Comments to Hillary Campaign

I've been getting e-mail from Geoff Garin of Hillary Clinton's campaign soliciting comments about strategy, encouragement to Hillary, and so on.

Here's a somewhat better developed version of my reply.

1. Dissociate herself from the Nineties. The Hillary campaign needs to completely separate her from the DLC/triangulation politics of the 1990's. Reducing Mark Penn's role, criticizing NAFTA, and lowering Bill Clinton's profile are steps in that direction. But more steps need to be taken. Hillary should speak more about the value of labor unions, the importance of working class men and the sacrifices they make for their families, the importance of raising wages, and the importance of reducing the disparity between CEO's and working-class people. The Bill Clinton administration shifted away from the "New Deal Democratic" coalition by being distancing themselves from labor unions, black people, and the poor and embracing deregulation. Although Hillary has already started the shift back, she should be more emphatic about it.

2. Renounce the Bush Doctrine. Hillary also needs to highlight her determination to withdraw from Iraq by also renouncing the Bush doctrine of attacking anybody who is an emerging threat and treating anybody who disagrees with us as an enemy. I get comments from a lot of people on both the right and left that Hillary won't "really" withdraw from Iraq. Renouncing the whole Bush doctrine might make her more convincing on that score.

3. Embrace the "activist" Democratic base. It was reported yesterday or today that Hillary made some negative comments about MoveOn.org and the activist "white" Democratic base after Iowa. She should do a 180 turn and embrace MoveOn, the liberal blogs, and Media Matters (which she helped get started didn't she) and their opposition to the war, support for environmental initiatives, and passion for racial and gender justice. Lots of people on the left view Hillary as more progressive than Obama. The activist left also has the kind of partisan, fighting spirit that Hillary herself is trying to exemplify. Hillary needs to nail her association with the left by openly identifying herself with progressives. In terms of her disagreements, she should emphasize that she agrees with progressive ideals but that it is also important to compromise with other constituencies and deal with some of the the unintentionally negative consequences of progressive initiatives.

4. Finally, Hillary needs to keep coming at Obama from several angles at the same time. For some reason, Democrats generally think that pounding away at one theme ad nauseum is the best way to do things. It's not. Of course, the risk of attacking Obama is that lots of Democrats don't like going negative on other Demcrats. But I don't think the Hillary campaign is in a position to do anything else.

Obviously, Hillary's behind. But she can still win and should be pushing as hard as she can.

The Personality Driven News Media

I want to start with Glenn Greenwald hammering the mainstream media again about their "petty personality-driven" reporting on presidential candidates.

Most certainly, the press will pretend to be above it all ("this is not something that we, the sophisticated political journalists, care about, of course"). But they yammer about Drudge-promoted gossip endlessly, and then insist that their own chattering is proof that it is an important story that people care about. And because they conclude that "people" (i.e., them) are concerned with the story, they keep chirping about it, which in turn fuels their belief that the story is important. It is an endless loop of self-referential narcissism—whatever they endlessly sputter is what "the people" care about, and therefore they must keep harping on it, because their chatter is proof of its importance.

Greenwald's right about the media and he's also right to keep hammering the media. Here's a couple of additional points.

1. An Embargo on Substance. One has to wonder whether a focus on "petty, personality-driven issues is a "ticket to admission" to the major mainstream media as well as the dominant mode of reporting. Perhaps the best way a young up and coming reporter can get on the air is read Drudge, catch up on Rush Limbaugh, and try to make Republican talking points sound like news. The embargo on substance might not just be a product of vapid media personalities; it might be a whole system where only the vapid survive.

2. Personality Politics Without Personality. One of the things about the media being obsessed with personality is that the mainstream media itself doesn't have that much personality. There's television personalities on the right like Sean Hannity and some of the Fox people. But the mainstream network guys like Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopolous aren't all that distinguishable and neither are their reporters. Katie Couric is still known more as a morning show personality than a news personality. Sure, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have personalities but they're also outside the loop.

No matter how it's sliced, television is a personality driven media. Perhaps the mainstream media focuses on political personalities as a way to make up for its own personality deficit.

But I'm Still for Hillary

And here's some reasons.

1. Damage to Obama's Candidacy. Now that that Barack Obama is the candidate of no flag lapel pin (I don't wear one either), the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and bitter white people, he's much more of a normal politician than "a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who has the skill and eloquence to help us raise our eyes and our aspirations beyond individual, personal concerns, beyond religion or region or race or gender beyond our well-founded fears to a shared destiny."

Frankly, I like Obama better now that he's at least knee deep in the muck of American society and politics and thinking about why it's so tough (which is what Obama was doing with the "bitterness" remark). The "raise our eyes and our aspirations beyond individual, personal concerns, beyond religion or region or race or gender beyond our well-founded fears to a shared destiny" idea sounds like pseudo-fascist crap. I'm not just throwing around the "Nazi" word either. Hitler talked a lot about lifting the German people above their "individual, personal concerns" as well.

2. Young People Aren't All That Great. I've worked with college students in Kentucky for most of the last twenty years and I can say with a lot of conviction that young people haven't gotten beyond "baby-boomer/Vietnam/segregation-era hangups" about race, gender, gay rights, abortion, patriotism or any of the other issues from the Vietnam era. The thing I can see that's really faded into cultural irrelevance is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" which was still popular when "Wayne's World" came out in 1992 (and we can all be grateful for that). But the rest of it is still there. Not that things have gotten significantly worse, but anyone who thinks that young people have escaped the evils of the past needs to reflect on school shootings, pornography, violent video gaming, date rape drugs, and the pervasiveness of heavy-duty binge drinking. Just to mention one thing that has gotten worse, college guys seem much more misogynous than they were 30, 15, or even 10 years ago.
It's precisely because of the limitations on her constituencies that Hillary Clinton strikes me as much more "large D" democratic than Obama. That's a good reason to support her.

3. She's prepared. Hillary knows full well that either her or Obama would have to deal with powerful reaction against their persons and their policies once they're elected. The next four years are going to be tough. Withdrawing from Iraq is going to be a bitter pill for the right-wing and the military to swallow and it's going to be made tougher with the general atmosphere of bitterness over the recession, gas prices, the revelation of yet more scandals from the Bush administration, and the general Bush hang-over. Hillary will be ready on Day 1 because she has an idea of just how bad things are going to be. Likewise, the American public knows what it's going to get with a Hillary presidency.

To the contrary, Obama won't be ready because he thinks that he's going to generate something approaching consensus. And the American public won't be prepared for the fact that he's not ready either. Four years of Obama sounds like four years of disillusion that I would rather live without.

4. A False Premise. The only way that an Obama presidency could work is if the activist right-wing was eliminated as a powerful force in American society. Perhaps an Obama victory could lead to people no longer listening to the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters. However, I frankly don't see it.

A Strong Case for Obama from Philly Daily News

Here's a strong case for Barack Obama from the Philadelphia Daily News.

A candidate's campaign may be the best indicator of how she or he will
govern. If so, an Obama administration would be well-managed, inclusive and
astonishingly broad-based. It would make good use of technology and communicate
a message of unity and, yes, hope.

It would not be content with eking out slim victories by playing to the narrow interests of the swing voters of the moment while leaving the rest of the country as deeply divided as ever. Instead, an Obama administration would seek to expand the number of Americans who believe that they have a personal stake in our collective future - and that they have the power to change things.

It would motivate them to hold their representatives accountable for making it happen. That is, after all, the only way to get us out of Iraq, to address global warming, to make us energy-independent. It's the only way to resist the forces arrayed against providing universal health care, rebuilding our infrastructure and returning our schools to world-class status. It's the only way to give our children the means to compete with children in other parts of the world who are healthier,
better-educated and have more opportunities than many of our own.

An Obama administration would be freer of the the corrupting influence of big-money donors and corporate interests. Obama has raised $240 million overall, with half coming in contributions of less than $200. People who contribute to political
campaigns can feel they "own" a candidate and so Obama would owe allegiance to
the wide swath of America that has financed his campaign.

Based on his experience in running a quarter-billion-dollar enterprise with thousands upon thousands of volunteers, we could expect an Obama administration to be
well-managed and cost-effective, with the president choosing forward-thinking
advisers committed to his program, demanding that they work as a team and pay
attention to details.

He would be steady and calm, given neither to irrational exuberance or outbursts of anger. He would make mistakes, that's for sure, but he could be expected to recognize them, adjust, and move forward. He would adjust his views to reality rather than trying to adjust reality to his views.

Obama's unprecedented appeal to younger voters is significant not only because it expands the electorate, which is vital. It's also a validation of his promise as a president to be free of the baby-boomer/Vietnam/segregation-era hangups.

Younger people are more egalitarian, more accepting of diversity, and more comfortable with rapid change. They also are less confined by old resentments or regrets.

AND AN OBAMA administration would lower the tone of the rhetoric that separates us.

As New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has said, Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who has the skill and eloquence to help us raise our eyes and our aspirations beyond individual, personal concerns, beyond religion or region or race or gender, beyond our well-founded fears to a shared destiny.

Most candidates claim that they will change the way business is done in Washington. Barack Obama has made us believe that, yes, he can. *

The Pope and the War Criminal

In Search of . . . I'm still looking for someone among my Catholic friends in Morehead who's interested in the Pope's visit. Maybe he's not that inspirational of a leader.

Meeting with the War Criminal in Chief. It seems that Pope Benedict XVI met today with President Bush.

The festive White House visit was the highlight of the first full day of Benedict's first trip to the United States as leader of the world's Roman Catholics. A South Lawn arrival ceremony — which also turned into a celebration for Benedict's 81st birthday, complete with energetic singing and a several-tiered cake prepared by the White House pastry chef — was followed by 45 minutes of private talks between Bush and Benedict, alone in the Oval Office.

After the revelations about the approval of torture practices during "Principles Meetings" among Bush's top officials at the White House, Bush has about as much moral standing as Francisco Franco or Jefferson Davis. One can say that Benedict is endorsing Bush's war crimes by meeting with him. Unfortunately, one can also say that the whole country endorsed Bush's war crimes by re-electing him president in 2004.

Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft, and their principle assistants should all be prosecuted for their role in the post-9-11 war crimes of the American government.

But all of us as Americans should all be ashamed that these people were elected to the highest office in our country. That includes people who opposed the war, opposed Guantanamo, and opposed the torture. We also should have done better.

There's a great deal of reason to criticize the Catholic Church hierarchy for their hostility to the aspirations of women Catholics, their hatred of gay people, and their execrable involvement in the pedophilia scandal.

But American government hierarchy has done far worse.

Waiting for the Dandelions

The big event of spring has almost arrived--the Dandelion Bloom. With pure yellow petals surrounding a golden inner ring, dandelions are a beautiful plant and are in fact hard to surpass when they're in full bloom. But what makes dandelions great is the quality for which they're so much despised--their super-tough hardiness. When the dandelions bloom, they're everywhere and no amount of spraying and digging can get rid of them.

People think of dandelions as weeds because they're so plentiful and because they don't need any human cultivation. But that's just a reflection of the grip of the middle-class sense of order on our minds. The fact that dandelions are everywhere does not diminish their beauty a single degree.

In fact, I would argue that the blanketing of yards with dandelions adds a major element to the beauty of the spring--

If only people could see an uncultivated multitude as beautiful.

The Audit is Done!!

Finally, the academic audit for the Government Program. After going through all the materials, I felt very optimistic about the Government Program and rated it highly.

But maybe I'm not an unbiased observer.

Is the Pope Dope?

The answer is Nope. Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the U. S. this week and my Catholic household has reacted by . . . not saying, doing, or seemingly thinking anything about it. RSI the atheist brought up the Pope's visit to Mrs. RSI but she was profoundly uninterested. Miss Teen RSI didn't know the Pope was coming at all because it wasn't on Jon Stewart. Ten year old Miss Tween RSI was moved to say "Yeah its all right" when queried.

According to Mrs. RSI, there was an item in last month's church bulletin about the Pope, but the local parish isn't exactly motivated by his visit either.

The problem is this. Mrs. RSI is a liberal Catholic who wants to remain Catholic despite her disgust with the Catholic Church over their refusal to let women serve as priests, their position on gay rights, and their general conservatism. If Mrs. RSI is forced to think about the highly conservative Pope, she'd most likely start wondering if she should attend another church.

Given that there's no hope for the pope, it's probably good for the Catholic Church that people like Mrs. RSI aren't paying attention. Otherwise, a lot of liberal Catholics would just leave the church.

Regrets: I've Had a Few

I regret that I haven't done much blogging this week.

Too much auditing to really blog.

But not as much as I regret that I didn't write anything about the flower pear trees of Morehead, KY while they were still flowering.

Morehead had a really beautiful white bloom of flowering pear trees this year. It was especially great at twilight.

But now the flowers are wilting and the seemingly ordinary green leaves have taken over.

But they won't be ordinary forever.

The leaves of the flowering pear tree change to a distinctive blood red at the end of the fall and the leaves of the flowering pear tend to change more unevenly than other trees.

The result is rows of flowering pear trees with red and green leaf patterns from the unequal changes. I thought I saw Dick Cheney's smirk in one of the flowering pear trees last year--the same smirk he used when he said Iraq would have 1,000 years of Democracy--or was that war.

Iraq's Getting Worse

The testimony from Petraeus is in, but the verdict is still the same. Despite the ability of American troops to suppress much of the violence, the situation continues to deteriorate. The bottom line is that the actions of the Iraqi government against the Mahdi Army have driven Iraq toward a civil war between the American-backed Government and the Shiite population as a whole. This isn't to deny that the surge led to some progress, but the progress is coming at the expense of an ever bigger future explosion.

Charlton Heston's Ashes

Too bad about Charlton Heston's death. Dying's usually a hard thing and Heston has been deteriorating for a long time.

It just so happens that I watched the first Planet of the Apes on Saturday. Interestingly, it was the boundlesssness of human desire that led Heston to undertake his space flight as a way to seek something "better than man." It was that some boundlessness that Heston's ape antagonist viewed as being responsible for humankind's demise as a species.

But I don't think human desire is boundless. Outside of European societies of the last four or five hundred years, evidence of that kind of limitless desire is relatively scarce.

In today's "advanced" societies, it's more the case that social authorities actually "bind" us by stimulating our desires in consumerist directions.

In contemporary American the more we desire, the more constrained we are.

Auditing My Brains Out

It's spring, but blogging isn't really in the air at Red State Impressions. I'm working my brains out on the academic audit for the Government Program and haven't been able to think much about blogging. It's even worse with piano playing. I haven't looked at it for a week.

How Big Are the Bucks for Hill and Bill?

Yesterday, it came out that Hillary and Bill Clinton had made $109 million altogether since Bill Clinton left office.

But that's hardly surprising. Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton both wrote bestselling memoirs and --well, let's face it--they've both had interesting lives to write about.

Likewise it's not surprising that Bill Clinton has made a ton of money in public speaking or that his friends have brought him into lucrative investments. Bill's the kind of charismatic guy who draws people to him like a magnet. His friends push great investment opportunities his way, corporations want to hear him speak, and everybody wants to contribute to his charities.

What is surprising is that Bill and Hillary Clinton waited so long to cash in on their talent.

The news media and casual observers think that going into politics is a natural thing. But that's not the case at all. Most people at the upper level of government are smart, driven people who would have still been famous and still made a ton of money if they hadn't been involved in politics. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and Tom DeLay are all people who sacrificed an enormous amount of wealth by going into politics as young men and women. If Bill and Hillary Clinton had gone to New York instead of Arkansas in 1973 and worked in corporate law rather than Arkansas state government from 1978 to 1993, their joint wealth would probably be closer to the $1,000,000,000 level than the paltry hundred million they have now. With Bill's charisma, it's easy to imagine that people proposing deals for mergers, leveraged buyouts, and IPO's would have flown to his office as easily as the robins and blue jays fly outside my window. If Bill Clinton's friends are letting him in on lucrative deals how, how many lucrative deals would he have had in the 80's and 90's.

The same with Hillary. She was a highly successful lawyer in Arkansas before Bill became president. She would have been a lot more successful in New York.

But instead of rainmaking in the Big Apple, Hillary and Bill started climbing the political ladder. Instead of being worth a few hundred million in 1992, Bill Clinton was making $35,000 as Governor of Arkansas.

As in so many things, the Bush administration is somewhat of an exception here. Geore Bush was even a bigger failure as a businessman than he's been as President.

But being a successful politician usually involves an enormous amount of financial sacrifice and Hillary and Bill Clinton have sacrificed more than just about anybody.

MLK Assasination Day

MLK. It's hard to believe that MLK wouldn't have been distressed by developments in the U. S. since the 1960's. It's hard to tell which is worse. There's the isolation of large segments of the black population in deteriorating ghettos, the explosion of homelessness, the crack cocaine epidemic, and the incarceration of so many young black men. But there's also the fact that so much moderate opinion supports the excesses of American militarism, Wall Street greed, and color-blind racism. King wrote in "Letter From Birmingham Jail" that he was more bothered by white "moderates" than he was by the Bull Connors of the world. He would be just as disappointed today.

Mariah Carey. With the release of the first single from her new album, Mariah Carey now has more no. 1 hits than Elvis Presley. I saw an interview in which Carey, now 38, demurred that she had not had nearly the impact of performers like Presley, the Beatles, or Madonna. That's true, but Mariah Carey also deserves a lot of credit for recovering from her recent breakdown and getting back to the top of her game. It's tough for people to drag themselves out of that kind of chasm and it's good to see that Carey was able to do it.

The Tree Down Front. There's a tree in the neighbor's front yard with a super bloom of white flowers. Spring in Morehead is unbelievably beautify and a variety of brightly colored flowers are beginning to bloom. It's great.

As Hope Becomes Expectation. The violence and hatred that killed Martin Luther King are endemic to American society and are best represented by the strength of the activist right-wing in American politics. But I believe that the will to create a better society is once again gaining strength and I'm looking forward to seeing a renewal of the kind of social progress that was accomplished in King's time.

Auditing, Vision, Dean, and Provost

Hey, Morehead State's academic audit is not such a bad thing after all. Yesterday, I was talking the audit over with a friend when the Muse or my patron saint or the spirit of John Dewey visited me and I suddenly had a vision for turning Morehead State University's "regional studies" institute into a "global outreach" organization.

I don't remember the details that well, but it was a beautiful thing.

This means that I need to broaden my horizons. I used to think of my self as a good candidate for chair positions. However, now that I have had my "vision," I've achieved the most important qualification for being a college dean. At least that's what administrative candidates get asked when they do campus interviews. "What's your vision for this?" What's your vision for that? Given that my accomplishment as an educational visionary will soon be transmitted over whatever "vision network" connects small universities, the offers for exciting new dean positions will start coming in.

My life is going to change forever.

Of course, I'll be ready to be a provost when I start getting credit for other people's visions.

Criticism of Right-Wing Masculinity: We Need More!

On Right-Wing Masculinity. Liberal bloggers like Glenn Greenwald and Digby argue that the right-wing has perfected a political narrative in which conservatives are conveyed in terms of down-to-earth, regular guy, masculinity and liberals as effete, feminized, and over-educated. Here's Greenwald characterizing his new book on the topic:

The Right has perfected the art of creating mythical cults of personality around their leaders. They are strong, courageous, honor-bound, protective, morally upstanding salt-of-the earth Everyman-warriors -- contemptuous of elitist prerogatives, and oozing traditional masculine virtues and cultural normalcy. As important, if not more so, is the corresponding character demonization of liberals, Democrats and a growing group of miscellaneous right-wing opponents -- those weak, subversive, conniving, appeasing, gender-confused, elitist freaks, whose men are as effeminate and cowardly as their women are angry, threatening and emasculating.

There's a strong sense in which Greenwald is correct here. But all he does is go out in claim that the right-wing narrative is false.

These election-determinant themes are not merely petty and completely removed from what actually matters. That would be bad enough. Far worse is that they are
complete fabrications. Virtually the entire leadership of the right-wing GOP is the complete opposite of these cartoon icons they are held out to be. Their lives are almost completely devoid of the virtues in which they are packaged. After all, their leaders are Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol and the whole slew of tough guy pundits from Fox News and National Review, cheering on wars while imputing to themselves the courage and virtue of those they endlessly send off to fight and prancing around as moral guardians and defenders of individual freedom while, in reality, living lives that rapidly destroy those very values.

But proving that the right-wing is lying doesn't get the job done in the sense that Greenwald and other liberal bloggers have not gotten through the media clutter to make their case before the non-liberal public.

Of course, there are several sources for the failure of liberal blogging in this instance. Liberal bloggers are not as popular or entertaining as right-wing figures like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Likewise, mainstream media outlets like NPR, CNN, and MSNBC view figures like Greenwald as deadly competition for their secular, culturally liberal audiences and do their best to keep them off the air. Greenwald has a better chance of getting featured on Fox than PBS.

However, it's also true that Greenwald and the other liberal bloggers don't produce enough "truth" about masculinity and the right to outweigh the "entertainment" value of the right-wing narrative.

The right-wing not only does not embody it's own masculine values, but the right has its own patterns of masculinity that is so pathetic that it almost defies characterization. Liberal bloggers have been scratching the surface of right-wing macho. We have to get to its beating heart.

Making the Republic Whole, Giving Birth to General Freedom

Condoleeza Rice had an interesting comment on race the other day.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national "birth defect" that denied blacks the same opportunities as whites when the country was founded.

But I don't think that quite works.

Abraham Lincoln came closer to the mark when he talked about the Civil War as a "new birth of freedom." The war resulted in the emancipation of the black slaves and also a broader understanding of freedom to include people of African descent as well as whites. Unfortunately, that new birth of freedom was ultimately defeated with the end of Reconstruction.

As a result, another "new birth of freedom" become necessary. In many ways, that was the inner meaning of the Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties.

Over the years, I've gradually come to the conclusion that the efforts of the African-American population to overcome the many legacies of slavery have done much more to define the nature of American democracy than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the other men who are now known as the Founding Fathers.

The founding generation created a Republic, but it was disabled by slavery and consequently required repeated "new births of freedom" which were carried out more than anyone else by the work of figures like Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, and other African-Americans.

One of the characteristics of the new birth of freedom in the 1960's is that the work of the Civil Rights movement was extended by the later advent of feminism and gay rights. Despite resistance, the forty years since then have been characterized by a constant and broad-based effort to expand the 60's new birth of freedom to include everyone. Because "freedom isn't free," people in general need to generate a continual effort to give birth to a society of broad-based freedom.

It's only then that we'll be able to say that we've overcome the legacy of slavery.

Maliki the Bold Adventurer?

The Bush administration is reporting that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the offensive against the al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia without consulting them.

Maliki decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials. With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that "we can't quite decipher" what is going on. It's a question, he said, of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why Maliki decided to act now.

Really? The Iraqi Army had U. S. air support pretty quickly in their operations. It seems unlikely that they would have begun their attack without arranging things with the American military.

More importantly, Dick Cheney was in Iraq just nine days ago. If one accepts that al-Maliki launched his assault on the Mahdi Army without consulting the Bush administration, that means that Maliki didn't breathe a word to Cheney about their plans while he was in Baghdad?

But why wouldn't he? It's not as though either Dick Cheney or George Bush would have rejected an aggressive approach to al-Sadr or an attempt to take over Baghdad. In fact, Cheney would have been a lot more enthusiastic about this kind of idea than most people in the Iraqi government.

Perhaps Cheney suggested the idea to Maliki himself.

In fact, it seems likely to me that the Bush administration pushed the Iraqis to make a big move now in order to help John McCain win in November. Likewise, I think that the Bush administration fully expected that American forces would quickly move in to confront Sadr after the Iraqi Army initially wilted.

And that's what's happened.

In this sense, the Bush administration would have goaded the Iraqi government into precipitating a showdown with al-Sadr to create a pretext for the American military to confront and hopefully destroy the Mahdi Army as a way to help McCain. If the assault succeeds, McCain could build his campaign around a real structural accomplishment in Iraq. If the assault fails, there's still almost eight months for McCain to dissassociate himself from the mess.

Of course, it may turn out that the American public really doesn't want to be reminded of the Iraq War. But the Bush administration has always had a "go for broke" mentality. It's not hard to see them taking one last shot at destroying Sadr and subduing Shiite resistance to the American idea of a "non-sectarian Iraq."

RSI:A Neglected Milestone

A couple of weeks ago, Red State Impressions had its one thousandth post in 21 months of existence. It turns out that blogging is my favorite writing medium by far. I wish I had time to post twice as much as I do now.

John McCain's Media Mommy

The McCain "Post-Modern" B.S. Yesterday, Neal Gabler of the New York Times found a new way to sanctify John McCain by treating him as the zen master of post-modern media relations.

Seeming to view himself and the whole political process with a mix of amusement and bemusement, Mr. McCain is an ironist wooing a group of individuals who regard ironic detachment more highly than sincerity or seriousness. He may be the first real postmodernist candidate for the presidency — the first to turn his press relations into the basis of his candidacy.

What nonsense! Paraphrasing a line Lloyd Bentsen originally stole from me, "I knew Jean-Francois Lyotard, the author of The Post-Modern Condition. Jean-Francois Lyotard and I served in the Foreign Legion together in Algeria. Or was it Vietnam? Anyway, Jean-Francois Lyotard was a friend of mine. John McCain is no Jean-Francois Lyotard and John McCain is no post-modernist."

And neither are the reporters on the McCain bus. In fact, there's a better word for the reporters--hacks who like to throw around words like "post-modern" even though they have no idea what they're talking about.

An Alternative Hypothesis. So what was McCain doing when he was spending hour after hour "wooing" the gathered reporters with all his criticism of his own weaknesses and discussion of how he was manipulating the press. John McCain has to be the biggest media schmoozer who's ever walked the halls of Congress. He's always been willing to appear on any news program, be a discussant for any interview show, or participate in any debate. I think Michael Kinsley once referred to McCain and Joe Lieberman as "fifteen minute men"--the kind of politicians who would get an emergency call on a Friday night from "Crossfire" and be at the studio, made up, and ready to ponticate in fifteen minutes. Talking all day with the reporters on the campaign bus is just an extension of his long career of determined catering to the media. Maybe the press should stop referring to McCain simply as a "war hero" and start referencing him as "the war hero and legendary media schmoozer" Sen. John McCain.

But why does he do it. My hypothesis is that John McCain looks to the media to be a combination of friend, confidante, protector, and nurturer. As William Greider mentioned, McCain wanted reporters to protect him from himself.

In 1999, William Greider wrote in Rolling Stone that, “While McCain continues examining his flaws, the reporters on the bus are getting a bit edgy. Will somebody tell this guy to shut up before he self-destructs?” Imagine, reporters protecting a candidate from himself!

"Reporters protecting a candidate from himself--that's what McCain wanted. But it's also what every kid wants from their mom as well. They want someone to be their friend, confidante, and protector, someone who will clean up their messes and make their clothes look all shiny and new, and someone who will be proud when they succeed and encouraging when they fail. "Mommy's" as limited to biological mothers. Lots of traditional guys get the mommy treatment from their wives and I'd bet my bottom dollar that Cindy McCain gives her "studmuffin" the full mommy treatment when he's home.

But when John McCain is working as a politician, he wants the media to be his mommy, works relentlessly to get reporters to see him as their own special child, and has largely succeeded.

Borrowing a line from Chris Matthews, McCain refers to the media as his "base." It would be accurate if he thought of him self as the media's "favorite son."