John McCain gave an elegant concession speech; unfortunately for him, his campaign wasn’t nearly as elegant. But, what a wonderful lesson he gave us all, especially in his kind words about Obama’s recently deceased grandmother. Last night, John McCain stepped up to and was visibly moved by the historic moment. He graciously and honorably became part of what we have always wanted to be.
Category Archives: Essays
Election Day
Just about two years ago, on October 31, 2006, I wrote my first post about Barack Obama. Then on January 29, 2008, Grave Error officially endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency. In 2008 alone, I have written about Obama’s candidacy some +170 times. It has been a long, long road until today. In looking back, here is what sticks out: Continue reading
How an Obama Victory May Be Republicans’ Only Chance
It took McCain until the final days of the election to realize that his best argument was that Americans love divided government and distrusted single party rule. From the look of things, not only may the Democrats take the White House, but they could also get a filabuster proof Senate and a powerful majority in the House. That means total control of government and a shameful end for George W. Bush, making W. the worst Republican president, in strictly Republican terms, in history.
But if I were a Republican, I wouldn’t fret too much (unless I was running for reelection tomorrow). Remember 1992? Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. Nevertheless, Bill Clinton was unable to pass any significant legislation. Two years later, the Republican Revolution took control over the Senate and the House for the first time in 40 years, as well as big gains in state legislatures and governorships around the country. That’s right, Americans love divided government. It took a little longer for this to happen to George W. Bush, but the same thing eventually happened to the Republican dominated Congress in the 2006 elections.
What does this mean for Republicans? My guess is that the Democrats will have big congressional victories in state and federal elections tomorrow and if Obama also wins, Americans will once again show their preference for divided government in the 2010 midterm elections. If on the other hand Obama loses, we’ll have divided government with a Republican presidency and Democratic Congress, and no tangible incentive to vote Republicans back into government.
Think about it. If McCain wins and is unpopular — extremely likely with the horrible outlook for reelection plus twelve years of Republican rule in the White House — it will be even more difficult to elect Republicans in 2012. Therefore, the Republicans’ best shot is for 2010 and 2012 is an Obama victory in 2008.
In Praise of McCain Palin’s Sense of Humor
Yes, I know I am annoyingly pro-Barack Obama, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t praise the Republican candidates when praise is due. For example, John McCain was very funny on last Saturday’s Saturday Night Live. It’s a shame that his self-deprecating humor doesn’t come off more frequently on the campaign trail, another trait linking him to Bob Dole’s failed presidential attempt. While I did not like the Sarah Palin crank call, I think that she actually came across as much more likable, natural, and ultimately as a good sport. Quite the opposite of making a fool out of herself — though she did reveal herself and her team to be overly gullible — Palin was nice and genuine. In that sense, the Canadian pranksters totally failed to embarrass her.
And of course to plug my own candidate, I should mention that Barack Obama was very good on The Daily Show with John Stewart, especially when Stewart joked about the Bradley Effect:
JON STEWART: I don’t even know how to bring this up. Obviously, your mother is from Kansas, she’s a white woman. Your father African. Are you concerned that you may go into the voting booth and…
BARACK OBAMA: I won’t know what to do.
JON STEWART: Your white half will all of a sudden decide I can’t do this.
BARACK OBAMA: Yeah, yeah, it’s a problem.
It’s nice to see all of the candidate with a healthy sense of humor and ability to laugh at themselves. Kudos to all.
Europeans, Race and the American Elections
Throughout the European press, I constantly hear Europeans asking whether Americans would actually vote for an African American as president. This weekend when asked the same question by a close Spanish friend, I played devil’s advocate, pushed all the buttons and cited recent examples of Spanish racism (the Spanish national basketball team, the colloquial use of the diminutive when referring to foreigners, and even their irrational hatred and distrust of Lewis Hamilton’s win yesterday in Formula One), though I do not consider Spain to be an overtly racist country.
Nevertheless, in a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s 2008 Global Attitudes Project, Spaniards came off as amongst the most racist (in terms of being both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic) in Europe. In Spain, unfavorable views towards Jews was up from 21% (2005) to 46% this year; and 52% had negative views of Muslims. At the same time, though, Europeans, especially Spaniards, overwhelmingly prefer Barack Obama.
So there is an irony to Europeans’ fascination with the racial aspect of the American presidential election and whether the “racist” Americans may actually vote for a black president. As I recently commented in a blog post on the subject, Obama has become by far the mainstream candidate with endorsements from all of the mainstream newspapers and with astonishingly record high donations from private citizens, mainly white. More importantly, the African American candidate and his family now look, act, and talk more like the average American than do his white counterparts.
So when you look closely at the facts, what is interesting from the European perspective isn’t whether Americans will vote for an African American but why there is almost no political representation by minority groups at all in European political life.
Filed under Essays, Living la vida española, Obama 08
The Untold Vulgarity of Blood and Oil
In the second presidential debate after McCain told him that he “does not understand our national security challenges”, Obama responded,
I don’t understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.
That was Senator McCain’s judgment and it was the wrong judgment.
When Senator McCain was cheerleading the president to go into Iraq, he suggested it was going to be quick and easy, we’d be greeted as liberators.
That was the wrong judgment, and it’s been costly to us. So one of the difficulties with Iraq is that it has put an enormous strain, first of all, on our troops, obviously, and they have performed heroically and honorably and we owe them an extraordinary debt of gratitude.
But it’s also put an enormous strain on our budget. We’ve spent, so far, close to $700 billion and if we continue on the path that we’re on, as Senator McCain is suggesting, it’s going to go well over $1 trillion.
We’re spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion.
And we need that $10 billion a month here in the United States to put people back to work, to do all these wonderful things that Senator McCain suggested we should be doing, but has not yet explained how he would pay for.
Now, Senator McCain and I do agree, this is the greatest nation on earth. We are a force of good in the world. But there has never been a nation in the history of the world that saw its economy decline and maintained its military superiority.
Nevertheless, Obama forgot to mention the most obvious reasons why Iraq was both strategically and morally wrong. For one, Exxon Mobil just announced, once again, record profits. How is it that since the war in Iraq our energy costs have gone through the roof, but Exxon Mobil is making a killing? We even want to further reward them by letting them “drill, baby, drill.” The war continues to benefit the oil companies and we pay the economic and human toll.
But worst of all, the press has all but ignored the grotesque civilian tragedy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the top of the list of “Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009” was the over one million Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S. occupation. Continue reading
Which Country Do You Prefer?
Following in the footsteps first of the Asbury Park Press and then the lesser known Washington Post and the New York Times, The Economist — not celebrated for its socialism — has just endorsed Barack Obama.
In response to my recent post about Michelle Obama on Leno, a friend of mine recent wrote to me complaining — and the same argument could be made of Obama’s infomercial — that you cannot draw any conclusions about the Obamas based on interviews and speeches that are completely staged and scripted. I responded that, even if the interview were staged, Michelle and the Democratic ticket were trying to give a certain perception of how they wanted the U.S. to be. McCain Palin would give a very different “staged” performance — for they see America differently. As The Economist noted with respect to McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin, she was “chosen partly for her views on divisive social issues.”
So the question isn’t whether Obama is too staged, but rather which staged America do you prefer? One that seeks unity or one that sees America at war?
How McCain Lost His Media Base
Recently I wrote about how the McCain campaign felt like it was being treated unfairly by the press. There I mentioned how prior to the GOP Convention, McCain was actually getting proportionally more positive coverage than Obama. Politico has written a story about how since the Convention, McCain has clearly “hosed in the press.”
The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.
What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).
So if the media was once McCain’s base, as he used to call them, what has changed since the GOP Convention to turn the press again McCain? Continue reading
McCain’s Shaky Performance
For the past few days, I have suffered from presidential election writer’s block. Actually, it’s not that I couldn’t think of anything to write, but there was nothing that interesting or novel to say that warranted a post. Nevertheless, today I finally decided to get my act together and write a few lines about some of the more interesting things we learned this week about the candidates and the election:
- Sarah Palin, though I do not believe she is directly to blame for the $150,000 wardrobe, the expensive stylist, and professional acting/speech coach, has not given a credible explanation. Rather, she has proven herself to be, as Maureen Dowd has repeated, nothing more than a My Fair Lady remake.
- The feeling of inevitable defeat has already begun to plague the Republican Party, and there is tension around the handling of Sarah Palin. While everyone panics and tries to save their own skin, Palin has gone from maverick to renegade, concentrating on her own political future.
- A valid worry is that the McCain Palin campaign’s mismanagement will infect many of the other state and federal races, giving the Democrats majorities nationwide and ousting Republican incumbents. McCain’s best argument, now much too late in the game to be successfully articulated, should have been about divided government and the perils of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a Democrat in the White House.
- As I wrote previously, the Obamas have become more representative of “America” than Mcain Palin’s small town “only served here” sign. Forget about whether or not a black man can become president, McCain’s own campaign has already conceded that Obama is the “mainstream” candidate with the mainstream media favoring him. As Frank Rich writes, white Americans already support Obama in higher numbers than they did Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or John Kerry. Would a fringe, angry, radical African American break all campaign finance records by rasing $150 million in a single month? I don’t know how Palin thinks Obama sees America, but a lot of Americans sure see Obama as worthy of their campaign donations.
While I was preparing to elaborate on the above, I took a short break to watch McCain on Meet the Press. I was stunned. While I have criticized McCain for his overly military-centeric and extreme shift to the right (including his choice of Sarah Palin), I have consistently avoided disqualifying him due to age. But on Meet the Press, McCain looked exhausted. His voice was shaky, his hands trembled, his tone was offbeat, and at one point he seemed to lose his bearing — giving him that forgetful senior moment that everyone has been hoping would not happen. Continue reading
With God’s Blessing, inshallah
In Arabic, all statements about the future are tempered by adding the phrase inshallah, meaning “God willing”. This comes from the Muslim precept that only God knows and determines the future; and therefore, it is a sign of arrogance and blasphemy to speak of the future without conditioning it on God’s will. Examples would include: I will see you later, inshallah; tomorrow I have an exam, inshallah; or I am going to Florida for Christmas, inshallah. Furthermore, its use is widely accepted by all Arabic speakers regardless of their religion (Islam, Christianity or Judaism). Even Spanish, heavily influenced by Arabic, adopted its own version of the expression — ojalá— to denote when one hopes for something to occur, i.e., ojalá que llueva café.
I wasn’t sure whether we had something similar in English until this morning when I heard Sarah Palin’s recent CNN interview. When asked what her role would be as vice president, Sarah Palin responded,
Well, we’ve talked a lot about that, John McCain and I have, about the missions that I’ll get to embark on if we are so blessed to be hired by the American people to work for them.
The “if we are so blessed” expression in American English is most commonly used by fundamentalist Christians to show that same degree of humbleness before God as does the Arabic inshallah. While I won’t doubt Sarah Palin’s sincerity, I can only imagine that by saying “if we are so blessed” she was also giving a wink out to her Christian voters.
Here’s what I would have liked to ask Sarah Palin in response. If ultimately you are not “so blessed”, but rather the will of God and that of a majority of American voters determine Barack Obama to be the next president, does that mean that Obama and Biden “are so blessed”? Could an Obama presidency be God’s will? And if so, wouldn’t you then have to accept God’s will and give Obama your full support?
Filed under Digressions, Essays, Obama 08
Grave Error 