The nation's real calling

Read the core of Vice President Dick Cheney's video endorsement today of John McCain:

"John is a man who understands the danger facing America. He's a man who has looked into the face of evil and not flinched. He's a man who's comfortable with responsibility and has been since he joined the armed forces at the age of 17....the time is now to make him commander-in-chief."

There is little rationale offered for electing McCain other than his supposed experience of looking "into the face of evil." Cheney is declaring that McCain shares his view, that bellicose confrontation with unnamed enemies is the chief role of the president. It is in fact a worldview which, when implemented with continuous use of military force, becomes self-fulfilling. Today the United States has more enemies in the world than at any time in its history, and Mr. Cheney -- through his decisive influence on George W. Bush -- bears much of the responsibility.

It may be helpful at this moment to remember some words from the Christian tradition, which is usually invoked by fearful conservatives to justify belligerent American actions in the world. In Chronicles, God does not urge his people to look into the face of evil, he says "seek my face, and turn from your wicked ways, then...I will heal your land." [emphasis added] St. Paul insisted: "Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good...See that no one renders evil for evil, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men."

There is also this cautionary passage in Ecclesiastes: "There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, the sort of error which proceeds from the ruler. Folly is set in great dignity...He who digs a pit may fall into it; and whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake." Indeed, throughout the entire Bible, most references to evil have nothing to do with battling or warring against it, but are injunctions to avoid practicing it yourself, promising that those who do justice, will receive justice.

Isaiah is the prophet who coined this memorable line: "Refuse the evil, and choose the good." Let me apply that to November 4: Let us refuse those who talk constantly of evil while ignoring the failures of their own actions. Let's choose those who say we can do better, who know that good will come to us only as we do the good work -- here and abroad -- that is our true calling as a people.

The rail-splitter in 2008...

Today The New York Times endorsed Barack Obama for President. The editorial was thorough, workmanlike and unequivocal. But of equal interest today is the editorial in which The New York Times endorsed Abraham Lincoln for President in 1860. Without seeing any of the eventual greatness in the man, the editorial was a bit condescending in tone – but summed up its appreciation of Lincoln by describing, tongue-in-cheek, the habits of mind of a “rail splitter” (which is how Lincoln’s campaigners described him, referring to one of his first jobs as a young man). The Times said this about the man from Illinois:

“Rail-splitting is not an exciting occupation. It does not tend to cultivate the hot and angry passions of the heart…It teaches a man to strike heavy blows, and to plant them just where they are needed – but he learns, also, to deal them only when they are needed. A skillful professor of this science will not be likely to go around splitting things in general – putting a wedge into every crack he sees and driving it home merely for the love of the thing. He has an eye to utility. It is only when things have fallen into decay a little – when the fences are down and the cattle and swine wandering into forbidden territory, rooting up useful crops and doing more harm in a day than a careful farmer can remedy in a week, that he splits rails to repair the breach and fence in the troublesome brutes.” It would have been hard to give a clearer assessment of how Lincoln actually governed in the ensuing years, navigating the country through the worst crisis of its history.

Today The New York Times said that “leading America forward will require…sober judgment and a cool, steady hand. Mr. Obama has those qualities in abundance.” In contrast, during the week last month when the Congress at first rejected the financial crisis bail-out package and John McCain suspended his campaign and rushed to Washington, USA Today editorialized: “The Republican candidate's erratic performance this week was far from reassuring.”

But fortunately there is a rail-splitter available again…

What the Election Has Come Down To...

If we take seriously the language of presidential candidates and their running mates, then what the outcome of this election has come down to -- according to John McCain -- is whether a majority of white Americans in swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Missouri is prepared to believe his campaign's insinuations that Barack Obama is (a) a terrorist, or at least the friend of terrorists, (b) a "socialist", (c) a racist, because he hasn't disavowed his friend Rep. John Lewis's criticism of racist language used by people who go to McCain and Palin rallies, and (d) a Muslim. None of these claims and insinuations are true, although the first three are subtly or directly interwoven into McCain's and especially Palin's remarks at campaign rallies, as well as illustrated in sinister, shadowy television ads. That some of their supporters have absorbed and begun to regurgitate these lines is readily apparent: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/10/note-to-palin-crowd-your-roots-
are.html

That video was broadcast worldwide on Al Jazeera, and it's a perfect example of what Colin Powell was talking about on "Meet the Press" last Sunday: That the words and images of some Americans' prejudice against Muslims and people of color are "killing us" around the world -- meaning that a big chunk of our political discourse is reinforcing the image of America as a mean-spirited, religiously antagonistic and racially bigoted nation of people which has, by the way, dumped the world into an economic crisis caused by our egregiously leveraged credit practices.

The final round of campaign rhetoric on which Senator McCain and Governor Palin are now embarked is rife with these images and themes of race, violence and radicalism. They are attempting to win an election based on making less well-educated, undecided white voters afraid of a black man who is a former University of Chicago constitutional law professor distrusted by the left-wing of his own party because it suspects he is too moderate. Inasmuch as many privileged political pundits who have known McCain well for many years say that he is a swell guy who would never really think these odious things about an opponent, then the intellectual premise of his campaign, at its 11th hour, is based on hypocrisy and cynicism. His strategy has come down to pandering to the worst residual forms of intolerance in order to try to eke out a plurality in a handful of socially conservative states that, in a close election, might theoretically be enough to give him a victory in the Electoral College -- an antiquated, undemocratic mechanism for electing a president -- although most pollsters now expect that Barack Obama will win a substantial popular vote victory. If this were to occur, the world would see that the United States had elected a president based not on "the better angels of our nature" but instead on our worst instincts. It would have every right to dismiss our pretensions to promote civil society and democratic principles elsewhere in the world.

We are better than that.

McCain and Palin call Obama's ideas "socialist"

The intellectual progenitor of most modern socialist parties was Karl Marx, whose philosophy was broad, ramshackle but ruthless. You could plow through thousands of pages of his writings without finding a single idea for government that would work in 21st century America or be happily embraced by many Democrats. But you don't have to do that research, to prove that Barack Obama isn't a socialist. Strip away all the ornate antechambers and upper stories of Marx's ideological palace -- which when imposed on modern nations always leads to their decline -- and you find one elemental, insistent idea: The state should own the means of production, all of them. Meaning that except for Korean laundries and unlicensed plumbers, the state should own every damn productive unit in the economy. No American presidential candidate has ever subscribed to that idea, least of all the unexcitable, distinctly unradical Barack Obama. So the McCain-Palin flaming steak of rhetoric about Obama being a socialist is just another piece of Flying Wallendas exaggeration. It's a lie if they know what socialism actually is, and if they don't, then it's clear they're at the stage of the campaign where they will say anything that might generate a headline which two or three voters will actually believe, while simultaneously driving their "base" absolutely hysterical with fear and hatred. That won't only create a long hang-over for the conservative faithful. In an age of political polarization and partisan animosities, it's irresponsible.

The perversity of the McCain-Palin attacks on Obama

Whether intentional or unintentional, there's a perverse psychology behind the false allegations about Barack Obama made in recent days by John McCain and Sarah Palin, in public speeches as well as television ads. They've accused Obama of friendship with a terrorist, on the basis of his having been present at a few fundraisers and foundation board meetings with William Ayers, who'd been in the domestic revolutionary group Weathermen almost 40 years ago but is now a respected member of the Chicago educational community. In return, McCain-Palin supporters at rallies have shouted "kill him" (meaning Obama) and have expressed fear about Obama being a Muslim (which he is not). Considered together and in the context of American history, the content of McCain's sinister-looking ads and Palin's exaggerated remarks in fact are tantamount to an incitement to hatred, and potentially an incitement to violence.

Claiming that Obama is "not who he claims to be" cues many fundamentalist Christians to believe that Obama is a Muslim (since many of them already believe that Muslims are barbaric). Insinuating to entirely white audiences that Obama's identity is ambiguous ("Who is he really?") can easily tap racial uneasiness from those who harbor such feelings. Claiming that Obama consorted with a terrorist amalgamates what has already been encouraged -- fear of a black presidential candidate -- with many white Americans' long-standing bias or resentment toward blacks generally, and combines that with fear of terrorists. This in turn blends the historically toxic prejudice against African-Americans with the new fear and loathing of foreign enemies like Osama bin Laden.

Similar combinations of false beliefs, when summoned by self-serving, unprincipled politicians before in American history, have led to social upheaval, riots and killing. However indirectly, by encouraging people to sip this lethal cocktail of prejudice and fear, the McCain campaign is resorting to a depraved kind of political rhetoric that has never before been used in modern presidential campaigns by any major party. They are bringing the radical, twisted fringe of American political conflict into the center of their language and are thereby polluting our public debate and disgracing themselves.

The financial crisis and the election...

None of us who favor the election of Barack Obama should take satisfaction in the carnage on Wall Street, however much it creates the possibility of an Obama landslide. The 401(k)'s and pensions of everyone are suffering, and the credit freeze is leading to lay-offs of workers, today. The now-failed "bail-out" package was a technical mechanism to extract bad debt from threatened financial institutions, as well as an emergency psychological measure to reassure world credit markets that the U.S. government would act to stop the domestic panic and prevent a major global economic implosion. Without some sort of legislation out of Congress in the next week of equivalent size, more American financial institutions (including small local banks) will fail, the Fed will have no choice but to print more money, and inflation and unemployment will rise simultaneously. How many more points on the unemployment and bank failure numbers are Obama enthusiasts willing to accept, for a few more electoral votes for him on November 4? The reality is that if there is no decisive government action to halt the credit crisis before the election, President Obama will inherit a much more seriously weakened economy and be digging out from a deeper hole for far longer into his new administration. What happens this fall can affect his ability to govern progressively. Let's hope that some sort of systematic U.S. government action proportionate to the world credit crisis is taken soon, because we all want this new president to be able to act on the plans and priorities he's talking about. You do not want his entire first term to be digging out from under more debris left by the fecklessness of Bush and the obduracy of congressional Republicans.

McCain's disrespect...

Today Arianna Huffington commented about last night's debate between McCain and Obama that McCain's best moment was when he said he saw "KGB" when he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes. Just why is it a good moment for a presidential candidate when he essentially calls the leader of Russia a spy and a thug (which is the common image in the West of a KGB agent)? This was another example of something we've seen before during this campaign: McCain's tendency to be belligerent toward other leaders who deviate from some aspect of his worldview. It was also a brash, foolhardy thing to say about the leader of a country with whom the U.S. must work on a range of serious global problems. Are we to believe that Putin will forget this, or dismiss it as campaign rhetoric, if McCain were to be elected?

But John McCain has denounced one foreign leader after another all year: the Iranian leaders, Hugo Chavez, various other dictators -- and he cast an aspersion at the prime minister of Spain. Now the U.S. has great differences with most of the leaders that McCain doesn't like, and some of them may have said incendiary things. But America's leaders shouldn't parrot their style. Unless the president of the United States and those running for the office maintain some semblance of decorum in talking about the people with whom they are forced to deal once in office, the present reputation of the United States for bullying other nations will be compounded with the additional problem of American leaders becoming known for insulting other leaders. This is exactly what we do not need as a president: someone who personalizes our national interests and invests his likes and dislikes with gratuitous hostility.

It may also be clear now, on the evidence of the first debate, that McCain has a general tendency to denounce or ridicule those with whom he disagrees. His condescension and lecturing tone toward Senator Obama in the debate was a form of disrespect for a fellow member of the Senate and, by extension, for the millions of Americans whose votes for Senator Obama in the primaries won him the nomination of his party. If McCain can't practice simple courtesy on a program watched by 60 million Americas, why should we think he will be able to enlist the trust and goodwill of those whose cooperation he'll need to govern effectively?