Category: The Dish

I’ve been amused recently by Hugh Hewitt’s boosterism for the McCain campaign. Not surprised: Hewitt is a partisan hack who will write anything. But amused. Earlier this week on a blogger conference call, Hewitt was merrily getting McCain to get into the latest piece of anti-Obama McCarthyism on the Ayers front. It’s worth reminding ourselves – and the McCain camp should remind themselves too – what Hewitt has written about McCain just in the last few months. He is not a McCain fan, to put it mildly. I’ve rounded up a few gems:

January 31:

McCain is a very weak general election candidate, and if he was to win, would not govern as a conservative in any significant way.

January 14:

To know John McCain in Congress is not to like him.

January 13:

[C]onservatives have to know that Senator McCain is the anti-conservative …

January 11:

A GOP vote for McCain … is a vote for an old warrior way past his prime …

July 10, 2007:

[T]here are vast  numbers of Americans who really are conservative, who  really do vote their beliefs, and for whom John McCain’s anti-conservative politics and positions could not be redeemed by his personal story of courage and service or by his relentless and correct support for victory in Iraq and the wider war.

May 18, 2007:

Senator McCain’s contempt for you is complete.  React accordingly.

And my personal favorite:

March 1, 2007:

Sen. McCain is a great American, he’s been a lousy senator and a terrible Republican. That’s the brand.

Really? A "lousy senator"? I don’t think even Obama and Clinton would go that far.

From Fox News’ website yesterday:

Obama Rejects Wright Comments
Says pastor doesn’t speak for him, campaign
Democratic presidential candidate puts distance between his campaign and pastor’s latest statements

Special Report w/ Brit Hume:
Fact-checking one of the claims made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright

The O’Reilly Factor:
The comeback of Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Hannity & Colmes:
Huckabee’s Take
Former GOP presidential candidate weighs in on Rev. Wright; McCain’s campaign

VIDEO: FOX News contributor Michael Steele on the message of Rev. Wright’s media tour

OPINIONS: Susan Estrich: Who Needs Friends Like the Rev. Wright?

John Moody: Memo to Rev. Wright: Do Souls Have Colors?

On the Record w/ Greta:
Deadly Shark Attack
Expert explains what led to Great White’s attack on swimmer

The shark story is what makes it all worthwhile.

Some say that criticisms of the torture, abuse, and injustice at Guantanamo Bay are founded in partisanship or wussiness or ignorance or ant-Americanism. None of this is true. Many of us who are now the sharpest critics of what has been done there were on board with the war on terror at the start, and Bush’s leadership of it, until the facts simply couldn’t be ignored any longer. Among those people is Air Force Colonel Morris Davis who was once the Pentagon’s former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases. Will the Insta-right now accuse him of being a lefty-terror-lover? But what he witnessed was the work of a propaganda state, with no concern for basic conceptions of fairness or justice:

Davis told Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who presided over the hearing, that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, made it clear to him that bringing charges against some of the most notorious detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value."

Davis said he wanted to wait until the cases — and the military commissions system — had a more solid legal footing. Davis also said that Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

"He said, ‘We can’t have acquittals,’ " Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. " ‘We’ve been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.’ "

In a very simple phrase, you can see all the bad faith, stupidity and impeachable violations of core American values at the very top of this rotten administration. They have forfeited any trust in their handling of these matters; indeed have shown how vital it is that they are swept out of office and replaced with something utterly different. Something, you know, American.

Sanibel Island, Florida, 3.55 pm.

This is getting interesting:

Barack Obama made a call for nonviolence in the aftermath of the Sean Bell verdict – infuriating the Rev. Al Sharpton, who accused the presidential candidate of trying to "grandstand in front of white people," sources told The Post.

I think that is part of Jeremiah Wright’s view of Obama as well: he will never forgive him for winning so many white votes, and breaking the pattern and ideology of victimhood and marginalization that forged Wright’s identity. This dynamic is very powerful in minority circles. In the gay world, for example, the younger generation faced enormous hostility at first in their desire for civil marriage. We were regarded as sell-outs, heterosexists, patriarchal fascists. I will never forget having a bookstore picketed by gay activists  on a book tour for "Virtually Normal." As integration deepens, the generation whose identity was created by separation can feel left behind, betrayed, and lash out … at other members of the minority.

Obama is a nice, and empathetic guy. He may have moved beyond the old racial politics, but he understands the pain that brought African-Americans there. He is not inclined to condemn those people or cut them off (within the gay world, I’ve always been far less politic). But there comes a point at which the old school’s attacks on him merit a response that can remind many what Obama’s candidacy still represents. I hope open-minded conservatives can see this: between the cynicism of Clinton and the polarization of Sharpton, Obama’s vision is a great one for his party and his country. He mustn’t be sacrificed to the wolves of the past.

A post for demoralized Obama supporters. Remember how far we’ve come; and how close to the prize we are.

She’s 82 years’ old and very white. And she gets it. He really must be the nominee:

Know hope. America is a great place and Americans are a great people. They won’t buy this divisive crap. Yes, we can.

"I once went on a TV panel with Smith and passed some green-room time with him, and I can assure you that premature detonations of any kind would certainly not be his problem. He combines the body of an ox with the brains of a gnat. Indeed, if his brains were made of gunpowder and were to accidentally explode, the resulting bang would not even be enough to disarrange his hair," Hitch on Bob Smith.

I agree with Hitch about the McCain temper issue, by the way. There’s no denying it, and I’ve witnessed an explosion or two myself from the good senator. There is I think a filibuster-proof majority of other senators who are part of McCain’s "Fuck you" club. But McCain does calm down; and I like a man who can lose his cool. God knows I can. My concern about McCain is what seems to be his unreconstructed foreign policy and his fiscal irresponsibility as laid out in his economic plans. But we’re not supposed to discuss the, er, actual issues in this campaign, are we?

I must say this also occurred to me:

I watched some of Reverend Wright this morning at the National Press Club.  It seems obvious to me that he’s doing everything he can to wipe out Obama’s candidacy, and I’ll tell you why I think it is.  I think that people like Reverend Wright — and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this — really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they’re going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.

So it appears to me, if you look at Reverend Wright, listen to what he says and analyze it from the context or perspective of what’s best for him, which is clearly all he’s interested in, what’s best for him is that if Obama loses, because then it’s easy for him to say, "See, the white power structure doesn’t want a black man to rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States of America."

It would certainly fuel Reverend Wright’s future and continue to help him raise money and keep people whipped up into a frenzy.  He’s not helpful.  Whatever he thinks he’s doing, it is not helpful to Barack Obama.

Look: it’s clear that Obama has kept contact with the kind of politics that Wright represents; but it is also apparent to any fair observer that Obama himself represents a clear and powerful break with the culture and language of permanent black victimhood and identity politics. He is not Shelby Steele – but Shelby Steele could never get many black votes in contemporary America. Obama is a mixture in this, as in so many things, a complicated mixture. My view is it is that very mixture, that very embodiment of American complexity that makes Obama such a next-generation candidate.

It is no wonder the some of the old guard have mixed feelings about his ascendancy; or that Wright, at this point, might feel jealousy and the erosion of his worldview. And that’s why Obama needs to spell out again his own vision of a post-racial America that is not a non-racial America. Instead of seeking to play out the clock, he needs to seize the narrative again, before it irreparably seizes him.

 

This from an interview as recently as 2005:

When asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan — something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign — the senator offered nothing short of a categorical "no." "I would hope that we could bring them all home," he said on MSNBC. "I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff."

Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue.

"You’ve heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I’ve heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German…the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?"

McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. "I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence," he responded. "And I don’t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be."

This is the reason his 100-years comment is a completely legitimate issue. Jeez: he said it, and we’re judging the other candidate on things he has never said. The key divide in this election – if it is between Obama and McCain – is whether you believe that the US should have a permanent military presence, permanent military bases, in Iraq. McCain has clearly flip-flopped in this issue. Clinton would do whatever was in the interests of the next 24 hour news cycle at home to insulate herself from GOP attacks. Obama has kept the same position.

And this gets to the core real choice in this election. Do you believe that the US should be the world’s only super-power, required to have a military presence on every continent, with troops permanently stationed in the middle of the Muslim Arab world? Do you believe in the 21st century version of empire? Or do you believe that after the last few years, America needs to formulate a, er, humbler relationship to the rest of the world? 

In other words, do you support the 2000 position of George W. Bush and the 2005 position of John McCain? And no, Mr Hewitt, that does not make anyone "far left."