all that counts

“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The above is from the October 17, 2004 New York Times Magazine article, “Without a Doubt”. By Ron Suskind. Although it has been reprinted many times in books and websites and blogs over the last four years, it occurs to me that many of you who read this might never have seen it.

It is a commonly held belief that the “senior advisor” was Karl Rove, but even if it wasn’t it is someone who holds a strikingly idealogical if not physical resemblance to him.

This quote has come to my mind several times over the past few weeks.

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In the play I’m in right now, I have a line: “Every conflict has a context”. Whenever I work on a character I try to find places where that character and I are alike and where we differ. This particular character and I share a complete veneration for history. We differ in the fact that while he approaches all history with fascination but a sense of total neutrality, I am often drawing conclusions and assessing where opportunities were gained or, more importantly, missed.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything always leads to something even if we aren’t aware of it until after the fact.
***************************************************
The Following is a Timeline which brought me to this place:

February & March, 2003—I am performing a supporting role in the musical “1776” in the Louisville area. At some point, when it is becoming imminent that the U.S. will invade Iraq—probably after Powell’s speech, I make the comment that I wish the U.N. inspectors would be allowed to finish their job. Although most members of the cast are outwardly ambivalent about the invasion there is a vocal quarter of the cast who are very much for it. Members of this group begin to make sneering comments about the U.N. and speak over my responses. I am silenced.

A few days later, another member of the cast, I don’t remember who, makes an even more definitive statement against the invasion. Like a pack of terriers hearing a doorbell the vocal quarter goes after the individual. I sit in silence. My mind is repeating two quotes that will stay in my head from then until now:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
--Yeats (The Second Coming)

“Woe to those who began this war if they were not in bitter earnest.”
--Mary Chestnut

While I didn’t know about it at the time, Illinois State Senator, Barack Obama has made a speech

against the invasion four months before and continues to speak out against it while preparing to run for the U.S. Senate. Within the past year, to my knowledge, Bill Maher has lost his network job and the Dixie Chicks are getting death threats due to critical comments against the administration, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is constantly being attacked and ridiculed by the right for his anti-war stance, Al Franken, arguably the most visible, unelected spokesman for the Left is speaking in favor of the war, there is a general widespread feeling of blind patriotism in the country, and I am sitting silently in a dressing room near the Ohio River because I am afraid of verbal reprisals and accusations from a group of musical actors.

February, 2007—Barack Obama announces his candidacy for president. Within the intervening four years, my wife and I have moved to Chicago and had a son. Although I put little stock in his ability to gain the nomination this time, my location and fatherhood lead me to read his book, Dreams From My Father. I decide that this will be the most important of his two books to read since it was written before he became a politician and I might get a better idea of who he is. After reading it, I don’t necessarily feel inspired. I realize that his vision of America requires a willingness by the populace to volunteer for some form of community service. I fear that most Americans, including myself, are either too selfish or too conditioned to having the president take care of things to give Obama much of a chance. I also realize that I like the guy a great deal and I wish his vision of this country was more of a possibility.

Early Fall, 2007—I am listening to a recording of the Howard Stern Sirius Satellite Radio show. A discussion begins about the primaries. Stern says that he expects and hopes the nominees will be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. If this is so, although he likes Hillary, he will be voting for Rudy.

I bring this up because I remember being disappointed in Stern. This is not an understatement. I was simply disappointed. This is significant because it reminds me that there was a time I wanted Hillary Clinton to be president.

Around this time is also when I had the discussion with my visiting Republican friend, mentioned in an earlier entry. So my want was not a passionate one. It was probably more simple expectation.

Final Weeks of 2007—Hillary Clinton appears in a taped interview during the first segment of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”. She seems to be coming off as expected, but then she says something at the end of the interview that gives me pause; She says that it “Will all be over by February 5th .” The implication is clear that she expects to be the nominee by then. I think to myself that it seemed extremely smug. She’s running against quite a few worthy candidates. I remember that Stephanopoulos gives her a chance to clarify her statement. She does so but I don’t find it sincere. Although I don’t expect it I remember thinking that it would be kind of cool if one of the other candidates challenge her. The two people that immediately spring to mind are John Edwards, because of his realistic views on the “Two Americas”, and Joe Biden because I feel like he has the best grasp on the Iraq situation. I begin to consider voting for one of them on Super Tuesday, February 5th.

In my mind, Obama is more realistically a dream candidate for Vice President. I am hopeful he will have enough clout to be president in 2016.

January 3, 2008—Barack Obama is winning the Iowa caucus. I am humbled that a predominately white state has come out in support of him. I see real progress in this and I feel it is a great moment in U.S. history even if he has to drop out by February 5th. Immediately after these thoughts three events occur on top of each other which lead me to what I refer back to as my “Grinch” moment: 1. MSNBC announces that Barack Obama has actually won Iowa. 2. The two women who live downstairs begin to cheer wildly. It is the first time I’ve ever heard them in the seven months since we moved in. They have had an Obama placard in their window, at least, since April when we first looked at the apartment. 3. Barack Obama appears on screen to make his first victory speech. Behind him are many twenty-somethings. Some of them are admittedly very goofy looking but it puts a thought in my head that maybe the idea of volunteerism is not so far-fetched.

“Well...in Chi-town they say That the LF Jackal's small heart Grew three sizes that day!”

Mid-January, 2008—Reports begin to come out about the national housing market and what effect this will have on the overall economy. As my wife and I listen to one of these reports on NBC news, I say, matter-of-factly, well that pretty much gives the nomination to her. My wife agrees. We both know that the Clintons' bread and butter is the economy. It’s how Bill won in 1992. Although I am not happy about this, neither am I sad. More wistful. At least for this time, Obama’s name joins the names of Nunn, Simon, and Bradley as Democrats who I would have loved to have as a nominee but they either never ran or didn’t make the cut.

Mid to Late January, 2008—Campaigning for the Nevada caucus and South Carolina begins and the Clintons begin a campaign of passive aggressive and misleading attacks. At the South Carolina debate, the name “Rezko” makes it’s first national appearance and John Edwards comes off as the adult in the room. It is a grim preview of what might happen if this campaign continues too long.

At times I become so annoyed with Hillary Clinton throughout these days that I openly consider voting for McCain in November.

I pull myself together…barely.

January 26, 2008—The South Carolina Democratic primary is held and Obama doesn’t just win. He crushes. A line from a David and David song comes to my mind:

“And though we know that deep down in our hearts
That someday this will all fall apart
For right now
Let’s just be heroes.”

I’ll just enjoy it while it lasts.


January 31, 2008—A very civil debate takes place in Los Angeles. What differences there are, are defined. Amiable arguments take place. I could see why someone would vote for either of these people. If Hillary wins out, I could vote for her. I hope against hope that the remaining three debates as well as the rest of the campaign can maintain this air.

I begin to consider how great it would be if every state and territory could vote on these two candidates before one dropped out. What a great message that would send if the Democratic party and it’s constituents could behave, on the whole, as grown-ups.

I realize that this is highly unlikely and as the reporters and commentators begin to complain about how boring the debate was, I get very nervous.


February 4, 2008—I have been writing and rewriting an email in support of Obama in my mind and sometimes in a notebook. It is always way too long and I hate the idea of being a nuisance. I am also noticing that as Obama talks about his approach to running his administration, it sounds familiar. My favorite book of the last decade has been, TEAM OF RIVALS by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is a book about how Lincoln put together a cabinet of people who could have easily turned against him because they had all run against him in the election of 1860. He somehow was able to channel all these egos with their conflicting ideas towards positive goals. Not only am I excited about what Obama wants to do as president I like the way he wants to approach it. I make an almost unconscious deal with myself.

I am wrestling one last time with the idea of writing this email while sitting on the couch. One of the 24-hour news channels replays a Katie Couric interview where she asks each remaining candidate what book, besides the Bible, they will take with them to the White House if elected. Obama immediately responds, “Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin…”

Within five minutes, I am writing an extremely edited version of my email.

The Remainder of February, 2008—Obama wins twelve contests in a row. Even though this has been predicted by many—that Hillary Clinton could have a rough month but still bounce back in Ohio and Texas—a new story begins to arise that Obama is becoming the inevitable nominee. I’m not buying it although many of my younger friends are telling me I’m being silly.

The general belief being shaped by Saturday Night Live, a show whose home is New York City—a city in the state Hillary represents—as well as by the Clinton Campaign, that the press is far harder on Clinton than it is on Obama. The press picks up on this.

I feel this is all a matter of perception. As Obama continues to win, the panels on the election shows always discuss, “What can Hillary Clinton do to stop Barack?”. The panels then begin to openly brainstorm on live T.V. about what the best way would be to defeat the Obama campaign. At times certain members seem almost perplexed—as if this man should not be winning.

After Obama wins Wisconsin, many of the same reporters who talked about a rough month of February for Clinton, begin to say that it’s all over. These were the same people who said she would turn it around in March. I begin to wonder whether the press is actually trying to create it’s own narrative. Whether I’m watching a political race transformed into a reality show.

The Time Between Wisconsin primary and Mar 4, 2008—The Clinton campaign announces that they will be throwing “The Kitchen Sink” at Obama. It is a simple but clever way of saying that they will do whatever it takes to win. Clinton begins to compare Obama to Bush, and Rove in her speeches. She then scolds and sometimes rants sarcastically about his opitimistic message.

Rather than listing everything. I think “The Kitchen Sink Strategy” is best exemplified by an event that some might have missed.

On Sunday, March 2nd's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, The first segment was devoted to an argument between Howard Wolfson, in studio and for the Clinton campaign, and David Axelrod, by satellite and for Obama.

Very early on, Wolfson began demanding that the Obama campaign produce every file, email, etc. pertaining to Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko. He asked if Axelrod would turn it over, “yes or no”.

Rather than answer Axelrod kept clarifying that there was no reason to turn over any of that material since Obama was in no way implicated in any of Tony Rezko’s legal troubles. Wolfson was asking an unanswerable question.

As I listened to this exchange, which Wolfson utilized to take up a great deal of the segment, I was reminded of an event of which, in a way, I felt bad to be reminded.

Soon after Bill Clinton became president his oldest friend, Vince Foster, committed suicide in a D.C. area park. Immediately after this was made known Hillary Clinton sent two of her personal assistants, one of whom served as her security guard, to Foster’s office to retrieve several files before even FBI agents had gotten to the office to investigate. As far as I am concerned those files probably had to do with attorney/client privilege and since Hillary worked at the same law firm as Foster, they were probably shared cases. I believe the Starr investigation looked at them in private. Even so, to this day conspiracy nuts on the web conjecture about darker possibilities.

As I listened to Wolfson repeat that Axelrod had not answered the question yes or no. I was both regretful and thankful that the universe did not work the way I wished it would.

If it did, Axelrod would have morphed into me and I would have suddenly answered:

“Of course I won’t answer yes or no. If I say no, you’ll just make up shit about what I give you that isn’t true, and if I say yes you’ll say, “ooooh! What’s he hiding?” …On second thought, Wait!...Wait!...You like to play with fire scarecrow?!?!. I’ll make a deal with you: I’ll give you all that material and you give me all those files from Vince Foster’s office and throw in all those files from the Clinton Library. Then we’ll play a game. Let’s see how many news cycles we can gum up with bullshit scenarios about what we find between now and Denver, while children starve in most parts of the world and get blown up in the Middle East! Together we’ll make sure that McCain skates into the White House even if he spends every morning in October running naked on the sidewalk around it ranting, “ME GONNA LIVE HERE! ME GONNA LIVE HERE!”….By the way, Stephanopoulos, you wear great ties.”

This probably would lose the election but it would feel really good. On second thought, I probably would have to vote for McCain if he did that. It’s my kind of October surprise.


March 4, 2008—This was the night of the first preview of the aforementioned play I am in so I was unable to watch the five hours of primary coverage live. I taped it. I'm very lame.

Marcus a fellow member of the cast and intense Obama supporter asked me my prediction on the primaries as we walked to the El after the show. I gloomily said that Obama would go 1-3. He laughed and predicted 2-2 and reminded me that I had been equally as negative before the last few primaries. I said I knew but this night was different.

Had I watched the entire results coverage only fast forwarding through commercials I would not have gone to bed until 4 am. With a show to do the next night and a twenty-one month-old son who keeps a strict schedule, I knew this was impossible. I watched the first hour and a half and then began to fast forward hour-by-hour. It was quite an experience.

During that first hour and a half all the experts were saying that even if Hillary Clinton won Texas and Ohio by margins less than massive, she was pretty much done—even though she had to stay in the race through April 22. Fast forward an hour and the races are too close to call. Fast forward an hour and Hillary has won Ohio—eventually by ten percentage points. Certainly a substantial win but not the margin described at the top of the coverage. Fast forward an hour and she has won Rhode Island by a lot. Fast forward another hour and she has won Texas by four percentage points, but he is winning the caucus. She eventually nets around five pledged delegates but the same experts from the beginning are now saying she’s back and Obama is in trouble.

I have always half believed the claims that the press crafts the narrative of an election now I truly believe it.

I remember a story I read in the New Yorker about the often drunk but always eloquently provocative Christopher Hitchens. He tells about how he and his fellow columnists decided that Howard Dean was a dangerous candidate in 2004 and set about to ruin him. He claimed that “the scream” footage in Iowa was their opportunity and they took it. I have always smirked at this but now I wonder why the “Shame on you” and “Heavens are gonna open” footage of Hillary are not considered at least as unsettling as the footage of a man working a room of young supporters with an ill-executed “Yee-Haw”.

I still don’t believe the press colludes to craft the story. I prefer to think it is more a case of the image Jon Stewart has of the press at election time. He says they look like six-year-olds playing soccer. All of them clustering around the ball wherever it goes without any standing back for perspective.

During the first hour and a half of coverage, just after it seemed like those at MSNBC had a sense of what was going on in Ohio, Howard Fineman came on in a particularly somber mood and commented that the Clinton campaign had been almost completely negative over the previous two weeks. He seemed disturbed by the fact. He said that, if she was triumphant,her attacks would only worsen and grow more negative.

March 7, 2008—Samantha Powers, top foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama refers to Hillary Clinton as a “monster”. Within three hours of my learning this, Ms. Powers has resigned from the campaign.

I have been thinking about writing a blog entry for several days now—a bold-faced, sneering attack on Hillary. The kind of one I wish the Obama campaign could make if it was not for the fact that the press claims that if he did so he would be breaking his own promise of practicing a different kind of politics. I begin to wish that until people can recognize the tactics of someone like Hillary Clinton that there could be a new category in politics. I have watched my candidates take the high road while being attacked for the last twenty years and they uniformly lost. I feel like there should be "mud-slinging" and then “responding in kind.” "Responding in kind" would only be seen as a proper response and not stooping to negative campaigning. Pipe dream. The Press wants a knife fight.

To call someone a “monster” or refer to their actions as “monstrous” in Shakespeare is far worse than calling someone a villain or referring to their actions as “villainous”. Villainous was almost a playful term like calling someone a jerk. Monster was pretty much the worst thing you can call someone back then. I had been thinking as I planned my more scathing entry to slip in the word “Monster”. Thinking it wouldn’t seem as harsh as I intended. A little personal joke. I thought better about it, though since it is name-calling and petty. Plus I don’t know any of these candidates personally so it would be rather ridiculous to make such attacks. All I had to go on were her tactics and they were definitely monstrous.

If Hillary Clinton has shown one talent that she has greater than Barack Obama, it is that she has the power to be destructive. She has systematically set out over the last few weeks to destroy her opponent's character. She has attempted to destroy his credibility as a commander and chief—going so far as to say that McCain would be a better choice. I can see no reason to do this except as a scorched earth policy that if she doesn’t get the nomination, then she’ll make it not worth having. My guess is that if Obama loses the general, it betters her chances for another run filled with self-fulfilling “I told you so’s” in 2012.

How else can all this that she is doing be described but as monstrous?
***************************************************

The political fact and reality is this; Whether it is due to necessity or original strategy, the Obama campaign funded itself extremely well by donors who, like myself, have given small amounts of money over a period of time. The argument is he had to do this since the Clinton campaign had sucked up all the machine big money donations. If this money had been available for Obama, he would have taken it. This may be true, but it wasn’t and he and his people figured out a way to make a deficiency an overwhelming strength.

Whether it is due to necessity or original strategy the Obama campaign set up a fifty state plan. It was clear that party machines, familiarity, and concentration of the opposition would make swing and blue states at least difficult to win. Hillary Clinton chose to campaign as if she was running for president of the eighteen blue and swing states of America. Obama has campaigned as if he was running for the United States of America. In doing so he has accumulated a delegate lead that forces Clinton to win the remainder of the contests with somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the votes. Each time she loses a state or wins by less than that amount the winning percentage need goes higher. This varies slightly but stays essentially true even if Michigan and Florida re-vote if I understand Chuck Todd's statements on MSNBC.

I was keeping track of the polls in Ohio and Texas during the three weeks before March 4. Depending on the poll, Clinton had an average of a 19 point lead in Ohio, an average of a twelve point lead in Texas. She ended up winning Ohio by 10 points and Texas by 4 points. This means he cut severely into her lead over those three weeks. And all evidence points to the fact that the main reason she even won by that much was because of a lie about a Canadian memo in Ohio and a scare tactic in Texas.

All that being said, I am aware that the Clinton campaign has and will continue to shape every win as a stunning reversal in favor of their side.

Even though the numbers are still in Barack Obama’s favor, I must admit that I am losing hope.
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"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

--October 17, 2004 New York Times Magazine article, “Without a Doubt”. By Ron Suskind.

Maybe it is a fact that Rove, Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Wolfson and all those like them understand and embrace a truth that I’m not willing to accept. That in a nation of so many it is impossible to honestly know our leaders on the highest levels and because of this, the simplest way to win is to play upon the darkest thoughts and fears of the masses to gain their goals.

In the case of Barack Obama I can’t claim to personally know him. I can only answer with these simple facts. He left New York to become a community organizer in Chicago. After dealing with city and state legislators he claimed that he recognized that the way to affect the most change was through the law and politics. He then got accepted to and attended Harvard Law School. His degree was in Constitutional law and he was the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was offered well-paying corporate jobs and with his credentials could have easily been a clerk to a Supreme Court Justice. Instead, he returned to Chicago and even though he eventually took a job at a law firm where he met the woman he would marry, he continued his community work and that’s what finally put him in the Illinois State legislature. *************************************************************
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne

The toothpaste is out of the tube. After sixteen years of overwhelming evidence, I recognize Hillary Clinton for what she is. I am fully prepared for her to be the Democratic nominee. The status quo just seems too fearful or unwilling to let Obama win. I also expect that I will vote for her in November. But I will do so while vomiting into my closed mouth.

As a Hillary Clinton presidency proceeds, I will listen to the attacks made by my Republican friends and relatives as I did sixteen years ago only this time, I will quietly agree.

Perhaps this is for the best. I came to consciousness during the Nixon era. Although it has been enjoyable, it has also felt unfamiliar to have so much excitement for a presidential candidate. I am much more comfortable holding my leaders in contempt.

My support for Barack Obama was the inverse of what I had come to believe. As Tip O’Neil said, “All Politics is local”.
***************************************************************

Conclusion

“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
--Bob Dylan

March 9, 2008—I am watching “Meet The Press”. Ed Rendel is appearing on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Tom Daschle for Barack Obama. Very early on, I recognize that Rendel is sending up a test balloon for what might be the lie of the week. He mentions that the Clinton campaign is for a re-vote in Michigan and Florida. He then says that the Obama campaign is against it. A few minutes later he repeats this. Only this time he says that the Obama Campaign is silent rather than openly against the re-vote. A few minutes after that Daschle finally says that the Obama campaign is not against re-doing the primaries in Michigan and Florida. I am still annoyed because I feel that Rendel should be called on his tactic and forced to take back what he said. The Obama campaign has said over and over that they would abide by the rules set by the DNC.
At some point, Tim Russert asks Rendel if Hillary Clinton will concede the nomination if Obama wins the delegate count, the number of state contests, and the popular vote. Rendel says she will not if she wins Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania. Russert repeats the question moments later and Rendel gives the same answer.

It is worse than I described above. Hillary Clinton is not running to be president of eighteen states. She is running to be president of four. The other forty six, plus the territories are just along for the ride.

In this moment I realize that as far as the Clintons are concerned, this is their country and all of us are either their loyal or unruly pets.

If Hillary Clinton gets the nomination under the stipulations outlined by governor Rendel, then, in my mind, the Democratic Party is the “Fredo” of American politics and the sooner it gets in that fourteen footer for its final fishing trip, the better.

I am losing hope.

As I marvel at the continuing implementation of this scorched Democratic Party policy, I re-realize that, although I am 41 years old and I have voted in every presidential election since it became legal for me to do so, I have never voted without the name “Bush” or “Clinton”on the ballot. They are the Yorks and Lancasters of the United States. (...The Kennedys are the Angevins...of course.)

It will take a conscious and concerted determination by the people to break this trend…

determination…

I have a vivid recollection of something from Bill Moyers Journal. I go to that show’s website. I find a transcript for an interview I had seen three weeks before with Sarah Chayes. She is a U.S. citizen and former NPR reporter, who left her job to live in Afghanistan and help women there to start their own businesses and trade with the region and, hopefully, the world. Her task is constantly thwarted by Pakistan, the resurgent Taliban, Opium poppy farmers, and the disastrous foreign policy of her home country.

The interview ends with this amiable exchange:

BILL MOYERS: There's a thin line. As I listen to you, there's a thin line we sometimes walk, we human beings, between hope and folly.

SARAH CHAYES: Hmm.

BILL MOYERS: Are you very close to that line?

SARAH CHAYES: I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going succeed or not. You have to keep trying.

OBAMA ‘08

J.A.L.