When has there been a weirder election, I ask you? It’s like upside-down land, or that planet on the far side of the sun that is an exact mirror image of the Earth, except that everyone eats corn on the cob up-and-down instead of side-to-side (apologies to Father Sarducci). On one side, a field of mostly white guys has narrowed to a woman and a brother; on the other, a 71-year-old “maverick” is winning out against religious and social conservatives. It took eight years of Dubya/Cheney to make this field look good to two historically cautious institutional parties. The Democrats haven’t even half-seriously advanced an African-American or female candidate for national office since 1984-88 – now it’s as if they figure, what the hell? And not choosing someone broadly approved by the Christian right is a very different kettle of fish for the G.O.P. Amazing. And yet, from a policy standpoint, we’re not looking at any radical departures here. The general election will be a clash of two orthodoxies – a choice between basically what we have now and a slightly more managed version of empire, with the winner building his/her administration from that same pool of a few hundred players they always draw on.

What about Obama? Painfully cautious man. Either that, or he really is a passionate centrist. I’m not sure it matters. To the extent that I want to invest any serious thought into the matter, I do mildly prefer him to the other people running, but it’s a kind of grudging preference. He does get people fired up and motivated to vote, and it would be at least nominally a new administration, if built from remnants of past administrations. Thing is, Obama could use his current standing to advance some badly needed political causes, but he won’t, either because he doesn’t agree with them or he feels they would cost him votes. The trouble with politicians on the center-left is that they’re always trying to take their half out of the middle of the electorate. Likely this is because they get most of their money from industry sources that reside there politically. If money wasn’t driving them, if they truly were a party of the poor and working class, they could win by taking bold positions. There is majority support in the U.S. for trading our current private health insurance casino in for a single-payer coverage system. They only thing lacking is a major party willing to take up that issue and that challenge. Obama, for instance, could but doesn’t. The reason may be money. (Just a guess.)

Then there’s Huckabee, Steven Colbert’s friend and invention (perhaps the candidate’s best attribute, aside from a television-friendly persona). Now he’s probably the friendliest guy who ever threatened to force millions of women to carry their pregnancies to term against their will. But hell, I’m sure if you met enough members of them, you’d find at least one Taliban who seemed likeable. I think the thing that gets me the most about Huck is not so much that he, for instance, doesn’t believe in evolution, but that he tends to adopt hare-brained policy positions like the national sales tax (known by its proponents as the “Fair Tax”). Aside from being massively regressive and favorable to the very wealthy, the “Fair Tax” promoters actually mask its true impact by claiming it’s a 23% tax (!!) when it’s actually more like a 30% tax (!!!!). (They do that by including the tax amount in the total – so for every dollar you spend, you add 30 cents… but that 30 cents is just 23% of the total $1.30 you just spent. Pretty tricky, huh?) But Huck has adopted it, so that must mean God wills it to be. Maybe they should just call it the “Jesus Tax”.

Still burning. Just in case anyone has forgotten, we’re still dropping enormous amounts of ordinance on Iraq – recently 19,000 pounds worth in Arab Jabour, south of the capital. Whoever you support for president, just make sure you hold their feet to the fire on this wretched enterprise.

luv u,

jp

Choosing who to vote for in the presidential election is always a question of one or the other of two people you’re not so crazy about (or downright detest). That’s probably one reason why so many people don’t bother to vote at all. Myself, I always make it to the booth for major elections – seems only right since so many people died to gain the franchise back in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s-60s. I’m usually not at all happy with the options, as some of you know, and the prospect of a McCain vs. Clinton general election is a depressing one for me. Not that I invest all that much stomach lining into the question of who will occupy the White House. (Far be it from me to suggest that a vote every four years is all you should expect to have to do to make the world a better place.) But honestly, both of these people will make abysmal presidents. And while I would prefer not to lock-in another eight years of Republican party ascendancy, particularly the virulent strain of right-wing conservatism that has taken hold in recent decades, I can see that in a race such as that, we’re fucked one way or the other.

Take Clinton, for instance. Her victory would result in Clinton II – The Vengeance… a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of political regeneration, stitched together from the remains of the last three miserable presidencies. Yes, including the current one. Everything an administration does sets a precedent for its successors. High sounding rhetoric aside, Bush has expanded the power of the presidency to a degree that will redound to the president that follows him, whatever party that person may belong to. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton will make use of the prerogatives of the unitary executive in a way that will make the previous Clinton incarnation seem tame by comparison. And for those who think peace and plenty are on the way, recall the bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war. With Kosovo on the brink of declaring independence (Feb. 18), we may be facing the prospect of renewed conflict in the Balkans; something the Clinton team, driven by the same foreign policy players, will be only too eager to engage with. Three wars, anyone?

Speaking of multiple wars, let’s talk about McCain, the presumptive G.O.P. nominee. There are two things I hear about McCain over and over again – one, that he is honest and firm in his beliefs, and two, that he (along with all reactionary Republicans) has great defense / national security credentials. My reaction to the first point if fairly simple – what the hell does it matter that he’s honest and consistent (questionable premise, but nevertheless) when he is dead wrong nearly all of the time, like when he thought the Iraq war was such a great idea (an opinion he still clings to)? We’ve got “strong” and wrong already, and it’s not working so well. On the second point, it beats the hell out of me why he or any of his fellow Iraq war enthusiasts would retain national security credibility when their historic disaster in the middle east has made us all more vulnerable to terrorist attack by any reasonable measure. What the hell does it take to discredit these fuckers, anyway? The man is an ass who flag-waved us into the Iraq catastrophe, costing many thousands of lives and setting us up for decades of negative consequences. He would make a miserable president. (Yeah, but how do I really feel?)

McCain would be Bush III – he’d be calling the tunes, but Dubya’s severed hand would still be playing the piano.

luv u,

jp

[Next week: Obama and Huckabee]