Hi all from the Justy side:
I cannot let Edwards go un-noticed, especially since Obama has disappointed more than he has rewarded his supporters for their confidence in him. But I don't want to criticize Obama at this moment, and prefer for everyone to read a speech given yesterday (October 29) by Edwards. I'm including it in its entirety and really hope people read it and think about it. I was knocked out.
We can discuss Obama later, and I know Hank has some things to say about Obama and the environment - not to mention his recent pro-nafta votes.
Thanks for reading,
Justy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remarks by Senator John Edwards
St. Anselm's College, Manchester, New Hamphshire
October 29, 2007
Many of you know that I am the son of a mill worker -- that I rose from modest means and have been blessed in so many ways in life. Elizabeth and I have so much to be grateful for.
And all of you know about some of the challenges we have faced in my family. But there came a time, a few months ago, when Elizabeth and I had to decide, in the quiet of a hospital room, after many hours of tests and getting pretty bad news -- what we were going to do with our lives.
And we made our decision. That we were not going to go quietly into the night -- that we were going to stand and fight for what we believe in.
As Elizabeth and I have campaigned across America, I've come to a better understanding of what that decision really meant -- and why we made it.
Earlier this year, I spoke at Riverside Church in New York, where, forty years ago, Martin Luther King gave a historic speech. I talked about that speech then, and I want to talk about it today. Dr. King was tormented by the way he had kept silent for two years about the Vietnam War.
He was told that if he spoke out he would hurt the civil rights movement and all that he had worked for -- but he could not take it any more -- instead of decrying the silence of others -- he spoke the truth about himself.
"Over the past two years" he said, "I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silence and speak from the burning of my own heart."
I am not holier than thou. I am not perfect by any means. But there are events in life that you learn from, and which remind you what this is really all about. Maybe I have been freed from the system and the fear that holds back politicians because I have learned there are much more important things in life than winning elections at the cost of selling your soul.
Especially right now, when our country requires so much more of us, and needs to hear the truth from its leaders.
And, although I have spent my entire life taking on the big powerful interests and winning -- which is why I have never taken a dime from Washington lobbyists or political action committees -- I too have been guilty of my own silence -- but no more.
It's time to tell the truth. And the truth is the system in Washington is corrupt. It is rigged by the powerful special interests to benefit they very few at the expense of the many. And as a result, the American people have lost faith in our broken system in Washington, and believe it no longer works for ordinary Americans. They're right.
As I look across the political landscape of both parties today -- what I see are politicians too afraid to tell the truth -- good people caught in a bad system that overwhelms their good intentions and requires them to chase millions of dollars in campaign contributions in order to perpetuate their careers and continue their climb to higher office.
This presidential campaign is a perfect example of how our politics is awash with money. I have raised more money up to this point than any Democratic candidate raised last time in the presidential campaign -- $30 million. And, I did it without taking a dime from any Washington lobbyist or any special interest PAC.
I saw the chase for campaign money at any cost by the frontrunner in this race -- and I did not join it -- because the cost to our nation and our children is not worth the hollow victory of any candidate. Being called president while powerful interests really run things is not the same as being free to lead this nation as president of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. If protecting the current established structure in Washington is in your interest, then I am not your candidate. I ran for president four years ago -- yes, in part out of personal ambition -- but also with a deep desire to stand for working people like my father and mother -- who no matter how hard things were for our family, always worked even harder to make things better for us.
But the more Elizabeth and I campaigned this year, the more we talked to the American people, the more we met people just like my father, and hard working people like James Lowe. James is a decent and honest man who had to live for 50 years with no voice in the richest country in the world because he didn't have health care. The more people like him that I met, the more I realized something much bigger was stirring in the American people. And it has stirred in each of us for far too long.
Last month Ken Burns -- who made the great Civil War documentary -- launched his newest epic on World War II on PBS -- and what a story it tells.
At the cost of great suffering, blood and enormous sacrifice, within four years after Pearl Harbor it is incredible what this nation achieved. America built the arsenal of democracy worthy of our great history. We launched the greatest invasion armada in the history of warfare against Hitler's fortress Europe, and, with our allies, we freed a continent of suffering humanity.
At the same time on the other side of the globe we crossed 10,000 miles of ocean and liberated another hemisphere of humanity -- islands and nations freed from the grip of Japanese militarists. While at the same time succeeding in the greatest scientific endeavor ever undertaken -- the Manhattan project -- and topped it off with building the Pentagon, one of the largest buildings in the world in a little over a year.
It is incredible what America has accomplished. Because no matter what extraordinary challenges we have been faced with, we did exactly what America has always done in our history -- we rose to the challenge.
And, now, as I travel across America and listen to people, I hear real concern about what's going on. For the first time in our nation's history, people are worried that we're going to be the first generation of Americans not to pass on a better life to our children.
And it's not the fault of the American people. The American people have not changed. The American people are still the strong, courageous people they have always been. The problem is what our government has become. And, it is up to us to do something about it.
Because Washington may not see it, but we are facing a moral crisis as great as any that has ever challenged us. And, it is this test -- this moral test -- that I have come to understand is at the heart of this campaign.
Just look at what has happened in Iraq. What was the response of the American people to the challenge at hand? Our men and women in uniform have been heroes. They've done everything that's been asked of them and more. But what about our government? Four years after invading Iraq, we cannot even keep the lights on in Baghdad.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the American people were at their best. They donated their time and their money in record numbers. There was an outpouring of support. I took 700 college kids down to help -- young people who gave up their spring break. But what about our government? Three years after hurricane Katrina thousands of our fellow Americans, our brothers and sisters, are still housed in trailers waiting to go home.
There's no better example of the bravery and goodness of the American people than the response to the attacks of 9/11: firefighters and first responders risking and too often giving their lives to save others, charging up the stairs while everyone else was coming down; record bloodbank donations; and the list goes on. But what about our government? Six years after 9/11, at Ground Zero there sits only a black hole that tortures our conscience and scars our hearts.
In every instance we see an American people who are good, decent, compassionate and undeterred. And, American people who are better than the government that is supposed to serve and represent them.
And what has happened to the American "can do" spirit? I will tell you what has happened: all of this is the result of the bitter poisoned fruit of corruption and the bankruptcy of our political leadership.
It is not an accident that the government of the United States cannot function on behalf of its people, because it is no longer our people's government -- and we the people know it.
This corruption did not begin yesterday -- and it did not even begin with George Bush -- it has been building for decades -- until it now threatens literally the life of our democracy.
While the American people personally rose to the occasion with an enormous outpouring of support and donations to both the victims of Katrina and 9/11 -- we all saw our government's neglect. And we saw greed and incompetence at work. Out of more than 700 contracts valued at $500,000 or greater, at least half were given without full competition or, according to news sources, with vague or open ended terms, and many of these contracts went to companies with deep political connections such as a subsidiary of Haliburton, Bechtel Corp., and AshBritt Inc.
And in Iraq -- while our nation's brave sons and daughters put their lives on the line for our country -- we now have mercenaries under their own law while their bosses sit at home raking in millions.
We have squandered millions on building Olympic size swimming pools and buildings that have never been used. We have weapons and ammunition unaccounted for that may now be being used against our own soldiers. We literally have billions wasted or misspent -- while our troops and their families continue to sacrifice. And the politically connected lobby for more. What's their great sacrifice -- higher profits.
It goes on every minute of every day.
Corporate executives at United Airlines and US Airways receive millions in compensation for taking their companies into bankruptcy, while their employees are forced to take cuts in pay.
Companies like Wal-Mart lobby against inspecting containers entering our nation's ports, even though expert after expert agrees that the likeliest way for a dirty bomb to enter the United States is through a container, because they believe their profits are more important than our safety. What has become of America when America's largest company lobbies against protecting America?
Trade deals cost of millions of jobs. What do we get in return? Millions of dangerous Chinese toys in our children's cribs laden with lead. This is the price we are made to pay when trade agreements are decided based on how much they pad the profits for multinational corporations instead of what is best for America's workers or the safety of America's consumers.
We have even gotten to the point where our children's safety is potentially at risk because nearly half of the apple juice consumed by our children comes from apples grown in China. And Americans are kept in the dark because the corporate lobbyists have pushed back country of origin labeling laws again and again.
This is not the America I believe in.
The hubris of greed knows no bounds. Days after the homeland security bill passed, staffers from the homeland security department resigned and became homeland security consultants trying to cash in. And, where was the outrage? There was none, because that's how it works in Washington now. It is not a Republican revolving door or a Democratic revolving door -- it is just the way it's done.
Someone called it a government reconnaissance mission to figure out how to get rich when you leave the government.
Recently, I was dismayed to see headlines in the Wall Street Journal stating that Senate Democrats were backing down to lobbyists for hedge funds who have opposed efforts to make millionaire and billionaire hedge fund managers pay the same tax rate as every hard-working American. Now, tax loopholes the wealthy hedge fund managers do not need or deserve are not going to be closed, all because Democrats -- our party -- wanted their campaign money.
And a few weeks ago, around the sixth anniversary of 9/11, a leading presidential candidate held a fundraiser that was billed as a Homeland Security themed event in Washington, D.C. targeted to homeland security lobbyists and contractors for $1,000 a plate. These lobbyists, for the price of a ticket, would get a special "treat" -- the opportunity to participate in small, hour long breakout sessions with key Democratic lawmakers, many of whom chair important sub committees of the homeland security committee. That presidential candidate was Senator Clinton.
Senator Clinton's road to the middle class takes a major detour right through the deep canyon of corporate lobbyists and the hidden bidding of K Street in Washington -- and history tells us that when that bus stops there it is the middle class that loses.
When I asked Hillary Clinton to join me in not taking money from Washington lobbyists -- she refused. Not only did she say that she would continue to take their money, she defended them.
Today Hillary Clinton has taken more money from Washington lobbyists than any candidate from either party -- more money than any Republican candidate.
She has taken more money from the defense industry than any other candidate from either party as well.
She took more money from Wall Street last quarter than Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama combined.
The long slow slide of our democracy into the corporate abyss continues unabated regardless of party, regardless of the best interests of America.
We have a duty -- a duty to end this.
I believe you cannot be for change and take money from the lobbyists who prevent change. You cannot take on the entrenched interests in Washington if you choose to defend the broken system. It will not work. And I believe that, if Americans have a choice, and candidate who takes their money -- Democrat or Republican -- will lose this election.
For us to continue down this path all we have to do is suspend all that we believe in. As Democrats, we continue down this path only if we believe the party of the people is no more.
As Americans, we continue down this path only if we fail to heed Lincoln's warning to us all.
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected," he asked, "if it ever reaches us it must spring up amongst us. It can not come from abroad. If destruction be our lot -- we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time or die by suicide."
America lives because 20 generations have honored the one moral commandment that makes us Americans.
To give our children a better future than we received.
I stand here today the son of Wallace and Bobbie Edwards. The father of Wade, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack -- and I know, as well as you, that we must not be the first generation that fails to live up to our moral challenge and keep the promise of America.
That would be an abomination.
There is a dream that is America. It is what makes us American. And I will not stand by while that dream is at risk.
I am not perfect -- far from it -- but I do understand that this is not a political issue -- it is the moral test of our generation.
Our nation's founders knew that this moment would come -- that at some point the power of greed and its influence over officials in our government might strain and threaten the very America they hoped would last as an ideal in the minds of all people, and as a beacon of hope for all time.
That is why they made the people sovereign. And this is why it is your responsibility to redeem the promise of America for our children and their future.
It will not be easy -- sacrifice will be required of us -- but it was never easy for our ancestors, and their sacrifices were far greater than any that will fall on our shoulders.
Yet, the responsibility is ours.
We, you and I, are the guardians of what America is and what it will be.
The choice is ours.
Down one path, we trade corporate Democrats for corporate Republicans; our cronies for their cronies; one political dynasty for another dynasty; and all we are left with is a Democratic version of the Republican corruption machine.
It is the easier path. It is the path of the status quo. But, it is a path that perpetuates a corrupt system that has not only failed to deliver the change the American people demand, but has divided America into two -- one America for the very greedy, and one America for everybody else.
And it is that divided America -- the direct result of this corrupt system -- which may very well lead to the suicide Lincoln warned us of -- the poison that continues to seep into our system while none notice.
Or we can choose a different path. The path that generations of Americans command us to take. And be the guardians that kept the faith.
I run for president for my father who worked in a mill his entire life and never got to go to college the way I did.
I run for president for all those who worked in that mill with my father.
I run for president for all those who lost their jobs when that mil was shut down.
I run for president for all the women who have come up to Elizabeth and me and told us the like Elizabeth they had breast cancer -- but unlike Elizabeth they did not have health care.
I run for president for twenty generations of Americans who made sure that their children had a better life than they did.
As Americans we are blessed -- for our ancestors are not dead, they occupy the corridors of our conscience. And, as long we keep the faith -- they live. And so too the America of idealism and hope that was their gift to us.
I carry the promise of America in my heart, where my parents placed it. Like them, like you, I believe in people, hard work, and the sacred obligation of each generation to the next.
This is our time now. It falls to us to redeem our democracy, reclaim our government and relight the promise of America for our children.
Let us blaze a new path together, grounded in the values from which America was forged, still reaching toward the greatness of our ideals. We can do it. We can cast aside the bankrupt ways of Washington and replace them with the timeless values of the American people. We can liberate our government from the shackles of corporate money that bind it to corporate will, and restore the voices of our people to its halls.
This is the cause of my life. This is the cause of our time. Join me. Together, we cannot fail.
We will keep faith with those who have gone before us, strong and proud in the knowledge that we too rose up to guard the promise of America in our day, and that, because we did, America's best days still lie ahead.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
From our friend Hank:
From: Hank
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 10:49 AM
To: 'oped@washpost.com'
Subject: To The Editor
“Gore & Obama: An Unbeatable Team!”
I am totally convinced that a Presidential election pitting Hillary Clinton against any of the Republican candidates would lead to Ms. Clinton becoming the first woman to occupy the Oval Office in 2009. But is Hillary the right person for the job? While the former First Lady is certainly smart enough to be President, I have my doubts about whether Ms. Clinton would be able to look past her glorified image of herself and govern fairly and compassionately. Hillary Clinton is an opportunist of the first order. She stayed with Bill to cement his support for her run for the Presidency. She voted for the Iraq war but says Bush did not go far enough, and she breaks with her party on calling the Quds force in Iran a terrorist organization in order Ito look strong compared with Giuliani and Romney. Ms. Clinton has never run anything: Not a city, a state or even a municipality. Her eight years in the White House do not make her Presidential timber, and her six years in the Senate have not convinced me that she is up to making the hard decisions a President must make, alone.
Al Gore on the other hand, has the experience and nationwide recognition to lead and unite the country after eight horrific years of Bush. He has added greatly to his luster with his excellent work on Climate Change, and his Nobel Peace Prize for that work has earned him high levels of international praise and respect. With Barack Obama, a shining symbol of hope, change and what America at its best could be, this pair would be more than capable of cleaning up the Bush mess, working in a bi-partisan manner with Congress and initiating dialogues with our allies and enemies across the globe. This is the “Dream Team” of politics for the early twenty-first century, and I hope it can actually happen this election cycle.
I admire Hillary Clinton, but I fear she is far too divisive and self-centered for the Presidency, especially at such a critical time in America’s history.
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 10:49 AM
To: 'oped@washpost.com'
Subject: To The Editor
“Gore & Obama: An Unbeatable Team!”
I am totally convinced that a Presidential election pitting Hillary Clinton against any of the Republican candidates would lead to Ms. Clinton becoming the first woman to occupy the Oval Office in 2009. But is Hillary the right person for the job? While the former First Lady is certainly smart enough to be President, I have my doubts about whether Ms. Clinton would be able to look past her glorified image of herself and govern fairly and compassionately. Hillary Clinton is an opportunist of the first order. She stayed with Bill to cement his support for her run for the Presidency. She voted for the Iraq war but says Bush did not go far enough, and she breaks with her party on calling the Quds force in Iran a terrorist organization in order Ito look strong compared with Giuliani and Romney. Ms. Clinton has never run anything: Not a city, a state or even a municipality. Her eight years in the White House do not make her Presidential timber, and her six years in the Senate have not convinced me that she is up to making the hard decisions a President must make, alone.
Al Gore on the other hand, has the experience and nationwide recognition to lead and unite the country after eight horrific years of Bush. He has added greatly to his luster with his excellent work on Climate Change, and his Nobel Peace Prize for that work has earned him high levels of international praise and respect. With Barack Obama, a shining symbol of hope, change and what America at its best could be, this pair would be more than capable of cleaning up the Bush mess, working in a bi-partisan manner with Congress and initiating dialogues with our allies and enemies across the globe. This is the “Dream Team” of politics for the early twenty-first century, and I hope it can actually happen this election cycle.
I admire Hillary Clinton, but I fear she is far too divisive and self-centered for the Presidency, especially at such a critical time in America’s history.
Monday, October 29, 2007
From Barbara Boxer
Dear Sunny,
The wildfires in California are a great tragedy. And unfortunately, as global warming increases the likelihood of extreme weather conditions -- hurricanes, droughts, floods, and others -- these kinds of disasters may become even more frequent.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, forestry experts believe rising global temperatures will result in an increased risk of fires. And news that the Bush Administration censored a climate change report by the Director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) last week confirms -- again -- that the President refuses to face the dangers of global warming.
Tell the Bush Administration to come clean on all of the facts surrounding global warming: Forward an email to the President and demand the full truth about the CDC Director's testimony today!
Last week, the Director of the CDC, Dr. Julie Geberding, testified at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing that I chaired. Before the hearing, Dr. Geberding provided the White House with a copy of the testimony she was preparing to deliver about the health risks associated with global warming -- but Administration officials slashed her report in half.
What information was included in the pages that were deleted from Dr. Gerberding's testimony? Many details that attributed potential public health problems to global warming -- as well as statements like, "Scientific evidence supports the view that the earth's climate is changing...CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern."
A CDC official familiar with both versions of Dr. Gerberding's testimony said that the Director's findings were "eviscerated."
Tell the Bush Administration to come clean on all of the facts surrounding global warming: Forward an email to the President and demand the full truth about the CDC Director's testimony today!
President Bush cannot continue to muzzle scientists -- especially on one of the most critical environmental challenges that we have ever faced.
We deserve a full accounting of what happened during this White House review process, and who was involved, to make sure that this kind of scientific censorship from the Bush Administration never happens again.
This is just one more example of how the Bush Administration is hiding the truth from the American people -- changing scientific reports to fit their policy, rather than fitting their policy to science.
Tell the Bush Administration to come clean on all of the facts surrounding global warming: Forward an email to the President and demand the full truth about the CDC Director's testimony today!
Thank you for your help.
The wildfires in California are a great tragedy. And unfortunately, as global warming increases the likelihood of extreme weather conditions -- hurricanes, droughts, floods, and others -- these kinds of disasters may become even more frequent.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, forestry experts believe rising global temperatures will result in an increased risk of fires. And news that the Bush Administration censored a climate change report by the Director of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) last week confirms -- again -- that the President refuses to face the dangers of global warming.
Tell the Bush Administration to come clean on all of the facts surrounding global warming: Forward an email to the President and demand the full truth about the CDC Director's testimony today!
Last week, the Director of the CDC, Dr. Julie Geberding, testified at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing that I chaired. Before the hearing, Dr. Geberding provided the White House with a copy of the testimony she was preparing to deliver about the health risks associated with global warming -- but Administration officials slashed her report in half.
What information was included in the pages that were deleted from Dr. Gerberding's testimony? Many details that attributed potential public health problems to global warming -- as well as statements like, "Scientific evidence supports the view that the earth's climate is changing...CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern."
A CDC official familiar with both versions of Dr. Gerberding's testimony said that the Director's findings were "eviscerated."
Tell the Bush Administration to come clean on all of the facts surrounding global warming: Forward an email to the President and demand the full truth about the CDC Director's testimony today!
President Bush cannot continue to muzzle scientists -- especially on one of the most critical environmental challenges that we have ever faced.
We deserve a full accounting of what happened during this White House review process, and who was involved, to make sure that this kind of scientific censorship from the Bush Administration never happens again.
This is just one more example of how the Bush Administration is hiding the truth from the American people -- changing scientific reports to fit their policy, rather than fitting their policy to science.
Tell the Bush Administration to come clean on all of the facts surrounding global warming: Forward an email to the President and demand the full truth about the CDC Director's testimony today!
Thank you for your help.
From Andy about big NYC DEM BASH!
They're not Greek, there are only two of them, and there is some question whether they can even be persuaded to wear their wreaths.
(Oh -- and they don't sing.)
But we have recruited A GREEK CHORUS for the December 5 dinner that could add an element a little different from the typical political fundraiser.
So . . .
. . . if you're already coming, please call a friend and inspire him or her to jump on board.
All they need to do is visit snipurl.com/ComeWrite (Sorry: you need to cut and paste that. I am trapped in AOL 5.0.)
. . . and if you yourself have been on the fence about coming, let me remind you that we will be joined at the Waldorf Starlight Roof by a long list of terrific writers, all coming to help COME WRITE HISTORY -- AGAIN (as in: let's repeat in 2008 our success of 2006).
So far:
* EDWARD ALBEE -- not one but THREE Pulitzer Prizes (and that doesn't even include WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF for which he merely won a Tony and a Grammy).
* DAVID AUBURN, whose Pulitzer (just one, but he's young) was for PROOF.
* NORA EPHRON, whose latest best seller, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK: AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON BEING A WOMAN, Publisher's Weekly calls "sparkling."
* MARSHALL BRICKMAN, who wrote the book for JERSEY BOYS, co-wrote ANNIE HALL, and -- this kid from Brooklyn -- lay down the banjo soundtrack for DELIVERANCE.
* ARTHUR FROMMER, author of EUROPE ON $5 A DAY and all its progeny, who, like many of our esteemed authors, is not only lending us his celebrity, but writing us a check.
* JOHN BERENDT, whose MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL has sold seven billion copies in 950 languages and doubled the tourist trade of Savannah.
* MARIE BRENNER, author of GREAT DAMES (What I Learned from Older Women) and VANITY FAIR writer-at-large. Her tobacco industry piece became Russell Crowe's seven-Academy-Awards THE INSIDER.
* STEVE BRILL, founder of THE AMERICAN LAWYER and COURT TV -- and now FLYCLEAR.com (so you can breeze thru security if your retina scans) . . . author of THE TEAMSTERS and of AFTER: HOW AMERICA CONFRONTED THE SEPTEMBER 12 ERA. (Badly, I would say.)
* LISA BIRNBACH, whose THE PREPPY HANDBOOK Amazon.com readers are *still* giving five stars, even in this age of bling.
* JUSTIN FRANK, MD, clinical psychiatry professor and author of BUSH ON THE COUCH: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT. (Hint: "an untreated alcoholic supported by a nation of enablers.")
* DREW WESTEN, whose THE POLITICAL BRAIN: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN DECIDING THE FATE OF THE NATION Governor Dean so often cites for what it tells us about how to win elections.
* Columnist LIZ SMITH -- who knows everybody, knows all their secrets, yet somehow still leaves them all feeling good. "Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress," she says in her autobiography, NATURALLY BLONDE.
* Charles Kaiser, author of 1968 IN AMERICA -- that pivotal year -- and of THE GAY METROPOLIS ("Brisk, splashy, dishy...Kaiser is a gifted popular historian" -- Washington Post).
* ANDY BOROWITZ, who lights up the Internet with daily "shockers" and whose humor you've seen in The New Yorker. ("A Swiftean satirist," the Wall Street Journal calls him.)
* OLIVER SACKS, whose AWAKENINGS became the Robin Williams / Robert De Niro movie, whose THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT is endlessly fascinating (and true!) -- Professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, just named Columbia University's first ever "Columbia artist."
* KEVIN SESSUMS, who was Andy Warhol's executive editor at INTERVIEW, a long-time VANITY FAIR contributing editor, and author of the recent, searing and sibilant autobiography, MISSISSIPPI SISSY.
* JESSE KORNBLUTH, author, screenwriter, belief.net blogger, contributor to New York, the New Yorker, and the New York Times -- for five years editorial director of America Online -- now America's HEAD BUTLER (headbutler.com).
* Pulitzer Prize-winning poet PAUL MULDOON, Princeton professor and newly-named Poetry Editor of THE NEW YORKER . . . described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War."
* BILL PRESS, former CROSSFIRE co-host, former California Democratic Party Chair, current syndicated columnist and progressive talk radio star, author of HOW THE REPUBLICANS STOLE CHRISTMAS -- four Emmy's.
* RABBI DENNIS SHULMAN, author of THE GENIUS OF GENESIS and THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOANALYST -- a practicing psychoanalyst . . . blind . . . testing the waters for a Congressional run.
Not to mention GOVERNOR HOWARD DEAN (you've heard of him?), author of YOU HAVE THE POWER: HOW TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.
Plus a couple hundred *wonderful* donors like yourself.
Please come, and at the highest level you can afford.
Just go to snipurl.com/ComeWrite to sign up.
We need to win.
Your help in 2007 is even more important, and leveraged, than it will be next year.
THANKS!
Andy
snipurl.com/ComeWrite
PS - GARRY TRUDEAU has donated THE PERFECT DOONESBURY STRIP as a door prize, to be inscribed to whoever walks away with it.
(Oh -- and they don't sing.)
But we have recruited A GREEK CHORUS for the December 5 dinner that could add an element a little different from the typical political fundraiser.
So . . .
. . . if you're already coming, please call a friend and inspire him or her to jump on board.
All they need to do is visit snipurl.com/ComeWrite (Sorry: you need to cut and paste that. I am trapped in AOL 5.0.)
. . . and if you yourself have been on the fence about coming, let me remind you that we will be joined at the Waldorf Starlight Roof by a long list of terrific writers, all coming to help COME WRITE HISTORY -- AGAIN (as in: let's repeat in 2008 our success of 2006).
So far:
* EDWARD ALBEE -- not one but THREE Pulitzer Prizes (and that doesn't even include WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF for which he merely won a Tony and a Grammy).
* DAVID AUBURN, whose Pulitzer (just one, but he's young) was for PROOF.
* NORA EPHRON, whose latest best seller, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK: AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON BEING A WOMAN, Publisher's Weekly calls "sparkling."
* MARSHALL BRICKMAN, who wrote the book for JERSEY BOYS, co-wrote ANNIE HALL, and -- this kid from Brooklyn -- lay down the banjo soundtrack for DELIVERANCE.
* ARTHUR FROMMER, author of EUROPE ON $5 A DAY and all its progeny, who, like many of our esteemed authors, is not only lending us his celebrity, but writing us a check.
* JOHN BERENDT, whose MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL has sold seven billion copies in 950 languages and doubled the tourist trade of Savannah.
* MARIE BRENNER, author of GREAT DAMES (What I Learned from Older Women) and VANITY FAIR writer-at-large. Her tobacco industry piece became Russell Crowe's seven-Academy-Awards THE INSIDER.
* STEVE BRILL, founder of THE AMERICAN LAWYER and COURT TV -- and now FLYCLEAR.com (so you can breeze thru security if your retina scans) . . . author of THE TEAMSTERS and of AFTER: HOW AMERICA CONFRONTED THE SEPTEMBER 12 ERA. (Badly, I would say.)
* LISA BIRNBACH, whose THE PREPPY HANDBOOK Amazon.com readers are *still* giving five stars, even in this age of bling.
* JUSTIN FRANK, MD, clinical psychiatry professor and author of BUSH ON THE COUCH: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT. (Hint: "an untreated alcoholic supported by a nation of enablers.")
* DREW WESTEN, whose THE POLITICAL BRAIN: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN DECIDING THE FATE OF THE NATION Governor Dean so often cites for what it tells us about how to win elections.
* Columnist LIZ SMITH -- who knows everybody, knows all their secrets, yet somehow still leaves them all feeling good. "Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress," she says in her autobiography, NATURALLY BLONDE.
* Charles Kaiser, author of 1968 IN AMERICA -- that pivotal year -- and of THE GAY METROPOLIS ("Brisk, splashy, dishy...Kaiser is a gifted popular historian" -- Washington Post).
* ANDY BOROWITZ, who lights up the Internet with daily "shockers" and whose humor you've seen in The New Yorker. ("A Swiftean satirist," the Wall Street Journal calls him.)
* OLIVER SACKS, whose AWAKENINGS became the Robin Williams / Robert De Niro movie, whose THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT is endlessly fascinating (and true!) -- Professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, just named Columbia University's first ever "Columbia artist."
* KEVIN SESSUMS, who was Andy Warhol's executive editor at INTERVIEW, a long-time VANITY FAIR contributing editor, and author of the recent, searing and sibilant autobiography, MISSISSIPPI SISSY.
* JESSE KORNBLUTH, author, screenwriter, belief.net blogger, contributor to New York, the New Yorker, and the New York Times -- for five years editorial director of America Online -- now America's HEAD BUTLER (headbutler.com).
* Pulitzer Prize-winning poet PAUL MULDOON, Princeton professor and newly-named Poetry Editor of THE NEW YORKER . . . described by The Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War."
* BILL PRESS, former CROSSFIRE co-host, former California Democratic Party Chair, current syndicated columnist and progressive talk radio star, author of HOW THE REPUBLICANS STOLE CHRISTMAS -- four Emmy's.
* RABBI DENNIS SHULMAN, author of THE GENIUS OF GENESIS and THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOANALYST -- a practicing psychoanalyst . . . blind . . . testing the waters for a Congressional run.
Not to mention GOVERNOR HOWARD DEAN (you've heard of him?), author of YOU HAVE THE POWER: HOW TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA.
Plus a couple hundred *wonderful* donors like yourself.
Please come, and at the highest level you can afford.
Just go to snipurl.com/ComeWrite to sign up.
We need to win.
Your help in 2007 is even more important, and leveraged, than it will be next year.
THANKS!
Andy
snipurl.com/ComeWrite
PS - GARRY TRUDEAU has donated THE PERFECT DOONESBURY STRIP as a door prize, to be inscribed to whoever walks away with it.
From Carole in our blog from her friends:
This came to me from Mary Bridget Hughes, who came last year to Sacred Activism. I have never passed a forward on before, but this seemed important to share. Feel free to share your thoughts, I am interested. Here's the link:
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
Much love
from a good Pax Christi IL friend. Not to be
> missed.
> Peace,
> Diane
The link below is to a video that shows a side of
> Iran that we seldom see
> in the U.S. Very hopeful, yet very troubling.
>
http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html
Much love
from a good Pax Christi IL friend. Not to be
> missed.
> Peace,
> Diane
The link below is to a video that shows a side of
> Iran that we seldom see
> in the U.S. Very hopeful, yet very troubling.
>
From Obama Campaign
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Barack and Gov. Deval Patrick at Boston Rally
AN UPDATE FROM IOWA
Obama Announces "Real Leadership for Rural America"
Last week Tuesday Senator Obama traveled to Fairfax, Iowa to unveil his "Real Leadership for Rural America" plan that focused on meeting the challenges facing rural communities and capitalizing on the economic opportunity that exists in rural America -- particularly in the renewable energy sector. The plan incorporated insight and ideas from Iowans who attended a rural issues forum in Adel and a rural policy summit in Tama, as well as more than 30 hearings that campaign staff conducted with Iowans who live, work and raise a family in a rural community. Read the entire "Real Leadership for Rural America."
Barack in Iowa discussing rural America
AN UPDATE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
Obama Campaign Launches Unprecedented Gospel Concert Tour
The top gospel music artists in the country, inspired by Barack Obama's candidacy for president, will embark on an "Embrace the Change" concert tour across South Carolina later this month.
The artists will headline the final days of the South Carolina campaign's "40 Days of Faith & Family" -- a grassroots effort that shares with South Carolinians how Barack Obama's family values and faith have shaped his leadership and commitment to bringing all people together around his movement for fundamental change.
The Community Times Dispatch of Walterboro described the forum as an "opportunity for people of faith to come together to talk about how they live their faith outside the walls of their churches, mosques or synagogues; what they want to see from their presidential candidates, and how Obama's faith informs how he thinks about the issues of our time."
Obama and Patrick Rally More than 9500 in Boston Rally
Governor Deval Patrick endorses Barack Obama in Boston
At a rally in Boston Common on Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama and Governor Deval Patrick called on a crowd of more than 9500 to play an active role in Obama's campaign to change this country. Patrick announced his support for Barack Obama in an email to supporters last week.
The Boston rally was part of Obama's three-day swing through New England. On Monday, he signed papers to officially enter the New Hampshire primary. The campaign also used the rally as an opportunity to recruit volunteers for two statewide days of door-knocking in New Hampshire on Saturday, November 10th and Saturday, November 24th.
AN UPDATE FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE
Barack Releases New Ad Called "Choices"
AN UPDATE FROM NEVADA
Senator Obama Gets Fired Up in Vegas
Senator Obama fired up Nevadans in Reno and Las Vegas on Thursday, October 18th. Barack addressed packed crowds of more than 2,000 supporters at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno and 1,500 at Cheyenne High School in Las Vegas. Obama spoke to America's need for a President who will approach national security decisions with honesty and sound judgment and not repeat the tragic mistakes made when we invaded Iraq.
The standing room-only crowds gave Barack a raucous reception and repeated standing ovations, showing that Nevada -- and America -- is fired up for change and ready to go for President Obama!
Campaign Co-Chair Federico Peña Joins Supporters to Jump Start Latinos for Obama in Reno and Las Vegas
On Friday, former Energy and Transportation Secretary Federico Peña joined dozens of Nevadans at Latinos for Obama kick-off events in Reno and Las Vegas. Peña told packed crowds that Nevada's rapidly growing Latino community needs a leader with the judgment to make real change in Washington on issues that impact the Hispanic community, like fair immigration laws and affordable health care.
› Visit BarackObama.com for all the latest news
Barack and Gov. Deval Patrick at Boston Rally
AN UPDATE FROM IOWA
Obama Announces "Real Leadership for Rural America"
Last week Tuesday Senator Obama traveled to Fairfax, Iowa to unveil his "Real Leadership for Rural America" plan that focused on meeting the challenges facing rural communities and capitalizing on the economic opportunity that exists in rural America -- particularly in the renewable energy sector. The plan incorporated insight and ideas from Iowans who attended a rural issues forum in Adel and a rural policy summit in Tama, as well as more than 30 hearings that campaign staff conducted with Iowans who live, work and raise a family in a rural community. Read the entire "Real Leadership for Rural America."
Barack in Iowa discussing rural America
AN UPDATE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
Obama Campaign Launches Unprecedented Gospel Concert Tour
The top gospel music artists in the country, inspired by Barack Obama's candidacy for president, will embark on an "Embrace the Change" concert tour across South Carolina later this month.
The artists will headline the final days of the South Carolina campaign's "40 Days of Faith & Family" -- a grassroots effort that shares with South Carolinians how Barack Obama's family values and faith have shaped his leadership and commitment to bringing all people together around his movement for fundamental change.
The Community Times Dispatch of Walterboro described the forum as an "opportunity for people of faith to come together to talk about how they live their faith outside the walls of their churches, mosques or synagogues; what they want to see from their presidential candidates, and how Obama's faith informs how he thinks about the issues of our time."
Obama and Patrick Rally More than 9500 in Boston Rally
Governor Deval Patrick endorses Barack Obama in Boston
At a rally in Boston Common on Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama and Governor Deval Patrick called on a crowd of more than 9500 to play an active role in Obama's campaign to change this country. Patrick announced his support for Barack Obama in an email to supporters last week.
The Boston rally was part of Obama's three-day swing through New England. On Monday, he signed papers to officially enter the New Hampshire primary. The campaign also used the rally as an opportunity to recruit volunteers for two statewide days of door-knocking in New Hampshire on Saturday, November 10th and Saturday, November 24th.
AN UPDATE FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE
Barack Releases New Ad Called "Choices"
AN UPDATE FROM NEVADA
Senator Obama Gets Fired Up in Vegas
Senator Obama fired up Nevadans in Reno and Las Vegas on Thursday, October 18th. Barack addressed packed crowds of more than 2,000 supporters at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno and 1,500 at Cheyenne High School in Las Vegas. Obama spoke to America's need for a President who will approach national security decisions with honesty and sound judgment and not repeat the tragic mistakes made when we invaded Iraq.
The standing room-only crowds gave Barack a raucous reception and repeated standing ovations, showing that Nevada -- and America -- is fired up for change and ready to go for President Obama!
Campaign Co-Chair Federico Peña Joins Supporters to Jump Start Latinos for Obama in Reno and Las Vegas
On Friday, former Energy and Transportation Secretary Federico Peña joined dozens of Nevadans at Latinos for Obama kick-off events in Reno and Las Vegas. Peña told packed crowds that Nevada's rapidly growing Latino community needs a leader with the judgment to make real change in Washington on issues that impact the Hispanic community, like fair immigration laws and affordable health care.
› Visit BarackObama.com for all the latest news
Sent by Judy written by Sid Blumenthal:
Bush's stairway to paradise
Hoping that history will somehow vindicate him, the president has entered a phase of decadent perversity.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Sept. 20, 2007 | There has never been a moment when we were not winning in Iraq. Victory has followed victory, from "Mission Accomplished" to the purple fingers of the Iraqi election to, most recently, President Bush's meeting at Camp Cupcake in Anbar province with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni leader of the group Anbar Awakening (who was assassinated a week later). Turning point has followed turning point, from Bush's proclamation two years ago of his "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" to his announcement last week of his "Return on Success." "We're kicking ass," he briefed the Australian deputy prime minister on Sept. 6 about his latest visit to Iraq. In his quasi-farewell address to the nation on Sept. 13, Bush assigned any possible shortcomings to Gen. David Petraeus and bequeathed his policy "beyond my presidency" to his successor.
After Bush pretended to deliberate over whether he would agree to his own policy as presented by his general in well-rehearsed performances before Congress -- "President Bush Accepts Recommendations" read a headline on the White House Web site -- he established an ideal division of responsibility. Bush could claim credit for the "Return on Success," whenever that might be, while Petraeus would be charged with whatever might go wrong.
One week after Petraeus flashed his metrics, a whole new set of facts on the ground suddenly emerged: an admission (previously denied) by Petraeus that the United States was arming the Sunnis, who might use those weapons in the next phase of Iraq's civil war; the release of a Pentagon report that there is "an increase in intra-Shi'a violence throughout the South" (a report conveniently withheld as Petraeus was testifying); the Iraqi government's expulsion of Blackwater, a private security firm with close ties to the administration, after a band of its guards gunned down Iraqi civilians; the restriction of all nonmilitary U.S. personnel in Iraq to the Green Zone; a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent that about 1 million people are internal refugees as a result of ethnic cleansing (apart from the more than 2 million refugees who have fled the country); and the announcement by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of an investigation into the State Department's inspector general for quashing scrutiny and embarrassing studies of fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, among other projects.
As these events played out, Petraeus was detailed as Bush's Willy Loman to preside over the cooling of the special relationship with America's most important ally in the coalition of the willing. The general traveled to London to meet with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the policy from which he is rapidly disengaging, already having withdrawn British forces in Basra to its airport before final evacuation. Such is the face of victory 10 days after Petraeus' march through Capitol Hill.
In his semiretirement, Bush engaged in appeals to history, which he now says on nearly every occasion will absolve him. Early on and riding high, he expressed contempt for history. "History, we'll all be dead," he sneered to Bob Woodward in an interview for "Bush at War," a panegyric to Bush the triumphant after the Afghanistan invasion and before Iraq. Now Bush cites history as justification for everything he does. "You can't possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency -- until I'm dead," he told Robert Draper, his authorized biographer, in an interview for "Dead Certain." The use of the words "history" and "dead" between the Woodward and Draper interviews makes for a world of difference -- the difference between a president who couldn't care less and one who cares desperately but can't admit it.
Bush incessantly invokes a host of presidents past -- Truman, Lincoln and Washington -- as appropriate comparisons, and also talks of Winston Churchill. Frederick Kagan, the neoconservative instigator of "the surge," refers to it as "Gettysburg," a leap of historical imagination that transforms Bush into the Great Emancipator. In his unstoppable commentary about himself, Bush has become as certain of his exalted place in history as he is of his policy's rightness. He projects his image into the future, willing his enshrinement as a great president. History has become a magical incantation for him, a kind of prayerful refuge where he is safe from having to think in the present. For Bush, history is supernatural, a deus ex machina, nothing less than a kind of divine intervention enabling him to enter presidential Valhalla. Through his fantasy about history as afterlife -- the stairway to paradise -- he rationalizes his current course.
Draper's biography has the feel of a lengthy feature magazine article wrapped in a dust jacket. It lacks any serious discussion of the influence of Dick Cheney, the rise of the neoconservatives, Karl Rove's attempt to create a one-party state, the government's torture policy, splits within the senior military, the scapegoating of the CIA, or the evisceration of federal departments and agencies. Nonetheless, Draper's unusual access enabled him to collect valuable anecdotes as well as to put a microphone in front of a president who, when interrupted by an aide, told him not to worry because the interview was "worthless." Letting down his guard, Bush does not understand what he reveals.
In his interviews with Draper, he is constantly worried about weakness and passivity. "If you're weak internally? This job will run you all over town." He fears being controlled and talks about it relentlessly, feeling he's being watched. "And part of being a leader is: people watch you." He casts his anxiety as a matter of self-discipline. "I don't think I'd be sitting here if not for the discipline ... And they look at me -- they want to know whether I've got the resolution necessary to see this through. And I do. I believe -- I know we'll succeed." He is sensitive about asserting his supremacy over others, but especially his father. "He knows as an ex-president, he doesn't have nearly the amount of knowledge I've got on current things," he told Draper.
Bush is a classic insecure authoritarian who imposes humiliating tests of obedience on others in order to prove his superiority and their inferiority. In 1999, according to Draper, at a meeting of economic experts at the Texas governor's mansion, Bush interrupted Rove when he joined in the discussion, saying, "Karl, hang up my jacket." In front of other aides, Bush joked repeatedly that he would fire Rove. (Laura Bush's attitude toward Rove was pointedly disdainful. She nicknamed him "Pigpen," for wallowing in dirty politics. He was staff, not family -- certainly not people like them.)
Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked. Aides have been fearful of raising problems with him. In his 2004 debates with Sen. John Kerry, no one felt comfortable or confident enough to discuss with Bush the importance of his personal demeanor. Doing poorly in his first debate, he turned his anger on his communications director, Dan Bartlett, for showing him a tape afterward. When his trusted old public relations handler, Karen Hughes, tried gently to tell him, "You looked mad," he shot back, "I wasn't mad! Tell them that!"
At a political strategy meeting in May 2004, when Matthew Dowd and Rove explained to him that he was not likely to win in a Reagan-like landslide, as Bush had imagined, he lashed out at Rove: "KARL!" Rove, according to Draper, was Bush's "favorite punching bag," and the president often threw futile and meaningless questions at him, and shouted, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."
Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. "Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president's support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a 'Big New Thing.'" Other aides played on Bush's self-conception as "the Decider." "To sell him on an idea," writes Draper, "aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision." But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today."
Draper reports a telling exchange between Bush and James Baker, one of his father's closest associates, the elder Bush's former secretary of state and the one the family called on to take command of the campaign for the 2000 Florida contest when everything hung in the balance. Baker's ruthless field marshaling safely brought the younger Bush into the White House. Counseling him in the aftermath, Baker warned him about Rumsfeld. "All I'm going to say to you is, you know what he did to your daddy," he said.
Indeed, Rumsfeld and the elder Bush were bitter rivals. Rumsfeld had scorn for him, and tried to sideline and eliminate him during the Ford administration because he wanted to become president himself. If George W. Bush didn't know about it before, he knew about it then from Baker, and soon thereafter he appointed Rumsfeld secretary of defense. Draper does not reflect on this revelation, but it is highly suggestive.
Quoted in an Aug. 9 article in the New York Times on the lachrymose father, Andrew Card, aide to both men, lately as White House chief of staff, and a family loyalist, spoke out of school. "It was relatively easy for me to read the sitting president's body language after he had talked to his mother or father," Card said. "Sometimes he'd ask me a probing question. And I'd think, Hmm, I don't think that question came from him."
The elder Bush assumed that the Bush family trust and its trustees -- James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Prince Bandar -- would take the erstwhile wastrel and guide him on the path of wisdom. In this conception, the country was not entrusted to the younger Bush's care so much as Bush was entrusted to the care of the trustees. He was the beneficiary of the trust. But to the surprise of those trustees, he slipped the bonds of the trust and cut off the family trustees. They knew he was ill-prepared and ignorant, but they never expected him to be assertive. They wrongly assumed that Cheney would act for them as a trustee.
Cheney had worked with and for them for decades and seemed to agree with them, if not on every detail then on the more important matter of attitude, particularly the question of who should govern. The elder Bush had helped arrange for Cheney to become the CEO of Halliburton, making him a very rich man at last. But Bush, Baker, Scowcroft et al. didn't realize that Cheney's apparent concurrence was to advance himself and his views, which were not theirs. When absolute power was conferred on him, the habits of deference lapsed, no longer necessary. ("Thank you for the privilege of serving today.") Cheney was always more Rumsfeld oriented than Bush oriented. The elder Bush knew that Rumsfeld despised him and that Cheney was close to Rumsfeld, just as he knew his son's grievous limitations. But the obvious didn't occur to him -- that Cheney would seize control of the lax son for his own purposes. The elder Bush committed a monumental error, empowering a regent to the prince who would betray the father. The myopia of the old WASP aristocracy allowed him to see Cheney as a member of his club. Cheney, for his part, was extremely convincing in playing possum. The elder Bush has many reasons for self-reproach, but perhaps none greater than being outsmarted by a courtier he thought was his trustee.
Through his interposition of Petraeus, Bush has bound his party to his fate. Of the Republicans, only Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, leader of the 1994 self-styled radical "revolution" that captured Congress, is willing to speak publicly about the danger Bush poses to the future of the party. "I believe for any Republican to win in 2008, they have to have a clean break and offer a dramatic, bold change," he told a group of reporters on Sept. 14. "If we nominate somebody who has not done that ... they're very, very unlikely to win it."
But repudiating Bush would also mean repudiating Gingrich's legacy, too. Draper reports that Bush loves claiming Ronald Reagan, not his father, as his role model. But Gingrich, more than Reagan, is Bush's forerunner. It was Gingrich who heightened the politics of polarization to a level of personal attack and unscrupulousness unlike any seen since the underside of Richard Nixon's operations was exposed in the Watergate scandal. Reagan was free of such dishonest and vicious politics. Bush, Cheney and Rove ("Pigpen") picked up where Gingrich left off. Republicans can no more return to the halcyon days of Reagan than magic carpets can be used in Iraq. For the Republicans to recover, they would have to extirpate their entire recent history, root and branch.
"History would acquit him, too. Bush was confident of that, and of something else as well," writes Draper. "Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card's departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs."
Bush grasps at the straws of his own disinformation as he casts himself deeper into the abyss. The more profound and compounded his blunders, and the more he redoubles his certainty in ultimate victory, the greater his indifference to failure. He has entered a phase of decadent perversity, where he accelerates his errors to vindicate his folly. As the sands of time run down, he has decided that no matter what he does, history will finally judge him as heroic.
The greater the chaos, the more he reinforces and rigidifies his views. The more havoc he wreaks, the more he insists he is succeeding. His intensified struggle for self-control is matched by his increased denial of responsibility. Hence Petraeus.
Bush's unyielding personality would have been best suited to the endless trench warfare of World War I, as a true compatriot of the disastrous British Gen. Douglas Haig. His mind is geared toward a static battlefield. For low-intensity warfare, such as in Iraq, "an authoritarian cast of mind would be a crippling disability," wrote British expert Norman F. Dixon in his classic work, "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence." "For such 'warfare,' tact, flexibility, imagination and 'open minds,' the very antithesis of authoritarian traits, would seem to be necessary if not sufficient."
Bush's ever-inflating self-confidence hides his gaping fear of failure. His obsession with deference demands exercises of humiliation that never satisfy him. His unwavering resolve is maintained by his adamant refusal to wade into the waters of ambiguity. "You can't talk me out of thinking freedom's a good thing!" he protests to his biographer. For Bush, even when he is long out of office, presiding at his planned library's Freedom Institute -- "I would like to build a Hoover Institute" -- victory will always be just around the corner.
Hoping that history will somehow vindicate him, the president has entered a phase of decadent perversity.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Sept. 20, 2007 | There has never been a moment when we were not winning in Iraq. Victory has followed victory, from "Mission Accomplished" to the purple fingers of the Iraqi election to, most recently, President Bush's meeting at Camp Cupcake in Anbar province with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni leader of the group Anbar Awakening (who was assassinated a week later). Turning point has followed turning point, from Bush's proclamation two years ago of his "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" to his announcement last week of his "Return on Success." "We're kicking ass," he briefed the Australian deputy prime minister on Sept. 6 about his latest visit to Iraq. In his quasi-farewell address to the nation on Sept. 13, Bush assigned any possible shortcomings to Gen. David Petraeus and bequeathed his policy "beyond my presidency" to his successor.
After Bush pretended to deliberate over whether he would agree to his own policy as presented by his general in well-rehearsed performances before Congress -- "President Bush Accepts Recommendations" read a headline on the White House Web site -- he established an ideal division of responsibility. Bush could claim credit for the "Return on Success," whenever that might be, while Petraeus would be charged with whatever might go wrong.
One week after Petraeus flashed his metrics, a whole new set of facts on the ground suddenly emerged: an admission (previously denied) by Petraeus that the United States was arming the Sunnis, who might use those weapons in the next phase of Iraq's civil war; the release of a Pentagon report that there is "an increase in intra-Shi'a violence throughout the South" (a report conveniently withheld as Petraeus was testifying); the Iraqi government's expulsion of Blackwater, a private security firm with close ties to the administration, after a band of its guards gunned down Iraqi civilians; the restriction of all nonmilitary U.S. personnel in Iraq to the Green Zone; a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent that about 1 million people are internal refugees as a result of ethnic cleansing (apart from the more than 2 million refugees who have fled the country); and the announcement by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of an investigation into the State Department's inspector general for quashing scrutiny and embarrassing studies of fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, among other projects.
As these events played out, Petraeus was detailed as Bush's Willy Loman to preside over the cooling of the special relationship with America's most important ally in the coalition of the willing. The general traveled to London to meet with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the policy from which he is rapidly disengaging, already having withdrawn British forces in Basra to its airport before final evacuation. Such is the face of victory 10 days after Petraeus' march through Capitol Hill.
In his semiretirement, Bush engaged in appeals to history, which he now says on nearly every occasion will absolve him. Early on and riding high, he expressed contempt for history. "History, we'll all be dead," he sneered to Bob Woodward in an interview for "Bush at War," a panegyric to Bush the triumphant after the Afghanistan invasion and before Iraq. Now Bush cites history as justification for everything he does. "You can't possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency -- until I'm dead," he told Robert Draper, his authorized biographer, in an interview for "Dead Certain." The use of the words "history" and "dead" between the Woodward and Draper interviews makes for a world of difference -- the difference between a president who couldn't care less and one who cares desperately but can't admit it.
Bush incessantly invokes a host of presidents past -- Truman, Lincoln and Washington -- as appropriate comparisons, and also talks of Winston Churchill. Frederick Kagan, the neoconservative instigator of "the surge," refers to it as "Gettysburg," a leap of historical imagination that transforms Bush into the Great Emancipator. In his unstoppable commentary about himself, Bush has become as certain of his exalted place in history as he is of his policy's rightness. He projects his image into the future, willing his enshrinement as a great president. History has become a magical incantation for him, a kind of prayerful refuge where he is safe from having to think in the present. For Bush, history is supernatural, a deus ex machina, nothing less than a kind of divine intervention enabling him to enter presidential Valhalla. Through his fantasy about history as afterlife -- the stairway to paradise -- he rationalizes his current course.
Draper's biography has the feel of a lengthy feature magazine article wrapped in a dust jacket. It lacks any serious discussion of the influence of Dick Cheney, the rise of the neoconservatives, Karl Rove's attempt to create a one-party state, the government's torture policy, splits within the senior military, the scapegoating of the CIA, or the evisceration of federal departments and agencies. Nonetheless, Draper's unusual access enabled him to collect valuable anecdotes as well as to put a microphone in front of a president who, when interrupted by an aide, told him not to worry because the interview was "worthless." Letting down his guard, Bush does not understand what he reveals.
In his interviews with Draper, he is constantly worried about weakness and passivity. "If you're weak internally? This job will run you all over town." He fears being controlled and talks about it relentlessly, feeling he's being watched. "And part of being a leader is: people watch you." He casts his anxiety as a matter of self-discipline. "I don't think I'd be sitting here if not for the discipline ... And they look at me -- they want to know whether I've got the resolution necessary to see this through. And I do. I believe -- I know we'll succeed." He is sensitive about asserting his supremacy over others, but especially his father. "He knows as an ex-president, he doesn't have nearly the amount of knowledge I've got on current things," he told Draper.
Bush is a classic insecure authoritarian who imposes humiliating tests of obedience on others in order to prove his superiority and their inferiority. In 1999, according to Draper, at a meeting of economic experts at the Texas governor's mansion, Bush interrupted Rove when he joined in the discussion, saying, "Karl, hang up my jacket." In front of other aides, Bush joked repeatedly that he would fire Rove. (Laura Bush's attitude toward Rove was pointedly disdainful. She nicknamed him "Pigpen," for wallowing in dirty politics. He was staff, not family -- certainly not people like them.)
Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked. Aides have been fearful of raising problems with him. In his 2004 debates with Sen. John Kerry, no one felt comfortable or confident enough to discuss with Bush the importance of his personal demeanor. Doing poorly in his first debate, he turned his anger on his communications director, Dan Bartlett, for showing him a tape afterward. When his trusted old public relations handler, Karen Hughes, tried gently to tell him, "You looked mad," he shot back, "I wasn't mad! Tell them that!"
At a political strategy meeting in May 2004, when Matthew Dowd and Rove explained to him that he was not likely to win in a Reagan-like landslide, as Bush had imagined, he lashed out at Rove: "KARL!" Rove, according to Draper, was Bush's "favorite punching bag," and the president often threw futile and meaningless questions at him, and shouted, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."
Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. "Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president's support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a 'Big New Thing.'" Other aides played on Bush's self-conception as "the Decider." "To sell him on an idea," writes Draper, "aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision." But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today."
Draper reports a telling exchange between Bush and James Baker, one of his father's closest associates, the elder Bush's former secretary of state and the one the family called on to take command of the campaign for the 2000 Florida contest when everything hung in the balance. Baker's ruthless field marshaling safely brought the younger Bush into the White House. Counseling him in the aftermath, Baker warned him about Rumsfeld. "All I'm going to say to you is, you know what he did to your daddy," he said.
Indeed, Rumsfeld and the elder Bush were bitter rivals. Rumsfeld had scorn for him, and tried to sideline and eliminate him during the Ford administration because he wanted to become president himself. If George W. Bush didn't know about it before, he knew about it then from Baker, and soon thereafter he appointed Rumsfeld secretary of defense. Draper does not reflect on this revelation, but it is highly suggestive.
Quoted in an Aug. 9 article in the New York Times on the lachrymose father, Andrew Card, aide to both men, lately as White House chief of staff, and a family loyalist, spoke out of school. "It was relatively easy for me to read the sitting president's body language after he had talked to his mother or father," Card said. "Sometimes he'd ask me a probing question. And I'd think, Hmm, I don't think that question came from him."
The elder Bush assumed that the Bush family trust and its trustees -- James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Prince Bandar -- would take the erstwhile wastrel and guide him on the path of wisdom. In this conception, the country was not entrusted to the younger Bush's care so much as Bush was entrusted to the care of the trustees. He was the beneficiary of the trust. But to the surprise of those trustees, he slipped the bonds of the trust and cut off the family trustees. They knew he was ill-prepared and ignorant, but they never expected him to be assertive. They wrongly assumed that Cheney would act for them as a trustee.
Cheney had worked with and for them for decades and seemed to agree with them, if not on every detail then on the more important matter of attitude, particularly the question of who should govern. The elder Bush had helped arrange for Cheney to become the CEO of Halliburton, making him a very rich man at last. But Bush, Baker, Scowcroft et al. didn't realize that Cheney's apparent concurrence was to advance himself and his views, which were not theirs. When absolute power was conferred on him, the habits of deference lapsed, no longer necessary. ("Thank you for the privilege of serving today.") Cheney was always more Rumsfeld oriented than Bush oriented. The elder Bush knew that Rumsfeld despised him and that Cheney was close to Rumsfeld, just as he knew his son's grievous limitations. But the obvious didn't occur to him -- that Cheney would seize control of the lax son for his own purposes. The elder Bush committed a monumental error, empowering a regent to the prince who would betray the father. The myopia of the old WASP aristocracy allowed him to see Cheney as a member of his club. Cheney, for his part, was extremely convincing in playing possum. The elder Bush has many reasons for self-reproach, but perhaps none greater than being outsmarted by a courtier he thought was his trustee.
Through his interposition of Petraeus, Bush has bound his party to his fate. Of the Republicans, only Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, leader of the 1994 self-styled radical "revolution" that captured Congress, is willing to speak publicly about the danger Bush poses to the future of the party. "I believe for any Republican to win in 2008, they have to have a clean break and offer a dramatic, bold change," he told a group of reporters on Sept. 14. "If we nominate somebody who has not done that ... they're very, very unlikely to win it."
But repudiating Bush would also mean repudiating Gingrich's legacy, too. Draper reports that Bush loves claiming Ronald Reagan, not his father, as his role model. But Gingrich, more than Reagan, is Bush's forerunner. It was Gingrich who heightened the politics of polarization to a level of personal attack and unscrupulousness unlike any seen since the underside of Richard Nixon's operations was exposed in the Watergate scandal. Reagan was free of such dishonest and vicious politics. Bush, Cheney and Rove ("Pigpen") picked up where Gingrich left off. Republicans can no more return to the halcyon days of Reagan than magic carpets can be used in Iraq. For the Republicans to recover, they would have to extirpate their entire recent history, root and branch.
"History would acquit him, too. Bush was confident of that, and of something else as well," writes Draper. "Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card's departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs."
Bush grasps at the straws of his own disinformation as he casts himself deeper into the abyss. The more profound and compounded his blunders, and the more he redoubles his certainty in ultimate victory, the greater his indifference to failure. He has entered a phase of decadent perversity, where he accelerates his errors to vindicate his folly. As the sands of time run down, he has decided that no matter what he does, history will finally judge him as heroic.
The greater the chaos, the more he reinforces and rigidifies his views. The more havoc he wreaks, the more he insists he is succeeding. His intensified struggle for self-control is matched by his increased denial of responsibility. Hence Petraeus.
Bush's unyielding personality would have been best suited to the endless trench warfare of World War I, as a true compatriot of the disastrous British Gen. Douglas Haig. His mind is geared toward a static battlefield. For low-intensity warfare, such as in Iraq, "an authoritarian cast of mind would be a crippling disability," wrote British expert Norman F. Dixon in his classic work, "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence." "For such 'warfare,' tact, flexibility, imagination and 'open minds,' the very antithesis of authoritarian traits, would seem to be necessary if not sufficient."
Bush's ever-inflating self-confidence hides his gaping fear of failure. His obsession with deference demands exercises of humiliation that never satisfy him. His unwavering resolve is maintained by his adamant refusal to wade into the waters of ambiguity. "You can't talk me out of thinking freedom's a good thing!" he protests to his biographer. For Bush, even when he is long out of office, presiding at his planned library's Freedom Institute -- "I would like to build a Hoover Institute" -- victory will always be just around the corner.
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