18 January 2008 a Friday

The lull before the weekend, apparently. Charlie Rangel says he hasn't been fooled:

"I don't know what these paid consultants come up with, but it would seem to me I would recommend you just have to be honest," he said. "You just have to be yourself, and for God's sake, don't try to change your personality,because quite frankly if you are who you are and it's not accepted by the American people, I don't see how you're going to lead anyway."

I guess he doesn't believe that she really only "found her own voice" just recently.

"Ken Starr spent $70 million and indicted innocent people to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon," he told the students last week, his eyes narrowing and his finger jabbing the air. At another point, he complained that the investigations during his White House days virtually bankrupted him: "The Republicans were so mean to me when I was president that I was poorer when I left than when I got there."

Clinton, himself, lectured us on the meaning of 'is' and how to parse sentences, so we can discern some truth in his statement that he wouldn't take a nickel for anything. And since all he'd been before he became president was a low-paid governor of a poor state, and the US president doesn't get paid like even the poorest corporate CEO, how did he get rich during his presidential term in order to be able to lose any of it? Maybe that explains why they stole the silverware when they left.

Clinton's frustration seems to be boiling over. He has likened her Democratic rivals to Republican "Swift boat" attackers and castigated Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for making up a "fairy tale" about Obama's war position. Just this week he berated a television reporter who asked about a dispute over Nevada caucus rules.

If you wonder how rich Clinton is now, consider the fact that he won't even bother to pick up an easy million dollars. That's the amount which has been offered to anyone who can disprove any of the Swift Boat "attacks". John Kerry bit, opening his mouth to claim the money while apparently failing to realize that proof was going to be required in order to collect. Oh. That.

The analogy Clinton was implying was obvious: I'm Lyndon Johnson, unlovely doer; he's Martin Luther King, charismatic dreamer. Vote for me if you want results.

Forty years ago, that arrangement -- white president enacting African American dreams -- was necessary because discrimination denied blacks their own autonomous political options. Today, that arrangement -- white liberals acting as tribune for blacks in return for their political loyalty -- is a demeaning anachronism. That's what the fury at Hillary was all about, although no one was willing to say so explicitly.

What people are really defensive--and thus mad--about is the fact that the 'tribune' description has been true of the Democrats. Every now and then you will hear a complaint from some black leader or other that they're tired of being wooed by the Democrats every four years for their votes and then ignored in between elections.

Bill is annoyed with Obama. As Bill inadvertently let on to Charlie Rose, it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with entitlement. He had contemplated running in 1988, he confided to Charlie, but decided to wait. Too young, not ready. (A tall tale, highly Clintonian; but that's another matter.) Now it is Hillary's turn. The presidency is her due -- the ultimate in alimony -- and this young upstart refuses to give way.

But telling Obama to wait his turn is a tricky proposition. It sounds patronizing and condescending, awakening the kinds of racial grievances white liberals have spent half a century fanning -- only to find themselves now singed in the blowback, much to their public chagrin.

Who says there's no justice in this world?

I have supported Obama's campaign since early on. But civil rights leaders have always played a somewhat separate role from presidential candidates. Free from the constraints of sound bites and pollsters and the politics of compromise, we are able to speak truth to power and apply positive leverage to get inequality issues on the candidates' agendas.

He's been for Obama all along and he isn't constrained, whatever that means, by sound bites.

The civil rights leaders of the '60s spoke against a range of structural inequalities. Today, we decry the fact that black men make up over half of the prison population, while...

See, no sound bite there. It's not clear whether he's arguing that black criminals are being unfairly sentenced to jail for their crimes and white judges are supposed to stop doing that, or whether white folks are supposed to give black folks enough money so that they don't have to steal, or, indeed, why the fact that there are so many black men in prison has anything at all to do with racial inequality of treatment.

Joe Biden has to be smiling as he reads this Op-ed by Iraq's national security advisor:

Iraq's political geography suggests five likely federal units: A "Kurdistan province," including the current Kurdistan and surrounding areas; a "Western province," including Mosul and the upper Tigris and Euphrates valleys; a "Kufa province," built around the Middle Euphrates governorates; a "Basra province," including the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys; and a "Baghdad province," built around Greater Baghdad, which may include parts of Diyala and Salah ad Din Governorates. The Kurdish region would be given a special constitutional status as a recognized society and culture with a unique identity (similar to the Canadian province of Quebec).

Unwittingly, he points out his idea's biggest problem. Quebec is a separatist, divisive force in Canada, and has spoken many times in the past about a desire to withdraw from Canada and become a separate state. Federalism in Iraq would work the opposite way it did in the United States, where formerly sovereign states voluntarily decided to come together in a new union, rather than the other way around. And, earlier in the piece, the author cites the real problem with federalism in Iraq even as he is offering it as an argument FOR federalism:

Overall, Shiites see their future based on two fundamental "rights": Power must be exercised by the political majority through control of governmental institutions, and institutional sectarian discrimination must be eliminated. Kurds see their future bound to their "rights" of linguistic, cultural, financial and resource control within Kurdistan. Sunni Arabs are driven by resistance to their loss of power, as well as fear of revenge for past wrongs and the potential for reverse discrimination.

As long as Iraqis think of themselves as members of those three groups first, and Iraqis second, and then wish to further concentrate their numbers within reasons, then federalism will be divisive rather than cohesive. The Iraqi federalists are arguing for splitting down, whereas American federalists combined upwards. To argue that both kinds of federalism are equally desirable is, I think, naïve.

America thought of itself as a "melting pot" where old identities would be discarded in favor of the new one: American. At its most successful, that is the way America operates...it isn't of major importance that we are Jews or Gentiles, or from Ireland or from Norway or Poland. This is the weakness of the Jesse Jackson "African-Americans", because attaching a qualifier does, well, just that: qualifies down into a sub-group rather than melts into a larger one.

The only reason for the present-day Iraq to continue to exist as one nation is oil wealth, which is unevenly distributed geographically, just the same way it is in the United States. Iraq's unique problem is that over there the state is considered to be the owner of the oil. Reverse federalism would grant the separate Iraqi states more and more power until pretty soon you'd find that the states with oil would no longer want to share with the others, especially if separation had emphasized the differences between them on the basis of Sunni, Shia or Kurd.

Religion, like federalism, can be both divisive and cohesive, depending on which way the arrow points. Christians once fought bitterly and were willing to kill one another over the differences between the sub-groups, for instance between Catholic and Protestant. No longer, as the ecumenical movement has been one of tolerance. As we readily see in Iraq's sectarian violence, however, Sunni and Shia are quite willing to kill each other over their perceived differences.

Since the people who feel so strongly about killing over differences, whether Catholic/Protestant or Sunni/Shia, seem to be in an increasing minority, the hope is that the people who don't feel that way, the "moderate Muslims", will prevail the same way that the moderates did in Christianity.

This is less likely to happen if the groups split up into like-minded enclaves, however.

It's easy to argue that Iraq has no choice, that it is "too soon" for them to learn to practice true democratic government, but then you only have to look around the world at Turkey and Indonesia and see that, yes, they can if they want to badly enough.

Candidates with big talk about unity never identify the convictions and positions they're ready to abandon in the search for common ground. There's no hint that Barack Obama, who has made "unification" the guiding star of his campaign, will adopt any of the Republican positions for the sake of "unity." Like all special pleaders for vague and windy notions, what he means is that if everybody adopts his convictions and views, we'll be unified.

That's exactly what they mean, every time, too. I agree with Pruden's conclusion when he talks about...

...John Kerry's endorsement last week. "We need a president who can reintroduce America to the world, and actually reintroduce America to ourselves," he said. But that's wrong. America, the last best hope anywhere, needs no introduction to anyone. Making the country over, to make it acceptable to its critics, losers all, would be a futile exercise in self-flagellation, satisfying only the flagellantes. What we need is a president who tries to satisfy only the people who elect our presidents.

The world is large and full of diverse critics all across the spectrum. Living to satisfy your critics is not living at all. To thine own self be true should be our motto.

It is no accident that the major candidates in the Republican field are a pastor, a businessman and a war hero. These are the three most evocative Republican leadership models. Nor is it an accident that the Democratic race is a clash between a daughter of the feminist movement, a beneficiary of the civil rights movement and a self-styled proletarian. These are powerful Democratic categories.