The Election
The McCain/Palin ticket has gotten a bounce following last week’s convention. It comes primarily from white women reacting to the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice President. It appears to have nothing to do with her record or qualifications and is the complete opposite of what most women have been seeking for themselves. Here is what we know so far about Sarah Palin:
She is opposed to abortion.
She is opposed to stem cell research.
She is opposed to same-sex marriage.
She is opposed to laws in favor of equal pay for women.
She is in favor of teaching creationism in the schools as an equal theory to evolution.
She admits to having no knowledge of foreign affairs, and has said we are carrying out a task from God by being in Iraq.
She claims to be a reformer but she actually is continuing the Republican tradition of saying whatever will help you, regardless of its truth. In her acceptance speech she claimed to have rejected the notorious “bridge to nowhere” as proof that she is a reformer. Subsequently it was demonstrated that she supported the bridge while campaigning for Governor. After being elected and seeing the negative Congressional reaction to this earmark, she came out against it, but kept the $398 million for future use by Alaska. Despite the widespread coverage of these facts, she keeps restating the claim in every speech she delivers.
Her executive and major life experience is in Alaska, a state that barely resembles the other 49 states. It has two major sources of revenue, oil and earmarks, and is doing very nicely in these difficult economic times. Its oil resources are benefitting from the high prices enough so that she is able to provide $3,000 payments to each of its citizens. Its (now indicted) Congressman and Senator have assaulted the US Treasury for years to obtain earmarks for their state well beyond the per capita amounts in the earmarks of other states. Governor Palin hired lobbyists to obtain earmark funds for Wasilla when she was Mayor and managed to get $27 million in earmarks and a subsequent $200 million as Governor. Earmarks come from US taxpayers and at least ought to be distributed evenly throughout the country, if they are not stopped outright.
Her reformist zeal did not prevent her from claiming and receiving travel per diem for over 300 days when she actually lived at home. The justification is that the capital is in Juneau, which is 200 miles from Anchorage, but in fact she spends most of her time as Governor working out of an office in Anchorage and commuted daily from there to her home in nearby Wasilla. She also collected per diem for her children and husband when they were with her although per diem is supposed to be limited to Alaskan state employees.
Part of her image is based on her being a hockey Mom who is able to raise five children and take on the job of Governor. She has done this in part because she has had jobs (Mayor and Governor) where she could bring her young children to work with her as often and as long as she wanted. This option is not exactly available to the average working Mom, married or unmarried. Most working women also have working husbands, if they are not on their own, who cannot afford to take off from their jobs to help with child care. This advantage doesn’t seem to register with Palin or the Republicans, who fail to support programs that would help working mothers manage their complicated lives and deal with the family pressures that men are usually not subject to.
All of the above is not to demonize Palin, who has accomplished much in her career; who has taken on established politicians in her own party; and is an effective campaigner. But making her into someone she is not, ignoring the contradictions in her record, and coloring over her lack of qualification to be Vice President ought to be of major concern to every voter in this election.
She lacks the credentials to be President of the United States in the event that the 72 year-old John McCain fails to survive his term in office. If she was the male Governor of Alaska, with the exact same credentials, she would never have been considered for this post. McCain has chosen political advantage over concern for the country.
The critical factor in this election should not be the battle over “family values’ – reproductive rights and the role of women, important as they are. Unfortunately, they are among the most divisive issues in this country, but they pale compared to the problems that the next President of the United States will be facing.
We are finishing eight years of the George Bush Presidency and that experience has left us in horrific shape. We are still in Iraq, a war we should never have entered that has cost 4,100 American deaths, 10,000 American wounded, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and over a million displaced Iraqi citizens. This war is costing us $10-12 billion a month. This major effort in Iraq to fight a war that was not in our strategic interest shifted us away from Afghanistan, where we should have stayed after the initial success. Now we are faced with a major problem as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda regroup in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Had we stayed and defeated them when they were on the run and spent a fraction of the money that we wasted in Iraq, Afghanistan would be well on the road to being a successful ally instead of being the next drain on our soldiers and treasury.
The budget deficit stretches into the unforeseeable future and is being financed, not by the American taxpayer, but by foreign governments. Our military is stretched so thinly that we have lost any leverage military strength ought to give us as we deal with a resurgent Russia and a recalcitrant Iran.
The economy is either in recession or quickly heading there. The Bush tax cuts, continued despite the costs of Iraq, have created excessive income inequality between the richest Americans and the middle class. This year’s budget deficit is going to be $407 billion and 2009 is now estimated to be $500 billion. The unwillingness to deal with our dependence on oil has gas prices soaring.
An administration that has subverted government regulation is seeing the result of those decisions in the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac catastrophe. Those institutions did what they want in the search for profit and gambled that the government would bail them out using taxpayer money if the risk they assumed proved fatal.
The Administration’s anti-science bias contributes to climate warming and destroys the environment. They’ve constantly ignored consensus scientific advice and chose the narrow and self-serving interests of business supporters instead.
At the start of Bush’s term, the US was the most powerful country in the world, and if not loved, was respected and listened to. Today that strength has been lessened substantially. Even our friends are reluctant to support our strategies and our enemies have multiplied, because they have been able to use our presence in Iraq as a recruiting tool.
What does this failed eight years have to do with this election? The answer is just about everything. McCain is running from this record with everything he has but he is a Republican who got his party’s nomination by adopting Bush policies and a belief that he will revert back to what he once was is self-deluding. Early in the Administration, McCain disagreed with a number of Bush policies – tax cuts being the major one. But his path to the nomination required that he change that position to its opposite. He now supports Bush economics and tax policy completely. This is a flip-flop that goes light years beyond what John Kerry was accused of four years ago.
In Iraq, McCain was a supporter of the war from prior to the invasion through today. In Jan. 2, 2003, McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!” He speculated that the Anthrax scare might have emanated from Iraq and jumped on claims, later disproved, that Saddam had met with Al-Qaeda. The lack of WMD is never mentioned.
He supported the surge from its start and claims it is the cause of reduced violence in Iraq and has led us to victory. General Petraeus was quoted today saying he did not know that he would ever use the word "victory": "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not war with a simple slogan." Whether it is victory or not, it now appears that at best the surge was only one of a number of actions that eased the security situation – the major three being the Sunni’s rising up against Al-Qaeda, successful counter-intelligence operations against Al-Qaeda, and the restraint shown by al-Sadr’s militia. Even if Iraq becomes the sought after democratic state of our dreams (although it will probably align with Iran) it will not have been worth the cost in lives and money we have expended and realistically we should admit it is a defeat and move on.
McCain has voted for Bush programs in Congress about 90% of the time. Not as much as other Republicans, but not enough to claim he is significantly different. The Republicans need to be held accountable for what they have done to this country. Even if their nominee claims to be different, he should not be rewarded by being elected. A McCain administration will be staffed throughout by people connected with Bush who have been involved deeply in the past eight years and if McCain is elected, there will be no change, and no reform in anything that matters.
On a final note, what bothers me as much as the above discussion is the tenor of the McCain/Palin campaign. It is based on demeaning opponents, rather than on debating policies. It features repeated lies that have been discounted by responsible parties under the assumption that most voters don’t follow the election closely. After all, about 50% of the American populace still believes that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack. So Palin keeps talking about her bridge; McCain tells his audiences that Obama will raise their taxes, even though Obama states that he is going to raise taxes only on people earning more than $250,000 per year, and McCain equates the surge with victory.
The latest McCain ad states that Obama’s only achievement in the Illinois legislature was to pass legislation ensuring "comprehensive sex education" for kindergartners. It turns out that Obama didn’t sponsor the bill, but did vote for it. The “sex education” for kindergartners is a section that trained teachers to make kindergartners aware of the risk of inappropriate touching and sexual predators. This practice of attack politics based on lies and distortion is becoming the predominant characteristic of the McCain campaign.
The contest is made out to be between people who are just like us – people you would want to have a beer with (the George Bush mantra), or are just Mom’s with similar cares to your own, versus elite Ivy League educated out-of-touch people. Why would anyone choose to put people just like themselves into such vital offices rather than someone smarter, more accomplished, and with better judgment is an idea I just can’t grasp.
So we are left with the spectacle of speakers at the Republican convention disdaining Obama for being a community organizer and obtaining the desired response of hoots and jeers from the audience of convention goers made up of 80-90% white people who no doubt were appalled that a Harvard Law graduate would turn down lucrative law firm jobs to help people living in poverty. That is as clear a statement as I can find of the values of the Republican Party and its standard bearers who allowed those scenes to happen.
She is opposed to abortion.
She is opposed to stem cell research.
She is opposed to same-sex marriage.
She is opposed to laws in favor of equal pay for women.
She is in favor of teaching creationism in the schools as an equal theory to evolution.
She admits to having no knowledge of foreign affairs, and has said we are carrying out a task from God by being in Iraq.
She claims to be a reformer but she actually is continuing the Republican tradition of saying whatever will help you, regardless of its truth. In her acceptance speech she claimed to have rejected the notorious “bridge to nowhere” as proof that she is a reformer. Subsequently it was demonstrated that she supported the bridge while campaigning for Governor. After being elected and seeing the negative Congressional reaction to this earmark, she came out against it, but kept the $398 million for future use by Alaska. Despite the widespread coverage of these facts, she keeps restating the claim in every speech she delivers.
Her executive and major life experience is in Alaska, a state that barely resembles the other 49 states. It has two major sources of revenue, oil and earmarks, and is doing very nicely in these difficult economic times. Its oil resources are benefitting from the high prices enough so that she is able to provide $3,000 payments to each of its citizens. Its (now indicted) Congressman and Senator have assaulted the US Treasury for years to obtain earmarks for their state well beyond the per capita amounts in the earmarks of other states. Governor Palin hired lobbyists to obtain earmark funds for Wasilla when she was Mayor and managed to get $27 million in earmarks and a subsequent $200 million as Governor. Earmarks come from US taxpayers and at least ought to be distributed evenly throughout the country, if they are not stopped outright.
Her reformist zeal did not prevent her from claiming and receiving travel per diem for over 300 days when she actually lived at home. The justification is that the capital is in Juneau, which is 200 miles from Anchorage, but in fact she spends most of her time as Governor working out of an office in Anchorage and commuted daily from there to her home in nearby Wasilla. She also collected per diem for her children and husband when they were with her although per diem is supposed to be limited to Alaskan state employees.
Part of her image is based on her being a hockey Mom who is able to raise five children and take on the job of Governor. She has done this in part because she has had jobs (Mayor and Governor) where she could bring her young children to work with her as often and as long as she wanted. This option is not exactly available to the average working Mom, married or unmarried. Most working women also have working husbands, if they are not on their own, who cannot afford to take off from their jobs to help with child care. This advantage doesn’t seem to register with Palin or the Republicans, who fail to support programs that would help working mothers manage their complicated lives and deal with the family pressures that men are usually not subject to.
All of the above is not to demonize Palin, who has accomplished much in her career; who has taken on established politicians in her own party; and is an effective campaigner. But making her into someone she is not, ignoring the contradictions in her record, and coloring over her lack of qualification to be Vice President ought to be of major concern to every voter in this election.
She lacks the credentials to be President of the United States in the event that the 72 year-old John McCain fails to survive his term in office. If she was the male Governor of Alaska, with the exact same credentials, she would never have been considered for this post. McCain has chosen political advantage over concern for the country.
The critical factor in this election should not be the battle over “family values’ – reproductive rights and the role of women, important as they are. Unfortunately, they are among the most divisive issues in this country, but they pale compared to the problems that the next President of the United States will be facing.
We are finishing eight years of the George Bush Presidency and that experience has left us in horrific shape. We are still in Iraq, a war we should never have entered that has cost 4,100 American deaths, 10,000 American wounded, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and over a million displaced Iraqi citizens. This war is costing us $10-12 billion a month. This major effort in Iraq to fight a war that was not in our strategic interest shifted us away from Afghanistan, where we should have stayed after the initial success. Now we are faced with a major problem as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda regroup in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Had we stayed and defeated them when they were on the run and spent a fraction of the money that we wasted in Iraq, Afghanistan would be well on the road to being a successful ally instead of being the next drain on our soldiers and treasury.
The budget deficit stretches into the unforeseeable future and is being financed, not by the American taxpayer, but by foreign governments. Our military is stretched so thinly that we have lost any leverage military strength ought to give us as we deal with a resurgent Russia and a recalcitrant Iran.
The economy is either in recession or quickly heading there. The Bush tax cuts, continued despite the costs of Iraq, have created excessive income inequality between the richest Americans and the middle class. This year’s budget deficit is going to be $407 billion and 2009 is now estimated to be $500 billion. The unwillingness to deal with our dependence on oil has gas prices soaring.
An administration that has subverted government regulation is seeing the result of those decisions in the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac catastrophe. Those institutions did what they want in the search for profit and gambled that the government would bail them out using taxpayer money if the risk they assumed proved fatal.
The Administration’s anti-science bias contributes to climate warming and destroys the environment. They’ve constantly ignored consensus scientific advice and chose the narrow and self-serving interests of business supporters instead.
At the start of Bush’s term, the US was the most powerful country in the world, and if not loved, was respected and listened to. Today that strength has been lessened substantially. Even our friends are reluctant to support our strategies and our enemies have multiplied, because they have been able to use our presence in Iraq as a recruiting tool.
What does this failed eight years have to do with this election? The answer is just about everything. McCain is running from this record with everything he has but he is a Republican who got his party’s nomination by adopting Bush policies and a belief that he will revert back to what he once was is self-deluding. Early in the Administration, McCain disagreed with a number of Bush policies – tax cuts being the major one. But his path to the nomination required that he change that position to its opposite. He now supports Bush economics and tax policy completely. This is a flip-flop that goes light years beyond what John Kerry was accused of four years ago.
In Iraq, McCain was a supporter of the war from prior to the invasion through today. In Jan. 2, 2003, McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!” He speculated that the Anthrax scare might have emanated from Iraq and jumped on claims, later disproved, that Saddam had met with Al-Qaeda. The lack of WMD is never mentioned.
He supported the surge from its start and claims it is the cause of reduced violence in Iraq and has led us to victory. General Petraeus was quoted today saying he did not know that he would ever use the word "victory": "This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not war with a simple slogan." Whether it is victory or not, it now appears that at best the surge was only one of a number of actions that eased the security situation – the major three being the Sunni’s rising up against Al-Qaeda, successful counter-intelligence operations against Al-Qaeda, and the restraint shown by al-Sadr’s militia. Even if Iraq becomes the sought after democratic state of our dreams (although it will probably align with Iran) it will not have been worth the cost in lives and money we have expended and realistically we should admit it is a defeat and move on.
McCain has voted for Bush programs in Congress about 90% of the time. Not as much as other Republicans, but not enough to claim he is significantly different. The Republicans need to be held accountable for what they have done to this country. Even if their nominee claims to be different, he should not be rewarded by being elected. A McCain administration will be staffed throughout by people connected with Bush who have been involved deeply in the past eight years and if McCain is elected, there will be no change, and no reform in anything that matters.
On a final note, what bothers me as much as the above discussion is the tenor of the McCain/Palin campaign. It is based on demeaning opponents, rather than on debating policies. It features repeated lies that have been discounted by responsible parties under the assumption that most voters don’t follow the election closely. After all, about 50% of the American populace still believes that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack. So Palin keeps talking about her bridge; McCain tells his audiences that Obama will raise their taxes, even though Obama states that he is going to raise taxes only on people earning more than $250,000 per year, and McCain equates the surge with victory.
The latest McCain ad states that Obama’s only achievement in the Illinois legislature was to pass legislation ensuring "comprehensive sex education" for kindergartners. It turns out that Obama didn’t sponsor the bill, but did vote for it. The “sex education” for kindergartners is a section that trained teachers to make kindergartners aware of the risk of inappropriate touching and sexual predators. This practice of attack politics based on lies and distortion is becoming the predominant characteristic of the McCain campaign.
The contest is made out to be between people who are just like us – people you would want to have a beer with (the George Bush mantra), or are just Mom’s with similar cares to your own, versus elite Ivy League educated out-of-touch people. Why would anyone choose to put people just like themselves into such vital offices rather than someone smarter, more accomplished, and with better judgment is an idea I just can’t grasp.
So we are left with the spectacle of speakers at the Republican convention disdaining Obama for being a community organizer and obtaining the desired response of hoots and jeers from the audience of convention goers made up of 80-90% white people who no doubt were appalled that a Harvard Law graduate would turn down lucrative law firm jobs to help people living in poverty. That is as clear a statement as I can find of the values of the Republican Party and its standard bearers who allowed those scenes to happen.
posted by John Weiss at 12:51 PM
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