SECOND EVENING POST:   JUNE 29,  2008

Posted at 11:40 p.m. ET

SWINGING GATES?

Does Secretary of Defense Robert Gates swing both ways?

Now, before you panic, let me explain:  The issue is whether Secretary Gates will be asked to stay on in an Obama administration, and whether he'd feel at home in a Democratic cabinet.  Sarah Baxter, excellent reporter for The Times of London, gives us the story:

In defiance of traditional party labels, Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, may ask the defence secretary of President George W Bush to stay on if he wins the White House.

Obama’s top foreign policy and national security advisers are pressing the case for keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon after he won widespread praise for his performance. The move would be in keeping with Obama’s desire to appoint a cabinet of all the talents.

After appealing for unity with former rival Hillary Clinton and her supporters and big donors last week, Obama, 46, is turning his attention to wooing Republicans and independent voters who may be concerned that he lacks the experience to be trusted with America’s defence.

And...

Gates showed he was comfortable working with Democrats when he appointed John Hamre, a former senior official under Bill Clinton, to serve as chairman of the influential Defence Policy Board last year. He also appointed William Perry, a former defence secretary who is advising Obama, to the board.

Gates has said he finds it “inconceivable” that he would stay on but Obama’s advisers believe he would respond to the call.

And...

Last month Gates said he backed negotiations with Iran, a policy favoured by Obama. “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them,” the defence secretary told an association of retired diplomats.

Ah, there's the rub.  The fact is that Gates, who's a decent public servant, is more Bush 41 than Bush 43.  Conservatives don't swoon when his name is whispered.

I have some concerns about this.  Gates was skeptical of the surge in Iraq.  Now that he's seen the result, he's backing it, and has handled it well.  But, bottom line, he still opposed it.  He is reportedly opposed to military action against Iran.  I don't know quite what his Iran policy is, but no one is announcing that he's come up with any great ideas.  He may be a fine manager, but he's not a man known for vision.  What will be needed in an Obama administration is a defense secretary who has a sound strategy for defending the nation, and one who can stand his ground against the leftist onslaught that is bound to accompany Obama's taking the oath.  Is that Gates?  Not so sure.

June 29, 2008.      Permalink          

FIRST EVENING POST:  JUNE 29,  2008

Posted at 7:49 p.m. ET

SLICK BARACK?

Paul Greenberg of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was a fabled nemesis of Bill Clinton.  Now he appears to be assuming that role in his assessment of Barack Obama:

The Hon. Barack Obama hasn't yet reached Clintonesque levels of slickness, but this presidential campaign is still young and a whole summer of broken promises and general disenchantment with the Saint of Hyde Park has begun to set in.

For all its smooth, Internetted aspects, the Obama campaign begins to develop overtones of George McGovern's crack-up in the summer of 1972. Sen. McGovern was the beneficiary that year of the Democrats' newly rigged nominating system, which remains much the same. This year it allowed Barack Obama to cinch his party's nomination even as his rival was sweeping the popular vote in the big states.

George McGovern required only a few torrid weeks back in '72 to go from shining hope to utter incompetent. And now Barack Obama, the Different Kind of Presidential Candidate, has begun his metamorphosis into the same old kind of presidential candidate by backing away from his earlier promise to accept public financing.

And...

Oh, tell it not at the Lyric Opera, publish it not in the Sun-Times, but how the mighty of Hyde Park have fallen. Some of us can remember when that leafy neighborhood wasn't a wholly protected subsidiary of the University of Chicago - the kind of effectively gated community and game preserve for Progressive Thinkers that it has become - but the home of giants like The Hon. and honorable Paul Douglas.

A forgotten figure who doesn't deserve to be forgotten, Sen. Douglas was a fighting Marine, true liberal and unwavering voice in the U.S. Senate for justice at home and freedom abroad, a fit companion for Henry "Scoop" Jackson of cherished memory. In short, he was a more robust version of today's Lonely Joe Lieberman, that voice in the Democratic wilderness.

Wonderfully said.  I was, as readers here know, an intern for Senator Paul Douglas.  And yes, he was a giant in many ways - a former pacifist who saw the need to fight World War II, enlisted, became the oldest man, at 50, ever to go through Marine training at Parris Island, rose to lieutenant colonel, and was severely wounded at Okinawa.  He was one of that group of national-defense liberals, like Jackson, like Stuart Symington, like Jack Kennedy, who kept the Democratic Party respectable until its collapse in the late sixties. 

Finally...

Mr. Obama's reversal when it comes to accepting public financing for his campaign was announced in the true spirit of our new Bobo - i.e., Bourgeois Bohemian - elite. (Thank you, David Brooks, for coining that now inescapable term when it comes to diagnosing the soft underside of the country's upper crust.) Mr. Obama explained that (a) he wasn't actually breaking his word, (b) it was really all John McCain's fault and, besides, (c) it's the system of public financing that is broken. As if it hadn't been just as broken when he made his pledge.

Skipping past these inconvenient truths, the senator from Upscale, Ill., now has issued a self-righteous statement taking the high ground while he himself opts for the low. Perfect. Perfect, self-serving hypocrisy. I can just see the look on old Paul Douglas's rugged face if he had been asked to swallow a line that slick.

It was indeed a rugged face.  Mr. Douglas looked a bit like Lincoln.  When he was defeated in 1966 for a fourth term in the Senate by the shallow Charles Percy, he was offered any number of lobbyist posts.  He turned them all down.  "How can I," he asked a friend of mine, "after all these years of public service, do that?" 

There are honorable men and women.  Mr. Obama does not, at this writing, appear to be among them.

June 29, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  JUNE 29,  2008

Posted at 3:51 p.m. ET

TRACKERS

Our standard tracking polls have now been published for today.  Both show an increase in strength for Barack Obama.  Rasmussen has Obama up six, an increase in two points in two days.  But Gallup, which had Obama and McCain tied on Friday, now has Obama up four.

What is the cause?  We should caution - a caution passed on to me by an experienced news executive - that we should be a bit skeptical about pollsters interpreting their own polls.  It's a bit like a lawyer representing himself.  However, with that in mind, Gallup does say the following:

Obama has now pushed slightly back ahead after a stronger showing in Saturday's polling, mirroring the slight advantage he has held for much of June. The polling was the first Gallup had conducted following the "Unity" rally in which Obama and former Democratic nomination rival Hillary Clinton publicly campaigned together.

Since both trackers show an increase for Obama after the rally, I'd be inclined to accept that explanation.  That little bump should disappear in the next week...unless Senator McCain continues a campaign in which he can't seem to get much publicity.

The campaigns will continue at this level until the conventions, except that Obama's upcoming trip to Europe should attract substantial excitement, much of it more show biz than politics.  You can be sure that the in-the-tank press will herald a new day for America's image with "old allies." 

Senator McCain must, as I note at Snippets today, get back on the front page.  An exciting choice for vice president might do it.  I hope he has it in him. 

June 29, 2008.      Permalink                

SUNDAY:  JUNE 29,  2008

Posted at 8:18 a.m. ET

A YEAR

What will the world look like a year from today?  If the former head of the Mossad is right, it will be a world in which Iran has the nuclear bomb, or on in which Iran's nuclear program has been crippled.  London's Telegraph reports:

A former head of Mossad has warned that Israel has 12 months in which to destroy Iran's nuclear programme or risk coming under nuclear attack itself. He also hinted that Israel might have to act sooner if Barack Obama wins the US presidential election.

Shabtai Shavit, an influential adviser to the Israeli parliament's defence and foreign affairs committee, told The Sunday Telegraph that time was running out to prevent Iran's leaders getting the bomb.

Mr Shavit, who retired from the Israeli intelligence agency in 1996, warned that he had no doubt Iran intended to use a nuclear weapon once it had the capability, and that Israel must conduct itself accordingly.

Why is this a headline in Britain, but not in the U.S.?

And...

As speculation grew that Israel was contemplating its own air strikes, Iran's military said it might hit the Jewish state with missiles and stop Gulf oil exports if it came under attack. Israel "is completely within the range of the Islamic republic's missiles," said Mohammed Ali Jafari, head of the feared Revolutionary Guard. "Our missile power and capability are such that the Zionist regime cannot confront it."

And...

Israeli officials believe the diplomatic process is useless and have been pressing President Bush to launch air strikes before he leaves office on January 20 next year.

They apparently fear that the chances of winning American approval for an air attack will be drastically reduced if the Democratic nominee wins the election. Mr Obama advocates talks with the regime in Tehran rather than military action.

I can't imagine circumstances under which a President Obama would authorize a strike against Iran - unless he calculates that he would be disgraced in history unless he does.

Finally, the former Mossad chief said:

"When it comes to decisions that have to do with our national security and our own survival, at best we may update the Americans that we are intending or planning or going to do something. It's not a precondition, [getting] an American agreement," he said.

That's exceedingly important.  Israel did not get American approval for its successful strike against the Iraqi reactor at Osirik in 1981.  The Iran nuclear issue can spin out of control, with Israel going its own way if it feels its existence is threatened. And yet, the issue is apparently off the radar screen for most Americans and most American pundits.  The word is out that Condi Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the Joint Chiefs are opposed to a strike on Iran.  Okay, but what are they for?  What are we prepared to do?  Apparently, our policy is incremental sanctions, none of which have slowed the Iranian nuclear program by as much as the length of a TV movie.

Mr. Obama says he'll talk to the Iranians.  I have the image of President Obama meeting with the Iranian chief of state, and having the meeting interrupted as four Iranian soldiers roll in Iran's 2009 edition of Little Boy, the American bomb that decimated Hiroshima.

And that would be change the new president could believe in.

June 29, 2008.       Permalink               

SAY IT AIN'T SO

The New York Times carries a piece today that's inadvertently revealing:

HALF a century ago, when America was having problems with its image during the cold war, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the United States representative from Harlem, had an idea. Stop sending symphony orchestras and ballet companies on international tours, he told the State Department. Let the world experience what he called “real Americana”: send out jazz bands instead.

A photography exhibition of those concert tours, titled “Jam Session: America’s Jazz Ambassadors Embrace the World,” is on display at the Meridian International Center in Washington through July 13 and then moves to the Community Council for the Arts in Kinston, N.C.

And...

Powell arranged for (Dizzy) Gillespie, his close friend, to make the State Department’s first goodwill jazz tour, starting out in March 1956 with an 18-piece band and traveling all over southern Europe, the Middle East and south Asia.

The band’s first stop was Athens, where students had recently stoned the local headquarters of the United States Information Service in protest of Washington’s support for Greece’s right-wing dictatorship.

Now wait a second.  Just wait.  How did this story get through the copy editors at The Times?  Is this newspaper telling us that there was anti-Americanism before BUSH?  Are Times editors now in the tank for the neocons?  You know, pretty soon these turncoats will be telling us we're winning in Iraq.

Well, yes, Virginia, there was anti-Americanism before Bush.  There was anti-Americanism in World War II.  Americans, according to the British expression, were "overpaid, oversexed and over here."  There was anti-Americanism in France as we and our allies were liberating that country.  There was anti-Americanism in Venezuela in 1958, when Vice President Richard M. Nixon's car was attacked by mobs in Caracas. 

In that same year, a novel called "The Ugly American" was published, with a story line charging that we were losing the battle against Communism because of the behavior of Americans in foreign, specifically Asian countries.  The book was a huge success. 

An elderly relative told me recently that when she traveled to France she was advised by the State Department's passport office to play down her American citizenship because of hostility toward Americans.  The year was 1950, five years after the end of the Second World War.

There was anti-Americanism in Europe in the 19th century. 

And yet, you would think, in reading some newspapers and columnists, that we were eternally loved at one time, and that BUSH ruined it all.  He did not.  The anti-Americanism we see today is of a piece with the traditional variety, pumped up perhaps because of the speed of communications and, yes, of course, by the pushback by leftist and Muslim groups opposed to our war on terror. 

Let me add this thought:  Many Americans believe that we were "loved" in the days after the 9-11 attacks, and that policies advanced by BUSH reversed that feeling.  Any love for the U.S. after the attacks lasted about 48 hours.  The attacks occurred on a Tuesday.  On Thursday the BBC went on the air with a program so viciously anti-American that a former American ambassador, who appeared, burst into tears.  Bush apparently did a lot of damage in two days.

June 29, 2008.      Permalink