How McCain is blowing it
John McCain is losing for three reasons: his war on the media, his choice of Sarah Palin and his vile lies about Barack Obama

If Barack Obama wins the presidential election, at least part of the reason will be that John McCain failed to recognise a landmark cultural shift.

The one-time bipartisan moderate cast his lot with the Republican party’s hard right just as it was losing influence. Rather than battling for independents and conservative Democrats, McCain chose instead to excite the passions of his party’s narrowest constituency. In so doing, he ended up running not just against Obama, but against his own history of bipartisan outreach.

I do not intend to write McCain’s political obituary. Though Obama leads in many polls by a substantial margin today, the election is still nearly two weeks away. A lot could happen between now and then.

But assuming McCain really does go on to lose, there are three major blunders he made that arise from his attempt to connect with the right’s sense of resentment and us-against-them populism: his war against the news media, with whom he had long been so friendly that he once jokingly called them “my base”; his inexplicable choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate and his deeply personal attacks against Barack Obama.

Let me take them one at a time.

1. McCain and the media. In 2000 McCain nearly upset George Bush’s march to the nomination by inviting reporters aboard the Straight Talk Express and charming them with anecdotes and access. In 2008 he didn’t even give the press a chance, trashing it on the assumption that it would be in the tank for Obama - and possibly in the hopes that he might be able to tap into the anti-media anger of Hillary Clinton supporters.

Perhaps the paradigmatic moment was McCain’s bizarre August interview with Time magazine, in which he answered standard-issue questions with undisguised hostility and contempt. No doubt this played well with the right, which has long detested what it sees as an elite liberal media. What McCain seems to have missed is that even if reporters, on the whole, favoured Obama, they still liked him, too. By cutting them off, McCain essentially gave them permission to dump on him at will. And many have.

2. The Palin pick. The Alaska governor is a talented political performer, and McCain’s choice worked for about two weeks. But among her numerous deficits as a general-election candidate is the fact that she may be the most extreme religious candidate since William Jennings Bryan.

At a time when the economy is melting down, and when McCain could have been putting, say, Mitt Romney front and centre as an experienced businessman and financial manager, we were learning that Palin had once prayed that God would build a natural-gas pipeline - and had stood by while the minister of her former church spoke of God’s special plans for Alaska in a post-Apocalypse world.

You think this is what the folks wielding those people metres on CNN are looking for? Think again.

3. Getting personal. Attacks on an opponent’s policies are fine. Even attacks that stretch the truth are hardly cause for consternation. But McCain has gone after Obama in the most vile terms imaginable.

There are many examples from which to choose. I’ll pick two.

The first was McCain’s claim, earlier in the campaign, that Obama would rather “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign”. By characterising Obama as deeply unpatriotic, and perhaps even treasonous, McCain played directly into unstated fears about a black candidate with a Muslim-sounding name.

The second was a McCain ad about Obama’s support as an Illinois legislator for a sex-education bill that would have taught kindergarteners how to ward off predators. Except that’s not what the ad said. Instead, it claimed that the bill would have mandated “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarten pupils - as sleazy a lie as has ever appeared in a major-party candidate’s advertisements.

Trouble is, the truism that negative campaigning works didn’t seem to hold this time. It may have energised the sorts of people who turn out at Palin rallies, but it appeared to turn off the undecided moderates who will actually choose the next president.

What happened to McCain would be sad if he hadn’t done it to himself. You’ll sometimes hear an old defender of his try to claim that McCain is better than his campaign. Nonsense. There is no such thing as a candidate who is better than his campaign.

It could be that victory was never a realistic possibility for McCain following eight years of an unpopular Republican president and an economic crisis. But if he couldn’t come out of this with the presidency, he could have at least preserved his reputation.

Barring a truly astonishing comeback, McCain is likely to emerge with neither.

DAN KENNEDY

Obama and the Palin Effect, by Deepak Chopra

 
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that.  This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week.  On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing.  Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City.  By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure.  Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride.  In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.”  For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them.  He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind.  (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black.  The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.)  I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message.  In her acceptance speech, Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.  Look at what she stands for:

 
    * Small town values - a nostalgic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.

    * Ignorance of world affairs - a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.

    * Family values - a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice.  Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be needed.

    * Rigid stands on guns and abortion - a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

    * Patriotism - the usual fallback in a failed war.

    * “Reform” - an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology.

 
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat.  The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change?  Everything’s OK as it is.”  The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time.  She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress.  The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good.  The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness Obama’s call for higher ideals in politics can’t be seen in a vacuum.  The shadow is real; it was bound to respond.  Not just conservatives possess a shadow - we all do.  So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia.  Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted?  No one can predict.  The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest.  It would be a shame to elect another Reagan whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in.  We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

Subject: This is America. We don’t jail journalists here.

Dear Friend,

Jailing journalists is unacceptable in a democracy. But that’s exactly what is happening at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Award winning journalist and host of “Democracy Now” Amy Goodman was arrested by St. Paul police while covering a protest outside the Republican National Convention. Though clearly identified as press, Goodman was charged with “obstruction of a legal process and interference with a ‘peace officer.’” Two of her producers were arrested for “suspicion of felony riot.”

To tell you that this arrest was brutal and upsetting simply doesn’t do it justice. Watch this video to see for yourself. Then take action.

I just e-mailed the presidents of CNN and NBC News (which oversees MSNBC) to demand that their networks cover this important story. I hope you will too.

Please have a look and take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/dont_arrest_journalists/?r_by=-366565-z5vO5zx&rc=paste

Thanks!

- George W. Bush

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned.”

Our - This is my husband’s fault.

Beautiful daughter - We’re not judging her and by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, she’s very pretty.

Came to us with news - At first we were afraid she was going to tell us she was going to art school.

Would make her grow up faster - We’re choosing not to think about the sin part or how this will severely limit our daughter’s choices in life.

Planned - I have to side with the Catholics on this — parenthood can’t be planned.

Sarah Palin is against sex education for teenagers.

So is John McCain, who has repeatedly voted against programs to teach teens about contraceptives.

When I was twelve, I spent the first of three pleasant, albeit undistinguished summers at a camp for boys in Maine, playing basketball and tennis, water skiing, target and skeet shooting, navigating a canoe and learning how to tread water for a really long time. It was 1968. I was giving the idea of sleep away camp one more shot after four weeks at a place I remember mostly for its forced conviviality, starchy food and mean-spirited counselors.

This time, despite some homesickness, I enjoyed myself. It would have been hard not to. I was at an age where my parents and I were driving each other crazy. And my suburban hometown was deader than dead. Simply having access to a dozen other guys’ record collections would have been enough, but I enjoyed my bunkmates, being outdoors and what seemed like frequent enough socials and trips into town.

In what would have been my fourth summer, I went to summer school to study creative writing, falling out of touch with my mates (how significant and shameful it seemed then to be writing poetry while my buddies honed their athletic skills and moved into positions of leadership). When I think about it, I’m amazed I ever lived communally, given my need for solitude.

Recently, Nick Lewin, a former camper sent me a DVD about the life and times of the director, Joel Bloom, a square-looking, plucky old guy (he might have been forty when I met him) who showed up in our living room one winter with a low-key sales pitch and a slide show. I remember Joel assuring my parents that he selected counselors carefully and telling me that the boys my age were nice, we could choose our own activities and listen to any kind of music we wanted. To my surprise, all of this was true. And Joel was the benign dictator – with a supernatural knowledge of everything that happened at camp, sanctioned and illicit, as well as our thoughts and activities.

I’d pretty much forgotten all about this by the time the DVD came and it was fun watching it. There were guys running and goofing around vaguely familiar sights: the old bunkhouses on stilts with dark screen windows, choppy lake water and clunky, old boating equipment, athletic fields and halls where countless games were won and lost. At the heart of it all was Joel, a passionate and accomplished man with a PhD who introduced the idea of elective activities and racial diversity into camping back when neither was even remotely in vogue. I had my distance until the end of the last event of color war – the softball game – when the winning team ran into the lake, at which point I welled up and then lost it.

At first, this baffled me. I was, at best, a reluctant color warrior. I liked sports for a challenge and the release of endorphins, but preferred competition that was solo or private, like long distance running and standardized tests. To cover my fears, I whined to whoever would listen that color war was at best, a brutish contrivance, pitting us against one another, forcing us to perform against a standard few could achieve, and at worst, a simulation of war, which weighed heavy on everyone’s minds. But once it began and I was assigned to a team, I got caught up in the excitement.

The DVD brought back other memories: chilly August nights around a giant campfire, the gray-streaked face of my counselor, Larry something from the Bronx, screaming and exhorting us to do our best; a complex, half-day long game of capture the flag; chanting in the dining hall, waiting for the scores to be read; standing in the shower area, smearing Ben Gay on our aching muscles.

I liked belonging to a tribe that was glad to have me, demanding only that I be the best version of myself. It was a relief not to have parents making arbitrary demands, teachers to suck up to, and mindless tasks that didn’t seem to count toward anything. Every activity was a chance to test our mettle, to see how good we were, to express ourselves aggressively without remorse, or anybody on the sidelines, worrying we might offend, insult, injure, embarrass, implicate or otherwise damage ourselves or each other. During color war, life was simple and engaging.

It ended in the afternoon of the third day, all of us exhausted, with the final softball game, the plunge into the lake, celebrations and a banquet. I remember being on the winning team once and the losing team twice, though that seems not to have mattered much at the time. Before I could be nostalgic, I’d consigned color war and camp in general to that category of cheesy things I did as a kid that I could be cynical about, which is where these memories remained until I found myself at a computer screen, wincing and then sobbing at the sight of the red team jumping in the lake with their clothes on.

So why this reaction?

I know that back then, my parents, bless them both, loved me too hard to let me try things and fail. And school engaged me from the neck up, but mostly for the purpose of making a productive person. Even my bar mitzvah, which was supposed to be my initiation into manhood, was an empty, dispiriting affair. No rabbi whispered anything in my ear that would make the transition to adulthood any easier. No wise uncle came over and gave me advice. When it was over, I was the same bewildered boy I’d been before, perhaps just a little angrier.

In my thirties, married with kids, feeling like I’d only half-accomplished what I’d needed to be an adult, I returned to camp — first, an Outward Bound and then several men’s retreats. Like color war, there were trials, community tasks that required mastery and commitment, ritual sharing, and some difficult task I had to achieve, all of which I embraced, throwing myself in the same way I had many years before. Only this time, the activities seemed loaded with significance.

A couple days after watching the DVD, I had another memory, enhanced by a friend’s recollection years later. Scott Herrin and I were doubles tennis partners in a long match, down by at least one set and about to lose the next. It was late and the small crowd that had gathered to watch seemed ready to pack it in. I don’t remember us saying much, but at a certain point, standing on the brink of certain defeat, we decided to throw caution to the wind and play as hard as we could. In front of a larger and larger crowd, we came back to win the set and then the match, not paying all that much attention to our opponents, only basking in the glow of our accomplishment, our physical and mental exhaustion, and that sweet feeling of victory. It occurs to me now that color war and my camp experience might have actually been the beginning of something really important.

“Most Americans, whatever our adversities, historically have been luckier than many others, and the luckiest of us include the most fervent supporters of the belief that success or failure depends wholly on the individual.” James McConkey, What Kind of Father am I

This of course is the bedrock of Rush Limbaugh style conservatism, a movement which holds Ronald Reagan, one of the luckiest of muddy-minded men who parlayed a truly mediocre film career imitating John Wayne, into the presidency, allowing the luckless and the callow to line up behind him, while proclaiming, in policy and words, Americans are the greatest people in the world and therefore our every yearning and striving is an urge toward Olympian greatness to which by God we are entitled.

Amidst this blizzard of nostalgia, I’m thinking, how sad for Tim Russert’s friends and especially, his family, but don’t we as a society have more important things to mourn than a man who entertained us by interviewing and moderating discussions among politicians?

Sure, he was likable and intelligent, though perhaps more in comparison to competitors like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Wolf Blitzer, Barbara Walters and Larry King than by any other measure. And he was a devoted son and an all around good guy, who, as far as we know, probably didn’t hit on his interns or parade around his Beltway apartment in women’s clothing, but is it appropriate to eulogize him as if he was a public servant, dedicated to something other than his show’s ratings and his own success?

How strange with all that’s going on in the world that’s tragic for “our” media to devote so much time and energy to remembering a guy who asked difficult questions, but then let whatever answer stand, no matter how stupid or lame, ignoring the significance of the actual issue raised. So what that even after he made it in Washington, D.C., he never forgot his beloved Buffalo Bills or that he got to work at 6AM to rehearse his questions along with what he expected his guest’s answers would be?

Of course it’s tragic when someone dies suddenly at 58, leaving a wife, a son and many friends,
but unlike Bill Moyers or Jon Stewart, I think of Tim Russert as another one of those talking heads who made it easier for TV viewers to ignore real issues by asking questions with enough bite to create tension and let people pretend they were thinking, then quickly backing off, so as not to scare off anyone.

Two stories ran early this morning. At Yahoo posted an AP report that the IEI (Int’l Energy Association) concluded it would take 45 trillion dollars (or more than 3 times the size of the U.S. economy) to avert a climate crises by 2050.

This report virtually disappeared in favor of news that the U.S. Senate, locked in filibuster, failed to pass legislation (48 to 36, less 6 Senators who were absent but said they’d have voted for it (including Senators McCain and Obama)), mandating the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Here’s the story:

Study: $45 trillion needed to combat warming

By JOSEPH COLEMAN, Associated Press WriterFri Jun 6, 6:15 AM ET

The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday.

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a “energy revolution” that would greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

“Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale,” IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.

Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.

The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.

The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.

Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, the report said.

That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.

The second scenario also calls for an accelerated ramping up of development of so-called “carbon capture and storage” technology allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them underground.

The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.

In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector.

Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005 demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials said.

“This development is clearly not sustainable,” said Dolf Gielen, an IEA energy analyst and leader for the project.

Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment — about $27 trillion — would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy technologies developed by governments and the private sector.

“If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector,” Gielen said.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

“The twentieth century opened on a world that was home to little more than a billion people and closed on a world of 6 billion, and every one of those 6 billion is using on average four times as much energy as their forefathers did 100 years before. This helps account for the fact that the burning of fossil fuels has increased sixteenfold over that period.” (J.S. Dukes, “Burning Buried Sunshine: Human Consumption of Ancient Solar Energy,” Climate Change 61 (2003): 31-44

“In 1961…there were just 3 billion people and they were using only half the total resources that our global ecosystem could sustainably provide. A short twenty-five years later, in 1986… our population topped 5 billion, and such was our collective thirst for resources that we were using all of Earth’s sustainable production.

In effect, 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth’s carrying capacity, and ever since we have been running the environmental of a deficit budget, which is sustained only by plundering our capital base…” (from the World Wide Fund for nature, now the WWF, Living Planet Report 2004, October 9, 2004)

“100 tons of ancient plant life is required to create one gallon of gasoline.”

“422 years worth of blazing light from a Carboniferous sun – and we have burned it in a single year.”

“By 2050, the population is expected to level out at 9 billion, the burden of human existence will be such that we will be using – if they can still be found – nearly two planets’ worth of resources.”

- The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery, Grove Press, 2005.