Office of the Independent Blogger

John Dickerson’s latest article, Boogeyman Foreign Policy, is a good one about the McCain and Obama campaign attempts to tie the other candidate with an unpopular leader. McCain seeks to tie Obama to Mahmoud Ahmaniac! and Obama seeks to morph McCain into George W. Bush. This raises an interesting question: who is more of an albatross to have around your neck in America? I’d like to believe that the average American considers Ahmaniac! more of a threat to the world than Bush, but immediately that is naive. People are tired of the President, and Ahmaniac! has so far done nothing but work behind the curtain and say a few nasty words here and there. However, McCain might well help stir doubts about Obama in voters by comparing him to Ahmaniac, and if Iran does something awful in the fall this might well be a shrewd and disgusting political move. Of course, I think it’s crude to compare McCain to Bush.

No one deserves that.

With this news that California has legalized gay marriage, we learn here that the state’s voters might well overturn it in November. The “worst” part of this is that it is going to allow McCain conservative voters all over the country reason to turnout in November, and it will put the focus on an issue where Republicans are in line with the American public even as Obama holds the same position as McCain. It’s already starting to feel like a general campaign.

How tragic — the death toll in Myanmar has doubled, while that junta’s refusal to do what’s right for its own people has remained firm.

Forgive me the lack of posting yesterday, as I had eight total engagements that I had to attend to. You can read about the most time-consuming engagement here.

I have never seen something so contemptible as the Myanmar junta’s refusal to allow certain aid into its country and its subsequent pocketing of much of what it does allow in.

Critics of the Bush Administration contend that the President has done significant harm to our image abroad, and while I doubt the extent he has damaged our nation’s good name I don’t have any question that our reputation has in fact taken a hit. I believe that the mere presence of a new President will work wonders in restoring our nation to wider respect around the world, whoever that next President may be, but the problem goes deeper than that and I think this Slate article raises a significant question to be considered: can the United States afford to continue giving half-an-effort to world fairs and expositions? I won’t excerpt the article because it deserves to be read in its entirety, but the author makes the point that no one received more from expositions than the United States in the 20th century and since the latter part of that century we have refused to participate with anything resembling vigor or pride, while much of the world (particularly in the Orient) take great care to present themselves to the world and welcome visitors. This is something that needs to be changed.

There are stories that you read and walk away from shaking your head. This is one of them.

A man ordered by a judge to make sure his daughter hit the books has found himself in jail because she failed to earn a high school equivalency diploma. Brian Gegner, of Fairfield, was sentenced last week to 180 days in jail for contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a minor. He was ordered months ago to make sure his 18-year-old daughter Brittany Gegner, who has a history of truancy, received her GED _ something that hasn’t happened yet. Brittany Gegner, who said Monday that she plans to take a required GED test this month, said her father shouldn’t be blamed for her failure because she has been living with her mother.

“It was my wrongdoing, not his,” said Brittany Gegner, whose fiance and 18-month-old daughter also live at her mother’s home in nearby Hamilton. “He shouldn’t have to go to jail for something I did.”

Now the man might lose his job, has to live with this embarrassment and is being unnecessarily jailed for the actions of a grown woman and fellow human being. I agree that we must put a greater emphasis on education in this country, but this is absurd.

John McCain has challenged Barack Obama to unmoderated debates over the summer and in the fall. Obama has all-but-said that he is willing to join him at these forums, and he thinks they are a “great idea.” I do, too, but I’m not particularly fond of the talk it’s spawning from pundits, especially with regard to the 1960 Presidential election where there is still far more conventional wisdom than actual wisdom. Witness this article.

[Talk of the positive effects the debates might have for McCain] discoun[t] what’s guaranteed to be a stark physical contrast: McCain’s shriveled firecracker standing next to Obama’s lanky coolness. Remember the 1960 presidential debates, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon less by out-arguing him than by out-dashing him. Nixon, still recovering from a leg injury, looked pale and gaunt; Kennedy was tan after campaigning in Southern California. Nixon, unfamiliar with the new medium, refused makeup and wore a suit that blended into the background. Kennedy, meanwhile, looked fit and telegenic. We’ve learned a few things since then about broadcast debates, but from an aesthetic perspective, “appearing frequently at Obama’s side” is just about the worst thing McCain can do.

What, exactly, is this supposed to mean? The debates in 1960 had little, if any, effect on the Presidential race. Poll numbers before the first debate and after gave about the same numbers for each candidate, and the other debates went off without a hitch as Nixon had had time to get healthy after a knee injury and flu had thrown him off his footing. That Kennedy defeated Nixon that year had precious little to do with the debates and in fact had a lot more to do with political machines and his aiding Martin Luther King after he was arrested. Besides, the two candidates in 1960 were around the same age, so this situation is not comparable to that one, even if we ignored the fact that the insinuation about the debates is deeply flawed to begin with.

What’s this nonsense about Nixon being “unfamiliar” with the medium of television, anyway? Checkers says hello! That Nixon was unprepared for the first debate in aesthetic terms has more to do with his grueling campaign schedule causing an oversight than anything else. He certainly wasn’t lacking familiarity with the television.

If there’s one thing I hate in politics, it’s a misinterpretation or misrepresentation of history, whether it’s the bogus claim that Harry Truman would be a Republican today (or worse, that George W. Bush is his heir) or this nonsense about the 1960 Presidential debates meaning anything to anyone at the time that they occurred. Now, I don’t know what effect these debates will have on the Presidential campaign, but I expect that they will have more of one than the 1960 rounds did. Assuming McCain can maintain his composure and remind the average American of a paternal figure, he should be fine, and if Barack Obama can hit the Senator from Arizona hard on the War in Iraq or the economy — if he can cause him to lose his temper — then Obama will be fine, too.

Bill Kristol made an interesting prediction today: Dick Gephardt for Vice President of the United States. It’s been written recently that John Kerry wanted Gephardt but changed his mind at the last minute, although it has also been written that Kerry wanted Dick Durbin to be Vice President, too, and changed his mind when he decided that he couldn’t run with a fellow Catholic for fear of a backlash against the ticket. I must say that I think Gephardt would be a fine choice for the political balance he would bring to the ticket, but Michael Dukakis chose Lloyd Bentsen to add more traditional liberalism to the ticket and an older figure with foreign policy credentials, and we see what that got him. Obama will sink or swim on his own merits, but Gephardt might help safeguard the Midwest from Republican intervention so he is worth a long look.

An old friend from the Chicago Debate League looked me up on Facebook recently and sent me a note saying, “I was actually reminded of you by an assignment for school. We’re reading some of the Federalist papers in my humanities class and I remembered the first time I had ever heard someone discuss them was when you spoke about them in a debate speech.” There’s very little I like more than contact with old friends, especially those that I held in high regard. I hate losing touch with people.

It has been a time-consuming weekend. Now I’m just relaxing with the film “Forrest Gump,” on TBS. I can’t begin to tell you how much I love that movie.

Forgive me for being busy lately, but final exams tend to take up time. The work I put in seems to have paid off as I aced three of the exams I took and performed adequately on the one I expected to perform just-adequately on, so there is no disappointment on my part. More than anything, I am relieved to have ended the semester as I expected to end it: with very good grades and a variety of new friends made. I had five classes this spring and took four finals, with one portfolio due in a poetry class in place of an exam. I wish I had been assigned more papers and portfolios than tests, but I did fine anyway. I simply am not fond of exams because I think they do not measure a student’s anything particularly well.

Now if you wonder why this entry is so brief, Dear Reader, since final exam week is over, I would answer that it is final exam celebration weekend. I will return in greater detail tomorrow, but for now I refer you to this article about Grand Theft Auto’s artistic and political value. Quote of the article? “I found that Grand Theft Auto actually offered a less sensational portrait of gangland and ghetto streets than the one put out by most cops, politicians, policymakers, and even academics.”

Guess we didn’t capture the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. We captured the name of a person who has the name as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. In Iraq. How embarrassing for the Iraqi government.

We’ve captured the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Where did we capture this leader? In Iraq. This is good news for obvious reasons. Now pardon me, as I have one last final to take tomorrow and a good night’s sleep followed by a morning of study to come.

I haven’t seen the election summed up
this concisely before.

A Clinton adviser said the situation was increasingly becoming one in which ’she cannot be nominated and he can’t get elected.’ ”

Obviously, the election is a ways away, so we have to wait and vote, but I thought I’d pass the quote along as I suspect it is accurate. Or will be, anyway.

It is super hot, I have a string of difficult finals before me and I have made significant progress on a few projects I’ve been stuck on but can’t work out the kinks further because, again, I have exams! Briefly, let me say that it is clear Hillary Clinton is not going to be the Democratic nominee without another significant Barack Obama bombshell landing. Jeffrey Toobin raised the possibility tonight that northwest Indiana was engaging in vote fraud, and if there’s a shred of truth to that it’ll change the dynamics of the race but now Obama is going to be the nominee for as-sure-as-you-can-be-in-politics-pre-convention and it does not appear likely that Senator Clinton will be able to stop him. For better or for worse, Obama is going to lead the Democrats into battle against John McCain, and while I suspect it’s for the worse it is clear that Clinton should withdraw and allow him to take the fight to McCain. I am worried about the blue collar support Obama is going to have to scrap for against John McCain and I am concerned that Obama might lead to a demographic realignment in favor of McCain-Republicanism but we’ll have to wait and see for all that. He’s won the Democratic Primaries fair and square, even if the game here is much different than the big show.

Reading Slate this morning only re-affirms my belief that Barack Obama will be rocked by John McCain. A Democrat cannot win without significant Catholic support, and for reasons detailed in this article I am not sure Obama can win a significant percent of the Catholic vote. When we factor in elitism, and his failure to succeed with white working class voters, the smoke around Obama becomes thicker. After he loses Indiana and barely holds onto North Carolina, there should be even more question about his prospects in November.

The man who is the closest thing I have to a father wrote an article a few years ago for his hometown newspaper, and he shared it with me over email the first time we corresponded after meeting at the University. I gave it another read today while researching my weekly baseball column. In it, he pauses to recognize his “dear reader” and as I began to type this entry, I smiled realizing how much Jon and I have in common. Not just because we occasionally refer to our “dear reader” in our writings, but you can read it for yourself and figure it out.

Back to our regularly-scheduled programming, there are two articles I would recommend to you, Dear Reader, that have a lot more to do with problems in the black church and black community than with baseball. Gary MacDougal’s Jeremiah Wright’s Wider Toll, published in the Washington Post, is a thought-provoking read and Christopher Hitchens’ article from awhile back, while a lesser-read than MacDougal’s, is still worthy of one and I recommend it here.

I have some friends over and despite the fact that this is not a political gathering one of them made the point that John Edwards would be the strongest candidate for President against John McCain. I ask, “Are you kidding me? He’s a trial lawyer whose homestate would have rejected him in 2000 had he stood for re-election. An Edwards-McCain race would be disastrous, like Bush 41 versus Dukakis Zzzzzz.” This isn’t the first time I’ve had this conversation with someone, and I know what everyone says: he’s young, Southern, charismatic and passionate, but they forget that he is sanctimonious, repetitive and a known loser who also happens to be famous for his work in one of the most unpopular fields in America. That is not a winning recipe. So my friend says, “Over at Slate — your favorite magazine — they wonder where he is when he can change the race and get one of the candidates to promise to put him on the Supreme Court!” What do I think, she wants to know. I say, No one wants Edwards’ endorsement that bad because he isn’t fit to be a Supreme Court Justice and he probably isn’t all that powerful in North Carolina. He does have nice hair, though.