[Peace-discuss] The Debate in Nashville

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Perceptive, thoughtful, realistic. THANK YOU, Ricky!
 --Jenifer

--- On Wed, 10/8/08, Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Debate in Nashville
To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 2:16 PM

Thanks, Carl.  My usual irritations with the phenomenally
"self-important" Cockburn aside, I think he's right about a lot of
this, but quite wrong-headed in places.  (I take his opening tantrum about
"imbecilic tedium" and so on as an apparent need to get ahead, or at
least keep up, with the pack of our nearly departed left - in which I include
myself, in case you think that's unfair.)

By the way, I always idly wish for an accuracy team, if nothing else, on the
sidelines with a buzzer or something, when I'm watching these things - just
to correct factual misstatements if nothing else, although I realize there would
immediately be a dispute over what constitutes a "fact."  It's not
a serious hope anyway, and I guess there needs to be something for the bloggers
to argue about.

But I can't agree that "Of the two performances, Obama's was the
more appalling since he is meant to be the candidate of change and new
ideas."  This is plain silly.  It's one thing to criticize a candidate
who's supposed to be "all that" - as a vehicle for pointing out
what we really want and need (besides no president at all, that is) and to
provide some admittedly moderate pressure in the right direction.  It's
another to simply refuse to analyze the situation comprehensively.  I posted a
review of Obama's policies on the Americas, from NACLA, not long ago, which
said, here's what's new and hopeful, here's what's
disappointingly old, here's what we can probably expect, and here's what
we  should be fighting for.  That kind of thing is useful.  Cockburn's
diatribe verges on "not really."

It just isn't true that Obama has "no new ideas," at least not in
the context of executive policy (the NACLA analysis I mentioned lists a few, for
example).  Whether we like them, or whether they could have been better, is
another matter.  But I think the more pertinent question is, is there any hope
at all in them somewhere?  My crystal ball is still broken, but I think there is
at least some reason to think there may be some.  Others may disagree.

Obama's low point, I thought was, well, a toss-up between accepting the
nefarious lie that Social Security is broken - yes, particularly vicious during
the current "crisis" - and trying to out-aggressor the old aggressor
McCain on war policy (let's call it what it is).  There's a big
difference, though, in what we'd hope to see a "serious"
presidential candidate say in this  class-stratified, belligerent nation - and
what we can reasonably expect to hear.  I have more to say on this - you may not
be surprised - but basically, I was disappointed at the level of Obama's
warmongering, although not surprised of course. 

I was still pleased to see him turn the "speak softly, but carry a big
stick" back on McCain, and Obama did sound a little less bloodthirsty than
he sometimes sounds on this list, even with regard to Pakistan.  And, while
strictly speaking I don't recall anyone actually uttering the word
"China", as Cockburn so carefully notes, Obama did mention US debt to
"the Chinese"  - I'm not sure how these "Chinese" are
different from Cockburn's missed "China", but it seems
substantially similar to me.

True, both did sing hymns to "the greatness of our civilization" -
that's kind of a base they have to touch - but I think "proclaiming the
fundamental soundness of our economy" doesn't quite capture it. 
Neither of them blamed the current level of "liquidity" of
"global capitalism" the way the New York Times rep on Charlie Rose did
later - even while praising Warren Buffet, he managed to point out that the
problem is more fundamental than either candidate was willing to do -  but there
was I thought more recognition than in past presidential debates that people are
hurting and the government has a responsibility to help, from both.  Libertarian
"free market" objections were off the radar, forced off by
circumstances, true, and it was not nearly enough of course, but I was impressed
by the extent to which even McCain couldn't just stay the course on this
one.  McCain of course tried to salvage as much from the "trickle
down" trash heap as possible, but he
 couldn't even own it when Obama accused him with the term.  And by the
way, it's great to hear the words "trickle down" used as a slur in
a presidential debate.

It's hard to notice where McCain's low point was, most of his
performance was so low.  Maybe it was when McCain just started repeating,
"It will get better.  We can do it.  We're Americans."  Like
whistling in the cemetery.  Cockburn at least acknowledges in his way that
McCain is the worse *candidate* of the two.

It's true, there's a lot to wish for, that Obama might have said, or
that Brokaw could have raised, but none of it was really very likely. 
Basically, I am always afraid Obama will be worse than he turns out to be -
after our brief encounter with him on the sidwalk in Champaign.  It probably
also comes in part of his trying to play too many angles at once.  But a very
smart friend of mine in Mississippi, a leftist economist and a good
anarcho-syndicalist, says we can always expect Democrats or Social Democrats or
whatever parties of vaguely left-leaning opposition to be full of
contradictions.  These are parties composed, fundamentally, of contradictory
interests.  Whether he's right about that or not, I think we have to look at
what we have in front of us.  Criticize, yes, but let's keep some sense of
proportion.  

Do we really expect a presidential candidate with ideas like one of us to have
a serious chance in this country?  Look how many people voted for Bush - in
2004!  We (broadly defined) have not been able, for whatever reasons, to build a
foundation for such a revolutionary event.  Even with all the reforms in the
universe - IRV, paper ballots, abolition of the Electoral College, same-day
registration, felon enfranchisement, and so on, all of which are good ideas - we
would still be stuck with a toxic cultural, social and economic atmosphere in
which to expect some kind of Allende or Aristide to emerge (and look what
happened to them).  It's that much bigger problem that I think needs
attacking, rather than the "tedium" of how the more hopeful candidate
disappoints us, how we hate him for it, how he *should* be so much more pure and
honest and socially conscious and, well, not much like a real candidate at all,
I'm sorry to say - at least not yet.

These debates are a useful starting point for discussion.  Of course there are
urgent needs, and we should push for them urgently.  But building real movements
for change has little to do with these debates, or the candidates.  It's
about issues - pushing forward, trying not to fall back too much - but mostly
about the day-to-day work we do in our communities: educating, agitating and
organizing, as the saying goes.

 
Respectfully,
Ricky


"Only those who do nothing make no mistakes." - Peter Kropotkin



----- Original Message ----
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at uiuc.edu>
To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 11:44:27 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Debate in Nashville

"Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is
meant to be 
the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to
change 
and no new ideas. Neither does McCain..."

    October 8, 2008
    Imbecilic Tedium
    By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The presidential campaign plummeted into imbecilic tedium last night in 
Nashville as Barack Obama and John McCain faced off in the second debate. The 
encounter took place against the vivid backdrop of economic catastrophe, the 
obvious failure of the $700 billion bailout to turn the tide, Tuesday's
market 
averages hurtling into the abyss, a paralyzing credit freeze, the prospect of 
savage deflation and prolonged world depression.

Scant intimations of these disasters penetrated the walls of the Belmont 
University auditorium, where the Gallup polling organization had mustered a 
crowd of "independents", people canny enough to claim to Gallup's
emissaries 
that they hadn’t yet made up their minds. The affair was billed as a
"Town Hall 
Meeting", meaning only that the candidates were permitted to pace about,
or walk 
up to their carefully selected, ethnically and sexually balanced interlocutors 
in the crowd and praise them for the acuity of their questions.

It was as though the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, even though apprised 
that fire and brimstone had already consumed substantial portions of their 
cities, with prospective destruction of the remnant, spent a vainglorious 90 
minutes vying with each other in proclaiming the fundamental soundness of their

economy and the greatness of their civilization.

McCain said he had a plan. He would require his Treasury Secretary to bail out 
beleaguered homeowners. Obama said he'd do the same. It's a sensible
idea.   A 
few days earlier both men had voted on a bankers' bailout that explicitly
does 
not rescue homeowners but exposes the defaulters to foreclosures superintended 
by the Treasury. The testy and self-important moderator, Tom Brokaw, could have

swiftly asked them about this but he didn't.

McCain said he'd consider a spending freeze. Obama could have asked him
whether 
this would include a freeze on the war in Iraq, which has so far cost nearly a 
trillion dollars. He did finally circle around to this matter, but way too late

and much too feebly.

In a week when only the government stands between Americans and ruin, one would

have thought McCain's Reaganesque attacks on government could have drawn
telling 
barbs from Obama. The auditorium had plenty of veterans who, like McCain, have 
access to hospitals run by the Veterans' Administration. Obama declined the

opportunity.

As a debater Obama is pitifully slow on his feet. This is not a time when any 
Republican candidate wants to be reminded that a cause dear to President
Bush's 
heart was Social Security "reform", shorthand for handing over
peoples' 
pensions, now held in government accounts, to Wall Street. Yet when McCain 
agreed with Brokaw that America's Social Security system needs
"reform", Obama 
promptly accepted the faulty  premise that the Social Security system is in 
crisis. Why didn't he point out that had privatization been enacted,
millions 
would have already seen the monthly checks standing between them and utter 
destitution go down the tubes, destroyed by the sharks at now bankrupt 
institutions like Lehman Bros?

Obama is too timid even to invoke the greatest hero in the Democrats'
pantheon, 
Franklin Roosevelt. If ever there was a moment to quote FDR, to pledge a new, 
New Deal it is surely now.

The discussion of foreign affairs was even worse, with the added burden of
being 
mostly repetitions of the first debate in Oxford, Mississippi. McCain invoked 
the uniqueness of America and its mission to bring freedom and light to the
rest 
of the planet. Obama solemnly agreed. Neither man saw fit to address the fact 
that America is only able to shoulder these imperial burdens because China has 
been prepared to finance the war in Iraq. The difficult word "China"
passed no 
one's lips. Nor did the issue of an immense and unsustainable Pentagon
budget 
intrude, nor the thousand or so US military bases overseas.

Both men once again bravely declared they would not allow another Holocaust to 
happen. Both pledged constancy to Israel. Both men said that an Iran with 
nuclear weapons was unacceptable.

Brokaw could have asked them for their reactions to outgoing Israeli prime 
minister Olmert's stunning disclosure in an interview with the
Hebrew-language 
newspaper Yediot Aharonot that he thinks  Israel is on a totally misguided 
course, should "actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not
from 
all the territories", agree to the division of Jerusalem and give Syria
back the 
Golan Heights.

Brokaw  didn't, though he did raise the recent British assessments from
Kabul 
saying the West's war is lost. This elicited scant reaction from Obama who 
continued to pledge higher US troops levels in Afghanistan plus forays into 
Pakistan, whatever the opinion of Pakistan's government might be. Will
anyone 
ask the Democratic candidate how he feels about stoking up a replication of the

Iraq disaster, with a possible war between nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India
as 
lagniappe?

The dawn of  an Obama administration is now scheduled, on the candidate's 
pledges, to see escalation of a doomed and pointless war in Afghanistan and 
perhaps also the assassination of Karzai, now square in Uncle Sam's sights
as a 
failure and probably scheduled for assassination. There's the heritage of
JFK 
and Vietnam for you. It's back to 1963.

Asked if Russia was evil, just like the Soviet Union in Ronald Reagan's
eyes, 
Obama said yes, McCain "maybe". Trade? Latin America? Africa? Europe?
Nothing 
from either man, though they both agreed that they would flout the UN at will.

Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is meant
to be 
the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to
change 
and no new ideas. Neither does McCain. Yet the post-debate panelists mostly 
claimed the Town Hall Meeting an absorbing affair, rich in content.

We have one more debate, in which McCain will have another chance to reduce 
Obama's commanding lead, something he failed to do last night, even though
it 
now seems Sarah Palin did slow McCain's slump with her performance last
week.

McCain and Palin are trying to get traction by slurring Obama for association 
with Bill Ayers, a leader of the the bomb-throwing antiwar Weathermen in the 
60s. Obama was eight when they threw the bombs. It doesn't seem a
productive 
line of attack for McCain and Palin, particularly when many Americans
wouldn't 
mind blowing up Wall St themselves.

http://www.counterpunch.org/

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