Edward M. Kennedy - 1932-2009

“My babies were rocked to political lullabies.”
- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

“We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make. I have lived in a blessed time.”
- Edward M. Kennedy, (D-Mass) December 2008, while receiving an honorary degree from Harvard.

“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
- Edward M. Kennedy, 1980 Democratic Convention, August 1980 ending his campaign for the Presidency.

“Those of us who loved him and take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world”
- Edward M. Kennedy, June 1968, Eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy

“He was the survivor. He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact on the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”
- Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute

Is it 1968 or 2009?

“Sticking it out seems to be a 10-year project and I am not sure we have the political capital and financial capital to do that. Yet withdrawing, that seems awfully high as well. So we have the wolf by the ear.”
- Lt Col. Douglas A. Ollivant, USA, Ret. – A former NSA staffer for both President Bush and President Obama, quoted in the New York Times, August 23, 2009 about the war in Afghanistan.

An earlier generation saw every diplomatic exchange as a potential Munich, so this one sees everything as a potential Viet Nam.

This Sunday, August 23, 2009, The New York Times ran a piece exploring the parallels between President Obama and President Johnson. After saying such a comparison was fatally flawed the writer made that comparison anyway. The similarities are obvious - a progressive President who has an ambitious domestic agenda, but also inherits someone else’s war. That war could overwhelm his agenda and hijack his presidency.

Yes it could happen.

It is just a likely that it won’t.

Before I go any further, let me say that this is not a discussion on whether or not the war in Afghanistan is good or bad, one of necessity or choice. It is a discussion of the threat it poses to Obama’s Presidency.

There are several critical differences between Obama in Afghanistan and LBJ in Viet Nam.

First, in Viet Nam there was no real compelling US geo-political interest to fight there. One of the main drivers to stay was the fear of being accused of repeating the mistakes of Munich. “If we back down to the commies like Chamberlin backed down to Hitler, the Russians will take over everything! We must show strength!”

Even greater was LBJ’s fear of being accused of having “lost” Viet Nam the same way Harry Truman was accused of having “lost” China. So pride and fear, rather than compelling need, cost young men their lives. In the end we lost the war, South Viet Nam fell, and we now have a new trading partner for, and manufacturing base of, American goods.

That is not the case in Afghanistan.

There is a compelling geo-political argument for America to be involved. It is called Pakistan. Were the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, they would continue to destabilize Pakistan. As it has the bomb, destabilization of Pakistan, has broader implications than the destabilization of say Laos or Cambodia. It is not far-fetched to say that the only thing standing between the Taliban and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is the US military.

So Obama does have a compelling case for intervention that LBJ did not.
The reach of Viet Nam into American society was deeper because of the draft and the size of the military commitment. Eventually it was this reach that helped destabilize American society. The way America tore at itself apart was what drove LBJ from office.

Today America is not tearing itself apart in the same way. There are no riots or protests in the streets. War is not dividing Americans. Shouting against Obama is driven by a small minority with little broad base of support.

This brings us to the third and most crucial difference between Obama’s political situation and LBJ’s. In 1968, the Republicans were able to present themselves as a viable alternative to Johnson and the Democrats. Today Obama is not faced with an opposition that is capable of presenting a viable alternative to anything. It is hard to imagine North East Liberals and California Progressives flooding into the arms of the current Republican party in the same way Southern and Blue Collar Democrats did between 1968 and 1980. Progressive Democrats will look at the party of Michelle Bachman and vote the party of Michelle Obama no matter their feelings are about Afghanistan.

His greater risk is not Afghanistan but Iraq.

The people elected Obama to end the war in Iraq. His early opposition to the war was the difference Democratic primary voters saw between Obama, Clinton and Edwards. It was also the difference that Independents and conservative Democrats saw between Obama and McCain. Failure to end American involvement in Iraq by the end of his first term presents a greater danger to him politically than staying in Afghanistan.

His whole entrance into the presidential scene was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Failure to end the war in Iraq could be his exit – but only if people see the Republicans as a capable alternative.

Bill Clinton would know, wouldn't he.

"What you can't do, or you can, but you shouldn't do -- is start saying things like we want to set up death panels to pull the plug on grandma."
- President Obama in a Town Hall meeting in Grand Junction Colorado.

“I don't care how low they drive support for this with misinformation. The minute the president signs this bill, his approval will go up. Within a year, when the good things begin to happen, and the bad things they're saying will happen don't happen, approval will explode."
- Former President Bill Clinton on Obama and Health Care reform

If anyone knows how this works it’s Bill Clinton. No House Republican voted for Clinton’s 1993 economic package. In the Senate, Republicans hacked away and what was left survived only because Al Gore cast the tie breaking vote to pass it. Despite all of the Republican doomsayers, the Clinton package kicked off eight years of prosperity and created the surplus that Bush would later squander.

Now it is Obama’s turn with health care.

Rather than making an honest effort to work out policy differences and create a stronger bill, Republicans are more focused on winning points with their base. Their goal seems to be to defeat the reform not because it is bad, but because a Democrat has proposed it.

In his book “The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works,” Henry Waxman (D-CA) states again and again, the best legislation has input and support from both parties. Despite his reputation as a hard knuckle partisan fighter, he attributes every major success he has had to working with Republicans, even when he was in the minority.

But here we are about to institute the biggest social reform since the 1965 Civil Rights Acts, without any Republican support. Obama has tried to reach out to members of the other Party, but they have responded by stirring up rage in the darker corner s of society with exaggerations like “Death Panels.”

There are two reasons for their reaction that have little to do with Obama. First, the Republican response is a natural end of the Gingrich revolution. Second there are no leaders on the Republican side to negotiate with.

When the party of Hugh Scott became the party of Newt Gingrich, partisan loyalty took over and kicked the art governing to the side. Gingrich and his successors did everything to make sure their members toed the party line. They recruited candidates not for their skills, but for their loyalty and ability to follow orders.

Now, without anyone in the White House to direct them, Republicans seem unable to come up with any ideas of their own. They were unable to come up with an alternative health care proposal –even after they said they would – and they proposed a four page budget alternative to Obama’s stimulus proposal that lacked any numbers. So with no original ideas all they have is scare tactics. It is a sad sight to see the party of Lincoln and the Cooper Union speech become the party of Sarah Palin and Death Panels.

The second reason Obama has not had any luck with a bi-partisan approach is the party leadership has been compromised by the Bush administration. There is no one left to negotiate with. In normal years, John McCain, as the Presidential candidate who lost, would be the spokesperson for the loyal opposition. His Vice Presidential candidate would a natural workhorse carrying the water for the party and taking over – while preparing for a run in four years.

But this is not a normal year by any means.

Sarah Palin has finished the implosion that started when she asked “What do you mean?” when asked about the Bush doctrine. No one, except the most red meat conservative listens to her anymore. McCain also is too damaged to negotiate. By picking Palin as his VP choice he ruined any credibility he had for sound judgment. In addition when he suspended his campaign to deal with the economic crisis the only thing he succeeded in doing was showing how weak and ineffectual he actually is. The other Republican leaders are also off the scene or are too compromised. Bush has tactfully retired to his ranch and said little or nothing. Cheney is busy fighting to salvage his legacy. Everyone else is too out of touch with the current generation of Republicans to matter.

So with no adult supervision, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh call the shots. These people have no vested interest in governance. They can stir up town hall meetings by pandering to the dark fears of a small segment of society because they have no responsibly beyond bringing in the ratings for their sponsors. Without Rove and Bush telling them what to say, they are now out of control. The media infrastructure that Rove, Gingrich created to shill the conservative message is like the monster who broke out of the laboratory and is running wild through the village.

So if Clinton is right, and Health Care reform passes, and none of the dire predictions come true, and good things actually start to happen, the Republicans are in a bind. Their legislators, programmed for blind obedience and partisanship won’t be able to admit they were wrong. And after getting it wrong on virtually every major issue in the last 17 years from Iraq, the economy, social issues, and deregulation, the Party will loose its remaining credibility. Like the boy who cried wolf the Republicans will not be believed by voters.

The only way to save themselves is to come up with new ideas. But after the lobotomy of the Gingrich and Rove years, the party simply doesn’t have the ability to do that. This failure will lock them into minority status for the next generation. In the mean time, America looses out on all the good things that can happen when both parties function and can work together to solve our nation’s problems.

Birthers, Truthers and Walter Cronkite

“Watch Birther Meltdown on MSNBC!”
Headline on the Huffington Post

In North Carolina, when the Feds moved to arrest a suspected terrorist, they knew his wife was in the house and they had to get her out of harm’s way before they could move in. To do this they sent an agent wearing a blood stained t-shirt to the door to tell her that her son had been in car accident and she needed to come to the hospital. Instead they took her to the police station where they told her her son was fine but they had just arrested her husband on terrorist charges.

Afterwards, the News and Observer ran an article taking the agents to task for their tactics. It turned out a few years earlier the woman had lost a son in a car accident. The FBI knew this and it is why used this particular story to get her out of the house.

The reader reaction on the newspaper’s website was extraordinary. Instead of outrage at the FBI’s heartless tactics, the paper was excoriated for stirring things up. Reader after reader cited the News and Observer’s role a few years ago in the Duke Lacrosse case – where a number of players had been falsely accused of assaulting an African American woman.

The readers all asked the same question.

“During the Duke Lacrosse case the paper had repeatedly maligned innocent people in a witch hunt.” “The paper,” they went on to say, “reported as truth facts that simple, basic legwork could have (and eventually) disprove the victim’s story. So why should we believe the newspaper now?” These comments were much more visceral and far beyond the usual media bashing such stories usually stir up.

While people were busy bashing the News and Observer, the New York Times ran a story from their Standards Editor explaining why the “paper of record” had to publish no less than 8 corrections to their front page obituary of Walter Cronkite. The obituary was written by a television critic who was a good reporter, but who had a history making errors in her copy. This seemed to me like an airline saying “Other than the fact he crashes a lot, he is a really good pilot.”

Despite this reporter’s well known problem with accuracy the three editors in charge of her story assumed that another editor had fact checked the copy.Hence 8 mistakes and 8 corrections in the obituary of the “most trusted man in America.”

Against this backdrop it is no surprise that the “Birther" movement seems to be gaining more traction. This group firmly believes despite all evidence that President Obama was born in Kenya and is not qualified to be President.

They are not alone in fringe groups gaining ground.

The “Truthers” believe the Government staged 9/11 to justify the war in Iraq, even going so far as to plant explosives in the Twin Towers to cause them to fall. Now weird conspiracy theories have been around for a long time – I have had discussions with people who believe the moon landing was staged. But this is the first time in a long time that these theories, such as the “Birthers or the “Truthers” have gained such traction.

People simply do not trust the structures that run the country and give them information. The Right has long since distrusted the media. But there was a sea change after Dan Rather used forged documents to try and prove that Bush had evaded National Guard service. The Right saw Rather’s use of these documents of proof what they had been saying about the media for years.

At the same time the Left lost faith in the news media are information came to light on how Judith Miller and others shilled the Government’s story line on the need to go to war in Iraq, essentially becoming Dick Cheney’s steno pool. The media had for the left gone from “All the President’s Men” to “All the President’s Flacks.”

In this atmosphere people turn to each other for information. They will believe their neighbor or the people in their carpool long before they will believe a reporter. After all they have watched they have spent years watching local TV reporters ask the parents of car crash victims “tell me how you feel” and the national media lie repeatedly for partisan and financial reasons.

So when a neighbor gives them information they are prepared to believe it. After all why would their friend lie to them about whether or not Obama s Kenyan, or the Government blew up the World Trade Center to start the Iraq war? People’s source of information will continue to spiral inward and they will isolate in their own echo ideological echo chambers. They won’t believe or even listen to anything that breaks their insular world view.

This is why the "Birthers" and “Truthers” have a foothold and a following despite all the evidence that contradicts their views. It also makes it harder to rally people behind things that really matter in this country like Health Care Reform and fixing the economy.