Jarrett House North

A defining moment: Obama on race

I’ve just read what I hope will be the first speech collected in Barack Obama’s presidential library, the prepared text of his address on race that he is giving right now in Philadelphia (New York Times liveblog). I don’t think I’ve heard any candidate in recent memory speak so cogently about problems with racial perspectives on both sides of the color line, nor put things in perspective quite so eloquently. Bottom line: Obama has taken what his opponents tried to paint as a liability and made of it an opportunity for one of the great statements of challenge to the nation, the first great challenge speech of the 21st century, and the first presidential speech to stand alongside Kennedy’s inaugural address.

Excerpts:

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe...

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it -- those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations -- those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time....

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the OJ trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

Typography is everywhere

I think that at the beginning of the campaign season, I was quite happy to handicap the field of candidates by their typography and logo decisions. Now that we’re down to three, an article on the typography of the 2008 presidential candidates seems a day late and a dollar short—not to mention, didn’t the Boston Globe already do this article? And the New York Times?

In fresher typographic news, a word for what happens to type when it is poorly kerned: keming. You have to be a type geek to get it, unless you look at an example.

Congrats to Josh Marshall

When Talking Points Memo started its investigation of the US Attorney firings, I knew Josh Marshall and his team were onto something big. When readers poured in with local press coverage and TPM started stitching the pieces together to show a pattern of politically motivated gutting of the judiciary, I knew that we were seeing a classic example of crowdsourcing at work. When he asked his readers to help him pore through thousands of pages of government documents to help put the pieces together, I knew that we were looking at the start of something big.

The world seems to agree. Having won a George Polk Award for legal reporting, TPM’s crowdsourced investigatory model now stands as a new high water mark in what lowered transaction costs can do to journalism. No matter how quiet, distributed, and seemingly boring, no matter how voluminous the documentation in which the offense is buried, you can now count on one thing: bloggers will be there to put the pieces together and spell out the uncomfortable truth.

It’s a reminder that we aren’t done with the revolution and promise of the Internet. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that lowered costs of communication would make it easier to expose secret government hijinx, but it is clear now that that is exactly one of the benefits of a free and open Internet, and that it is a bracing alternative to the spin dominated, celebrity focused, Timmy-trapped-in-well-24-hour-coverage that has passed for “broadcast journalism” recently. Well done, Josh and team, for reminding us how it’s supposed to be done.

Summing it up

Heh…

Really not much more to say, honestly. (Though I am kind of tickled over the series of strips that my friend Jen Sorensen is running in Slowpoke right now. Oballary and the current Mr. P’s Civics Reader are current favorites.

Super Tuesday hangover

Super Tuesday has come and gone. While it appears to have done what the parties wanted on the Republican side by narrowing the field down to one presumptive winning candidate (though McCain still has a resurgent Huckabee nipping at his heels in the South), the Democrats appear to be no closer to reaching a decision.

Two interesting things I observed locally. First, turnout: according to the numbers reported by the Globe, 18,027 people voted in Arlington (my home town) in the primary. As of 2006, Arlington had 28,022 registered voters. That’s something like 64% of the registered voters turning out for a primary. People are motivated here.

And they’re motivated to do more than build a horse race between two candidates. The Globe’s numbers included a nontrivial number of people who voted for candidates who had already dropped out of the race, including Edwards and Kucinich. While there’s no doubt that a large number of those were people who voted absentee before the candidate withdrew from the race, I have anecdotal evidence that that isn’t all that is going on.

I spoke to an Edwards supporter last night who said that, while he had voted absentee before Edwards withdrew, he would have voted for him anyway and he knew quite a few other Edwards supporters who were planning to do the same. Their reason: they were indifferent between Obama and Clinton, and wanted the party to consider Edwards’s platform issues at the convention, particularly his stance on poverty.

2008 is shaping up to be a very interesting election indeed.

Edwards out. At least until the convention

John Edwards bowing out of the race is no surprise after South Carolina, and I guess neither is his refusal to endorse a candidate. I think he’s setting himself up as a kingmaker, and unless either Hillary or Obama are particularly persuasive, he’ll probably hold off on an endorsement as long as possible. But popular also-rans don’t always help sway the party’s decision. I’m pretty sure John Kerry’s selection wasn’t influenced by Howard Dean.

On to New Hampshire

Interesting analysis by Josh Marshall at TPM. Summing up: Obama will have a much easier time replicating his success outside Iowa than Huckabee. Man, I hope so.

Good to see that the writers strike did not, in fact, lift Giuliani by depriving America of hearing endless jokes about his love nest on late night TV.

Iowa ♥s Huckabee

According to the AP, Mike Huckabee, Baptist preacher cum politician, is in the lead in Iowa. And I’m pretty sure I won’t be the first to use that headline, but I might edge out the AP by a few hours with it.

Will Huckabee do well nationally, what with his “shut down the IRS, usage tax, theocracy” platform? I hope not, but then, I thought Bush Jr. would fail nationally too. I can’t see him doing especially well in New Hampshire, though. But I’m nothing but thrilled to see him bloodying Mitt Romney’s nose.

And how about Barack Obama? Rarely has a candidate done so well on a promise to do things differently.

Ding, dong...

...the Turd Blossom is out. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out, pal.

But I can’t help but watch to see where he shows up next. Rove has always seemed to me to be the Zelig of the cynical right... which means that he might serve a cipher of a candidate like Fred Thompson, or even Mitt “dog lover” Romney, well.

Of course, the last time I cheered the departure of a hated administration official, the replacement wasn’t a heck of a lot better, so I need to be careful. But the gray skies seem a little brighter today.

An unwelcome victory

Notes about undemocratic, non-representative findings aside, the victory of Mitt Romney in this weekend’s Iowa straw poll is heartening and troubling. Heartening, because it positions as the Republicans’ leading hope a man with no discernible positions, whose chief political experience is four years spent running away from Massachusetts while running for President. As Talking Points Memo points out, it speaks to a lack of enthusiasm for the field. Half the leading Democratic contenders should be able to make mincemeat of this guy.

The disheartening part is that so many damned people in the straw poll voted for this inflated ball of suit and hair. Hasn’t anyone learned anything from watching his performance in Massachusetts? If there is one lesson to be taken away from the last seven years, it is that electing a weak façade of a politician for president means handing over control to the back-room apparatchiks that have been setting up secret prisons, wiretapping America’s citizens, waging war on moisture, and dismantling checks and balances systematically since Cheney and Bush took office. And nothing about Romney’s track record in Massachusetts suggests that he is prepared to say no to the cabal.

I would really like to see both parties giving us a vision for how the country is going to move away from the Bush/Cheney administration’s lunacies. I don’t think that’s going to happen in 2008.

Back. And so is "None of the above"

Having spent a good 17 hours or so spread across two trips in the few days since I posted last, I have still not recovered from my vacation. I think it will take a few days for the soreness to go away from the drive.

My soreness, however, must pale in comparison to the feelings of the average GOP presidential candidate when he learns that his entire field is trailing “None of the Above” for the 2008 nomination. While I would hate to have to run away from W’s war record as a GOP candidate, surely there must be someone in the party who will go out on a limb and do that. If not, the 2008 election will shape up as a referendum on whether we should be in Iraq, rather than what it should be: a contest of ideas on how to get out of the mess we are in, since our need to get out is for all rational people a foregone conclusion. (Via the slickly-redesigned Talking Points Memo.)

Mixed messages

On this two-hundred-thirty-first Fourth of July, it’s good to know that the president is in favor of clemency.

For his pals.

That the Vice President is willing to declare his own personal branch of government to avoid laws governing the executive branch.

They say every nation gets the government they deserve.

Heaven help us.

Small favors

Well, this week our favorite Washington political operative, our Vice President Dick “Go F*ck Yourself” Cheney, did what seven years of liberal activism could not: he removed himself and his office from the executive branch of government. That he did so to assert privilege to flout oversight rules related to the handling of classified documents seems especially appropriate for our most secretive of politicians.

But turnabout is fair play, and the VP uncharacteristically left himself vulnerable. A courageous Democratic member of Congress obliged with one of the finer statements of the newly bipartisan reality of Washington life that I’ve seen since, well, 2000:

Washington, D.C. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel issued the following statement regarding his amendment to cut funding for the Office of the Vice President from the bill that funds the executive branch. The legislation -- the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill -- will be considered on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.

"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch. However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent. This amendment will ensure that the Vice President's funding is consistent with his legal arguments. I have worked closely with my colleagues on this amendment and will continue to pursue this measure in the coming days."

Heh. At any rate, if the VP’s office is no longer part of the executive branch, we should be thanking heaven for small favors.

Wildmon on HR 1592: Taking fearmongering to new heights

Ah, Reverend Don Wildmon. Once known for picketing TV shows and comic strips, now turning his attention to hate crime legislation. The latest American Family Association newsletter hysterically claims that new anti-hate-crime legislation in front of the House (HR 1592) and Senate (S 1105) would make it illegal to preach against homosexuality.

The actual text of the bill, in fact, says that that’s not what the bill trying to do. Section 8 says that nothing in the bill “shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution.” The whole bill targets violent felonies causing bodily injury that are motivated by prejudice. If the Reverend Wildmon would spend more time reading and less time picketing, he might have picked up on the distinction.

Getting to a six-figure sinecure in one easy step

Good to know that one can go from a legislative aide position to a federal immigration judgeship on the strength of one’s ability to riot in corridors pretending to be a grassroots protester. Yes, I’m talking about the poster child for the problems at DOJ, Garry Malphrus, whose fast track to success started when he participated in the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot during the Florida recount in 2000. Now it looks like Malphrus was just one of the recipients of the administration’s impressive, and institutionalized, cronyism: according to Monica Goodling, for several years now, “Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had provided guidance some years earlier indicating that Immigration Judge appointments were not subject to the civil service rules applicable to other career positions.”

In other words, the administration is using one of the most politically hot positions in the justice department as a way to repay political favors. And I do mean repay: an annual salary of $113,904 is nothing to sneeze at.

Is it any wonder that the cries for impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are crescendoing?