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]
speculate on. More than mass murder and dictatorship united them; they also share the posthumous praise of pundits and political leaders the world over, some of whom have every reason to know better. One can only assume these apologists hold a cynical appreciate of the blood-soaked Indonesian general’s ability to provide wealthy westerners with favorable investment opportunities in what was once seen as the super-domino of U.S. southeast Asia policy. Whatever the truth may be, news articles about Suharto’s passing referred to him as a “modernizer” who brought his country into the global market, though with some level of brutality. His rule was “controversial” due in part to his having eliminated as many as 1 million “alleged communists” during his 35-year rule (not to mention the perhaps 200,000 killed in East Timor). This, according to new Australian Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, amid “a period of significant growth and expansion,” though Rudd admits, “many have disagreed with his approach.” Including, presumably, the 1.2 million dead and their families. Can you imagine Pol Pot being so eulogized? (At least the syndicated article in my hometown newspaper compared Indonesia’s mass killings with those of Cambodia – a comparison that once drew howls of derision.)
A simple twist of fate would have had the corporate media and world leaders praising “Saddam the modernizer” at his graveside as well, were it not for his fateful transgression in 1990 (i.e. invading a country we’re friendly with). Instead, he alone of the three is condemned unconditionally as a mass murderer, though perhaps his worst crimes – deadly attacks against the Iranians, whose county he invaded – typically go unmentioned, despite the extensive use of chemical weapons. Clearly, neither mass murder, nor unprovoked invasion, nor the use of non-conventional weapons, is a problem for our leaders, since they have committed (in our names) crimes just as serious over the past few decades. Not surprisingly, British researchers have completed 
prices, the duopoly of federal office holders has decided to cut some checks and pass them out to us proles. Guess they figure we’re pissed off enough to warrant bribery at this point. In any case, a recession during an election year is bad news for either party in a divided government, so you are seeing the kind of “bipartisanship” that in another might be considered a mild form of totalitarianism. Sure, we’re blowing billions of dollars a month (to say nothing of lives lost) trying to hold on to our imperial stake in Iraq and perpetuating astounding economic inequality through a tax system heavily skewed in favor of the hyper-rich, but we’ll borrow even more money now for a one-shot payoff to the American people in hopes they’ll go out and shop and forget about how fucked up everything is. 
Doing this must gall Bush no end. He’s been going around for years repeating the same hackneyed talking points about the U.S. economy, about its “strong fundamentals” and its “resilience”, and never was heard a discouraging word. As recently as this week, his drone Condi “Supertanker” Rice was praising our economic strength at Davos. Lord knows, Bush despises having to reverse himself, like the Custer character in Little Big Man. (I wonder if his father and the old man’s somewhat embarrassing friend had to shame Dubya into it? Hmmmmm….) Whatever its genesis, this half-measure Keynesianism can be seen as the ownership class’s bulwark against much more meaningful adjustments, like restoring some measure of taxation to the extremely rich (i.e. those few who have benefited tremendously from the economic order of the past 25 years), or slapping an excess profits tax on the oil companies, or re-regulating the financial/banking sector, or dismantling the so-called “free trade” investors’ rights agreements. Not that any leading candidates from the nominal left are advocating this, but there’s always a chance someone will if people get mad enough.