The Dish

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."

And the Clintons are in the thick of it. Stanley Fish:

The literature the Clinton campaign is passing around about Obama and Ayers cannot be explained away or rationalized. It features bold heads proclaiming that Ayers doesn’t regret his Weathermen activities (what does that have to do with Obama? Are we required to repudiate things acquaintances of our have not said?), that Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s senatorial campaign (do you take money only from people of whose every action you approve?), that Obama admired Ayers’s 1997 book on the juvenile justice system, that Ayers and Obama participated on a panel examining the role of intellectuals in public life. That subversive event was sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals, an organization that also sponsored an evening conversation (moderated by me) between those notorious radicals Richard Rorty and Judge Richard Posner (also a neighbor of Ayers’s; maybe the Federalist Society should expel him).

Gasp. Alert Hewitt and Kristol. Richard Posner is a closet communist. Fish is too kind to the Clintons in the rest of his column. But I have to say that his observation about the tactics of this campaign – classic McCarthyite tactics long practised by Rove – is on the mark. And it’s interesting to me that these smears have been aimed primarily at the most obvious agents of real change in this election: Ron Paul and now Barack Obama. When people have ideas and arguments that actually reach and move people, and you don’t have a good argument in response, smearing is the logical next step. And smearing is what the neocons and the far right and the Clintons have been reveling in.

To which one can only respond: don’t let these people smear your future away. It only works if you let them get away with it.

Conyers subpoenas Addington and Yoo.

So many readers seem to be feeling it. I have too. But remember what we’re dealing with here: last fall, no one gave Obama a chance. It was always a very long shot. When I wrote that Obama piece, Clinton was ahead by at least 20 points and it wasn’t budging a jot. Every pundit also expected the classic Clinton-Giuliani set-up for 2008: the perfect boomer red-blue battle. It didn’t happen. The Republicans, from a smaller and demoralized base, gave us McCain. And the Clintons have lost the mathematical chance of winning the nomination by any fair means. The change has already happened.

Obama is a freshman senator; he is 46 years old; he is African-American; he is a liberal – even if he is very gifted in talking to conservatives. He has taken on the biggest brand and machine in American politics, the Clintons, and won. If you didn’t think this would be an uphill struggle, you’ve been deluded. Of course, race will not go away; it will come back again and again and again. Of course, generational resistance will not go away: Obama is a big leap for the over 50s for all sorts of reasons. Of course, the usual Rovian tactics will be used against him – brutally. He does represent real change – culturally, politically, and in terms of global politics. Politicians who represent real change do not win easily; they usually require a real crisis to rise. That’s how RFK and MLK emerged – in crisis, after being smeared (sometimes with a grain of truth) and finally assassinated. That’s how Reagan and Thatcher emerged. We forget how their chances were considered flimsy for so long.

Obama is still in this; and the Wright fiasco gives him a chance to remove this cloud and address it again. He has the most votes, the most states, the most money, the most new voters and the most delegates and the most Senators on his side. This is no time for a failure of nerve – on the part of the Obama team or his supporters.

The only way past this is through it. And it’s not just up to Obama; it’s up to those of us who see him as a vehicle for real change.

From an interview with Patricia Gossman on Afghanistan:

"Recent statistics on security incidents, ranging from gun battles to suicide attacks, show a 40 percent increase throughout the country over last year. Security was the problem from day one after the Taliban fled Kabul and Kandahar in 2001, and six-and-a-half-years later it remains the most urgent priority. On the one hand, this new improved Taliban is fighting NATO and U.S. forces in a wide swath of the country’s south and southeast–even fairly close to Kabul. A few years ago I never thought twice about traveling from Kabul to Pakistan via Jalalabad, or from Kabul down to Logar (a 45-minute drive). I wouldn’t do it now. This time round the Taliban have new tactics too, in line with their Al Qaeda connections. Suicide bombings are a recent phenomenon, and they are becoming more frequent and lethal."

An interactive website.

Jeffrey Goldberg makes a mistake and joins the blogging world. Poor schmuck. But, hey, welcome!