Right-wing paranoia

I have received a curious comment on my April 20 post, "The right-wing malcontents are bashing Obama." It was written by a highly educated, articulate reader who occasionally visits and comments on my blog.

She wrote: "Just because [Obama] is coming after the Christians, veterans, pro-lifers, etc...doesn't mean the Jews are safe."

I expected disagreement, of course, with my view of President Obama's opponents. But what could have produced such an hysterical response to my criticism about the recent series of anti-Obama" tea parties." At those events, I had written, "paranoid Obama-bashers vented their spleen about taxes, soaring government spending for financial bailouts, and what they regard as government encroachment into their private lives"?

President Obama is a Christian, and his much-publicized search for a church to attend on Sundays suggests that he is an observant believer. I have seen no evidence that he is "coming after" his fellow Christians. And why would he do that?

Nor as a World War II veteran have I seen any evidence that he is about to do something awful to my fellow veterans. Indeed, as some one who has been frustrated by my rare dealings with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, I am impressed by President Obama's appointment of retired Gen. Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. A critic of the Bush Administration's Iraq war, he is a refreshing change from the incompetent political hacks who have headed the department in recent years.

But what really strikes me about my respondent's comment is her frightening claim that Obama's policies do not mean that "the Jews are safe." What does she mean? The only explanation that I can imagine for the provocative comment is her knowledge that I am a Jewish-American who has an intense interest in Israel.

Her point, I guess, is to warn me that Obama is will be less sympathetic to Israel than his predecessor. President George W. Bush's policies were indeed very favorable to the Jewish state. I believe that this was largely because of benign neglect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, rather than of any profound pro-Israel sentiment on Bush's part.

President Obama has demonstrated that he will take an aggressive stance to settle the Middle East conflict. Presumably, this would mean pressure on Israel to make concessions that could affect its security.

I had recognized that this might occur if Obama became President. Nevertheless, I voted enthusiastically for him, and I strongly admire what he has accomplished so far. Like many ardent Jewish-American partisans of the Israeli cause, I am not a single-issue voter.

While I am seriously concerned about Israeli security, I am also interested in other important issues--national security, health, education, and other matters dealing with foreign affairs.

So my respondent's warning that the Jews might not be "safe" because Obama is "coming after the Christians, veterans, pro-lifers, etc." makes no sense.

I resent the use of the term "pro-life" by those who want to ban abortion, and I support efforts to preserve a woman's right to have one. I thus do not worry that Obama is "coming after...the pro-lifers."

The Obama-bashers don't give up easily

Having lost the election, the Obama-bashers haven't given up trying to prevent Barack Obama from becoming the President.

I have received an e-mail message, entitled "Update on Obama birth certificate law suits," from Human Events magazine, informing me that an organization known as the United States Justice Foundation is engaged in a legal battle "to compel Obama to produce a valid birth certificate that he is constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States."

The foundation, which was founded in 1979, describes itself as a "non-profit public interest, legal action organization that instructs, informs and educates the public on, and litigates significant legal issues confronting America."

The organization evidently doesn't believe that Obama was born in Hawaii. It argues that because Obama's father was born in Kenya when it was a British colony, somehow there is a question about the President-elect's legitimacy as a native-born American. The group has filed suit in California to push the issue and is helping to fund similar suits in Mississippi and other states.

In its e-mail message to me, Human Events notes that the U.S. Justice Foundation's campaign "does not necessarily reflect the editorial position" of the magazine. (Ideologically, the magazine can best be described as standing to the right of both the Bill Buckley-founded National Review and the Bill Kristol-edited Weekly Standard.)

So why does the magazine, which boasts such arch-conservative luminaries as Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter as columnists, go to the trouble of sending me information about the foundation's absurd campaign?

"From time to time," the magazine's message explained, "we receive opportunities we believe you as a valued customer may want to know about." The "opportunity" is for me to contribute money to the U.S. Justice Foundation so that it can finance the effort to keep Obama out of the White House.

I am not a paid subscriber to the magazine, so I can not be accurately described as a "valued customer." I am uncertain how I wound up on its e-mail mailing list. But I'm not complaining. It is always interesting to keep up to date about the right-wing loonies' current crusades.

Thoughts about the election

My wife and I have just voted for Barack Obama, and for the first time since 1996 we think we have voted for a winner in a Presidential election. We voted on an absentee ballot in New Jersey, our legal residence, because we plan to be in Florida on Election Day.

Just a few months ago, I was not very optimistic that Obama would be the victor. I feared that John McCain would win because he was much better known and experienced. I was worried that Obama was handicapped by both his limited record of political achievement and his race.

But Obama has clearly demonstrated that he possesses the credentials to be President. He has campaigned with dignity and has shown himself to be a man of superior intelligence and integrity. He appears to be far more suitable than McCain to cope with the current economic crisis and with the national security and foreign policy issues facing the nation. He is far more impressive as a force for the political change that both candidates claim is needed.

McCain is still ideologically linked to the disastrous policies of George W. Bush. Moreover, McCain has displayed extraordinarily poor judgment. The most obvious example was his selection of Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

McCain has failed to explain how he would meaningfully bring change to government. For instance,he talks about economic reforms, but sticks obsessively to the idea that the free market, unfettered by government intervention, will solve basic economic problems. In his many years in Congress, he has been a consistent champion of deregulation of business and the financial markets, a philosophy that helped produce our current economic plight.

McCain has behaved so erratically that I am concerned that his temperament makes him ill-equipped to handle the very serious and complex problems that the next President must handle. In particular, I worry that his macho-aggressive approach to foreign affairs could revive the cold war with Russia.

In contrast to Obama's well-mannered style, McCain and Palin have conducted a disgraceful election campaign, employing gutter tactics with slanderous personal attacks on their opponent. This is the kind of campaigning that twice brought Bush to the White House.

Obama still faces a serious obstacle. As they see Obama gaining in the polls, the McCain-Palin team seems to be turning even more aggressively to hate-filled personal attacks on Obama. Example: Palin's absurd argument about Obama "palling around with terrorists."

The big question is whether white voters' fears about the financial crisis will overcome any unwarranted concern that some of them may still have about Obama's race and patriotism.

Reflections on the Presidential election

I've become more optimistic lately about a Democratic takeover of the White House in November. I've always been a bit of a pessimist, and have been fearful until recently that Barack Obama didn't have a chance to defeat the Republican candidate, John McCain.

But McCain is coming across like a doddering old man far removed from the realities of the nation's serious problems. It takes one to know one, since I am a doddering old man myself. And I'm a decade older than the Arizona senator. But I do hesitate to disparage McCain because I had once admired him as an amiable politician with integrity.

McCain evidently doesn't know the difference between Muslim Sunnis and Shiites--an issue that is basic to an understanding of the Iraqi situation. Nor does he appear to know that Iraq and Pakistan are not neighboring countries, and that that the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan--and not Iraq--is the primary battleground in the war against Islamist terrorism.

He also seems to be unaware that Czechoslovakia, a subject that recently came up in a discussion, has not existed as a separate country for about a decade. So much for the superior foreign policy expertise he was supposed to possess.

I am bored that McCain, like the Bush Administration, is obsessed with what he calls "the success of the surge" in reducing violence in Iraq. To the "surge" promoters, the temporary deployment of about 25,000 fresh troops to Iraq has taken on the aura of a historic new military tactic worthy of a Robert E. Lee or Field Marshall Rommel.

They seem to forget that Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was ousted as the Army's chief of staff, warned that the U.S. was invading and planning to occupy Iraq with an inadequate number of troops. Indeed, there is evidence that he and other Pentagon generals were unenthusiastic about the Iraq adventure from the start.

According to knowledgeable observers, the insurgency in Iraq was already declining before the arrival of the additional U.S. troops. One primary reason, they claim, was the decision to put several powerful Sunni Arab tribes on the American payroll to fight other Sunni insurgents and the local al-Qaeda forces.

Another factor in the decline in violence has been the loss of popular support for the corrupt Shiite Sadr movement, which had battled U.S. troops and opposed the rival Shiite parties that dominate the Maliki government.

When the Maliki regime embraced the idea of a timetable for the removal of U.S. forces from Iraq--which Obama proposed--the absurdity of both McCain's and President Bush's fierce resistance to a withdrawal plan was vividly exposed.

As I have written before on this blog, I have not been an ardent Obama supporter. I would have preferred a more seasoned Democratic candidate like Senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd or Governor Bill Richardson.

I have been troubled by Obama's limited experience and political achievements. Perhaps because I am a a grouchy old man, I have also been put off by his boyish persona and the adoring, charismatic movement that has developed around his Presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, I recognize that he is man of exceptional intelligence. More important, we are essentially on the same ideological wave length. I will therefore enthusiastically vote for him, hoping that his coat tails will bring in overwhelming Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.

I was delighted to see Europeans and others waving the American flag during Obama's recent foreign tour. It was more gratifying than seeing the foreigners who burn the American flag whenever President George W. Bush arrives on an overseas visit.

I am scared by the prospect of John McCain, my doddering old compatriot, moving into the White House and repeating and even reinforcing the blunders of the most incompetent Presidential administration in my lifetime.

Who's the real flip-flopper? Obama or McCain?

The Republicans and political pundits of all stripes have been dumping on Barack Obama for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election and to thus avoid the spending limits that come with it. He has abandoned his earlier pledge to preserve the publicly subsidized restrictions on election spending.

The reason is his extraordinary but unexpected success in raising enormous sums through small-bore donations on the Internet.

Obama now rejects public election funding, he says, as a means to contend with the Republicans' ability to raise money through separate party funds and through such sleazy shadow groups known as the 527s. One such group was the notorious Swift Boaters, who were instrumental in Sen. John Kerry's defeat four years ago.

Sen. John McCain has joyfully attacked Obama as a flip-flopper for abandoning the public election financing law which McCain himself helped enact.

But Obama is an amateur as a flip-flopper, compared to McCain. Moreover, Obama's switch on public election financing is certainly not as significant as McCain's ideological reversals.

In his second bid for the Presidency, the Arizona Republican senator, once regarded as a fiscal and social moderate, has embraced the Bush Administration's reactionary economic and social policies.

McCain opposed the Administration's 2001 tax cuts because, he argued, they favored the rich. Now he intends to retain the tax reductions if elected President, and will seek further tax cuts that will benefit high-income tax-payers.

After opposing reductions in capital-gains taxes, McCain voted in favor of them in 2005. The following year he voted to repeal the estate tax, a measure that he had also formerly rejected.

During the 2000 election race, McCain denounced Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, Religious Right movement leaders, as "agents of intolerance." Now he vigorously seeks the support of Evangelical Christian right-wingers.

Once an outspoken critic of corporate influence in Washington, he initially retained a staff of powerful Washington lobbyists to run his Presidential campaign. Only after widespread criticism of the lobbyist's prominent role did McCain reluctantly dump a few of them.

In short, McCain is pandering to the very same special interests that he once opposed so fiercely.

And Obama is a flip-flopper?

The Democrats are handing the Presidency to McCain--and woe is us!

The Democratic Presidential primary race has degenerated into such a nasty battle--largely caused by the Clinton camp's unprecedented belligerence--that I fear that Sen. John McCain will win the November election. The Democratic candidate will have run out of steam by then. Many of the party's disaffected members, plus independents, are thus likely to vote for McCain.

Sen. Barack Obama seems to have tied up the Democratic nomination. But I think he is not as electable as some of the candidates who dropped out of the primaries might have been. Nor would Hillary Clinton be any more electable against the Republicans because of the political baggage she carries.

I believe that Senators John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd--and perhaps even Governor Bill Richardson--would have been stronger candidates against McCain. Unfortunately, they apparently lacked the "glamour"--and the money--to beat Obama and Clinton for their party's nomination. In short, the media overlooked them because of the phenomenal presence of an African-American and a woman who might become President of the U.S.

The Republican attack machine is already undoubtedly assembling all the ugly stuff that Hillary and her surrogates threw at Obama, planning to regurgitate it during the actual election campaign. With even more venom, we will be hearing once again about Obama's controversial church pastor, his alleged Muslim connections, his neighbor the Weatherman bomb-thrower, his failure to wear a flag pin in his lapel, and his so-called "elitism."

So be ready for another four more years of George W. Bush's disastrous domestic and foreign relations policies! McCain once fancied himself as a maverick who often strayed from the Administration's positions. To gain the Republican nomination, however, he has pandered to the party's right-wing base and has become a Bush clone.

In Iraq, for example, McCain intends to keep U.S. forces at roughly the current level. The situation appears to be growing worse there, however, despite the White House's glowing and absurd claims of the "progress" produced by the highly-touted and amorphous "surge."

Under McCain, there will be no talk of a troop withdrawal in the foreseeable future, even as American casualties continue to soar, billions of dollars keep being wasted, and Muqtada-al-Sadr's pro-Iranian Mahdi army carries out his new threat to wage an all-out "war for liberation" against the U.S. If the situation becomes even more critical, it is conceivable that McCain will want to ship more U.S. troops to Iraq. Such a move would have to lead to consideration of a draft and would provoke widespread political unrest that would rival the Vietnam anti-war movement.

How can we expect a man who didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to cope with the convoluted situation in which U.S. troops are performing as referees and policemen in the battles between those two sects, the growing conflicts among factions in each sect, and the infiltration of sectarian militias into what is supposed to be a national army?

And yet McCain echoes the Bush Administration's nonsensical argument that the U.S. presence in Iraq has made our nation "more secure." The truth is just the opposite. Because of our occupation in Iraq, we have been distracted from the war in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas against the Al-Qaeda organization, which was responsible for 9/11 and still represents a genuine threat to national security. Meantime, the nation's defense capabilities have been so weakened that our generals worry whether the U.S. is capable of contending with a new military challenge.

And in the midst of the most serious economic crisis in recent history, what can we expect from a new President who casually reveals that he is ignorant about economic matters. He has already foolishly declared that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, made amidst soaring Federal expenditures and a ballooning national debt, will be retained.

To bolster has right-wing credentials, McCain talks again about privatizing Medicare and shows little interest in the universal medical care issue. He also now seems obsessive of the so-called "values" social issues-- the "pro-family" and "pro-life"causes that did not figure so prominently in his agenda before the Republican primary race.

Worst of all, McCain has embraced the fanatical belief that the free market can cure any economic problem, minimizing the need for government intervention in the current economic crisis. That is, if you are not Bear Stearns.

Fortunately, a Democratic-controlled Congress is likely to be elected despite a McCain triumph. I hope it can prevent the blunders and excesses of another Republican in the White House.

Electile dysfunction

The current election race for the 2008 Presidency has introduced a new term into our political lexicon, "electile dysfunction," and I am a victim of this malady. I define it as "the inability to become aroused over any of the choices for the Presidency put forth by both the Democrats and the Republicans."

As a nominal Democrat, I am naturally underwhelmed by the candidates for the Republican nomination. I shudder at the thought that the likes of Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee could make it to the White House.

Romney is a slick, smooth-talker whose ideological views depend on whether he's running to be governor of Massachusetts or President of the United States. Giuliani is a petty, vindictive man who has exaggerated his role in 9/11 and made that tragedy the keystone of his career. Huckabee, a likable fellow best known until recently for losing 100 lbs., would have been a more appropriate candidate in the 18th Century.

And then there's John McCain, who I believe is most likely to win the Republican nomination. He is an admirable man whom I have respected in the past. But his insistence on sending still more troops to Iraq and his belligerence on foreign affairs in general lead me to fear that he would repeat George W. Bush's policy blunders and accelerate our nation's loss of international influence and power.

If either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton emerge as the Democrats' Presidential candidate, I am convinced that McCain, assuming that he is the Republican nominee, would win the November election. Until now, I have felt that John Edwards would be the most electable Democratic candidate. Sadly, I think the American electorate is still unprepared for an African-American or a woman as President. But despite his impressive talents, Edwards seems to have been eliminated from the race.

Obama is a refreshing political personality. I do not believe, however, that he is ready for the Presidency. Perhaps it's because I'm an old grouch, but I feel that he lacks the gravitas and experience to lead the nation.

Of course, an argument could be made that the importance of experience is overplayed. Not many men, e.g., have had more government experience than Vice-President Dick Cheney. But imagine him as the nation's commander-in-chief! (Actually, he has probably served as such during much of the past seven years, and look at the results.)

I have a high regard for Obama, but I find his political agenda still obscure and his record of accomplishment limited. Hillary Clinton's credentials are at least as impressive, and I have been puzzled why she is plagued by such pathological hatred on the part of so many people.

I am turned off, however, by the dynastic quality of her candidacy. I voted enthusiastically for Bill Clinton, but I do not relish the idea of the dual Presidency that would result if Hillary were elected. Moreover, the Clinton camp's tasteless tactics to defeat Obama in the Democratic primary campaign have tarnished the ex-President's legacy.

Where is Al Gore when we need him?