Entries associated with the tag "Politics":

Since the immediate CW on Sarah Palin seems to be WTF (inexcusable!), I thought I'd take a look. I know it's not local, but the hairs went up on the back of my neck when I saw the first wave of reaction.

First, start with James Wolcott's rundown of the other main candidates. They sucked. Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge were the most Serious choices, and they were apparently ixnayed by management (can't remember where I read that, but I'll update when I find it) for being too moderate. Don't know what happened to Eric Cantor.

That leaves as your "strongest" candidates Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Romney was a one-term governor of Massachusetts. Pawlenty is partway into his second term. Neither has any political experience outside of state or local politics, unless you count being CEO of the Winter Olympics. Neither is/was overwhelmingly popular as governor, although they held their own. Neither is particularly charismatic. I guess you could include Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, but the former isn't a politician at all and the latter isn't a politician and was a disaster at HP.

I'll be honest and say that I don't know that much about Palin as governor, so I'll have to outsource immediate opinion to erstwhile Alaskan Dave Noon at the generally left-wing blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, who vouches for her personal appeal (and it appears she has a gift for political theater), competence, and lack of corruption (heretofore the only famous thing about Alaskan politics, especially their Republicans), and casts a skeptical eye on the nascent Troopergate scandal.

His biggest criticism of her is that she's a radical social conservative (but not so radical that she'll give the middle finger to her state supreme court; more) and ready to drill the fuck out of Alaska for oil, but that's clearly part of her appeal to the McCain campaign. Her choice to carry a child with Downs syndrome to term will carry her a long way with the Christian right, and as far as following one's conscience it's admirable.

So, think about it. Lieberman and Ridge are out. Romney has just a couple more years of political experience than Palin, and his foreign policy experience amounts to running for the Republican nomination. Oh, and he's unlikable. Pawlenty is in his second term as governor--a job that Palin might actually be better at--and doesn't seem to have any experience of any kind outside of Minneapolis. Plus there was that bridge collapse.

The NYT's roundup/bio is even more convincing. Is it a good idea? I have no idea. Do I understand the logic? Yes. Will Biden own her in the VP debate? Maybe, but I'm the only person in America who watches that.

Do I think the fact that she's an attractive woman with a nontraditional pedigree and work history from a state no one thinks about has something to do with the fact that Steve Chapman and others are bugging out? Um, yeah, kind of. For the record, the women at Slate's XX factor are highly impressed, including the incomparable Dahlia Lithwick, whose word carries more weight with me than virtually any other political commentator writing today. Am I going to get sick of the acronym VPILF? Yeah, real fucking fast.

YMMV--I'm not the most informed person to be listening to about Palin and am playing catch-up like most of America. Chill, was I think my point.

Update: Shorter Eric Zorn: Alaska's awful tiny. Oh, okay then. Please let us know how big a state you have to be governor of in order to be Vice President.

Update II: Wonkette, both the posts and the comments, is the abyss. Really, really ugly.

Update III: Joan Walsh makes a good point--she's also there to balance out McCain's nonphallus-related weaknesses, which is to say almost everything except foreign policy, not to mention his wealth and presumed detachment from the interests of working-class etc., which the Democrats are hitting pretty hard.

The thing I love most about political conventions is that it's one of the few chances to see high-stakes oratory and the broad range of people--smart, charismatic, successful people all--who fail and succeed at it. Mark Warner, for example, was a successful high-tech businessman and a fine governor, and he's coasting towards the Senate. Remarkable achievements. And he gave, out of all generosity and ideological bias, a forgettable speech. A dud. It translated fine as soundbites in the wrapups, since it was a hash of soundbites, but as a speech, an act of performance, it failed.

And it really doesn't matter all that much. Mark Warner is a good, popular, and not uncharismatic politician, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if he succeeded his namesake John as a long-serving, powerful Senator with bipartisan admiration.

On the other hand, having just seen Barack Obama deliver a masterpiece in all respects--style, structure, delivery, and strategy--it was bracing to feel the awesome power of great oratory. As someone who cares very deeply about the power of words across all media and who thinks in my darkest moments that the art of sustained, sophisticated prose is past us, watching and realizing that rhetoric qua rhetoric can change the course of history on its own, realizing this as it is happening, is a rare experience. The last couple minutes, beginning with his invocation of Martin Luther King, Jr., are breathtaking.

Bill Clinton could go there on occasion. George W. Bush, who was a good and underrated speech-giver (as distinct from speaker) back when he had the confidence of his team and the American public, before he himself burned out, could too.

Reagan I was too young to appreciate, but I have it on good word that he was better than anyone who followed him, at least until now. Before that I suppose you have to go all the way back to JFK. And presuming that Obama is their equal as an orator is vital to understanding his appeal. Neither Reagan nor Kennedy, to me at least, was a good president, but both galvanized movements and have been, since their presidencies, the key figures for their parties. As a partisan Democrat I find this a bit shameful with regards to JFK, but I do admire the role of his oratory and personality in revitalizing the appeal of public service and scientific achievement as patriotism. On the other hand, I also admire Reagan's role in building a young, devoted, and devoutly patriotic conservative base.

Both men, deservedly or not, represent national greatness for the Republican and Democratic parties, which is a troublesome but inevitably appealing concept and one that can, even in the hands of an ultimately disappointing politician, do right by the country. We may need a "good, dull Cincinnatus" (to borrow P.J. O'Rourke's phrase--I guess Eisenhower would be the modern equivalent? a non-sociopath Nixon?); we want someone inspiring, even if it means casting that inspiration back upon ourselves for it to do any good.

This is what's worth remembering when people contend that Obama is using the Democratic party. It takes two--he's what Democrats wanted, for the nation and for the party. That gift, which we saw tonight, is the reason he's the Democratic nominee, partially through the wisdom of the crowds, partially through the machinations of history, partially because these very ideas were earnestly hashed out in the media and on the Web. And I can't tell you where it's going, but after tonight I have a better sense of how it got here.

Update: Publius at Obsidian Wings has a smart take. "This is why he got nominated — and he came through." And if there's precedent for a politician gaining prominence on the basis of his speeches, it's Reagan. It's not so much that he was an actor--a "celebrity"--as the time he spent barnstorming for G.E. His job was writing and giving speeches.

P.S. One thing I should emphasize--a speech like Warner's, provided it has a few good soundbites, is fine for most purposes, in that it gets a few bones out there for pundits to play with. But stirring an audience demands the craft, the attention to detail, the through-composed structure that Obama's speech entailed. Politically it was quite sophisticated, as well--the defenses against McCain's attacks doubled as attacks, the difference between gay marriage and civil unions was addressed while slyly if cynically elided, etc.

But the one part that moved me, as craft, was the structure. It was surprisingly engaging, sometimes riveting, for 45 minutes, and sustaining that kind of momentum for that long takes a real virtuoso. Compare it to Hillary's speech, which was professional, well-delivered, effective, and at the end inspiring and even exciting. It was a very good speech, while Obama's was truly great. Enjoy the conventions while they last--if you're into the dying art of oratory, it's like the Olympics.

P.P.S. Offhandedly I'll say that I think McCain had this gift in 2000, but after the brutal loss to Bush in South Carolina, having to eat W's shit with a smile for eight years, and suffering all that for the nomination just to fight not only Obama but a rotten heap of an imploding party--call it the Morning After in America--might have broken him. At the very least I can see why he seems so pissed off all the time. I'm too tired to make this argument in any respectable form so YMMV, but that's my intuition, at least.

That damn mic is picking up the Pepsi Center A/C or something. The tacky DNC logo is still up. Can I help you guys out or something?

Hey, Mark Warner mentioned Danville! That's where I get food on the drive to and from Raleigh! It's like the state capital of 17-year-olds cruising the strip in jacked-up pickups! Yay regionalism!

Warner was a good governor (as opposed to Tim Kaine, a veep Dems were fortunate to dodge), but his speech was disjointed--a bunch of little bits of a theme that you could shuffle around at random. There was one killer bit:

"Think about it: after September 11th, if there was a call from the president to get us off foreign oil to stop funding the very terrorists who had just attacked us, every American would have said, 'how can I do my part?' This administration failed to believe in what we can achieve as a nation, when all of us work together."

Other than that, it was kind of forgettable--plenty of sound bites, though. Do people write for the AP wrapup now?

On the MSNBC panel charismatic lesbian-next-door Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow is sitting next to the aged Catholic Nixon street fighter Pat Buchanan, and they're playing off each other. They're really good together, seriously. That makes me feel better about America than Warner's speech, honestly.

Other people are watching Fox for you.

Hey, Dee Dee Myers, the Democratic Dana Perino. Presidential spokespeople are boring--that's their job. Please don't interview them.

Oh, shit, Keith Olbermann just brutalized McCain. Going out to commercial, he said something like this--"Hillary Clinton set to speak... introduced by her daughter Chelsea, once the target of a horrible joke by John McCain." That may have been the most effective attack of the night. You see how being a partisan Democrat can be frustrating? Speaking of mean attack jokes, the comments at The Poor Man Institute ("Resident Evil Syndrome") are cracking me up.

Hillary's about to speak. I would like to second Eric Bohlert's plea to historically chill about it.

Ok, maybe not. Bill Richardson is one of the few politicians with the guts to sport facial hair. Respect.

Oh, no, we've got movie sign! Is Hillary running for president again? Why are we in reruns?

"If we can blast 50 women into space, we can put a woman in the White House." Does anyone need a speechwriter? I can't deal with post-literacy speechwriting, and I work cheap.

Quoth my fellow convention-watcher: "How does Bill Clinton make that face? That tears-just-about-to-well-up face?"

Has Hillary ever worn the same pantsuit twice? I'm curious. She's an underrated speaker, by the way, but "no way, no how, no McCain" is a dud.

The tributes to Bill Gwatney and Stephanie Tubbs Jones were pretty classy. That kind of got me.

If John McCain will amend McCain-Feingold to ban the use of the "from... to..." construction in televised campaign appearances, I'll vote for him.

Indeed. And.

When Hillary talked about how awesome America was under President Clinton I think Bill had a little petit mort. When I say that he looks like a pig in shit I mean that as a compliment. I like seeing people happy.

The Harriet Tubman part was inspired, and then, segue! "But remember, before we can keep going, we have to get going by electing Barack Obama president." Hillary can't stay away from the cheese, even when she's on a roll. I think it's why she lost. Is it her speechwriters? Residual pantsuit aesthetics?

Hey, time for the Daily Show! Sleep well!

Michelle Obama's speech: it's fine. CNN explains it more pithily than I can. Chuck Todd just told me how many times she said "America" and "values." All the pundits agree that it was a brilliant move to talk about America and Values and Motherhood and Not Being Scary instead of, like, issues and shit. I demand tag clouds. SHOW US MORE TECHNOLOGY I'M BORED.

[Update: Roy Edroso, as usual, puts it perfectly: "The harsh necessity of countering the ugly stories that have been circulated about her may have forced her into a speech more programmatic than she, or even we, would have liked, but it would take more than a little boilerplate to conceal that she knows both how fortunate and how worthy of fortune she is."]

I'll cut to the chase: the only important thing I want to point out is that whoever is responsible for the stage--the abysmal Department of Tourism Day-Glo DNC logo pasted to the hotel lobby-chic podium, the weird dual floating Obama heads, the chyron background (!?!?)--needs to go back to doing sets for Dancing with the Stars or what the fuck and deserves all the blame if Obama loses. It's nauseating.

Seriously. That cheeseball logo makes me want to pull an Elvis on my TV.

Stars? Gradient? Why is the sky the color of apocalypse? Why is the "0" so big? Why is the "8" so weird looking?

CNN has five people interviewing Caroline Kennedy. Now they're cutting away to a McCain spokeswoman named "Nicolle" who talked about how everyone roots for the family and how moving it was to see Ted Kennedy. Clearly no one has it in them to make news tonight. Three more days for something interesting to happen!

CNN has a shot of each potential Vice-Presidential candidate's home up, with another camera staked out at Midway Airport in Chicago. It's exceedingly weird, as if they're waiting for OJ or something.

The only reason I can think of for the Obama-TK campaign to announce the VP on a Saturday morning, pretty much the nadir of the national news cycle, is 1) it's John Hinckley 2) just to piss off the cable news networks. At this point I was hoping that they'd just wait until next week's convention and reveal the veep candidate LIVE to "The Final Countdown" or to the Alan Parsons Project like they do with the Bulls. Given the nature of the whole unveiling I'm going with #2, which I guess is honorable but it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to.

Anyway, hell if I'm giving a political campaign my jealously guarded cell phone number so I will have to wait the 30 seconds for someone to blog the pick. I'm stranded in my birthplace with an overheating car, so unless the nominee has an immediate Jetta thermostat subsidy proposal or a western NC exit plan I will be focused on other things.

Just so my picks are on the record, I'm going with Bill Richardson for the Dems and Joe Lieberman for the Republicans. I am definitely going to be wrong about those. Back to reading Simon Baatz's compelling new Leopold & Loeb book.

This is the #1 story at the NYT right now:

Barack Obama said he has chosen a vice presidential candidate, but said he would not reveal who it is.

That's because he totally has to TXTMSG US FIRST! C'mon tell us who you're taking to the prom! Reading the news was so not worth it today.

But Mr. Daley and the alderfolk look like a combination of Milton Friedman and Warren Buffett, compared with the fiscal circus in Springfield.

Greg Hinz, perhaps the city's most underrated columnist, gives a thumbnail hierarchy of local and state financial incompetence--and Todd Stroger comes off looking good by comparison. In other financial-disaster news, TribCo posted a $4.5 billion 2Q loss.

I've been thinking about this whole Obama = Antichrist thing, and: doesn't this help Obama with the apocalyptic Christian crowd? After all, the more bonkers element of the Christian right is more than happy to support Israel because the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland indicates/will bring about/I don't get the causation of/etc. the Second Coming and the End Times. Let's get John Hagee on the case.

[Dear David Axelrod: I am so good at this. Call me.]

Anyway, I got this in an e-mail from a friend; identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent:

Marcus Gilmer at Chicagoist asks:

Ben Stein on Obama's planned stadium speech at the convention: "Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that's something the Fuehrer would have done." Wait...what???

What, indeed--it's actually quite interesting. Stein's observation didn't come from nowhere. Ideas have histories; this one has two.

1) Attack your opponent where he's strongest.

This is a fairly old idea, but the Republican party, on the national level, has been particularly skilled at this recently--think of the swiftboating of military hero John Kerry. Right now, Obama's greatest strength is the enthusiasm and excitement about his campaign. As distinguished from actual political support--clearly he's polling well and has a healthy chance against McCain, but the buzz and hype over his candidacy, fairly or not, far exceeds that of McCain, who seems to be running for dogcatcher this week.

That's a hell of a dilemma. Obama has a lot of strengths that make logical sense to attack, like his youth, his education, his diverse background, and so forth. Attacking someone because he's popular, because people like him, is, um, tough. The McCain camp actually made a good attempt, with an ad purporting to show how the media is in the tank for Obama. And it's pretty funny and not unconvincing, for the medium. But watch it, and see if there's not at least some cognitive dissonance. After all, it's an ad about how you should not like Obama because lots of people like him. It's just a tough pitch: VOTE MCCAIN. AMERICA, IT'S TIME FOR YOUR CHECKUP.

Hence former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein: "you know who else was popular? HITLER!" And Stein's not the only one making this pitch:

Erik Erickson (husband of famously incompetent former DOJ official Monica Goodling; emphasis, error his): "Barack Obama is using propaganda FILMED IN GERMANY MADE POSSIBLE BY THE NAZIS RELOCATING THE FREAKING STATUTE!!!!!!!"

David Plotz of Slate (who supports Obama!): "That's slightly fascistic.... That's a very, like, let's rally the nation [style of speaking]. I don't want to be rallied."

Patrick Ruffini: "This is pretty extraordinary. A candidate for the American Presidency is using flyers printed in German to turn people out for his campaign rally in Berlin on Thursday."

Tom Sullivan of Fox News Radio: "it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell."

And so forth. It's much more of a thing on blogs than it is in media outlets, but increasingly that's where these ideas take hold. Does it make any sense? Of course not, but that's not really the point. The point is to figure out a way to negate his strengths, and when that strength is popularity, it takes something especially ingenious--a radical version of the "personality cult" meme that you've been hearing from people like John Kass since time immemorial.

2) Liberal Fascism

You may remember that Tribune Company Star Columnist Jonah Goldberg wrote a book arguing that the liberal wing of the modern Democratic party is fascist, based on the "purity test" principle--check off certain similarities to the Nazis, like environmentalism, organic food (seriously), animal rights (no, seriously), the New Deal, and so forth, and get a fascism score. This is of course total lunacy, but thanks to his prominence (thanks, LA Times!) the argument has enough pull to become an undercurrent in the exciting new Obama=Hitler meme. Hullabaloo and Jesse Taylor have much, much more on this.

Why belabor the point? Ideas have consequences; columnists have very big consequences. On an abstract level it's interesting--to me, at least--to see how these things evolve and mutate over the short and long term. On a practical level, it's helpful to not be caught off-guard by the crazy. Because it's not actually crazy--it's a strategy.

On the Trib home page right now:

Obama ad cites bill he did not vote on

Oh no! How dare... oh.

"While the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee authored provisions that ultimately made it into the law, he did not vote for its passage on Jan. 22, when he was busy campaigning in advance of the South Carolina primary."

There's more to passing legislation than voting on it, but why wouldn't he make sure... oh.

"The bill, H.R. 4986, was easily passed without either man's vote."

It's cute when you blog, but if you want to ding Obama, here are some posts (written by liberals!) that you should read first.

Obama being silent on FISA? Kind of a big deal. Kinda wish he'd step it up. Kinda think that's more important than the definition of "worked to pass."

Also: This post on Obama's alleged breaking of a promise to accept public financing is just bizarre. I mean his ultimate decision's maybe not the purest thing in the world, but surely Frank James is aware that John McCain, whose decision to accept public financing allegedly triggers Obama's promise, used theoretical public funding as collateral on a loan and then tried to back out of it.

In other words, his campaign tried to play it so that if McCain's primary campaign failed, they could use public funding to pay off his debts, but if it succeeded and he raised lots of money, they could back out of the need to take public money. Ezra Klein calls it "a legal masterpiece, albeit an ethical travesty." (The L.A. Times was clever enough to mention this.) Whether or not McCain's decision to accept public financing is directly related to being unable to get out of his legal thicket is unclear (the FEC hasn't ruled because they don't have a quorum, long story), as is more abstractly whether Obama is being a dick about his promise. But I do know that McCain probably deserves to have a Coke and a smile and shut the f**k up about it.

Don't invite the Tribune editorial staff over for a party. They're lingerers, if you know what I mean.

But what we're hearing from the Iraqi side is troubling. Maliki's latest statement outlined several conditions:

• Iraq won't grant U.S. forces immunity from Iraqi laws and courts.
• Iraq rejects Washington's demand "to have a free hand in undertaking military operations without cooperation with the Iraqi government."
• Iraq won't allow "American forces independent right to arrest Iraqis or execute operations against terrorism."
• "We cannot allow them to use the Iraqi skies and waters at all times."

Again, this is still all under discussion. But Maliki's conditions seem to be unacceptable.

[snip]

The military and political news from Iraq has been good lately, good enough to believe that the U.S. can continue to draw down troops in the months ahead. But if Iraq insists on untenable conditions in these talks, the U.S. will have to hasten its departure.

Which is something no one wants, clearly. Then again, we were told we'd only stay as long as we were needed, which I guess is different from as long as we're wanted. Related: TomDispatch on America's new ziggurats.

Lots of people are writing about the "whitey" video, but either surprisingly or not all the mainstream media sources have to say is that it's the product of "rumors" on the "Internet." Fortunately, since they are on the Internet you can link to them and find out more about them. I have informations! Let me show you them!

1. Rumors of said video come from Larry Johnson, a unreliable partisan whose blog has become an anti-Obama clearinghouse. As far as I can tell he is the sole source of the rumors.

2. Johnson claims the video exists, but the information he's given that would in an ideal world indicate that it does in fact exist have been disproven. (Eric Zorn writes that the rumors are "unsubstantiated." I think we can safely go farther than that.) More colorfully you could say that the information has been cleaned, skinned, and fried.

3. Johnson's response has been to lash out at anyone who has destroyed anything that he's offered that looks remotely like proof of the video's existence.

4. People who would party hard if the video existed don't trust the rumors as far as they can throw them.

5. The video is currently one of the most rich inspirations for satire on the Internet.

6. If I was an Important Journalist I would ensure that I had a shut-in lackey like myself who keeps up with these things. From the "news" accounts you probably wouldn't guess that people on the Web--some irresponsible hippie amateur bloggers, some Real Journalists--have been eagerly trying to substantiate the video and have not only been unable to do so, they've actually done the opposite, tangibly disproven what has passed for actual proof.

7. In summary: there are rumors. The proffered substance of those rumors has been proven false. The aspects of those rumors which remain insubstantial have not subsequently been substantialed. Which means that the rumors themselves have not been fully disproven, but everything about the story save for a remaining handful of claims by one historically unreliable person (who keeps changing his story) has been disproven. And if we're taking a show of hands (wisdom of the crowds, etc), even the people who really want the video to exist have so far been unable to wish it into existence.

8. All of this seems relevant to me, but I am stale and pedantic and clearly having a tough Friday, having seen my R. Kelly prognostication blow up in my face, so I would try to spin this into some kind of grand point about Teh Future of Newspapers but I am going to go get some coffee and let it make the clock run faster. To paraphrase Robert Christgau, dystopia is hard and I will flog you with it if I have to.

It's worth noting that the Michelle Obama "whispers" that are a very big important story at the Trib and elsewhere amount, if you actually read the article, to dated criticism of one thing she said a couple months ago and totally bonkers Internet rumors like the "whitey" video, an impossibly thinly sourced project of professional angry man and former CIA op Larry Johnson, which has become the object of great hilarity for people who are tired of waiting for the tape and are starting to suspect that it doesn't exist.

I do wonder if anyone will mention that time Cindy McCain went all House M.D. on her own charity, or speculate how the story would be written if she was a black woman from the south side of Chicago. "It’s going to get worse, and it’s going to be everywhere, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it." Indeed.

Update: A handy observation from James Fallows about a different thing: "the article that 'uncovers' this startling fact is written in classic and depressing Beltway 'could be perceived as problematic' style."

I do not think that slang means what you think it means (via Salon).

Problem: Obama owes various debts to the local machine.

Problem: The CTA is totally screwed up.

Solution: President Obama throws some Keynesian dough at public transportation. Maybe "solution" is the wrong word, but "making lemons out of lemonade" might suffice.

Also: This Trib article from 1987 on the '77 CTA disaster is interesting.

That's not okay:

"Lyric Opera of Chicago has not endorsed the proposed new site for the Children's Museum, and did not authorize inclusion in the advertisement which appeared Sunday in the Chicago Tribune."

Via Steve Rhodes, who has been all over the Children's Museum astroturf campaign.

Hyde Park's isolation was by design. At its boundaries, the university bought and leveled city blocks that could serve as a buffer, or moat, from the surrounding South Side as it filled with impoverished blacks. The isolation brings a whiff of unreality to the neighborhood. The place seems unrooted. It's neither one thing nor the other. Hyde Park lacks the freewheeling energy of a college town, and it lacks the surprises and variety of a healthy city neighborhood. Strolling the quiet streets on a morning in May you'll admire the lilacs spilling over the low stone fences, the mansions with the squares of lawn marching to the edge of the boulevards, the funky, vine-covered apartment buildings shaded by overarching oak and poplar. Only after a day or so do you notice what's not here. There are no movie theaters, for example, and not much commerce generally. There's nowhere to buy a pair of pants or shoes.

As someone who's spent four of my seven Chicago years in Hyde Park, I can legitimately (and surprisingly) recommend this essay from the Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson as a thumbnail portrait of the neighborhood. If you don't know that much about the history of urban renewal in Hyde Park, pay attention.

Also, kind of amazing to see a conservative magazine getting to the heart of why the Rezko thing, as it stands, just isn't that big a deal. (via Andrew Patner, who's quoted in the article)

Drop whatever you're doing and read this essay on how Chicago's civic government is a model for 21st century politics. It does for unmitigated gall what Barry Bonds did for home-run hitting, with about as much class and honesty, but it actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

And that's when it hit me--of course Daley's Chicago is a model for America in the 21st century. It's expensive, it doesn't work very well, it's been designed so it's virtually impossible to fix without costly technical help, and yet it's really popular.**

Chicago is the perfect product.

---

* Commenter petronius: "Chicago (and Illinois) is not 'post-partisan', it is omnicriminal."

**I was going to say it's like an iPod, which is pretty and seemingly very simple until it breaks, and then you take it to the Genius Bar and they ask you for an ungodly sum of money, only unlike an iPod it isn't secretly easy to fix, by which I mean you can't open it with a small flathead screwdriver and reseat the loose hard drive connector, metaphorically speaking.

First, two things, just so you know where I'm coming from.

A) I don't mean to brag, but I do think I have an above-average grasp of the English language, particularly in regards to journalism, media generally, and politics, and am attuned to nuance.

B) I do support Obama over Clinton, personally. And I think the latter has said some things in defense of her continued candidacy that are, at best, an insult to our intelligence. It doesn't really bother me that she seems to want to go all the way to the convention, but I wish she'd stop making dumb arguments in her own defense. Hell, I don't even mind wrong arguments, I just hate the dumb ones. And the dumb and morally offensive ones I would hope would have already convinced everyone to pack up the tents.

Having said that, the total and complete freakout over her RFK reference is a total mystery to me. Five out of the eight diaries at DailyKos right now are about it; Keith Olbermann has a Special Comment; this post rounds up comments from the leading lights in the liberal blogosphere about this being the final straw; the MSM is latching on with headlines like Hillary Clinton Raises the Specter of the Unspeakable; etc. I realize that the Clinton campaign has recently turned into a bullshit factory and after the Zimbabwe comparison I lost all sympathy, but I think the coalescing conventional wisdom on this latest statement is wrong.

Here's what she said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

She was talking about how primary campaigns used to be longer. People remember significant things more than insignificant ones, and presumably the two most handy examples floating around in her head were her husband in '92 (significant for obvious reasons) and Kennedy in '68 (ditto).

Now, it so happens that--again--her reasoning is flawed (also). I'm not sure what else is wrong with it, though. But I'd be glad to hear arguments:

"The tongue slips, of course, but is she really arguing that she shouldn't drop out because Obama might get shot?"

No.

"New HRC campaign rationale -- Obama might get shot and killed before formally securing the nomination, so she may as well stay in the race!"

Ibid.

"You only have to spend a few minutes talking with African-Americans about this campaign to discover that the fear that Obama could be assassinated is very much on their minds. It is in everyone's subconscious, especially Michelle Obama's. To refer to the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the context of reasons to stay in this interminable race against Barack Obama is therefore catastrophically inappropriate."

Wait, but Bobby Kennedy was white. What if Hillary was coming down to the wire with John Edwards and she'd said that? Edwards kind of looks like Bobby Kennedy--so would it be worse?

"The fear of a president or a presidential candidate being shot or assassinated is horrifying precisely because recent history teaches us that it can happen [just read that whole sentence; no one cares about prose anymore; please turn out the lights when you leave--Mgmt]. We don't need anybody to remind us, and we certainly don't need anybody to remind whatever suggestible wackos might be lurking in the shadows."

So we should definitely write lots and lots about one comment to the Argus Bugle-Whatever editorial board so we can keep talking how no one should talk about it.  But aren't you... isn't... your powers are too strong for me....

I've said it before and I'll say it again--language is going the way of keywords and tag clouds. What used to look like

"Robert Kennedy was still campaigning in California in 1968 when he was assassinated"

now becomes something like

"Robert Kennedy Assassination 1968 California was still when he campaigning."

That's not a world I want to live in, even though I'm a Web editor and would have a clear evolutionary advantage.

PS: Have a nice Memorial Day weekend. Like I said last year, read this. Also, Robert Lowell. (h/t ptb)

Just because the Red Menace is now just a sometimes catchy ("July July"), sometimes grating ("Song for Myla Goldberg") band from Portland doesn't mean we have to stop being afraid of it:

"Hugh also notes that The Decemberists typically open their shows with what I'm sure is a stirring rendition of the Soviet national anthem. No word on whether they opened the Obama rally with such a performance, but I'm certain our trusted media would have reported it if they did."

Thers at Whiskey Fire notes: "Quick, someone e-mail Michael Goldfarb a detailed explanation of how Obama only connects with African-American voters because he won the endorsement of Death Cab for Cutie. Bet you a nickel he'd go for it." I am excited about the integration of establishment indie culture into mainstream political narratives just because of the silliness that will result. Somehow we skipped politicians having to answer for Husker Du or something. Wasn't that what Rock the Vote was for?

PS: I go back and forth on Death Cab, but "Company Calls" is pretty undeniable. Maybe because it's the closest they get to sounding like Heatmiser? Anyway, here's Ben Gibbard covering the Mountain Goats' magisterial "Palmcorder Yajna" (real version here). It's weird.

Worth noting: Songza, from (or a side project of?) the local software company Humanized, is awesome.

"Mell said he first realized he was in violation of the re-registration requirement about a year ago. When he tried to re-register his guns belatedly, the Chicago Police Department's Gun Registration Section refused to bend the rules. Mell appealed that ruling to the city's Department of Administrative Hearings but decided to re-write the law instead." Via The Agitator.

PS I think Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke's thumbnail sketch of Ald. Mell is relevant here. 

"Unless someone calls for a quorum, the assumption is that the quorum is present."

--Ald. Toni Preckwinkle 

I wonder if the people who called out Obama for having connections to incompetent ex-terrorist Bill Ayers and angry Jeremiah Wright--I'm looking at John Kass and Neil "Dissent is Treason"* Steinberg in particular--will be all over the news that John McCain's chief political strategist, Charlie Black, has a long history of lobbying for terrorists and dictators? Sure, Obama's main man David Axelrod works for Daley, but Daley is an awfully mild tyrant compared to Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko, and others on Black's bloody client list. I'd much rather Daley stick a museum in Grant Park than, like, 80,000 land mines.

This seems like it would interfere with Steinberg's appraisal of McCain as "a genuine war hero with the courage of his convictions. . . . the one man on the Republican bench who stands a chance of becoming a president we could all be proud of." Now, most of the people I am proud of would run screaming from a person who openly defended Angolan terrorist Jonas Savimbi, mostly because he was paid handsomely to. McCain is throwing lobbyists under the Straight Talk Express left and right--including the one he chose to run the Republican convention this fall, after it came out that he'd lobbied for the Burmese dictatorship that's been denying aid to victims of the cyclone--but Black is still safe.

Now, if I was the kind of person to worry about who a politician associates with, I'd be extra-special concerned about a politician who hired, as his most important employee, a hack who took blood money to say nice things about dictators and terrorists so that our elected officials would give our money to them.

Perhaps Kass and Steinberg will read about Charlie Black and be terribly, terribly horrified at McCain's lack of judgment or morals or sense and sit silently at their desks fretting about what his association with--I mean, well-compensated and ongoing employment of--Charlie Black says about McCain.

Or, you know, they'll dismiss it as wimpy liberal liberaling or something. Stranger things have happened. I long ago locked my optimism about anything political away in a tiny box so it wouldn't spoil, and I only bring it out for family and close friends. More on Black here, here, here, and here.

Also worth noting that, more recently, Black's outfit lobbied for Ahmed Chalabi and ran an Iraq war good-news propaganda mill for the Pentagon, assigned to plant stories in the Iraqi press about how swell things were going in the three-way civil war circa 2005. Need "straight talk"? Buy it from Charlie Black.

* For the record, I'm still stunned that the Sun-Times let Steinberg basically call Jeremiah Wright a traitor ("near-treasonous" is a sorry cop-out). Treason is an actual crime defined by actual laws and punishable by actual death, and it's one of the worst charges you can possibly level at a person. And to do so because someone made a public, and not unusually radical, foreign policy critique is just bizarre. If everyone who said overwrought shit about our country and how it sucks was a traitor, most of us would be in jail.

Treason was defined more narrowly in America than in England because we wanted people to be able to say stuff like that without feeling obliged to behead them. Why does Neil Steinberg hate America?

"Anybody who we hire, [critics] seem to have a problem with."

--Larry Mullins, spokesman for Todd Stroger

On one hand, I usually admire people who employ ex-cons, because the rehabilitation of former prisoners is a pretty serious societal issue. On the other, I dunno if Todd Stroger is the man to do it. 

It doesn't to me.

--Eric Zorn

But if not quite a dead horse, the argument against defiling a sacred vista is too lame to make it around the track against the opposition of not only the mayor and the Children’s Museum’s other powerful allies but even Lois Wille, Grant Park’s biographer and the Tribune’s former editorial boss. What ultimately undoes the museum’s claim on Grant Park is its failure to look anywhere else, and Bruce Dold, who now holds Wille’s old job, decided early on that the Tribune would have to propose alternatives.

--Michael Miner

Sometimes I think the Children's Museum fracas has less to do with kids or Grant Park or architecture or free and clear etc. and has a lot to do with the powers that almost are but aren't having lost a lot of pissing matches to the powers that be. And I'm okay with that. There are obviously bigger problems, but you might as well throw down against a weak hand for a small victory.

--me

I think the key here is what Zorn mentions offhandedly--"here, somehow" (emphasis mine). Now, it doesn't seem to make any sense that a "lame horse" defense of a not-beloved part of Grant Park vs. the heretofore unremarkable Chicago Children's Museum (I'd never heard anyone say anything about it until this mess) would hold any promise as a wrench in the gears of the Daley Quality of Life Tyranny. Even the specious concert-promoter bill is a bigger and more important fight. This is, on the surface, kind of dumb on both sides.

And that's why it's so important. That's the "somehow." Unlike foie gras, unlike concert promotion, and don't even get me started on TIFs, all the supposed merits on each side of the argument are so transparent that the only tangible goal, for the Machine and its discontents, is the dark beating heart of the city: Clout.

And we, the discontents, we have charts.

PS:

The losers prolong their agony as much as possible, because they're convinced the alternative is worse. Meanwhile the winners, who might earlier have accepted a compromise peace, become so maddened by the refusal of their enemies to stop fighting that they see no reason to settle for anything less than absolute victory.

--Lee Sandlin, "Losing the War"  

I vote for the Trib's Doctors Hospital suggestion. It's pretty, it's next to a park and the MSI, it's near underserved neighborhoods and an institution of higher education, and the damn thing has been boarded up since I moved here.

Just, wow.

Chicago Children's Museum officials were in the Woodlawn neighborhood Thursday night pitching their $100 million plan to relocate the facility to Grant Park to a lively group of about 200 children from after-school programs.

As the children munched on pretzels and drank from juice boxes at the Harris Park Field House, Jim Law, the museum's vice president of planning and external affairs, said the project was good for families.

[snip]

At the end of the meeting, the children were told to fill out a card urging aldermen to "support this museum for children from our neighborhood."

Steve Rhodes asks: "Did anyone ask why the museum didn't consider locating in Woodlawn then?" Actually, Woodlawn could use it. Woodlawn could use something besides townhouses, apartment buildings, and vacant lots. But it's cool, because the Olympics will definitely be in Washington Park in 2016.

Chicago: The City That Wouldn't Grow Up.

On Stroger's list: F. Daniel Cantrell, who in the late 1980s was president of the Mile Square Health Center on the West Side, which failed to pay more than $1 million in payroll taxes and went bankrupt.

[snip]

[Sister Sheila Lyne, president and CEO of Mercy Hospital & Medical Center] was instrumental in reviving the Mile Square Health Center after Cantrell's crew drove it to bankruptcy. She ran Chicago's Health Department in the 1990s, and ran it very well. But not well enough for Todd Stroger.

More where that came from. A good read.

Kind of off-topic, but since I came up with a plan to save journalism and America I thought I should share it: fire all the political writers and replace them with advice columnists. Let me explain.

As a case study, let's take Chicago native Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate. He was in the news awhile back because he wrote a book called The Bush Tragedy. In his essay "The Bush Who Got Away," he explains that Bush wasn't the moderate he sometimes said he would be, and that sucks. I guess we all learned something?

Not, it would seem, Weisberg. In 2006, when one would assume his thesis was becoming clear, he wrote "McCain's not really a conservative," which is all about how McCain is the "Teddy Roosevelt progressive" he says he is sometimes, and when he says he's not, he's not lying exactly, he's:

"a politician in genuine flux"; "uncharacteristically calculating"; "temporarily turned into a performing elephant"; "choosing his battles far more selectively"; "pandering to the Republican base in a way that is politically shrewd"; "Discount his repositioning a bit"; "smoke signals"; "if you watch closely, you still catch plenty of signals"; "the old new McCain isn't dead, just hiding out"; " "lapses"; "a stratagem"; "a mandatory position he no longer believes in, if he ever really did"; "a conservative before he was a liberal before he became a conservative again"; "searching phase";

and my favorite, written without apparent irony: "Despite his professions of fidelity, the pro-life lobby knows better than to trust him." Oh, you think so, doctor? (All of those are phrases from one short essay.)

In other words, he's not lying to you, he's lying to them. Honest, baby. I'm totally different from the last guy who burned you, come back, baby, I swear.

I don't think I have to tell you that Ask Amy wouldn't stand for that B.S. Or Dan Savage, or Cary Tennis, or Ann Landers. They have various phrases ready for that scenario: "he's just not that into you," "DTMFA," etc.

So let's do it: think-tank dudes out, advice columnists in, for a funnier, more profane, more engaging, and more rational editorial section. Boredom? You'll be begging for the primaries to continue.

I'm only partway into Roland Martin's long appearance on the Tom Joyner show this morning, but so far it's been near unanimous, among the hosts and callers, that Jeremiah Wright needs to go away for awhile and enjoy his retirement (Martin sums up his opinion here). As far as cold strategy, I'm not sure I agree--Rev. Wright's inflamatory appearance at the National Press Club (video) gives Obama a pure out to repudiate him, which might help in the long term. Might--just speculating here.

Anyway--Eugene Robinson thinks Rev. Wright's ego is running away with him, and that his attempt to represent the black church is presumptuous. Pam Spaulding called his "playing the dozens" at the NPC "a public unraveling of the id." Bob Herbert called it "a narcissist's dream."

I'm trying to figure out how all this fits into the "established liberal media script."  

That's all strategy, though; you have to look far and wide to find anyone addressing Rev. Wright's infamous sermons and speeches on their merits. For that, you can look to James Forbes Jr. (Senior Minister Emeritus at New York's Riverside Church) and Gustav Niebuhr (grand-nephew of Reinhold). They're good correctives to, say, Neil Steinberg, who totally misrepresents Rev. Wright's "chickens coming home to roost" comments--Wright never said that 9/11 was divine retribution. You can listen to it here; Wright was talking geopolitics, as inspired by a former ambassador.

Whatever--Steinberg has a shtick just as strong as Wright's and similar reasons to stick to it, although I have to admit that calling his words "near-treason" is pretty appalling even by Steinberg standards. Right or wrong--and there are Christian arguments for and against the "war on terror"--I fail to see the treason, or even the lack of patriotism. Some of us patriots are right sick of the idiocy and immorality done in the name of an uncritical belief in national greatness and innocence.

Wright does need to be called out on his suggestions that HIV was created by the government (background here), and Niebuhr and Forbes ignore that, to their discredit. Wright's critics bring it up, but mostly in passing, which is unfortunate--he's way, way wrong in extremely damaging ways. It's not just that it's untrue; it's not just that the origins of HIV are well-known. It's that discovering the origins of the disease, and its spread, has been one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of science. People have spent their lives tracing its history (which is fascinating), and Wright's blithe rumor-mongering denigrates their service to humanity, not to mention science generally, which is in a bad way in this country. That's offensive. That's a terrible disservice to America, and it needs to be echoed.

Update: More on Rev. Wright's bad science. I wouldn't say he's defending "underclass behavior" in his NAACP speech, whatever that means, but his ideas on "miseducation" (the whole speech is here) are weird and regressive; that seems to have mostly gone under the radar.

The most salient thing I've read about the Obama/arugula B.S.:

"In other words, purchasing goods in a progressive manner is itself elitist, whereas purchasing goods in a less sustainable manner that suits enormous corporations makes you a populist. . . . I don't know exactly when underdogs, small business people, alternative lifestyles and cultural minorities became the elites, but it seems to be a permanent fixture of conservative ideology in the post-civil rights era. Comparisons like 'arugula track vs. beer track' is one manifestation of that ideology."

In some alternate universe, being a "Niebuhr-reading ESPN watcher" wouldn't make you a freak, but in the bright future of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications, your choice of consumer goods is a cross you have to bear. Anyway, Obama needs to fight back: it ain't arugula, it's rocket!

Why I could never go into politics, part eleventy-million:

In March, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) went to great lengths not to "disown" his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after fiery videotaped comments from sermons surfaced.

No, "great lengths" would have been if Obama had brought Wright up on stage and said, "Yeah, God damn America, what are you going to do about it." He gave a good speech and kind of split the difference, which is fine. He's also been distancing himself from Wright, which is arguably less fine.

In return, an unapologetic Wright launched a speaking tour, ending Monday, drawing outsized coverage on the hot-button issues of God and race days before crucial votes in Indiana and North Carolina, threatening Obama's presidential bid.

Threatening what? Unless Wright is detaining pro-Obama superdelegates, he's not threatening anything right now. The numbers are still very much in Obama's favor, and I haven't seen any real evidence, besides media fretting, that Wright hurt Obama in the primaries. He did slightly better than/about as well as expected in Pennsylvania, depending on the time frame. Obama will probably lose Indiana and win North Carolina.

Some in the Obama camp were stunned that Wright did not realize the potential harm he could do to Obama's candidacy by reviving stories about Obama's relationship with his pastor.

The big reason I don't think I could go into politics is that I don't think I could sustain the kind of naivete required to believe that a veteran, temperamental preacher--with tons of higher education and years of experience at one of the largest churches in Chicago behind him--wouldn't "realize" what he's doing, or not do it. He's a preacher. That's what he does.

Superchunk for Obama. Now, if Portastatic went for Hillary, that would be an interesting artistic statement.