ohio and Texas, but how will she blend those stump personas into a coherent candidate for the side-by-side setting of tonight's crucial debate?

In New Hampshire, the sensitive Hillary won over voters in the final days and, at the end of last week's sitdown, emerged again to great effect, but her advisors seem convinced that only an aggressive Hillary can overcome doubts about a woman as Commander-in-Chief.

During the 1960 campaign, John F. Kennedy said he felt sorry for Richard Nixon. "It must be hard," JFK said, "to get up every morning and have to decide who you're going to be that day."

Compared to Nixon, Hillary Clinton is a person of substance, but the Barack Obama surge has forced her into parading multiple personalities, adding confusion to the negatives she has to overcome from the Clinton years.

Claiming superior experience didn't work. Unleashing Bill Clinton didn't work. Mockery and anger don't seem to be working. Being soft and sensitive is too risky.

What's left?

Mission Creep in the Middle East

John McCain's hyperbole about keeping troops in Iraq for a hundred years is alarmingly echoed in a Washington Post OpEd by one of the saner foreign policy experts on the Washington scene.

"What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common," Anthony Cordesman writes, "is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war.

"Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020."

Only seven months ago, Cordesman was pointing out that some recent advances in Iraq were the result of “sheer luck,” such as Sunni tribesmen turning against Al Qaeda insurgents and quoting a U.S. official as describing our situation as "three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you."

Rejecting the extremes of staying the course or immediate withdrawal, Cordesman made a case then for phasing down troop levels starting early this year. Now, another trip to Iraq and Afghanistan has persuaded him that "these are wars that can still be won" if we stay another decade or more.

Does the word quagmire ring a bell? In 1968, Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam and stayed another five years before accepting a humiliating defeat.

Now, once again, we are testing our will in places thousands of miles away against antagonists who are willing to do anything for as long it takes to get control of their own territory.

We started out to remove Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, a mission that has morphed into policing the entire Middle East, with Pakistan and Iran next on the horizon. Can Cordesman and John McCain explain how we do that without breaking our military and busting the budget?

Stoning Bush

If ye have tears for George W. Bush, prepare to shed them now. Oliver Stone is going to make a movie about him.

On the other hand, that may be the Decider's best chance for an upgrade in history. In some quarters, such as this one, there is great sympathy for the subjects of Stone's blow-torch reinventions of the truth, as in his lie-filled "JFK" about the assassination.

"It's a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to 'Nixon,' to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin," Stone tells Variety. "But if 'Nixon' was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, but that is superficial. I'm a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being..."

Stone's empathy is illustrated by his description of the theme of his projected "fair, true portrait of the man: How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

This new project will replace Stone's attempt to immortalize Iran's Ahmadinejad, who turned him down last year because he is "part of the great Satan."

Stone began his career as a moviemaker in the 1970s after returning from Vietnam, in his words, "very mixed up, very alienated, very paranoid." If his goal has been to make us all that way, he has been doing very well. Whatever he does to George W. Bush won't change that.

The Experience a President Needs

Democrats will surely nominate a senator, and if John McCain can't go all the way, Republicans will name a former governor or super-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who insists that a president needs executive experience to run the Executive branch.

History suggests otherwise. In 1960, Richard Nixon used that argument against John F. Kennedy and, in the early months of JFK's Administration, it looked like Nixon might have had a point as the new President mishandled the Bay of Pigs disaster.

But Kennedy trumped his inexperience with two crucial qualities: He took responsibility for his mistakes and learned from them, in contrast to George W. Bush, whose resume as an executive did not help him do either, and Nixon who... But you know the rest of that story.

Instinctively Kennedy surrounded himself with the best people ("You can't beat brains," he would say) and insisted on hearing all sides of an argument before he made a decision, as he did during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Those qualities would satisfy even Giuliani, who wrote a book about leadership but has had trouble practicing his own principles, as his Bernard Kerik albatross and the bitter 9/11 complaints of New York fire fighters suggest.

For a President Obama or McCain, the first days in the Oval would not be a test of management skills. What will count is their vision for America and determination to translate it into political reality. Voters are instinctively doing the right thing by focusing on that.

Casting Call for GOP "Christmas Carol"

Looking for redemption in Bush's final year, the White House Art Players might plan a new production of the Dickens classic starring the President as a kinder, gentler Scrooge.

A Nixon impersonator would be perfect for Jacob Marley, dragging the chains of Watergate, to open W's eyes with visits from the ghost of Christmas past (a Reagan lookalike as Fezziwig) Christmas present (Mitch McConnell or any endangered Senate colleague) and Mike Huckabee as Christmas future in the Republican graveyard.

On Christmas morning, a new Bush would awaken with SCHIP insurance for Tiny Tim, a veto-proof new signing pen to show Nancy Pelosi and a symbolic fruitcake to send to his new best friend, Ahmadinejad.

They could ask Dick Cheney to understudy the lead, if he promises not to shoot any of the other actors.

History Lessons: Mitt, Huckabee and Hillary

This week, Presidential candidates who are trying to sell the future are involved with echoes from the past.

Mitt Romney's Texas speech, meant to invoke John F. Kennedy, drew on Nixon's Checkers speech as well, using his family to validate himself, insisting on his own virtue and pandering to his audience in a way JFK would have disdained.

His sermon is getting mixed reviews on the right--a Pat Buchanan rave and a John Podhoretz pan--but, like Nixon, Romney seems to have kept his candidacy from going down tubes.

Mitt's nemesis, Mike Huckabee, is getting the Dukakis treatment with accusations of being naïve in freeing a murderer-rapist to kill again. But the Republican preacher is a lot faster on his feet and smoother than the Democrats' 1988 candidate, and he has already started to convert his Willie Horton problem into a failure of "the system" rather than his own.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is faced with reminders of the 1948 campaign, in which an over-confident Thomas E. Dewey, anointed by the public opinion polls, ran a cautious campaign and was overtaken by "Give 'em Hell, Harry" Truman.

As Truman himself said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."

CBS' Respect-Free Zone for Journalists

The network has come a long way since Edward R. Murrow. From the time William S. Paley backed his newspeople in unmasking Sen. Joe McCarthy to the present day when its lawyers are insulting Dan Rather in court filings for trying to nail George W. Bush's lies about his National Guard service, CBS has been in a downward spiral as steep as the ratings plunge of its nightly news.

In the new issue of New York Magazine, Rather vents his dismay over being blamed for an error in a story that was essentially right and booted out of a job he held with distinction for 24 years after being the network's lead reporter in exposing Nixon and Watergate.

Although legend rightly immortalizes Woodward and Bernstein for their Washington Post coverage leading to Nixon's downfall, CBS News was the only other media outlet that stayed with the story during a time when others held back, and it was Rather who did most of the reporting.

When he recently brought suit to vindicate himself from what Ted Koppel called the "travesty" of his firing for "a story that was much more correct than incorrect," CBS lawyers filed a contemptuous response in court papers, citing it as "a regrettable attempt" by him "to remain in the public eye, and to settle old scores and perceived slights."

At the risk of looking like the loony anchorman in "Network" shouting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more," Rather is ending his public life with the signoff he used for his broadcasts: "Courage."

He has always had more than his share of that and deserves the respect that a now whorish network is trying to take away from him.

Kos and Karl Rove, Kolumnists

It's a little like watching your prim maiden aunt get sloshed at Thanksgiving dinner to see Newsweek hiring Markos Moulitsas and Karl Rove as contributors. Cutesy can be embarrassing.

For the Kos founder, the question of being co-opted comes up in much the way the MSM glommed on to the hippies in the 1960s and packaged their rebellion out of existence. Moulitsas will have to be careful to preserve his edge.

Rove is another kettle of stale fish. Instead of letting him slink away after poisoning American politics, here he comes as Elder Statesman to pontificate in a magazine owned by the heirs of Kay Graham, who backed Woodward and Bernstein in taking down Nixon's White House illegality.

What next? Is Time dickering to sign up Dick Cheney after January 2009?

Schwarzenegger on Boffo Ballot Box Office

Gov. Arnold, who knows about these things, is advising his party on how to get the grosses up next year. He told a Republican convention this weekend that they are "dying at the box office" and “not filling the seats” because they have "lost the middle.”

“I have been a Republican since Nixon,” Schwarzenegger said. “I have been a Republican in spite of years of debates with Maria, the entire Shriver clan and all the Kennedys up at Hyannis Port. Believe me, it would have been far easier to abandon my Republican identity years ago.”

The majority of Republicans want health care reform and action to reduce global warming, he pointed out, suggesting their leaders follow them.

“I am of the Reagan view that we should not go off the cliff with flags flying,” Schwarzenegger said, quoting his fellow actor-governor who became President: "We cannot become a narrow sectarian party in which all must swear allegiance to prescribed commandments...This kind of party soon disappears in a blaze of glorious defeat."

The Governor went even further back for a new role model for the party, “President Eisenhower, the moderate military man who understood the need for logistics and infrastructure and created the Interstate Highway System--the largest public works project in American history. The majority of Republicans understand the need for investment.”

Schwarzenegger named no names, but another fellow actor, Fred Thompson, does not sound like good casting for the role he described. He has spoken warmly of Rudy Giuliani and, if all else fails, there is another New York Mayor he likes, Mike Bloomberg, who may run as an Independent.

Elizabeth Edwards Channels Nixon

One of our 37th President’s hallmark moves was to bracket his slanders with the phrases, “Some people would say...” and “But I’m not one of them.”

In her Time interview this week, Elizabeth Edwards echoes the Master by attacking Hillary Clinton while pretending to defend her:

"I want to be perfectly clear: I do not think the hatred against Hillary Clinton is justified. I don't know where it comes from. I don't begin to understand it. But you can't pretend it doesn't exist, and it will energize the Republican base. Their nominee won't energize them, Bush won't, but Hillary as the nominee will. It's hard for John to talk about, but it's the reality."

Nixon too always “wanted to be perfectly clear” as he stirred the mud.

Mrs. Edwards’ passionate belief in her husband and apparent freedom to speak her mind freely in the face of her cancer are admirable, but not limitlessly so. Among the many reasons John Edwards is mired in the polls is the impression that he will do or say anything to get elected. Having his wife do a Nixon impression is one of them.

Bush's Brain is Going

They can start disinfecting the White House now. Karl Rove is leaving “for the sake of my family.”

It will take reams of obloquy to write his political obituary, but it’s not too soon to start.

Never the master strategist or shrewd tactician of Bush folklore, he was the greasy mechanic of the White House sleaze machine.

His first significant sighting came on Election Night 2000 just after the networks called Florida for Al Gore. With a knowing smile, Rove told a network reporter to wait for the absentee ballots, which we later learned had been rigged by the Bush people.

Fittingly enough, Rove started his career by stealing letterheads from an opponent’s office to send out fake messages and going on to perfect his craft under the tutelage of Nixon’s dirty trickster Donald Segretti.

Nixon brought shady operators into the fringes of his White House. Bush took it further, putting the man he called “the architect” into the heart of the Oval Office.

From the sliming of John McCain in the 2000 primaries to the outing of Valerie Plame and the firing of the U.S. Attorneys for not being political enough, Rove’s fingerprints have been all over every unethical, immoral and illegal move of the Bush Administration.

He may be leaving the White House, but Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee will do everything possible to keep him in Washington. The capital wouldn’t be the same without him.

Reality Check for Nixon's Lying Library

Congressmen who are frustrated by current White House stonewalling may want to look at how long it has taken to get out the truth about our 37th President.

This Wednesday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will re-open after being closed for months to tear out the Watergate Gallery, which for 17 years has been giving visitors a fictionalized version of events that led to his resignation--a “coup” led by his enemies with Woodward and Bernstein “offering bribes” to help distort their coverage.

In March, workers roped off the exhibits and began to destroy the cabinets and plexiglass-sandwiched documents with hammers, crowbars and electric saws.

In 1990, the Library had opened with ceremonies attended by three Republican presidents--Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. What nobody seemed to notice was that Nixon had rewritten Watergate history, edited the crucial Oval Office tapes and omitted any mention of the dirty tricks, break-ins and other illegal activities that led to his impeachment and resignation.

This Alice-in-Wonderland version of Watergate was seen by almost three million visitors before the library, museum and Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California were transferred to the National Archives this year, presumably for taxpayers to take over expenses that had previously been underwritten by private donors.

The new federal director ordered demolition of what one Nixon scholar called "another Southern California theme park" with “a level of reality only slightly better than Disneyland" and replace it with what he tactfully describes as less of “a shrine.”

The library will now have 78,000 pages of previously withheld papers and 800 hours of tapes as well as copies of “All the President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein in the book store.

One thing that won’t change is that the reproduced White House East Room will still be available “for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.”

Iffy Expert on White House Crime

After the Scooter Libby commutation, Keith Olbermann interviewed two people this evening--former Ambassador Joe Wilson, husband of Valerie Plame, the object of Libby’s lying and obstruction of justice, and John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel in his new career as the Bush Administration’s harshest critic.

For someone who lived through and reported on the Watergate years, Dean’s resurrection is a little hard to take. It’s like listening to sermons from a whore. For those too young to remember, this from Wikipedia’s will serve as a catch-up:

“Dean pled guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on November 30, 1973. He admitted supervising payments of ‘hush money’ to the Watergate burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list.

“On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. However, when Dean surrendered himself as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S. Marshals and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special ‘safe house’ holding facility primarily used for witnesses against the Mafia.

“He spent his days in the offices of the Watergate Special Prosecutor and testifying in the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded on January 1, 1975. Dean's lawyer moved to have his sentence reduced, and on January 8, Sirica granted the motion, adjusting Dean's sentence to time served.”

Civilized human beings believe in redemption, but does that extend to making the fallen experts and moral arbiters? Dean was a willing White House accomplice to criminal activity until he saved his skin by helping expose the people he worked for and with.

That’s understandable, but more sensitive souls will pardon me for not wanting to hear his opinions on today’s public morality ad nauseam. Olbermann might think about finding instead some of the people who risked their careers opposing Nixon’s criminality while he still had power.

If Alberto Gonzales or any of his cohorts finally spill the beans on Rove and Bush out of fear of going to prison, that will be fine for American democracy. But will it mean having to listen to them as moral exemplars during some scandal decades from now?

Myth of the Washington Outsider

As Republicans run away from George Bush in’ 08, one avenue they will take is that of the “Washington outsider.” Giulani and Romney can legitimately do that, and even Fred Thompson, who started as a Party lawyer during Watergate and went on to years as a lobbyist followed now by a second generation, will try.

But there is a contrarian case to be made that much of the Washington mischief of the past half century goes back to White House outsiders who didn’t know the rules of the game and where the boundary markers were.

Start with Nixon, the insider who always felt like an outsider, and surrounded himself with the likes of Mitchell, Erlichman and Haldeman, who didn’t know enough to worry about being caught doing the dirty tricks that brought them down.

During Reagan’s time, it was Oliver North et al who stepped over the line with Iran-Contra and got caught.

Now, with so much focus on Cheney’s fiefdom, it’s easy to forget that Karl Rove’s overreaching is at the heart of what Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman and other Democrats are trying to lay bare. It isn’t hardened Washington operators, but true-believing amateurs like Alberto Gonzales and his crew who stepped over well-established lines in the Justice Department.

This is not to glorify traditional politicians but, as voters look for answers, they may want to look carefully when candidates promise to change the ways of Washington rather than get the political process back under control. So far, the alternatives to politics as usual have turned out to be politics as nightmare.