Week of: |
1:53 PM
Will Blair Take the Fall for Bush?
Tony Blair is neck-deep in hot water yet again. Predictably, it's over something his government likely did at Washington's request. And, just as predictably, the world's media is focusing its attention exclusively on Downing Street, not the White House.
Clare Short, who has been a thorn in Blair's side since resigning from his cabinet in protest, told reporters that British intelligence agents bugged the office of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq war. That disclosure has created a media feeding frenzy in the UK. But what nobody is bothering to ask Blair -- or anyone in Washington -- is whether the alleged British spying was undertaken as the request of the White House.
The oversight seems glaring, particularly since Short's declaration comes only a day after British authorities abandoned their case against a government whistle-blower who a year ago leaked a secret Washington memo asking for British help in bugging the offices of U.N. delegates. It hardly takes an investigative genius to connect those dots, now does it?
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4:55 PM
Low-blow-sur-mer
Make no mistake: the gloves are coming off.
The Washington Times has stooped to the kind of politics of personal destruction that gave the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy a bad name in the Clinton years. "Kerry boasts French support," screams a headline today. (OK, admittedly it's a UPI story, but the WT didn't have to take the low road and play it up).
The piece piles incrimination upon incrimination. A sampling:
"I know my cousin, and I know he has a clear view of the rest of the world," said 58-year-old Brice Lalonde [Kerry's cousin (!) and the mayor of St.-Briac-Sur-Mer, a "picturesque village, hugging Brittany's rocky shores" where Kerry summered as a child.] "And sometimes the rest of the world feels a little bit left out, not understood by the United States.""I must say too," added Mr. Lalonde, a former French environment minister and one-time presidential candidate, "his environmental policies are much better than Mr. George Bush's."
Then this:
"Honestly, I don't like Bush's politics," [said a 29-year-old newspaper-shop owner, who moved to St. Briac three years ago.] "Mr. Kerry seems quite nice. And he's got this French background." [Emphasis added]
And then, when you think the innuendo can't get any lower, comes this cheap shot at Kerry's grandmother.
"Madame Forbes was very kind," said [95-year-old Pauline Briand] as she finished an afternoon snack at the home, near St. Briac's town hall. "She was the same age as my mother-in-law, and they would chat. She spoke French very well." [Emphasis added]
Yes, make no mistake --the conservative smear machine is gearing up, and there's no depth it won't sink to.
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1:02 PM
The Lesson of Haiti
George Packer's terrific piece in The New Yorker should be required reading for every Pentagon, State Department, and White House planner working on the administration's schemes to exit Iraq. Not that Packer's essay is about Iraq. It's about Haiti. And, while Packer makes a compelling case for deeper American involvement in the chatoic nation the Clinton administration sought to rescue in 1994, he is equally eloquent on the larger, endlessly difficult, and vitally important task of planting the seeds of democracy in rocky ground.
Politics in Haiti is an all-or-nothing contest. Personal relationships and power determine the winners. The American intervention in 1994 seemed designed to help free Haiti from the logic of its own history. But the return to power of an elected president—a priest who raised his voice on behalf of Haiti’s legions of poor people—simply put a mild, bespectacled face on the traditional way of running the country. Aristide always showed a tendency toward demagoguery, and the poor have fared at least as badly under him as under his predecessors, who ruled on behalf of the rich. Democracy depends in part on the political culture in which it grows, and Haiti’s is poisoned.There are lessons in Haiti for other parts of the world: dramatic interventions followed by elections aren’t enough. In unpromising conditions, democracy will thrive only with sustained effort on the part of forces both inside and outside the country to create democratic institutions and a mentality of tolerance.
Obviously, that didn't happen in Haiti, in large part because Washington walked away, and we are seeing the results of that failure today. It is worth asking the Bush White House now whether any of those things are happening in Iraq. An imploding and unstable Haiti is a humanitarian and democratic disaster. An imploding and unstable Iraq could be far, far worse.
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12:40 PM
Special relationship
For an instructive study in contrasts, take a look at this piece in today's Guardian on the differing attitudes toward gay marriage among U.S. Republicans and British Conservatives. The two parties, writes Tom Happold, are "reaching very different conclusions about what is in their best electoral interests."
By a nice symmetry, Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage came on the same day that the Tories announced that they are hosting a "gay summit" in the House of Commons.
The president is trying to make gay rights an electoral issue - in the hope of painting John Kerry as a New England liberal in thrall to minority interests - while the Tories are trying to shed their homophobic image."
That image, by the way, is richly deserved. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, to her shame, introduced the infamous "section 28," a measure banning "promotion" (read: toleration) of homosexuality in schools. The conservatives have been tagged the "nasty party" ever since, although a change set in with the leadership bid of Michael Portillo, openly gay and one of the few genuine stars in the party. (He lost, but his run did a lot to bring gay conservatives out of the shadows.)
Though the party is still divided over gay rights, the new leader, Michael Howard, has taken a softer line than his predecessors. This month he endorsed same-sex partnerships and applauded those "same-sex couples [who] want to take on the shared responsibilities of a committed relationship," although he stopped short of backing gay marriage, insisting that "civil partnership differs from marriage."
Writes Happold:
Nevertheless, the announcement was significant. It marked a real effort to court the pink vote, as well as a genuine change of heart. As Charles Hendry, the Tory MP who is organising the "gay summit", said: "There are many gay and lesbian people who are instinctively Conservative, but in the past they could not vote for the party because of section 28. We are saying we have changed. We are different."
The Conservatives' change of heart is in part based on a straightforward political calculus familiar to U.S. observers -- with some crucial differences.
Party strategists have concluded that being seen as homophobic does not only alienate gay voters it also turns off the sort of [swing] voters it needs to attract to be electable. President Bush, and his strategist Karl Rove, have obviously concluded the opposite. America is, after all, a very different society to Britain. The UK, despite an established church, is almost an atheist society. The US, on the other hand, has a substantial bible belt and a powerful Christian right. Abortion is an enormously divisive issue in America, and almost irrelevant in Britain.We will know in November whether [Bush and Rove] made the right call, but research seems to point otherwise. Number crunching by the Annenberg Public Policy center shows that while Americans are against gay marriage, they are also against amending the constitution to outlaw it. Perhaps the Republicans should have copied their transatlantic cousins.
And the Brits are supposed to be the uptight ones?
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5:05 PM
Political science
The Union of Concerned Scientists last week released "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," an investigation into the Bush Administration's alleged "misuse of science." Its key finding:
A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy.
The report cites an article by Ken Silverstein from the November-December 2002 issue of Mother Jones titled "Bush's New Political Science." Silverstein found that the Bush administration had been "screening candidates about their political views--an unprecedented move inteded to make sure that conservatives [got] seats on NIH advisory councils."
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services told Silverstein (with a candor he no doubt later regretted), "Every president does it. ... I can't say that past administrations have asked the same questions, but the end result is the same--you put people on the boards that you want."
But Steven Hyman, former director of the National institute of Mental Health, strongly disagreed telling Silverstein, "That's absolutely unusual--are you kidding me? Politics should be irrelevant to science."
It should be, of course, but judging from the Mother Jones article and now the UCS report, it isn't.
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2:26 PM
Newsom = Moore?
Analogy-loving pundits and bloggers have struggled to find a compelling comparison when discussing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's act of City Hall civil disobedience. Supporters of same-sex marriage gravitate towards rights campaigners such as Rosa Parks or the suffragette Alice Paul. Christina Wise entertains such comparisons in a Santa Cruz Sentinel column:
Is Newsom this century’s equivalent of Parks or Paul? Not exactly, but only because the presence of homosexuality has slowly morphed from radical to, well, conventional.
But conservatives (especially religious conservatives) have found their own Newsom doppleganger: former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Newsom's defiance of state law is no different than Moore's defiance of federal law, conservatives argue. In fact some, like Stanley Kurtz of National Review, argue that Newsom has already eclipsed Moore:
What Mayor Newsom is doing has much deeper social and legal consequences — and is meant to have those consequences. Newsom is intentionally creating legal, political, and cultural facts on the ground designed to overturn current law — both in California and beyond. Newsom is purposely trying to initiate legal challenges to state and federal defense of marriage acts. And he is doing this is two ways — by encouraging copycat civil disobedience in other parts of the country, and by generating "married" couples who can file lawsuits, in California and beyond. Especially because he is creating couples who can file suits, Newsom's actions are far more disruptive and consequential than Judge Moore's. And the judges who have refused to swiftly shut down this obviously lawless action are equally to blame.
The comparison is interesting -- but only up to a point. As über-blogger Eugene Volokh puts it, "a government official is entitled to -- and sometimes possibly even obligated to -- refuse to comply with laws that he thinks are unconstitutional, when there's a serious argument that they're unconstitutional, when there's no clear precedent that says they're constitutional, and when there's no court order ordering him to comply with the laws."
That's the situation that Newsom is in right now. Even the most forgiving of observers must conclude that Moore went well past such principled disobedience in August of last year, when he announced he would defy a federal judge's order requiring the removal of "Roy's Rock," the massive granite sculpture of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state's high court building. As for Kurtz' assertion that judges have "refused to swiftly shut down" Newsom, let's consider the timeline of Moore's legal odyssey:
• August 1, 2001 -- Moore unveils his monument, which he had surreptitiously installed without informing his fellow justices.
• October 30, 2001 -- Two civil rights groups -- the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- file suit in federal court seeking the rock's removal.
• October 15, 2002 -- The trial begins.
• December 20, 2002 -- U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issues a permanent injunction, demanding the removal of the monument by January 3, 2003.
• August 5, 2003 -- Following an appeal, Thompson issues a bench order requiring the monument be removed within 15 days.
• August 18, 2003 -- Moore declares he will defy Thompson's order.
• August 25, 2003 -- Moore is suspended.
• September 29, 2003 -- Moore files appeal with Supreme Court.
• November 3, 2003 -- Supreme Court declines to hear Moore's appeal.
• November 13, 2003 -- Moore is removed from office.
• February 1, 2004 -- Moore appeals his removal.
Math was never my strong suit, but August 2001 to August 2003 is 24 months, right? Two years? So, if conservatives really believe that Newsom is no different than Moore, they must be prepared to give the state and federal courts until 2006 to settle the same-sex-marriage issue. Right? Right?
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1:15 PM
Double your money
"To measure actual spending by the United States on defense, take the federal budget number for the Pentagon and double it."
So begins a good piece in today's Christian Science Monitor taking a look at "hidden defense costs." The "rule of thumb" is attributed to Robert Higgs, an economic historian and defense analyst.
On that reckoning, President Bush's requested $401.7 billion for the Pentagon looks for fiscal 2005 looks more like $800 billion, out of a total federal budget of $2.4 trillion.
How come? Higgs factors in, among many other costs, the defense-related activities of the Department of Energy (cost: at least $18.5 billion) including cleanup of radiation-contaminated sites and development, by DOE scientists, of nuclear "bunker busters" and other new weapons; and extra costs for activities in Afghanistan and Iraq (for fiscal 2004, $58.8 billion. The DOD hasn't yet put a number on 2005 costs, but the Office of Management and Budget estimates the 2005 cost at about $50 billion).
"They wanted to avoid sticker shock prior to the election," a defense analyst tells the Monitor.
Other defense analysts don't go along entirely with Higgs's accounting methods but do agree that the true cost of defense is "far in excess of what is formally acknowledged," as one put it.
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12:30 PM
Dare to be boring
Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland recently wrote that Tony Blair's government, fresh from its near-death experience over Hutton, was attempting to change the subject from Iraq by writing off critics as "bores" (an insult, he noted, possessing a "peculiarly English power to devastate.")
It wouldn't work, he said:
[T]his is more than another political story de jour, one that looms enormous at the time but is soon forgotten. ... On the contrary, the legitimacy of the Iraq war is about as serious a question as you could imagine; its answer could determine the way our world is ordered in the 21st century. ... It has direct political consequences; it could even break the governments of both Britain and the United States.
Well, we can dream. Certainly, disillusionment with the White House's handling of Iraq is driving down Bush's poll numbers, but the economy seem to be playing a bigger role, for now, in voters' calculations. If -- big if -- Bush can win on the economy, he can win.
Not so Tony Blair. A new Guardian poll shows that although a large majority of Labor Party members (Blair's base) is happy with the government's performance on economy, health, education, and crime, anger at the war and antipathy toward Tony Blair personally are at a high.
Two-fifths of Labor Party members say the prime minister should stand down before the next general election; more than one-third would prefer to see Gordon Brown take over; a third believe the Hutton report was a whitewash. Blair's net personal rating, already in firmly negative territory, has fallen further from minus 15 points to minus 21 points.
Labor's lead over the conservatives is down to 2 points - the lowest since last July, before Michael Howard took over the Conservative leadership. As many voters (not just party members) believe that the Iraq war was not justified as those who believe it was - 45% in both cases.
So there's a real danger that Iraq will eventually drag Blair under. Bush seems safer, at least for now -- but that could change, as Freedland says:
Blair and Bush must suspect that Iraq could be the breaking of them, even if they do not know how it will happen. Governments toppled in London and Washington, and the world order reshaped. Boring? I don't think so.
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6:02 PM
'Terrorist' teachers
President Bush has told us that he is "a war president," just as he's told us that the enemy in that war is "a shadowy terrorist network."
But who exactly is part of that menacing cabal? How about teachers?
On Monday, Education Secretary Rod Paige declared that the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union, is a "terrorist organization" because it opposes the No Child Left Behind Act.
The White House quickly swept up after Paige, saying the secretary misspoke and was deeply sorry for doing so. But it seems that Rod's little slip provides a certain insight into how strategic this administration has become in using the T word and the dread it inspires in most Americans. What's next? Hollywood figures slammed for being terrorist sympathisers (oh, wait... that's happened). Civil libertarians and rights advocates investigated as threats to national security (hmmm... that's happened, too). It's so comforting to know that we've put the un-American practices of McCarthyism in our past.
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4:31 PM
A 'Republican Nader'
The editors of The Nation were unable to keep Ralph Nader from running. Even a heartfealt and surprisingly kind editorial urging him to keep out of the race didn't do the trick. Not that they had much of a chance -- as Todd Gitlin notes on Salon, the Nader 2004 campaign is little more than an exercise in unbridled narcissism. And narcissists don't take direction well.
But at least one Nation editor sees a way to diminish any damage done by a Nader candidacy. John Nichols asserts that "the most likely scenario for Nader in 2004 is that he will not matter much." In fact, Nichols argues, Nader might not even be the most influential independent on the ballot.
"Those in the Bush White House and its echo chambers on right-wing talk radio and the Fox television network, who have been delighting in the prospect of a Nader run, may not be laughing for long. Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama jurist whose fight to display the Ten Commandments on state property drew national attention last year, is being courted by the right-wing Constitution Party as a potential presidential candidate... With growing numbers of core conservatives angered by Bush's policies on immigration, federal spending and individual liberties, a Moore candidacy could develop into a serious problem for the president. More than 20 percent of the voters in January's New Hampshire Republican primary cast ballots for someone other than Bush; more than 10 percent of Oklahoma Republican primary voters did the same. Come November, Moore could pose a greater threat to Republican prospects than Nader will to the Democrats."
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3:41 PM
President Emeritus?
Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar, who, as The New York Times blithley put it, "would not go so far as to call the vice president a liability," has nevertheless felt it necessary that the company engage in a somewhat misguided media campaign to defend itself against charges of Cheneyism. The public, too, seems increasingly willing to put some healthy distance between itself and the VP: recent Time/CNN polls show 42 percent say Cheney should leave office, only 1 percent less than say he should stay on.
All of which means that Bush reelection strategists, who would not (yet dare to) go so far as to (publicly) admit Dick Cheney is a liability, have got to be thinking: Can we dump Dick?
Conventional wisdom would say no. First there is the oft-reported issue of President Bush's personal loyalty to Cheney and others who are not Paul O'Neill. And even if Cheney's favorables continue to drop, the president is somewhat hampered thanks to his own plummeting poll numbers. As The New Republic's Ryan Lizza recently reported:
Bush's personal favorability rating has dropped from 73 percent after the fall of Baghdad last spring to 53 percent today. And here's the most stunning line from Pew's report on the new poll: The most frequently used negative word to describe Bush is "liar," which did not come up in the May 2003 survey. Back in May, when asked for one word descriptions of Bush, 52 percent of those surveyed used positive words like "honest," "leader," and "good." That number has fallen to 36 percent, which is the same percentage of registered voters whose most frequent words to describe Bush--in addition to "liar"--are now "arrogant," "stupid," "incompetent," "dishonest," "idiot," and "ass." ("Cowboy" has fallen off the list since the May survey.)
Whew! With a list like that, one hardly wants to add on "backstabbing ungrateful bastard."
And then, of course, there's the real issue: Who will run the country? Whether you believe that Cheney is merely the most powerful and influential vice president in history or the evil puppet master behind this little show we like to call The Executive Branch of the Federal Government, his absence would be felt. (Even those who hate where the country is headed sometimes admit to being glad that it is not just Bush's hand on the tiller.)
But we have the solution: Cheney reports his heart is once again murmuring (bonus: reminds nation he has one). Sadly, but with a resolute tone, Bush announces that, for the good of his friend, and for the good of the nation, he and the vice president have both agreed that only healthy men (bonus: subtle shot at John "prostrate" Kerry) must lead the nation "at this time of war," and so on. Bush gets at least a week-long news cycle. AWOL issues, duck hunting trips, secret energy task force—all gone. Bill Frist nobly accepts the call to be Veep; let the national healing begin!
As for who will run the government: Boardrooms and newsrooms have a time-honored method for dealing with leaders whose day has come but whom—be it for institutional regard, political reality, or operational necessity—cannot be exiled altogether. They make up a title and kick 'em upstairs.
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3:10 PM
Believe the hype, or don't
A piece in today's Christian Science Monitor tries to stake out some middle ground in the increasingly polarized debate over outsourcing (wherein the practice is inevitable and beneficial or else utterly destructive of the American way of life).
First off, says the Monitor, outsourcing isn't happening on the scale the hype would suggest.
True, about 1 in 20 Fortune 1000 companies already spends half its IT budget abroad. ... And programmers in India can be hired at one-tenth the salary of programmers here. Yet labor-cost savings aren't the only factor firms need to consider before jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon. And many still wonder if the benefits surpass the risks.
The Monitor offers some examples of outsourcing not working out so well. A sampling:
A skateboarding company brought support services back to the United States because the changing lingo of young American customers was too much for its foreign call center to handle on the other side of the world.After a Fortune 500 financial services firm outsourced some IT work abroad, it had to foot a larger-than-expected bill when the transition took more than nine months instead of the projected four to five.
A few months ago Dell rerouted some corporate clients' service calls from India to the US, a move viewed by some as an indication that accents and cultural gaps were forcing US companies to pull back from foreign call centers.
Says one tech exec, "It is so commonly imagined ... that you can just take anything to India and it will work - and that's just clearly not true."
(Admittedly these examples -- which could easily be imagined in any business setting where new practices are being tried out, and which point to problems that are presumably simple enough to iron out -- don't quite justify the windup, as the Monitor coyly hints. "But that's not to say opponents of offshore outsourcing should celebrate the trend's demise. ...")
The piece, though, does put into perspective the more dire predictions about American job losses to outsourcing.
Offshore outsourcing's impact on American white-collar jobs depends on factors that are difficult to predict. Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., estimates that by 2015, 3.3 million high-tech and service jobs will have moved overseas. But the Census Bureau predicts a labor shortage, because retirements will outpace new entries into the workforce.
Now that's not a factoid you hear too much on the political circuit. The positives and negatives of offshore outsourcing are both being overstated, an exec tells the Monitor, adding "The hype is about the potential future of this market, not the current reality ... and if the supply side scales up to meet demand, that potential is fairly significant."
Meanwhile, says the exec, IT types should get over it.
"IT professionals have to accept that their trade is becoming more like an average trade," he says. If salaries hadn't gotten so overheated in the 1990s, he says, it wouldn't be worthwhile to outsource. "Once your standard of living and expectations have gone up, bringing those back [down] is tough. But that's what's happening slowly but surely."
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12:50 PM
Ralph says relax?
Relax, Ralph Nader says, his candidacy isn't going to hurt the Democratic nominee. It's only going to hurt Bush. "This is a campaign that strives to displace the current corporate regime of the Bush administration," Nader told the National Press Club today.
How does Nader arrive at that conclusion? "Conservatives and independents who are very upset about Bush administration policies are left with two options -- vote for the Democrats, which is unlikely, or vote for an independent ticket."
"Unlikely" is it? Tell that to the Democratic leaders in "red" states like South Carolina and swing states like New Hampshire and Missouri. As U.S. News reports, the Democratic primaries in all three saw record turnouts by indpendent voters.
"When all the South Carolina returns were in last week, Democrats had posted a record turnout--nearly 300,000. Exit polls showed that 24 percent of them identified as independents. It is a pattern that has been repeating itself: In New Hampshire, "undeclared voters" accounted for more that 40 percent; in Missouri, 23 percent. Sens. John Edwards and John Kerry have been pulling most of them. In Missouri, for example, exit polls showed Kerry beating Edwards 37 to 28. But here, Edwards won a whopping 48 percent of independents. And already there is speculation about the implications for November."
Clearly, a lot of independent voters don't have a problem with option one. So the question remains: Why does Nader feel it's productive to add his option?
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12:45 PM
Unlimited liability company
Poor, maligned, misunderstood Halliburton is fed up with all the mean things people have been saying about it. In response, the company is rolling out a TV advertising campaign designed to buff its image. Halliburton has cleaned up in Iraq "because of what we know, not who we know." Capisce?
The White House, which must wish Halliburton would shut the hell up, "has not fallen over itself to embrace" the ads, says the New York Times.
An unnamed administration official said, no doubt between gritted teeth, "They get a bum rap, they're acting in their own interest, and that's their prerogative. I'm not sure there's any real benefit for anyone but them."
Asked whether he had cleared the ads ahead of time with Dick Cheney, Dave Lesar, Halliburton's current CEO, said absolutley not. Nor, says the Times would he "go so far as to call the vice president a liability for the company." Er, isn't it supposed to be the other way round? And are we meant to infer that Lesar didn't go so far as to say the veep is NOT a liability for the company? That's some gratitude for you!
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12:32 PM
Arnold sees dead people...
"All of a sudden we see riots and we see protests and we see people clashing. The next thing we know is there are injured or there are dead people, and we don't want to have that."
- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger outlines the grave public safety threat posed by San Francisco's same-sex marriage initiative.
Riots? Injuries? Dead People?
I'm not sure what city the Governator was talking about. It sure wasn't San Francisco. In fact, while a handful of scripture-quoting protesters were removed from City Hall last Friday, Mayor Gavin Newsom's same-sex-marriage blockbuster hasn't resulted in a single arrest, let alone an injury or a death.
But maybe it's predictable that Ahnold veered so dramatically into the oncoming traffic of political hysteria. After all, the ongoing celebration of family-building that is taking place here by the Bay threatens to show just hollow the conservatives' 'it will destroy our way of life' argument has been. And when the facts counter the rhetoric, the new GOP line seems to be, it's time to create new facts.
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12:00 PM
No money, no problem
Don't feel sorry for the Democratic candidate -- be it Kerry or Edwards -- who will have to reckon with George W. Bush's money-raising mojo ($150 million on hand, without having broken a sweat).
Feel sorry, instead, for Al Sharpton: As of Jan. 31, his presidential campaign had $1,039 in the bank.
Apparently, the Sharpton campaign is in the hole for in excess of $485,000, much of it in unpaid salaries and expenses. The Washington Post hints that the shortfall might have something to do with Sharpton's taste for $1000-a-night hotels, which he tabs to the campaign.
Sharpton owes $38,000 to Kevin Gray, who ran his South Carolina campaign, and who may have a long wait for his money. Sharpton's current manager, Charles Halloran (owed $52,500), told the Post, "I have no current plans to pay Kevin Gray. . . . I can't see any value for what he was allegedly doing over there in South Carolina."
Sharpton isn't letting money worries get him down. Halloran said his man's bid for the Democratic nomination will continue "as long as Reverend Sharpton is standing and speaking.... It's a campaign built on faith and trust and commitment."
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10:46 AM
What is Nader thinking?
The emerging conventional wisdom -- if you can call it that -- is that Ralph Nader's decision to enter the presidential race won't make a big difference.
So what?
The rosy predictions may come true -- Nader may not steal a decisive number of votes from the Democratic nominee. But, as The American Prospect argues, his candidacy remains the absolute wrong idea at the absolute wrong time. As for Nader himself -- is it possible that his ego is so overwhelming that he cannot recognize the damage he may do to the nation, his own reputation, and the progressive movements he professes to love? That's the question on Norman Solomon's mind.
Obviously, Ralph Nader finds his own priorities to be compelling, but as a practical matter they seem indifferent to the task of building viable progressive coalitions. Getting onto networks as a talking head is a very different matter than serving the interests of activism for the long haul. The post-election scarcity of momentum from Nader's 2000 race speaks volumes. His independent campaign this year offers even less beneficial prospects.
That's putting it nicely. Whatever Nader's "own priorities" might be, can he possibly believe they are more compelling than the overwhelming desire among progressives (and liberals, and moderates, and even many conservatives) to see George W. Bush and his band of neocons evicted from Pennsylvania Avenue? And, after three years of W's presidency, can Nader still truly believe that there is no meaningful difference between the vision of America Team Bush are busy turning into reality and the vision John Kerry or John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich have laid out?
"Less beneficial" indeed.
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