PROOF!

...that the Obama campaign reads my blog; the story here. A general election move, but also something he thinks he needs to do to distinguish himself from Hillary. Problem is, I don't think this is the issue that will do it. Hillary's made the last four years of her tenure in the Senate all about hardening her political and terror armor. If Obama wants primary votes he probably needs some kind of move to the left. The tough talk on terror should wait for the general, he needs to shore up his New Hampshire/Iowa/South Carolina numbers ASAP. This is, for the time being, a distraction.

ALL I NEED...SUMMER TUNES

I'm in Eagle's Mere right now and with a rare moment to listen to some music in between helping out ETC I found Pitchfork's list of free singles. There are some great summer songs here.

Check out Spoon's Underdog, the New Pornographer's My Rights Versus Yours, Iron and Wine's Boy With a Coin, the cheap Beach Boys ripoff band The Explorers, The Go! Team's Grip Like a Vice, Okervill River's Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe and the Afghan Wigs' I'm a Soldier. There's over fifty songs here, so hit some of that!

AN OPENING FOR WARRIOR DEMOCRATS

A couple days ago the Times reported that in 2005 Rumsfeld, then the Secretary of Defense, aborted a strike in Pakistan on what could have been 'high value' Taliban and Al Qaeda targets. There were concerns that the operation would have been diplomatically risky considering Pakistan wouldn't have sanctioned the raid which would have inserted a small SEAL team into the tribal areas of Pakistan's remote northern regions. Should knowledge of such an incursion have reached the local populace, it could have further destabilized Musharraf's tenuous hold on the country and, additionally, should the soldiers have failed in their mission, or been captured, the US could have suffered a painful and humiliating lesson in the limitations of special forces warfare. Without knowledge of the specific operating environment (though many on the operational side were begging the administration to give them a chance to execute) it's hard to know whether the administration made the right decision. Nevertheless, there is a political opportunity here for the Democratic presidential candidates.

The principle objection many Americans have to the Democratic party is that, fairly or unfairly, Pelosi, Reid and their ilk have been branded 'soft' on the war on terror, on national defense, and, in general, on all matters of national security. Instead of ignoring and accepting this charge, Democrats should work to dismantle their perceived national security Achilles heel. Much like Bush did in '00 by running a successful campaign of 'compassionate conservatism', Democrats should rework their image by becoming more hawkish on terrorism. That doesn't mean advocating the status quo in Iraq, it means finding smarter and more effective ways to establish a more 'militant' facet to an otherwise socially conscious and progressive party. One such opportunity is the aborted mission in Pakistan.

The Democratic candidates should come out hard against Rumsfeld's conservative decision not to deploy special forces. Such a position would do much to excite independents and even some Republicans wavering on whether to vote for the GOP in '08 because of Bush's egregious and startling incompetence in Afghanistan and Iraq. The issue of whether or not such an operation would have been in the best interest of the US is irrelevant for now. The vociferous condemnation of Republican squeamishness in war could be the first step to undoing years worth of right wing propaganda and might give that would-be Democratic president a chance to harden up on defense in light of recent threats to London, JFK, and Fort Dix. For candidates looking to pick up those essential centrists who are justifiably uncomfortable with the Democrats lack of vision when it comes to combating terrorism, this could be an easy way to score points on defense and steal some thunder from terrorism hawks like McCain, Giuliani, and Thompson.

TIPS FOR OBAMA

Despite the impressive fundraising tally coming in, Obama's campaign is still worrisome to me. More important than the question of how much money he accrues, or from how many donors he collects, Barack must decide how to spend his new found campaign cash. As other commentators have noted, Howard Dean raised a good deal of money too but never found an effective way to spend it. Obama will have to find a way to improve his poll numbers because, as of now he doesn't lead in a single primary race and trails Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire by ten points or more. To be a serious contender, he has to close the gap. So, keep the champagne bottles corked, there's work to be done.

Simply because Obama's campaign staff no doubt read this blog assiduously, I humbly offer some points of advice for my tentative choice to lead the Democratic Party in '08.

Embrace Your Differences

It's time to distinguish yourself from the rest of the primary pack my friend. The debate last Thursday was a frightful display of pandering and collective self-congratulation. The primary isn't that far away and on most of the issues, Edwards, Clinton and you all agree. Instead of relying simply on your biography, you must find a compelling reason for why voters should choose you over your competitors, especially as Clinton's ability to beat Giuliani has dramatically changed in just the last month.

1) Primary--Talk up your viability/electability. The fact is, Hillary's negatives are high, but she's managed recently to change her image and improve the country's opinion of her. How will you respond? You have to emphasize your ability to win over moderate Republicans and Independents who won't, under any circumstances, vote for another Clinton. The danger here of course is that Clinton will be able to permanently erase those negatives and leave your electability claim in the dust. So what. You're losing by double digits in all the important primary states. Put an emphasis on those negatives (scroll to bottom of link) and talk about how neither Kerry nor Gore had the negatives Clinton does. Don't forget to add what happened to them.

2) Primary--Court Edwards supporters. John's campaign is collapsing, you should find a way to hasten that collapse while at the same time assuring Edwards supporters that they belong in your camp and not Hillary's. One way to do this would be to (not seriously of course) float the idea of an Obama/Edwards ticket in the general election. Treat Edwards with respect and adulation, and allow his supporters to see that you are a more viable version of the former senator. I think it's okay to openly and actively solicit the anti-Hillary crowd. Something along the lines of, 'we have to stop her, John Edwards doesn't have a chance of stopping her, I do, let's work together'. For this to occur, Edwards needs some kind of catastrophic event to hasten his electoral demise. Low fund-raising numbers aren't enough. Since Edwards has put all his strategic eggs in Iowa's wicker basket, perhaps a slightly more concerted effort by you in Iowa to ensure a Hillary win (she's only a point behind) would be enough to fatally cripple Edwards and get his people on board.

3) Primary/General--You must improve your onstage presence in the admittedly difficult short-form debates. It's embarrassing that in an almost exclusively African-American forum, Hillary Clinton got the largest applause line of the night. The best way to accomplish this isn't by demonstrating your command of facts and figures (John Edwards will beat everyone in this regard, that's fine, let him be the Bill Bradley/Al Gore/Michael Dukakis of the past). It's time to discover your inner Bill Clinton. You showed flashes of it at the most recent debate when you defused Joe Biden's comment that you'd gotten an AIDS test by reassuring everyone that you were committed to Michelle your wife and that you didn't want her to get the wrong idea. Voters don't care about numbers and statistics, they care about what kind of visceral and emotional connection you can forge with them. In long form speeches you connect brilliantly, which accounts for the durability and near fanaticism of your netroots. But you must find a way to access this charm and vivacity in shorter sound bites. You need to become less of a technocrat and more of a Fred Thompson. Study up.

4) Primary/General--Your ads are not very effective. As Bill Clinton did in '92 (the man from Hope Arkansas), you need to connect your biography to the American Dream. You've done this frequently in your speeches to great effect, but I haven't seen a powerful version translated into a TV spot. One of your most attractive qualities is that you represent an important 're-branding' of the American presidency. In this time when the globe is alienated from America over Iraq and Afghanistan, what better message to send to the world, especially the Muslim world, then for the country to elect a black man who's lived in a Muslim country? What better palliative could you offer to counter Al-Qaeda's virulent and noxious propaganda--and the organization's ability to attract future recruits--than your election? Tell us this!

You should emphasize the chances America has given you, and how you want to ensure those chances are extended to everyone in the country, including poor rural whites (whom I suggest you specifically address in the ad). Show the nation, using your biography, how voting for you is voting for a new kind of unified America. Emphasizing your community activism is a start, but you need to show the country how a vote for you is a vote for the American Dream. Who else can lay claim to this meme? Certainly not Hillary, or Giuliani, or Hollywood actor Fred Thompson. Make yourself a symbol the country can rally behind; show us on television.

5) General Election (should you make it there)--Renounce affirmative action and favor a class-based redistribution of university and job opportunity. It's just the kind of unexpected tack to the right that would convince moderates you weren't just another 80s liberal in sheep's clothing, and it would steal some Third Way wind from Hillary's sails.

6) General Election--Talk up your Christianity. While this is especially important in the general election, it's critical to establish some credibility on the issue now (don't be like John Kerry and start talking about God the summer before the election!) so that you're taken more seriously in the future. Study some of Bill Clinton's speeches at Harlem churches. They're brilliant, especially his "We see but through a glass darkly" moment from a few years ago.

A BLOOMBERG CANDIDACY

While he's still denying it, the NYTimes makes it clear that Bloomberg's 'aides' are feeling out the possibility of a national campaign. Bloomberg's disavowal of the GOP is no casual affair, and the prospect of yet another prominent New Yorker entering the presidential race fills this ambivalent blogger with a terrible mixture of glee and trepidation.

The Glee: Could this be the most exciting presidential election in the history of our country? I'd be interested if anyone could name another election year when this much star power and potential history making was on display for the public. Add Bloomberg to the list of groudbreaking firsts in this race: the first woman, the first African American, the first Mormon, a mayor of a city that was attacked by terrorists, and the possibility of a former VP who had an election stolen from him and we've just scratched the surface of the multitude of great stories emerging in this year's competition. And we haven't even hit the primaries yet! With all these fascinating personalities in play it'll be a political junkie's dream watching all the duels, parries, calibrations, disasters and surprises unfold.

The New York Interlude: Which face of New York will Americans prefer? Giuliani? Clinton? Bloomberg? None of the above? Has New York become so symbolically important to the country because of 9/11 that it can viably field so many candidates? Why are so many Americans not from New York eager to exploit its hurt for their own political gain? I met some folks from Iowa in Colorado at my brother's graduation and they were enamored with Giuliani while at the same time holding New York in a kind of cultural contempt. Why do so many Republicans in the middle and south of the nation like a man from a city and state they despise? I would argue because Giuliani has found a way to patriotically hate New York. We can vote for him because he'll kill terrorists, even if we didn't mind so much who the terrorists killed the last time they were here. Don't forget, Giuliani's line on the campaign trail is something like, 'if I could get that lunatic liberal bastion of AIDS and welfare under control, think of what I could do for the country'. He capitalizes on the loathing most of the US has for the city while simultaneously galvanizing anger and fear in the electorate at the fact that "America" (not so much "New York" when you really think about it) was attacked. The strategy is paradoxical but obviously effective. You get votes by hating and loving New York in the right proportion at the same time. But I digress.

The Trepidation: I think you could also argue that this is one of the most important elections ever as well. America's moral standing in the world is profoundly tarnished and our ability to project military power mightily weakened. Environmental disaster looms, the terrorist threat has been exacerbated, and our health care system is on life support. Bloomberg entering the race will make it difficult for the Democrats to win the White House. He never was a real Republican, and his stances on the environment, gun control, gays and public health make him palatable only to liberals, meaning his independent run would siphon votes away from Democrats and pave the way for a GOP victory the same way Perot enabled a non-majority Clinton victory in '92. Look for Bloomberg, should he decide to run, to create the Nader effect, whereby he steals say, 2-4% of the overall vote and allows Giuliani to take the White House. This election is too important and while I love Mayor Mike and I think his addition to the race would diversify and excite the '08 election, it might be in all of our interests if he sits this one out.

LOVE THY ENEMY

It's clear that the kind of hard right politics practiced by Bush no longer enjoy the wide support we saw after 9/11. No longer able to wrap the flag around issues such as the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind, and after suffering several major legislative defeats (though one of them, immigration, was distinctly not a part of the typical right agenda), Bush's influence, his neocon foreign policy, and his domestic usurping of legislative and judicial power are on the wane. Bush's poll numbers are a joke and, according to many the president has officially entered the lame-duck phase of his tenure in office. Whither the future of the Republican Party?

It's clear that the GOP, at least for this election cycle, is coalescing around centrist candidates like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. On the state level, we see policy and attitudinal similarities with the enormously popular 'progressive' Republicans like governor Schwarzenegger who, like Giuliani at least, support the environment, gay rights, the right to abortion, etc. These issues, of course, would normally have been toxic to a conservative electorate, but not so much anymore. Schwarzenegger's popularity has been mentioned, Giuliani is the current front runner for the Republican nomination, and in 2004 these 'centrist' politicians were trotted out as the new face of the GOP at the Republican convention in New York, which suggests that senior Republican leadership realizes an essential move to the left is necessary to maintain conservative relevancy.

Here's my thought experiment/question: Should democrats who have an interest in 'reforming the enemy' support these centrist candidates in an effort to change the Republican party? Wouldn't it be important for the Republican leadership to have their tack to the left reinforced and supported by another term in the White House? Wouldn't this permanently transform the Republican Party, reform them, and put them on a course to eventually accept the permanency of Roe v Wade, the essential moral justness of gay marriage, and a humbler (and more traditional) foreign policy? It's conceivable that if the Republican party doesn't win this cycle they will return to the bosom and succor of typical right wing ideology and an important opportunity will have been missed. Would a vote for Giuliani be a vote for a larger kind of electoral liberalism where future debates between liberals and conservatives wouldn't be about Creationism vs. Evolution, or Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, but instead about Civic Unions vs. Full Marriage for gay people, or Comprehensive Immigration vs. Limited Immigration Reform, or Privatized Health Care Reform vs. a Single Payer System. Wouldn't the possibility for these dramatically less polarizing national arguments represent a massive ideological shift to the left we liberals would love to see and wouldn't it be great for the overall welfare of the country? Would a true liberal vote for the GOP in '08?

IS ART A SYMPTOM OF EMOTIONAL REPRESSION?

Events in my personal life have led me to question why I, as a sometime playwright, felt the need to share stories with other people and why I don't so much anymore (though all things are in flux).

I think it's safe to say that today's world doesn't afford too many people, particularly men, a place to express and interact with their feelings. The result is the cliched but apt vision of the repressed straight male whose inability to grapple with his own emotions is legendary. As a further consequence, men become deeply alienated from themselves, from their own desires, and are crippled by their insecurities, anxieties and fears. We erect titanic defenses to shield ourselves from being hurt, we unwittingly design entire personalities to deflect the emotional hazards of everyday life. Maybe we can't stop making light of everything (nothing can hurt you if you can laugh at it right?), maybe our shield is irony, cynicism, or an empty and giddy optimism. Regardless, these defenses are real impediments to knowing others, to fully engaging with life's volatile mix of pleasure and pain, and to constructing an identity devoid of the disfiguring effects of fear. We're never really taught how to interact or understand ourselves the way we're taught how to read or write. If anything, we're encouraged to seek comfort in the material world to assuage our existential dread. Buy a computer, an anti-aging cream, a car, a dress, a nice suit, a house, it'll make you feel better; the sheer act of accumulation will make you feel better. And if it doesn't, be quiet about it. Suffer in silence. This message has been encoded into popular culture. Heroic figures talk little, suffer much. Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Keeanu Reeves and others teach us that real strength comes from an avoidance of ourselves and our feelings. Genuine longing and hurt, devastation and exultation, are regarded with disdain and discomfort. We feel uneasy in the presence of true emotion, it unhinges us, exposes us, opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt. Of course, our squeamishness is simple cowardice, an understandable cowardice, but cowardice all the same, and hardly the embodiment of fortitude we think it is. In our everyday interactions with society we're expected to work and produce, not to reflect, or just experience in the purest sense of the word. Our society values speed and efficiency, not mental health. And what we're left with is the modern artist's principle subject: the breakdown of communication and understanding.

I wonder if art then doesn't become a socially acceptable way of interacting with and expressing our feelings. It's not really okay for a man to be distraught by, well, anything (unless it's the Redskins losing), but it sure is cool when he writes a song about it! Or a book! In fact, the artistic sphere of life is the only one where the individual is allowed to fully and honestly engage and dialogue with his true emotional self. He can even make a fortune while he's at it! The problem is that this particular form of interaction seems inert. While society has no difficulty with Morrissey or Thom Yorke emoting on stage, they better shove those feelings back down their gut when they unplug their guitar, or the writer Don DeLillo better shut right back up after he closes his laptop. Are sculptures made of cold stone, reams of paper stacked to the sky, rolls and rolls of beautified celluloid, are these barren fictions the only monument to our emotional lives? What if our lives themselves could be living, breathing expressions and negotiations of feeling, what if we found a way to integrate all our feelings into a work of art that was us, every day, in every word and thought and action? Would art become irrelevant if society weren't so emotionally repressive and repressed? If you begin to find a way to connect to yourself, to know yourself, if you can express your feelings to yourself and those around you, does art become irrelevant? Aren't artists just dodging the tough work of getting to know themselves? Isn't everyone else even worse off?

WOULD HE END AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?

Liberals made cynical by the election and re-election of George W. Bush argue that there's no way the American electorate would ever put a black man in the oval office. The thinking goes that the country is just too racist to countenance a minority in a major position of power, that the so-called 'red states' are too enthralled with their own messianic and white vision of Christian hegemony to even consider electing a black man president, even if he did go to Harvard. These liberals are wrong.

It's easy to understand why they'd feel the way they do. Bush's active disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida in 2000 certainly seems to suggest that, at a minimum, the Republican leadership at the state and local levels would do everything they could to ensure a Republican victory. But in the end it's the voters who decide and elect our officials, not the political elite of the governing party, and polls from 1996, over ten years ago, already demonstrated that America was willing to vote for a black leader. Colin Powell, who at the time declined to run, consistently polled better than either Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, sometimes by margins as great as 5-8 points. How can this be? I thought our 'red states' would never allow a minority candidate to win?

I think we need to give the American people some credit. Fundamentally, Americans desperately want to believe in the American ideal of a diverse and ethnically just society. It doesn't mean they're always willing to elect officials who feel the same way, or that they don't sometimes fail to live up to their own professed ideals. But the reason the American model has been so successful at integrating other cultures into our own, the reason I'd argue why we don't have the kind of homegrown Islamic terrorism we see in Britain for instance, is that the the message of America as a place of real opportunity for people regardless of their race or ethnicity has a robust vitality to it, even if in reality our country has a long way to go before we achieve the kind of social equality we prematurely claim to already have. Despite our Katrinas, our Sean Bells, despite our Rodney Kings and the embarrassing confederate flags flying above certain state capitals, Americans want to believe in egalitarianism, they want to at least think we live in a tolerant country. They believe in the democratic principles of the Constitution, in the idea of a 'country of immigrants' that values hard work and effectiveness over the color of ones skin. If the right candidate comes along, and assuages certain, admittedly racist, concerns, I think a black man can easily win enough white votes to become president...and Barack just may have an ace up his sleeve to help him pull the whole thing off.

So the whole blogosphere is buzzing about a comment Barack made regarding affirmative action. Here's what happened during an interview when he was asked on ABC's This Week if he thought his own children should benefit from racial preferences:

On affirmative action, Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, said he thinks that someday when his two young daughters apply to college, they “should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged” and there is nothing wrong with that.

“I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and been brought up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed,” he added. “There are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling.”

Obama said that “if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.”

What's significant of course is that it seems Obama is suggesting a switch from traditional race based affirmative action to a more class-based system that would give assistance to poor whites as well as to poor blacks. To me and many others,
this could be the kind of brave and singular policy position that separates him from the rest of the Democratic contenders, and which positions him in a place to secure not just the poor white vote, but also the middle/upper class white vote that harbors the soft racist fear that Obama's an angry black man. Look, this idea of the black man out to punish white America for its racist transgressions is one that, rightly or wrongly, strikes fear into the heart of many moderate to slightly right of field Americans. If Obama bucks the paleo-liberal establishment and rejects affirmative action, he'll score huge points with moderate whites as someone who clearly won't let their race interfere with their principles. In the end, that's all certain parts of white America want to be assured about. As racist an idea as not trusting a black candidate who is justifiably upset by racial inequality is, you can win as an African-American candidate if you tack to the right on precisely the issue of your race. No other democratic candidate could pull this off without losing the black vote as Mickey Kaus reminds us. Obama could do it simply because he's black.

Now, while it's a great strategic move politically, is it morally right to include white racist 'concerns' into your political calculus? I'd argue you have to if you're serious about winning. Play the game, get power, change the game. You certainly can't change the game if you lose...

Another equally important question then becomes whether or not replacing affirmative action with a class-based alternative is the right thing to do. Right or wrong, affirmative action has grown increasingly untenable as it breeds all kinds of white resentment. A class based alternative still redresses political inequality, but it does so in a way that alleviates racial tensions, and for that alone it bears some merit.

Can Barack do it? If he plots the right course, yes. It remains to be seen whether or not Obama will elaborate on his ostensibly spontaneous remarks and incorporate them into a larger policy that rejects affirmative action. But if he does make this a part of his platform, he just might wind up making history.

OH YEAH, RIGHT!

Has anyone else noticed their indie music collection getting a little stale recently? I don't know, some albums aren't holding up as well as they used to for me. Worse, my interest in new albums from bands I used to love immediately fades in under a week. The Shins, Modest Mouse, Wilco (gasp), Flaming Lips, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arcade Fire (I insert mad caveats here however), Radiohead among others all released fairly mediocre albums over the last couple years. Now, what existential dread can I wring from the very marrow of this catastrophe? That way I dare not tread for it is a path fraught with dangerous rumination, arthritic knees, and discount antacid. Suffice to say, you must have also noticed recently that your old jazz albums from high school (the ones you have because you played in a high school jazz band--you may have even been terrible) have been sounding better and better. Check out Basie's tunes on the upper right and I defy you not to grin wider than you have at a song in like four and a half years.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE EVER FILMABLE PAST

A recent trend in movies is to take well-publicized and often times well documented and photographed moments in history and recreate them on the big screen. The first time I saw it was with Man on the Moon, that biopic about Andy Kaufman starring Jim Carrey. But Good Night and Good Luck, the recent play Frost/Nixon and The Queen are also examples of the kind of appropriation that takes video footage and, well, has actors imitate them, word for word, and hollow gesture for hollow gesture. Help me. I just don't get it.

It seems to me if you're going to do a movie about real events, especially ones that have occurred quite recently, then you better have some new insight or information or interpretation to offer your audience. Perhaps there are some offstage machinations that cast the historical moment in an entirely different light or a recent revelation that somehow upends our understanding of an important figure. But those aren't the movies we usually see (except for this one, which is incredible and the perfect example of how to handle material that's been previously televised) Instead, all of the above flicks take documented moments and simply have their actors mimic the real event...which begs the question: why not just go and watch the real event? When it comes to the antics of Kaufman, or the Frost/Nixon interviews, or Edward Murrow's grilling of McCarthy, these incredible parts of our history are available to us, in the flesh, most likely on YouTube if not Netflix. So why do we give Oscars and kudos to what is necessarily a poor impersonation? In the case of Good Night and Good Luck there wasn't even much of a movie to watch, nearly the entire film was a series of word for word reenactments of what actually happened. It was like watching the World Trade Center version of the Twin Towers coming down, computer generated approximations and all, when you could just go on CNN's website and see the real thing. Even worse is the recent translation of a very good documentary called The Staircase into a television show. Now we're taking TV reality entertainment and fictionalizing it...for TV. Are screenwriters, producers and studios so bereft of creative ideas that they're starting to devour themselves like the proverbial snake? What's next, a movie about American Idol with Al Pacino playing Simon Cowell? Can't we just watch American Idol? Does anyone in the world think that Frank Langhella or Helen Mirren or Jim Carrey can even roughly approximate the drama that only real life can and, in this case, actually does offer for our video hungry eyes? Can somebody tell Al Pacino to stop yelling?

RUDY!

A call to my legions of readers! After spying this Slate piece I thought of a question which I think might elicit some interesting answers from you all. Considering Rudy's horrfic personal life story in which he marries his cousin, gets an annulment (or a Catholic divorce as we sometimes say), marries again, admits to cheating on second wife, divorces said second wife from a press conference (calling her a 'whiny stuck-pig'), marries third wife and abandons children, and considering Rudy's predilection for women's clothing, my question is: If you were a political operative working for Hilary or Barack, would you attack Rudy's personal life in speeches, ads, etc... and smear him with his own personal immorality? Or, on the contrary, do you subscribe to the notion that one's personal life has no bearing on one's fitness or lack thereof to be president? If you would attack him, how would you go about it so as to not offend those Americans who think a man's personal life isn't any of the public's business? If you wouldn't attack him on these issues....why not?! They're gold! Or are we trying to practice a new kind of politics? But think of what those ads would do to potential Republican Giuliani supporters in the Mid-West, the Bible belt, and how it would effect his ability to get out the evangelical vote. Could you really not use this stuff?

MCCAIN AT THE GATES OF HELL

After watching John McCain at the Republican debates recently, I couldn't help but notice how awkward, detached, and forced he seemed. Once the Republican front runner, McCain's poor fund raising, his excessive age, and questionable public comments have seriously undermined his bid to be the GOP's Reganesque savior. One can't help but wonder how much McCain really wants to win. By turns sober and winsome, McCain never seems to evince the right emotion at the right time. He was nervous and out of breath at the beginning of the debates which did little to dispel the notion that he's too old to be president. But moreover, his shortness of breath speaks to his overall comfort level with himself. He's a seasoned politician who's already been through one presidential campaign. Where is the self-assuredness of a man who's navigated the harrowing gauntlet of going up against no less than Karl Rove? Whither McCain's even hand and steady leadership in the face of a minor primary debate when the stakes couldn't be less important--at least in terms of what's to come?

A single moment in the debate may provide some illumniation on what appears to be McCain's self-destruction. Notice in the video clip how he begins by light-heartedly (and superciliously) demeaning Tancredo, after which he launches into a seemingly innapropriate and ill timed rant about hunting down Osama bin Ladin to the 'gates of hell'. Forget, for a moment, the tonal incongruity of making a joke and then seguewaying into a discussion of murdering terrorists. What's so interesting about this isn't so much the forced change of tone, but rather McCain's reaction to it. He seems chagrinned and embarrassed at his own insincerity, as if wakened from a dream. There is a moment of clarity in his eyes, and in the sorrowful smile that follows the realization that his plastic words ring hollow. After all, this is a man who once stood up for his values regardless of how his own party reacted. His campaign finance battles were noble and politcally risky, yet he proved himself a man of integrity who stood up for what he believed. But now, after aligning himself with the same Bush administration that smeared him in South Carolina in 2000 by suggesting he had an illegitimate (and black) child, and which also outrageously implied that he was mentally unstable because of his time spent in a Vietnamese prison camp, by forcing himself to 'make nice' with Bob Jones university, by compromising some of his core beliefs in order to appeal to his conservative base, I think McCain has lost his soul. And I think he knows it. His subsequent strategic and rhetorical gaffes in the campaign symbolize what has become clear to nearly everyone except, until now, McCain: he's lost his way and doesn't believe in himself anymore. It remains to be seen whether or not he can rediscover the man who built up such a wealth of bi-partisan political capital and rebuild what was once an unimpeachable character.

THE GOD IMPULSE

It’s good to be back! I had to take a hiatus as I try to figure out what to do with myself. But let’s pick up with a discussion of spiritual matters eh? Recently, I’ve had a number of events lead me to a spiritual mood of late, so let’s discuss. I’ll attempt to weave together some kind of coherent commentary by talking about a few different observations I’ve made over the last few years.

First, I’ve been investigating Buddhism and its many intersections with modern psychology and science. Of all the religions, Buddhism seems to me the least traditionally religious in the sense that it doesn’t really posit the discrete existence of God, nor does it prescribe any sort of political affiliation or outlook. For instance, Buddhism doesn’t comment on abortion, gay marriage or gun ownership, which is as it should be. More a philosophy or a practical guide to navigating life’s joys and sufferings, its belief in the immense healing power of meditation has changed my life. Essentially, as the poet Dagon stated, to be enlightened is to be intimate with all things. Being close to all the people in your life, your neighborhood, your feelings, having a sense of the interconnectedness of all things is to discover and metabolize both the inherent beauty of all creation, and its native cruelty. To fully accept our suffering and our joys, to cease resisting our emotions and to fully incorporate them into who we are, to release ourselves from the pathological and destructive defense mechanisms we’ve constructed for ourselves, is the principal goal of Zen. As an added bonus, Zen compliments our scientific understanding of the world. There is no difference between a chair and myself, a leaf and an idea like capitalism. All are simply different manifestations of the root energy unleashed by the Big Bang. When we die our energy is dispersed back into the universe. As the law of energy conservation states (which is a corollary of the first law of thermodynamics) “energy can not be created or destroyed—it can only be changed from one form to another (such as electrical energy into heat energy)” or kinetic energy into, for example, thermal energy. It’s kind of nice when our spiritual system for understanding ourselves and the world neatly fits into our scientific understanding of the universe. Thus Buddhism and, say, the general theory of relativity, or evolutionary psychology, exist in an amiable congruity between faith and reason.

Second, modern neurology has offered us some powerful tools for explaining the universal religious impulse in man. There are two camps right now, those scientists who believe that a belief in God bestowed an evolutionary advantage to the religiously observant, and the more popular and contrary belief that the religious instinct is a byproduct of the brain’s elaborate neural architecture. (I have the full article, which is now protected behind the Times’s Select wall. Let me know if you want it.)

Third, I saw a great play at the Women’s Project in Manhattan called TransFigures which investigates the ‘Jerusalem Syndrome’, a condition in which secular and religious people alike experience a kind of spiritual ecstasy when they visit Israel. Men and women, regardless of their beliefs, have been known to discard their clothes, wrap hotel sheets around their bodies, and gallivant around Jerusalem proclaiming to be Moses or Jesus only to have the effect wear off after a couple of days. Typically, the tourists then resume their vacations as if nothing had happened, emerging from their spiritual psychosis as if from a daydream.

Taken altogether, there is something clearly making man a distinctly religious creature. Divine revelation? Biological side-effects? Evolutionary advantage? Let's try a slightly different tack. It seems to me there are two forms of reality, one subjective and relative, and the other absolute. Our relative reality is informed by our own experiences, personality, genetics, circumstances, etc… Our relative reality is the world through our own eyes as dictated by our own subjective experience. If I had a rough childhood, my perception of the world might be colored more by a sense of injustice or cruelty than if, say, I was loved thoroughly and truly from the day I was born. Absolute reality however, is the world as it is, free from human interpretation. I believe it’s this absolute reality, and the occasional glimpse of it we get from religious experience, that makes us spiritual beings. Most of the religions of the world place a strong emphasis on love and love’s importance in our daily lives. Of course, if we really are cut from the same cloth, if there is no substantive difference between myself and my friends, or my enemies, then of course a kind of compassion must naturally be a consequence of such an understanding. Our desire to know the contours of this absolute reality, to touch it and understand it, fuels our spiritual lives and gives meaning to our existence in the universe.

There are currently 10,000 extant religions in the world right now, and most claim the other 9,999 are incorrect in their understanding of God and lay claim to the one ‘true’ revelation of God’s word. With such claims to an ‘exclusive’ interpretation of God’s will, it’s no wonder there are so many conflicts around the world and why so much of secular society turns away from anyone who claims to know what God wants of his people. There is an arrogance to most kinds of spiritual faith, and often an imperative to relinquish one’s individual mind to the collective will of tradition that is repugnant to what is truly man’s most divine gift: his ability to reason for himself! Of course, if God wanted us to simply do as he said, he wouldn’t have given us the faculty to reason for ourselves. Islam, Christianity’s and Judaism’s directive to ‘surrender’ to the will of God as detailed in apocryphal texts whose collation has been historically arbitary, patriarchal, and subservient to the cultural and social needs of the era in which they were written, seems the height of intellectual folly. Nonetheless, the whole world subjects itself to ‘literal’ understandings of the Bible and Koran that are often at odds with modernity and individual freedom (see the Supreme Court’s most recent ruling on partial birth abortions or the attempts by Creationists to instate ‘Intelligent Design’ as a serious scientific alternative to the theory of evolution). We see rather irrational beliefs that are disproved by experience cultivated and passed on for generations. Thus homosexuality becomes an inherent sin despite there being no evidence to support such a belief. Reason, observation, and personal experience shows us that gay people are as loving, barbarous, beautiful, idiotic and human as the rest of us, yet the vast majority of the world continues to see gay people as a walking repudiation of God’s will. As if, in all His resplendent glory, God doesn’t have more important things to think about than where someone sticks their dick.

But that striving to know our absolute reality, to see beyond the shroud of our limited five senses and see the truth of the first law of thermodynamics, to really intimately feel the interconnectedness of the universe and all its sentient and non-sentient inhabitants is to truly know God. Part of us, somewhere, knows this. The tragedy is when man distorts this wondrous and beautiful impulse to intimately know all things, this ability to see ourselves with infinite compassion (as Jesus instructed), out of a desire to control and manipulate others. The Protestant Reformation, the Shia and Sunni split over who would rule after the death of Mohammed, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the intractability of Israeli settlers, Muslim terrorism, the Jonestown Massacre, Salem Massachusetts, the Holocaust, the dissolution of Yugoslavia into civil war, the extermination of the native peoples of the Americas and the blood soaked sand of the Sudan all bear witness to our fractious and violent competition for God's love. One presumes, of course, that these moral calamities were the result of sincere religious discord and not just the product of a banal rapacity for personal profit. In the end, does it matter one way or the other? Man’s unique tragedy is both his inability to see absolute reality without laying claim to it and his insatiable desire for power. Perhaps one causes the other.

THE WATCHMEN AND HUMAN ANNIHILATION

Though I haven't finished it yet, I thought I should write something about Alan Moore's graphic novel, The Watchmen. Written in the 80's at the height of Cold War existential paranoia, it's the story of several washed-up masked adventurers who find themselves abandoned and ridiculed by society. To make their troubles worse, someone is killing them one by one.

What really separates the story from other more adult-themed comics is its examination of how the threat of human annihilation affects us. Though Moore envisions the possible end of the world as coming from a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, his depiction of how humanity grapples with the possibility of its own extinction (and man's inherent moral cruelty)is as relevant today in the face of nuclear jihadism as it was two decades ago. His characters take on the 'masks' one must don in order to withstand man's barbarity. Consequently the Comedian, a brutal and conscienceless thug, can only greet the horrors of Vietnam--where he cuts his super-hero teeth doing the government's 'dirty work'-- with a shrug and a laugh. How can one understand the slaughter of children, the collection of human body parts for trophies, the rape of women, and the killing of millions? What kind of ideology or philosophy can mediate and interpret that kind of horror? The Comedian, who commits many of the aforementioned crimes, wraps himself in an ironic nihilism to shield himself from the terror of the world around and in him. How else could he avoid going insane? How else to endure the unendurable? He laughs as he slays, for the great joke of man's existence is that despite all his noble accomplishments, his artistic achievements, his glorious scientific breakthroughs, his is, at bottom, an animal of uncommon savagery and bloody cunning.

More to come...

HAMLET AND WOOSTER

For anyone who doesn’t know them, the Wooster Group are an experimental theatre troupe who command a mainstream-sized audience and a comparable level of interest. Founded by Willem Defoe, Spalding Gray and Kate Valk among others, the ensemble is committed to using innovative sound and video design to enhance what are often exhilarating and challenging theater pieces. I saw their staging of Emperor Jones, a production that was re-mounted after an amazing run in ’93, in which Kate Valk dons black face and tells the story of a slave who becomes an ‘emperor’ of a small island of native Africans. The production was simply astounding. Kate Valk was thunderous, powerful, frightening, ferocious, and commanded what was easily one of the finest and most exciting productions I’ve ever seen. It was the kind of elemental theater-making that comes along a handful of times a generation, which scores itself into the brain of anyone fortunate enough to see it, and which is talked about as legend for years afterwards. The prospect of the Wooster Group tackling Hamlet, one of my favorite plays (honestly, who doesn’t like Hamlet?), intrigued me and I was ready for, if not a legendary performance, at least something memorable.

Sadly, the show was a masturbatory indulgence of theater insiderism, snarky gimmickry, and empty gesticulation signifying nothing. According to the group, “We were drawn to Richard Burton’s Hamlet, a 1964 Broadway production recorded live” which was to be shown in theaters across America for two days and then destroyed. Somehow, a copy of the play survived and the Wooster Group “attempt[ed] to reverse the process by reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the fragmentary evidence of the edited film...[to replace] our own spirit with the spirit of another”.

As is ever the danger with post-modern tinkering, the misguided director Elizabeth LeCompte decided to gut Hamlet of everything that makes it dear to us. All emotion and intention was purposefully drained from the play, lines became sarcastic, winking, aren’t-these-soliloquies-kind-of-corny commentaries on Shakespeare’s beautiful imagery and ideas. There’s no better way to alienate an audience than to remove the human core of a production. Isn’t the purpose of art to examine our emotional lives, to experience and share the human condition in all its ironies and paradoxes? The Wooster Group, in an act of cynical and theatrical violence, delivered robotic line readings that turned Shakespeare’s glorious language into leaden drivel, and which reduced the power and conflict of the story to empty plot points devoid of pathos. The audience was restless, unengaged, and bored silly. Were we supposed to sit through two and a half hours of clumsy gadgetry? While the sound effects that sometimes accompanied the play were interesting, they never amounted to any kind of meaningful insight into why we are the way we are. There's no question that video and sound can be a powerful compliment to theater. But if the technical flourishes don't enhance some principal dramatic idea, or hypothesis, or investigation, if they only exist for their own benefit and not to further some dramatic objective, they're a waste and indulgence. Could it be that LeCompte and the actors were intimidated by Shakespeare? What are they afraid of? Maybe it's just easier to slip into retrograde irony than to actually find a new way to interpret Hamlet. Or maybe the Wooster Group's just lazy.

The idea of resurrecting a play from the sixties is interesting, but what is Wooster trying to say to us by projecting the film behind the exact same scenes re-enacted on stage and then clearly mocking them? The sixties were melodramatic? There’s nothing new under the sun? Richard Burton talks funny? And what to make of Hamlet’s interruptions from the text to tell the technician manning the video to ‘fast-forward’ through Opehlia's scenes because they're boring? And what to make of the actors moving their body in synchronicity with the glitches, hops and gyrations of the fragmented film? In what way does this contribute to our understanding of, well, anything?

In the end, the Wooster Group failed to create any dramatic reason for their experiment other than the artistically toxic and otherwise noxious ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…’ justification to which immature artists (particularly in college) frequently succumb. It’s a shame, because Shakespeare could use a good take-down; Bardolotry is ripe for ridicule and nothing is sacrosanct in art. It’s too bad the best the Wooster Group could manage was to roll their eyes, rock their Fischerspooner soundtrack (Laertes sounds like that guy from Postal Service!) and fill the stage with the sound of static. Nihilism thy name is…yawn. Shakespeare demands a wittier and more compelling excoriation than that.

SAD NUMBER CRUNCHING

I understand why the Edwards family wants to put their best face forward, but it seems like Elisabeth's cancer is incredibly serious. Not even a day off? Quotes from an article on Slate at

http://www.slate.com/id/2162548/


"When she was initially diagnosed, Edwards' breast cancer was treated with a combination of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, to which she seemed to respond well. The details of her cancer have not been made public, but we might expect roughly 90 percent of women with this diagnosis and with an apparently good response to treatment to be disease-free five years after treatment. Unfortunately, Edwards is among the roughly 5 percent of women in whom the disease reappeared more rapidly.

The recurrence was discovered almost by chance. She cracked a rib, and when she was X-rayed to evaluate that injury, the radiologist who read her film detected a "spot" on another rib, on the other side of her chest. The development of the new lesion in a location distant from the original tumor—a "metastasis"—dramatically worsened her prognosis. Edwards' likelihood of survival for five more years dropped from perhaps more than 85 percent to about 20 percent. And her illness went from one that might have been cured to one that might be, at best, controlled."

"In spite of the generally gloomy statistics for metastatic breast cancer, it is hard to predict how things will go for Elizabeth Edwards. Some patients, though never fully cured, still have a relatively good outcome, with their disease reasonably well-controlled, a high quality of life, and a good long time of survival. This group is a minority, to be sure. But let's hope Edwards is in it."

MORE ON EDWARDS AND CANCER

In respone to Alex's posting:

Mac offers us some serious and excellent questions to ponder. Who can tell another how much or whether or how to grieve? I think, to boil down Mac's comments, the question becomes, we aren't priveleged members of the Edwards household, we have no idea how they are dealing with this news, and shouldn't we give the family the benefit of the doubt? This was my initial reaction as well. Let's grant them their privacy and let them deal with the issue on their own. But my girlfriend made the excellent point that the Edwards's decision is so characteristic of the American psyche in that it doesn't acknowledge any feelings that may not be optimistic or cheery, that it refuses to acknowledge the gravity of death, and that it believes the best way to deal with psychological hardship is to channel one's pain into one's work. That's what Americans do best isn't it? Work away the hurt! I don't know whether John Edwards should cancel the campaign or not, but how bout a day off! I think the fact that Edwards hasn't even paused speaks to how much time they've really spent talking and thinking about this. And it's perfectly reasonable from an outside perspective to say, no, talking about this issue for a few hours is not enough, that focusing on the campaign is a way of avoiding the serious questions they need to face, and that a presidential candidate who values his own ambitions more than the quality of his wife's final days is repugnant. How can working on a campaign bring them together? What kind of emotional support can they offer one another when they're giving speeches on the environment or Iraq? How can they attend to one another's feelings between TV appearances, luncheons, fund raisers, speeches,shaking hands, and kissing babies, when they barely get a moment alone together? It's just not possible, no matter how we try to rationalize it for them.

As for their ability to deal with death because of the loss of their son, I'm not so sure that qualifies them to deal with the slow painful death of another family member. In fact, what was Elisabeth's response to the loss of her son? She chose to have two more children at ages 49 and 50 respectively. We all know how dangerous it is for a woman to have children that late in life, and it's also quite dangerous to the unborn. The risk of having learning disabilities, pyschological disorders, physical complications, and other health problems are multiplied dramatically when an older woman decides to have a child. But the Edwards needed more kids to get over the loss of the last one. Doesn't that seem kind of, well, selfish? Doesn't that mesh with how they're acting now? Instead of grieving and accepting the loss of their son they decide to have more children regardless of the health consequences in order to make themselves feel better. But it's just another mechanism of avoidance. The belief that you can turn to outside sources of comfort in the face of loss for relief is dangerous. As any grief counselor will tell you, the work of accepting something as hurtful and frightening as death needs to be done internally. Getting a new job, having more children, making more money, gaining more power, are all illusions that promise closure and acceptance, but in reality they distract from the hard reflective work that needs to be done by the individual. If you don't metabolize and digest what's happened to you, you'll never process and internalize the loss, and it'll eat at you for the rest of your life in profoundly destructive ways. The Edwards's emotional delusion is flat out unhealthy, and really speaks to the state of America's overall emotional dysfunction.

THE EDWARDS CAMPAIGN AND AMERICAN EMOTIONAL DENIAL

While I’m sure many blogs and columnists will talk about the political ramifications of John Edwards’s decision to keep his campaign running in the midst of his wife’s new battle with cancer, I’m more interested in the emotional cost. The NYT’s article covering the announcement that Elizabeth Edwards’s breast cancer has metastasized states that patients with stage four cancers have only a 25% chance that they will be alive in five years. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that Elizabeth Edwards would even make it through the first term of John Edwards’s presidency should he actually win. It sounds like Elizabeth Edwards received her death sentence today, but by refusing to even pause his campaign her husband’s acting like she got the flu. Why?

We all know what kind of breakneck pace a presidential candidate needs to maintain in order to fund raise, strategize, build net roots, and cultivate relationships with early primary states. When exactly are John and Elizabeth going to sit down and talk about the very real and serious fact that she will most likely be dead by 2015? It seems to me there needs to be some grieving, some confrontation with naked reality, some serious decision making, some emotions that need to be shared and experienced. How can this couple adequately address these emotionally daunting issues on the campaign trail? Don’t they want to spend their remaining years together focusing on one another and not press releases and political picnics and attack ads? Doesn’t Elizabeth deserve her husband’s support and attention now more than ever? Instead it’s a ‘sign of strength’ that the campaign continues, it’s somehow ‘cowering in the corner’ to admit that one might have some, I don’t know, serious feelings about, you know, dying. John and Elizabeth equate taking time off, even a suspension of the campaign, as an acknowledgement of defeat, as if to take a step back from politics in order to breathe and reflect and feel and love was some kind of weakness. There is something depressingly American about denying ones feelings and seeing that as a sign of victory and strength. The desire to keep the campaign upbeat and optimistic and free of doubt, or depressing news, or sadness is a hollow attempt to deny the very real fact that Elizabeth doesn’t have long to live. What’s going to happen to all that bottled up grief, and rage, and fear? How is it going to affect John and Elizabeth’s children to pretend like nothing’s changed? John, your wife is going to die. It’s okay to take a day off. If anything, acting like Elizabeth has a ‘manageable’ sickness like high blood pressure is emotionally disingenuous not just to the public but also to Edwards’s family, and might turn voters off in the end. If he’s such a good husband, if he’s of such sterling character that he deserves to be president, why isn’t he spending time with his wife right now? Maybe she’s insisting that he keep up the good fight and carry on with the campaign. Maybe so. But it’s his job to tell her no, that she’s more important than being president. As an old boss of mine once said, ‘you’re either working hard or hardly working’. American identity is so wrapped up with one’s commitment to work that sometimes our basic humanity gets punched away in the time clock. Spinning a gaffe on Meet the Press is one thing, but spinning death is downright cowardly. There is plenty of work to be done for John Edwards, but it’s not on the campaign trail.

ON GIRLS AND TRAINS IN QUEENS

A week or so ago during that balmy spell we had I was heading to work on the train when I noticed something peculiar. My fellow 7-train riders had come prepared for another typical February chill but were instead met with a late-May blast of sunlight and warmth. Naturally, it was hotter even in the car than outside and a few of the heavier dressed riders were understandably uncomfortable. I saw a young woman out of the corner of my eye and thought little of her. When she took off her coat though the response in the rest of the train surprised me. She removed her jacket to reveal a t-shirt and, as you would expect, her arms and neck were bare. She was neither particularly attractive nor was she repulsive but nonetheless a good number of the train’s occupants turned to look at her as soon as she began taking off her jacket. And while you would expect this of any man on the subway, it never occurred to me that she would attract so much attention from the female riders. But heads turned mechanically, as if conditioned, all up and down the subway car. Why?

For one thing, I think we’ve been taught, women and men alike, to immediately need to determine a woman's physical (and thus true) value. For women it’s a matter of comparison, of judging, of seeing how you stack up against the sexual competition, but also a way of measuring your own worth. Some of this is biologically induced; it would make sense for natural selection to make women, well, competitive, and their physical appearance is the easiest and most natural way to establish sexual primacy. At the same time, I couldn’t help wondering if all those magazines and TV shows and movies didn’t make us turn the female form into a commodity, something to be assessed and appraised like a house or a sports car. If it were a man taking off his jacket no one, women included, would be as likely to turn their heads. But a woman’s body is somehow different and considered an object for consumption by both men and women alike. For men a woman’s body is simply a source of sexual gratification and titillation. No surprises there. I don’t, however, think the women on the train were carnally interested in this particular girl. They had other concerns: What was her complexion like, how toned were her biceps, how much hair did she have on her arms, how did her fingers wrap around the steel pole, did she paint her nails, how many freckles did she have? A never-ending process of evaluation swept over the contours of the girl's arms and neck. We’ve seen women as instruments of commercialism for so long it’s no wonder every detail of her body was consumed by the 7-train riders. A woman is thus 'kidnapped' to allay or exacerbate another woman's insecurities. My hair’s thicker, my waist thinner, my legs fatter, my face rounder, my arms less muscled and on and on until she's just another glossy magazine cover. That appropriation was probably what I thought the most interesting and disturbing. For many women on the train the girl in the t-shirt was taken and used to reassure some, to reprimand and threaten others. What must it be like to be a woman and evaluated by other women in such a relentless way? What kind of stress do women put on one another and themselves as a result of their cold appropriations? Do their eyes ever leave one another alone or are they forever locked in this inhuman appraisal of the flesh? The young woman wasn’t so much a mirror as a scale built and stolen to praise or punish oneself.

Or maybe they just liked her t-shirt.

THE GIANT VACUUM ON THE RIGHT AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR DEMOCRATS

Reading the newspapers, weeklies, blogs and the rest of the media, it's become clear that no one is too excited one way or the other about the GOP field of ’08 presidential candidates. It’s true that the NYT has had a few charitable features on Mit Romney and Rudolph Giuilani, and of course there’s the seemingly perennial piece on John McCain’s inability to lock up the nomination, but otherwise the papers are relatively quiet. Think of the amount of ink spilled over Obama’s announcement to run, the question of his essential blackness or lack thereof, of Hilary’s refusal to renounce her vote on the Iraq war, or the possibility that Gore may enter the race.

Where’s the comparable media frenzy over a possible late entry by Newt Gingrich? Compared to the hushed, fingers-crossed intensity of coverage surrounding Gore’s possible entrance into the Democratic field, Newt’s waiting in the wings seems especially ho-hum. And even though McCain can command a large audience as he did recently on his Iowa bus tour (he provided free breakfasts) there’s no media electricity surrounding his campaign the way there is around say, the possibility of the first woman president, or the first African-American president. As a magazine editor what would make for a more compelling cover story, Hilary’s historic bid for the presidency or John McCain’s age? When McCain speaks after a speech or at a press conference the first question out of every reporter’s mouth is, “Are you too old to run?” Exactly.

But it’s not just the press that’s down on the Republicans lackluster stable of candidates. When Republicans themselves are polled about their options they to seem less than impressed with their choices. Much has been written about the Evangelical right being frustrated by the lack of a clear values-oriented and avowedly Christian candidate. Romney doesn’t count apparently as there is a longstanding animosity between Protestant Evangelicals and Mormons and there don’t appear to be any serious Evangelical stalwarts waiting out the early campaign skirmishes either. There is a colossal sense of loss and opportunities missed on the right, of having once had the reins firmly in hand only to have them slip away amidst scandal, war, and political hubris. There is no Reaganesque political savior poised to return the Republican party to power and prominence. Instead, there’s Sam Brownback.

Aside from Giuliani still coasting off his 9/11 performance and his general good nature, where are the Republican superstars? Say what you will about W’s incompetence, he was generally likable and straight-forward on the campaign trail and a lot of voters warmed to him. He had name recognition and a certain conservative pedigree vouchsafed by his running mate Dick Cheney. Bush galvanized the Republican base in ’04, at least in part, by opposing gay marriage and continuing to push for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. With Giuliani decidedly moderate on the aforementioned issues and with his long list of marital problems can even he be taken as a serious threat to Hilary or Obama? Indeed, the entire Republican field is vulnerable on a number of ‘values’ issues, particularly the sanctity of marriage (almost all of them have had messy divorces). Can any of them be serious contenders? As of now, no.

Whoever can mobilize their base and appeal to the center (not two mutually exclusive goals) will win the next election, but the Republicans, shattered by miscalculation in Iraq, will have trouble getting their base excited by McCain’s clumsy triangulation, Gingrich’s moral hypocrisy, Romney’s fringe faith, or Giuliani’s liberal attitude toward gays and divorce. Even a mediocre political operative working in Clinton or Edwards’ war room would have a field day with the Republican candidates ethical and personal vulnerabilities.

Are the GOP hopes of holding onto the executive naïve? Much can change over the next two years, and if one thing is constant in the political landscape, it’s the Democrats inability to identify and exploit their opponent’s weaknesses. If anyone can lose the ’08 election with the outgoing Republican president one of the least liked presidents in history, an election preceded by a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate, it’s the same Democrats who nominated Dukakis and Kerry. Still, the Republican field has rarely been this thin while the Democrats have never looked so strong. In the face of Hilary’s prodigious fund raising apparatus, Obama’s singular charisma, Edwards’ commitment to the working poor and Gore’s passion for the environment and his own reinvention, the Republicans are in trouble. As Chuck Schumer said of the Democrats on Charlie Rose’s program in February, “We want to win this time. We really want to win.”

The generally weak Republican candidates pose a problem for the conventional wisdom regarding both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, candidates who have been handicapped because of their gender and race respectively. The wisdom goes something like this: because Democrats desperately want to win this election, voters will choose the candidate with that all important ‘air of electability’, even if they have to vote for someone they don’t ideologically support. Whomever Democratic voters think can beat the Republican nominee will get the most support in Iowa and New Hampshire. Consequently, Hilary and Obama shouldn’t get the nomination the wisdom goes, because their ‘handicaps’ will pose a major obstacle to capturing independents or stealing a Red State or two in the general election, both of which are required to win the electoral college. They can’t win because their ‘handicaps’ compromise that ‘air of electability’. But with the Republican campaigns exhibiting so little vigor and excitement among the conservative base, real progressives have their best chance in years and perhaps for years to come, to capture the White House. Whether one thinks Hilary is a good choice for president or not, it’s clear that her being a woman isn’t nearly the liability the conventional wisdom argues it is. The same goes for Obama and his being black. The election is up for grabs, and the belief held among some ‘realist’ Democrats that Clinton and Obama should be immediately disqualified ignores the fact that, as yet, there’s no tactical reason to jump to another insipid and ostensibly ‘safe’ candidate like John Kerry. Maybe progressives should roll the dice. With their enemies hobbled by mediocrity, there’s no better strategic time than now.