Month: June 2015

John Kerry: The Hardest Working Man in the Diplomacy Business (April 1, 2014)

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john kerry

While CNN busies itself covering every non-development in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Newt Gingrich. He makes for amazing treadmill grist.), the world continues to turn. And as much of the nation’s news apparatus is rightfully preoccupied with a triumphant conclusion to Obamacare’s first enrollment test, it’s been another busy week for foreign policy.

Such is one of the many perversities plaguing the Obama era. Every time the beleaguered POTUS wants to shine the spotlight on domestic issues, international unrest just won’t have it. Thankfully, he has arguably the modern era’s most unflappable State Department leader by his side. There seems to be no number of hairy, potentially history changing crises that Kerry cannot attack at once.

Secretary of State John Kerry is a busy fellow. Last week the former Presidential candidate was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for what I am sure were tense discussions regarding the years-long Syrian conflict, ongoing negotiations with Iran and a host of other topics. Apparently a glutton for punishment, Kerry was halfway home this past weekend before turning his plane around and heading for Paris.

According to a report from Matthew Lee of the Associated Press, “Kerry [was] to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Sunday evening at the Russian ambassador’s residence. Kerry spoke to Lavrov on the flight to Shannon after President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a call on Friday to have their foreign ministers meet to discuss a possible diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine situation.”

Seriously, if the only channel one watches is CNN, it’s easy to become transfixed by the Flight 370 black box countdown and Richard Quest’s virtuoso ability to make floating jellyfish sound like a break in the search. But change the station. There’s plenty of other stuff not happening.

John Kerry is definitely the ‘don’t put off until tomorrow that which can be done today’ sort. I like this Kerry, the urgent, sincere, and dare I say bold Secretary who can juggle multiple serious imbroglios without misplacing a strand of that lovely silver hair. Would that he had been half so interesting in 2004.

Apparently opposed to a good night’s rest, Kerry was up and at it early Monday morning. According to a report from Shira Schoenberg of The Republican, “As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry jetted to Israel on Monday in an attempt to revive faltering peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli members of parliament visiting Boston reacted with mixed emotions, ranging from cautious optimism to strong pessimism.” That’s right. Kerry can mix it up with naysaying Israeli lawmakers talking to the press on two different continents. Boom.

And because North Korea needs to make sure the world still knows it exists every few months, the communist nation exchanged fire with its neighbor to the South in the early part of the week. While North Korea’s aggression in the event, according to Kashmira Gander of The Independent, is attributable to “an expression of Pyongyang’s frustration at making little progress in its recent push to secure international aid,” The White House and the State Department are expected to formulate some type of official response. Kerry’s got this.

Obviously some of my remarks have been semi-serious, but my respect for John Kerry’s energy and leadership is completely genuine. Others might have deemed following the celebrity and competence of Hilary Clinton’s turn in the Cabinet a daunting task not worth the undertaking. But Kerry accepted the challenge and even afterward, could easily have chosen to play it safe. Instead, with everything else on his international plate (and by extension ours), the man continues fighting the good two-nation, Israeli/Palestine fight. He seems completely unburdened by previous decades of failure to achieve a solution, and if he doubts his own eventual success, it doesn’t show.

I don’t mean to suggest that the combustible situations unfolding across the globe aren’t deadly serious. They are and it’s precisely because so much is at stake in so many regions that I am grateful for Kerry’s cool-headed, thoughtful, yet unwavering direction. He may not know it all, but he’s a thinker, a statesman, not a trigger happy cowboy. I think he’s found his calling.

Why Nate Silver’s Numbers Are Good News For Democrats (March 30, 2014)

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Nate Silver, New York Times blogger and statistician

Statistical wunderkind Nate Silver may be on the cautious side of predicting a Republican takeover of the Senate come November (and there’s been a lot of overreacting on both sides of the aisle to the March 23 FiveThirtyEight blog post), but it’s helpful these days to be a longterm strategist. That may not always be an asset within today’s 24/7, reactionary, attention deficient political and media paradigms. However if one is able, even for a moment, to see 2014’s bizarrely stagnant, bipolar and toxic sociopolitical atmosphere for what it really is, it’s a lot easier to relax into a zen-like embrace of the old adage, “this too shall pass.”

The electorate is morphing, growing more socially liberal in particular, at a magnificent clip. Both parties are keenly aware of that fact. And nowhere is the transition more evident than among the youth demographic.

Gallup released poll results last week, interpreted in an article entitled, Young Americans’ Affinity for Democratic Party Has Grown. The piece opens by observing, “Young adults — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — have typically aligned themselves with the Democratic Party, but they have become substantially more likely to do so since 2006…Since 2006, the average gap in favor of the Democratic Party among young adults has been 18 percentage points, 54% to 36%.”

Meanwhile, over in Baby Boomer county, New York Timescolumnist Charles M. Blow observes in his March 28 writing, The Split of the Ages: “Until the age of Obama, Democrats had an ideological leg up among Americans 65 and older. Then those voters shifted to give the Republicans an advantage. That advantage has held, although it’s shrinking.”

Blow’s comments reflect good reason for Senate Democrats to be concerned this year. As the Daily Kos writers remarked last fall, Democrats’ biggest challenge is getting their base voters to vote in a midterm election. And if a strong enough contingent of the older, white, conservative voters who comprise the Republican base are mobilized to hit the ballot box, then there’s a decent chance we could end up with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Yes, I just vomited a little in my mouth). However there’s a lot of “ifs” in play here and there’s still plenty of time for left wing voters to realize what’s at stake.

And now let’s return to my proposal at the beginning of this column. Let’s try to see the 2014 midterms for what they really are, accept the possibility of a short-term hit (while doing everything we can to avert it) and smile as we consider 2016 and beyond. The soundtrack of this political year is the gasping death march of the old Mad Men world order. As Blow notes, “Part of the reason for the Democratic swing among young people is the incredible diversity of the group. Gallup estimates that 45 percent of Americans 18-29 are nonwhite.” As Americans evolve into a more ethnically and racially disparate population, the “white man is grand” policies of the GOP become progressively alienating.

But here. HERE is where the blood of the Koch Brothers and others of their election purchasing ilk must run especially cold. Toward the middle of the Gallup piece, writer Jeffrey M. Jones concludes:

“But young adults are not more Democratic solely because they are more racially diverse. In recent years, young white adults, who previously aligned more with the Republican Party, have shifted Democratic. From 1995 to 2005, young whites consistently identified as or leaned Republican rather than Democratic, by an average of eight points. Since 2006, whites aged 18 to 29 have shown at least a slight Democratic preference in all but one year, with an average advantage of three points.”

Cold, hard statistics. Not opinion, although we know the Republican party struggles to embrace science and facts in the modern era. But not all right wing pundits will afford themselves the luxury of denial. In his own weekend column, The Christian Penumbra, New York Times conservative Ross Douthat takes a look at the unholy relationship between Deep Southern traditional religious values and poverty. He notes, “some of the most religious areas of the country — the Bible Belt, the deepest South — struggle mightily with poverty, poor health, political corruption and social disarray.”

While the piece goes on to argue that full engagement in a religious institution rather than nominal belief is the cure for this disparity, Douthat can’t be encouraged by recent studies concluding that Americans are less religious than ever before. And as voters drift away from dogmatic Christianity, away from consigned racism and homophobia and toward recognition that the oligarchs are running the show, rejection of socially stunted, corporate protectionist policies is a natural outcome.

I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated by the President’s low approval ratings. I’m frustrated that Democrats seem to be on the defensive nationally against a party with no platform. But we have time and Silver’s projected 10 percentage point likelihood is hardly insurmountable. But it’s the long run where Republicans are at the disadvantage. It’s all in the numbers.

Senator John McCain Still Can’t Accept the Country’s Rejection of Him (March 18, 2014)

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John-McCain

My colleague and Senior Editor, Justin Baragona, did a marvelous job identifying and assessing Arizona Senator John McCain’s hypocritical, warmongering bologna on MSNBC earlier this weekin the aftermath of the laughably suspect Crimean referendum. However, I’d like to take a step slightly farther back in time if we could. I’d like to travel back to last weekend when the ersatz maverick sullied my favorite morning read, the Opinion page of the New York Times.

Though the piece was actually published on Friday, March 14th, it wasn’t until Saturday that I scrolled the headline, Obama Has Made America Look Weak, across the screen of my smartphone. Similar to what I imagine were the conscious streams of many an unprepared liberal, my first thought was: “I hope this is just an ironic hook, but something tells me I am about to read the words of Lindsay Graham or John McCain.”

There are times I hate being right and this was certainly one of those. But it was about to get much worse, with McCain opening his assault with a tried and true journalist trick of the right wing trade: the rhetorical question that actually affirms that which it proposes to query. McCain asks, “Should Russia’s invasion and looming annexation of Crimea be blamed on President Barack Obama?”

The fact that he immediately responds with “No” means absolutely nothing. As Billy Crystal’s titular character wonders aloud in 1980s romantic comedy classic, When Harry Met Sally,“Oh geeze…what are we supposed to do? Call the cops? It’s already out there.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d love to make a citizens’ arrest of Senator McCain, for a veritable truckload of irresponsible, reactionary 20th century battle rhetoric he’s vomited up on the voting public since President Obama was inaugurated. I said itlast week and I’ll say it again. The lack of public support that McCain and the bulk of his partymates have shown the POTUS in one delicate, dangerous international imbroglio after another, is nothing short of treasonous. Short of the divided loyalties of the Civil War, American history has seen nothing to rival it.

Of many instances in the Op-Ed where McCain claims not to impugn President Obama’s foreign policy as the root cause of the Crimean standoff (before doing exactly that), I think this was my favorite. McCain writes, “More broadly, we must rearm ourselves morally and intellectually to prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin’s world from befalling more of humanity.” Yes, pick up the weapons of “American exceptionalism,” which worked so well for us in the aughts. And it is just me or does the Republican party’s 21st century version of national superiority sound and feel an awful lot like the international bludgeon that many on the right would like us to wield in perpetuity? Violent wish fulfillment disguised as patriotism is a special kind of hypocrisy.

Earlier in the piece, McCain not so slyly makes the following observation about the general Obama military strategy: “In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed.”

Um, yes, yes they have Senator McCain. And you want to know why? I know this is a trifling consideration for your party, but disengagements from money and life wasting Middle East quagmires have been more commonly referred to in the last decade as “the will of the people.” And I won’t even try to ask you to explain where it is that President Obama is supposed to “succeed” in Afghanistan and Iraq where his predecessor couldn’t. Should he continue looking for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction then?

I applaud the New York Times for its long-running and dedicated efforts to bring all voices to the proletariat. But as for Senator McCain, the people outside of Arizona have spoken again, and again and again. They don’t want war. They don’t want shoot first and ask questions later diplomacy. And sir, they don’t want you in charge. Please find a way to support your Commander-in-Chief. Barring that, silence is golden.

On Issue After Issue Republicans Are Determined to Be Wrong (March 10, 2014)

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mccain graham ayotte

There are so many elements to unpack with regard to the very recent, quick changing and still unfolding events in the Ukraine. I think many of us are in agreement that we expected something to go down during the expense-laden bombast fest that was the Sochi Olympics. Could Vladmir Putin risk parading his own controlled version of Russian exceptionalism on the world stage, without asking for some sort of karmic exposure? The terrorist attacks and bombings that preceded the Games seemed to bode ill for security issues in a region that was volatile before Olympic planning ever commenced. Along with most of the rest of the civilized world, I crossed my fingers, turned on the TV and hoped for the best.

As we know now, the Games, for the most part, played out without any large-scale incidents (What’s a little baton beating of protestors? In Russia, Putin calls that “Tuesday”). And though the media and well-informed observers knew a situation was brewing between Russia and Ukraine, its neighbor to the Southwest, I don’t anyone could have anticipated the escalation and series of events that followed.

As of early this week, Russian troops have tightened their grip on the Crimean peninsula, and the region is imminently prepared to vote upon a secession referendum. This even as Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, is reportedly seeking elevated diplomatic assistance from the United States and the United Nations to help restore order and beat back this act of Russian aggression.

The world is watching, cautiously, and with much trepidation as President Obama and his team decide America’s next move. Any illusions of Putin as a rational custodian and partner in enforcing international norms have been shattered, probably for good. It’s not just the situation in the Ukraine that we must ponder. For months and years, President Obama has tried to establish Putin’s cooperation with regard to other unstable nations and threats, including but not limited to: Syria, Iran North Korea, China.

President Obama’s cautiousness in deploying U.S. troops is in keeping with the nation’s evolving attitude toward long, expensive, overseas conflicts without directly achievable objectives. In late January of this year, results from a USA TODAY/Pew Research Center poll indicated that more than 50 percent of respondents (across party lines) believed that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan waged across most of the 21stCentury to date, failed to achieve anything of consequence. At least not anything to warrant the costs, both economic and in human terms.

Moreover, Christopher Gelpi, an Ohio State University political scientist, is quoted in the piece as saying,  ”What is especially interesting about these responses is that the public has continued to update its views on Iraq and Afghanistan despite the fact that these wars have received virtually no attention at all from our politicians over the past couple of years…This shows that the public is more attentive to costly wars than we might expect, even when politicians try to ignore the conflicts.”

President Obama may now fully understand that placing his faith in Putin to be a good steward for democracy and the world’s collective interests was a mulligan. But I for one am grateful that the cerebral POTUS hasn’t proposed a reactionary return to the failed Cowboy Diplomacy of George W. Bush (“Bring ’em on!”). There are similarities of course between this situation and international land grabs of the past, but this is 2014, not 1941, and the solutions aren’t as black and white as the attitudes of certain Obama critics might suggest. Case in point: Contributor Michael Peck of Forbes (no one’s idea of a liberal rag) wrote last week, “America is the mightiest military power in the world. And that fact means absolutely nothing for the Ukraine crisis. Regardless of whether Russia continues to occupy the Crimea region of Ukraine, or decides to occupy all of Ukraine, the U.S. is not going to get into a shooting war with Russia. This has nothing to do with whether Obama is strong or weak. Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan would face the same constraints.”

So now we get to the real crux of my column. I am 35 years old. Over the course of a relatively short life, I have watched as the nation came together in times of conflict: Operation Desert Storm of the 1990s, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, various skirmishes on the continent of Africa, the Balkans, etc. I did not mention the names of Presidents in charge of operations during these battles. You know why? Because it didn’t matter. A sitting President could expect all sorts of partisan bickering and legislative headaches in times of relative calm, but he could also count upon united support when lives and U.S. international interests were at stake.

Republicans have slowly and systematically set about destroying paradigms of the normal order since President Obama first took the oath in January 2009. But once again, they have failed to understand that their short-term goals (undermining every single thing that the President endeavors to achieve) stand in relief against what is best for the country. Their strategies aren’t even healthy for the struggling party’s long-term branding.

Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and others, I am looking at you. Your rhetoric (“feckless,” “dangerous,” “weak”) is actually what makes the country appear limp and disorganized, rather than Obama’s thoughtful cautiousness. Publicly impugning your President in 145 characters and trying to create a pathetic political link between the Ukraine and Benghazi, really Graham?

If there’s something that’s not in the national interest, it is this bizarre Putin hero-worship on the part of much of the Republican establishment, and the method by which these right wing lemmings have succumbed to the Russian President’s divide and conquer strategy.

Democrats in Unique Position of United Comfort as Republicans Grapple with 2016 Dread (February 25, 2014)

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clinton obama

Before I launch into the meat of my argument, I must take a moment to preface with a drop of journalistic reality. The 2016 Presidential elections are a LONG haul. Political fortunes will be won, lost, regained and quite possibly, lost again before the first voter casts a ballot 21 months from now. The presumed front runners of late 2013 (Democrats: Hillary Clinton, Republicans: Chris Christie) have experienced a seismic shift on the right side of the political spectrum with an alacrity that caught even the most overstimulated among us by surprise. Truly at this point, anything is possible.

That said, it’s kind of fun to be a loyal Democrat right now. There was a really dispiriting moment in late 2004, after the super dull but well-meaning John Kerry lost to a resurgent George W. Bush, when it seemed that the White House might never welcome a Blue occupant again. Because if the unraveling scandal of fictional WMD intelligence and the mismanagement of the war in Iraq wasn’t enough to get Dubya tossed; if the expensive, seemingly objectiveless Afghanistan quagmire couldn’t produce regime change; and if the unpaid for tax cuts for the wealthy and a tired attempt to leverage gay marriage as a base-appealing wedge issue couldn’t galvanize a solid liberal opposition – well then it seemed nothing could upend the prospect of a permanent conservative majority.

It was with this sense of defeated resignation that many idealists observed the commencement of the 2008 Presidential races. The only upside appeared to be the lack of a Cheney candidacy. The New York Times Jonathan Martin alludes to that period and other recent transitions before it, this week in a piece entitled, Stability and Chaos, Hallmarks of Presidential Races, Swap Parties. Martin opens the article by observing, “Republican primaries usually amount to coronations, in which they nominate a candidate who has run before or is otherwise deemed next in line, while the Democratic contests are often messier affairs, prone to insurgencies and featuring uncertain favorites.”

This was true in 2008, when it seemed that Arizona Senator and erstwhile maverick John McCain might be rewarded for his patience and perseverance with the Presidential oath of office. This appeared even more likely when the “inevitable” campaign of former First Lady and New York Senator Hillary Clinton foundered under a challenge from young Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Really, were it not for the timeliness of a late-2008 economic collapse that can only be tied to eight years of Bush leadership, and the Hail Mary nomination of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate, we might be playing “Hail to the Chief” today for another in a long string of old, white men.

But it turned out that Yes, We Can sometimes ask the voting public to make a statement for change. And though the last six years of Obama leadership has been marked by dogged opposition from the GOP, the public has yet to shift its allegiance, in large part because “Just Say No,” makes a better drug abuse prevention slogan than a party platform.

Though the shenanigans related to Congressional redistricting (aka gerrymandering) has awarded the Republicans a virtual stranglehold on the House, the right has utterly failed to offer plausible alternatives to the initiatives put force by the President’s team. October’s disastrous government shutdown finally disabused Team Right Wing of the notion that obstructionism alone represents a path to Washington. Turns out that voters prefer imperfect government to no government at all.

The following quote from Martin exemplifies why Democrats are, for the moment at least, relishing the prospect of another long campaign season, “the Republicans are acting like the Democrats of yore, anticipating a free-for-all primary that highlights the competing and at times fractious constituencies in their coalition.”

Ah yes. Who can forget the freak show that was the 2012 Republican primary series of candidate debates? Good times that almost succeeded in making Rick Santorum look like a palatable, centrist alternative to the other crazies. And folks, we’re just gearing up for the fun of 2016. I’m literally performing an impatient two-step, desperately awaiting the first time (because you know it’s coming) a flustered member of the establishment upbraids Ted Cruz in front of a live audience.

Cruz, Paul, Rubio, Bush (Jeb), Walker, Christie, Jindal – this is a just a smattering of the unelectable names being thrown about in Republican circles. Possibly the least offensive member of this group, Jeb Bush, can’t even secure the endorsement of his own mother.

For the moment, the grass is looking a lot greener on the Democratic side of the fence. Martin quotes Bill Clinton’s former chief strategist, James Carville, as saying, “My party is in a little bit of a just-don’t-blow-this-thing mode…The idea that we’re now consistently winning presidential elections isn’t lost on us.”

As I noted in the first paragraph, there’s miles to go before Decision 2016 sleeps. But for the first time since 1996 really, that encroaching feeling of dread is at bay.