Poseur Alert

"On exhibit is Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore (2007), a video made in collaboration with four practicing New York City attorneys John Sloss, Chet Kerr, Scott Rosenberg and Thomas Moore. The work features the lawyers performing a movement and vocal score that references their work and lives. The rhythmic sequences illustrate the performative aspects of litigating, the pressures experienced while working inside the juridical system, the contest, the service and ultimately the lawyers individual humanity. Highly formal in its spatial design and patterning, the work becomes a kind of twenty-first century folk dance," – Alexander Gray Associates.

Republican Base Voters And McCain

A reader offers the various stages of grief:   

Shock or Disbelief: How could this be, his campaign was DEAD last summer?

Denial: McCain cannot win, Mitt Romney is the stronger candidate. American want to round up all Mexicans and put them in concentration camps.  He is against waterboarding, so he is not qualified to be a Republican.

Anger: I am sitting out this election or voting for Hillary! Just watch me do it!

Guilt: How did we ever let this happen? What did I do to allow the GOP to sink so low?

Depression: Pass me the liquor. I feel sick.

Bargaining: McCain better make things right with the base, he has to get approval from Rush, Hannity and then agree to have Fred Thompson as his running made to keep him in line (actually even I hope for that!).

Acceptance and Hope: Well, it is better to win the general than to face President Hillary in the White House for possibly two terms. GO MCCAIN!

The Clintons Roll The Dice

On their legacy, that is. Matt Bai:

Only they can afford to be concerned right now with their own historical legacy, about seeing all that they have accomplished on behalf of their party and its commitment to fairness and equality blown away in the space of a few months. No one else is going to protect all that for them…

No one expects Mrs. Clinton to stand down and let Mr. Obama make his case unchallenged. She could, however, send a clear message to the cogs in the machinery she’s built that there is a line she will not cross. She could tell her Nevada allies that the job of the Democratic Party she grew up in is to make it easier for people to caucus, not harder. She could tell Robert Johnson that he needs to apologize, the same way she forced Bill Shaheen, her New Hampshire co-chairman, to resign last month. She can make it plain to all those people trying to get jobs in the next Clinton Administration that there is way to win—a rough and combative way, even—that nonetheless won’t destroy all the good that the Clintons, at least for a lot of Democrats, have come to represent.

Iraq And The Future

A reader writes:

Bainbridge is focused on finding a way to package the problem to help his friends at the polls. He needs to focus on a way out for us; indeed, we all do. The public debate so far is "the surge is working" vs. "the surge failed." This is infantile nonsense. There are two tracks, which must be considered independently. One is the military track. Here the military has performed consistently with plans, but at a very dramatic cost (I am talking more about treasure than blood, but the latter is not to be dismissed lightly). 

The second is the political track. This has been a disaster. The situation has gotten continuously worse through 2007 because of the political disintegration in Iraq.

The centrifugal forces are more troubling than most seem to believe.  It’s not simply Kurd v. Sunni v. Shiia. The Shiia themselves are hopelessly fragmented. The US has all but completely lost its influence within the Maliki Government (this is the reason for the steady trickle of coup rumors). Remember that Baghdad refused to go to Annapolis.  That was a calculated slap in the face to Bush, just on the point on which Baghdad thought they could most embarrass him. Just think about it–how do you manage to do this with such massive resources in cash and such a powerful military presence at your fingertips? It’s a demonstration of the unequaled incompetence of the Bush Administration. And into this vacuum of failing American power steps Iran, exercising more robust influence than ever before. And that in turn eggs the Saudis and Gulf Arabs to their undercover dealings with the Sunnis.

So the US military achieved its military objective at great cost. But political ineptitude means that the US will have frightfully little political gain from the military’s sacrifice. We are looking at a situation in which our friends are ever more eager to wish us away, and even our friends are afraid to be publicly associated with us. This is a disastrous result.

But how many analysts take the time and make the effort to look just a little deeper into the situation?  The superficiality of the coverage and debate is frightening.  Iraq is a very big deal.  The threat to us is enormous. And there are no obvious or easy solutions, none.  It will be a matter of picking the least bad of a series of horrible alternatives.  Bush is to blame, of course.  Let’s note that for the record. But let’s be focused on finding our way forward in a field of quicksand.