Yes, the Bush Administration is rolling to a close – sprinting to the finish line, as Junior has said – and they seem remarkably unfazed by a record of failure unsurpassed in modern presidential history. Just this past week Bush took the stage at the global economic summit in Washington and defended “free market” capitalism, “free” trade, and related virtues so dramatically discredited of late, warning his fellow national leaders not to depart too drastically from the neoliberal order concocted by Washington and implemented by the I.M.F. and World Bank. I was not in the room, but I imagine there were a few grimaces, maybe a laugh or two, and perhaps a lot of inattention during Bush’s remarks. Honestly, who is going to listen to the captain of the titanic as he lectures everyone on marine safety? How many of those people have one of those “Bush’s Last Day” countdown clocks on their desks? (Or wish they had one?)

Irony department: As Bush argued for hewing to the I.M.F./World Bank line, the I.M.F. released a report that was critical of the United States’ massive trade deficit… criticism which, of course, the U.S. can blithely ignore, in as much as we are an extremely wealthy nation and accept orders from no one. For the poorer nations, well, there are ways of making them cooperate, and any departure from the neoliberal order can bring consequences, often grave ones. This sounds like a double standard, but as Noam Chomsky and others have pointed out many times, it’s actually a very consistent single standard – wealth enjoys privileges. The “Washington Consensus” and the international institutions that enforce it were created by America and its rich international partners expressly to benefit themselves. Who will respect this system now that it has crippled its creators in much the same way as it has its subjects in the developing world?

It does seem as though people are becoming openly contemptuous of the administration’s financial team, in particular, in the closing months. Even ordinarily reserved public broadcasting was giving Treasury Secretary Paulson what passes for a hard time this past week, with somewhat prickly questioning coming from the likes of Robert Siegel and Jim Lehrer, for chrissake. Paulson and his assistant secretary Neel Kashkari have both been grilled by Congress (again, in a somewhat less incisive fashion than in previous decades, but nevertheless). Everybody is taking swings at them because public faith in the administration is so abysmally low… and with good reason. It’s pretty easy to shoot holes in the $700 billion bailout plan(s), which seems to be evolving by the minute. What amazes me is that, with states facing something like $100 billion in red ink, they don’t seem to show any impetus towards sending some of that money back to state legislatures just to shore up essential services. I mean, if we’re spending like sailors to get the economy going again, shouldn’t we at least consider a state government bailout? I’ve yet to hear it suggested by anyone other than economist Robert Pollin. (Would that Obama would make him treasury secretary…)

Oh, well. It’s nearly “over” time for them. Let’s try to make certain they don’t sink the ship before they jump overboard.

luv u,

jp

Looks like Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com was right. Never would have thought it. Barack Obama winning North Carolina? Virginia? Florida? Astounding. Pretty solid victory for a Democrat, I must say. (It bears remembering that Bill Clinton never broke 50% of the popular vote.) I will admit to a certain divided sentiment going into this election. On the one hand, it felt inevitable that Obama would win – not so much because of the polling, but because he just seemed like the person for this moment. On the other, I just found it hard to believe that this country would elect an African American guy named Barack Hussein Obama President of the United States. Up until the last couple of years, I’d always assumed that the first black president – if ever there was to be one at all – would be a Republican/conservative hawkish type, like Colin Powell…. you know, offset the “otherness” with a healthy dose of jingoistic cultural hegemony. But hey, w.t.f., so much for that. I guess it’s true until it’s not, like sitting Vice Presidents never win. Now … there’s going to be a black liberal Democrat in the White House this January.

Readers of this blog (all five of you) know that I have significant political differences with Obama and, more generally, with the Democratic party. But Tuesday was a source of both joy and relief to me. Joy after eight years of Bush and an even longer stretch of just plain bad government, descending into catastrophe over the last two terms. Relief that a hot head like McCain is not going to be driving the ship of state over the falls, or crashing it like one of his planes. I felt a little bit of this when Clinton won the first time, though I was never as comfortable with big Bill as I am with Obama. I suppose I experienced a kind of visceral charge out of, for once, pulling a lever with someone’s name on it and having that someone end up president. That didn’t count for much. And I can’t say that I was in a gloating mood around the McCain voters the next day… though I did leave the Obama lawn sign up for the rest of the day. (If I could endure the fool for eight years, they can stand that sign for a few hours.)

As it happens, there’s a personal dimension to the success of the Obama campaign. One of the first people to talk to me about the Illinois Senator was a neighbor, a retired school teacher named Lynn Beaton. He lent me Obama’s most recent book, actually, which I have yet to read (and yet to return). Sadly Lynn died of a heart attack last year, but since then it has almost seemed as though he were observing the race from afar, coaxing it along. Every time I thought Obama really didn’t stand a chance, he would pull it out somehow, and I’d think about Lynn. When my wife Karen and I went into the voting booth this past Tuesday, we both thought of him as we pulled that lever. How he must be smiling right now… and I don’t mean at all that stuff about Palin’s wardrobe (though he’d probably get a kick out of that, too). For all it means to so many people, I’ll always think of this election as Lynn’s. He was out ahead of most of them.

Anyway, congratulations to all those who wanted this to happen. Now the work begins.

luv u,

jp

All right, already. The general election is Tuesday next, and I hope you’re all planning on voting. Unless of course you’re voting for Admiral McCain – if so, please just stay home. There, that’s done it. Election over.

Not quite. Would that it were that easy. Of course, as is usually the case, people generally to the left of the political center have to overcome themselves as well as the legions on the right – legions of pre-organized churchgoing Republicans who march out to the polls each and every election and pull the lever or punch the card or touch the icon next to the biggest caveman’s name. (We’ve seen the results.) The liberal-left does not come in simple, pre-organized packages like this – neither do the folks in the natural constituencies for leftward political appeals, such as the poor and working class. We’re constantly carping at one another. We splinter in so many different ways.

A lot of people far to the left, like me, are disgruntled with Obama’s tepid positions on issues we feel strongly about. Understandably so – these are crucial issues of war and prosperity, health and civil liberties, etc. Still, I intend to vote for Obama and encourage you like-minded folks to do the same. In fact, I’m actively working for his election. Here’s why: McCain. He’s certainly the best argument for voting for Barack Obama. I don’t know about any of you, but the thought of having McCain in the White House after eight years of Bush/Cheney is enough to make me scream. This man is all over the road. He lurches from one thing to the next. His vaunted foreign policy credentials are bogus; just the fact that McCain’s taking advice from Randy Scheunemann, a prominent booster of Ahmed Chalabi six years ago, should be enough to convince anyone that his administration will be like a third Bush term. (Scheunemann looks like a prime candidate for National Security Advisor or some senior State Department post.)

McCain’s economic team is no better, hawking the usual G.O.P. prescription of cutting rich people’s taxes, gutting social programs, and glutting the war machine. In as much as that brain trust is likely to be headed up by UBS exec. Phil Gramm, former senator, and primary architect of the current financial meltdown. He would no doubt be joined by Joe the Right-Wing Talk Radio Wingnut (and unlicensed plumber), who is full of great ideas and is, in McCain’s words, a “national hero” and the Senator’s “role model.” (Honest.) Since presidencies are largely about the people the successful candidate drags with him to Washington, this does not augur well for a McCain administration.

Sure, Obama’s got a lot of points that irk a leftist like me. (The fact that Rashid Khalidi is somehow being used to “slime” Obama merely by his being in the same room as him at some point is astonishing to me.) But he’s marginally closer to my way of thinking than any Democratic nominee in quite a few years. I have less trepidation about voting for him than I did with either Kerry or Gore, frankly. And in a zero-sum match-up against McCain, I’ll vote Obama. I encourage you to do the same. Just don’t let it be your only political act of the next four years.

Let’s pull this thing out, folks. Otherwise it’s going to be another long four years.

luv u,

jp