So, does he double down — or does he compensate?

That’s the stark choice facing Barack Obama as he ponders whom to tap in the next few weeks as his running mate. Now that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine’s name has popped to the top of the charts as a possible Obama sidekick — perhaps to be replaced in a few days by some other hot possibility — the question helps clarify the next few weeks: Does Obama counterbalance his relative inexperience in general, and in foreign policy and defense matters in particular, and go with a trusted old-timer or pick a fresh face, someone who can pose as an agent of change, a relative newcomer just like himself?

Does he double down on his weakness or does he compensate for it?

For months, much of the Democratic Party intelligentsia in Washington has insisted that Obama must do the latter and pick an older, white, foreign-policy or establishment figure such as Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, even Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. The chatter from this class has been logical, based in polls and nonstop — and it stems in part from the fact that many of those who have been spreading it are aligned with some of those potential veeps.

But there has never been much evidence that anyone in Chicago shared that view.

The alternate universe goes like this: The last thing Obama ought to do is pick a figure from the Washington establishment. He needs, instead, to reinforce his message of change and shake up the status quo with an outsider untainted by the Capitol games. Such a pick would be aimed not at the party’s base but at the pool of independent voters who still aren’t comfortable with Obama and are looking all summer for signs that he is both something different and up to the job. Those who back this approach have been talking about Kaine for months in this context, as well as former Virginia governor Mark Warner, Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius and Virginia Senator Jim Webb (before he took himself out of the contest).

Noting the various qualities he is searching for in a running mate, Obama said on Meet the Press Sunday that “I’m going to want somebody who shares a vision of the country — where we need to go; that we’ve got to fundamentally change not only our policies but how our politics work, how business is done in Washington.”

Of course, Obama could try to split the difference. And parked somewhere between these poles is Senator Evan Bayh, a moderate Democrat from Indiana who has been a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services committees and backed Hillary Clinton during the primary but has kept a comparatively low profile despite a decade in Washington. He has been elected statewide five times in a state where his last name is something close to hard currency, though that is hardly a guarantee that he could help Obama carry the state. Bayh’s also a little short on excitement, but that’s the one area where Obama can carry the ticket all by himself.

In any case, the choice between doubling down and compensating for weakness is not unlike the judgment awaiting Republican John McCain. He could look to a younger Republican who is more oriented toward domestic policy — such as Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who is 48, or former Bush Administration official and Ohio Congressman Rob Portman of Cincinnati, who is 52. Or he could forgo those relative newcomers and instead try to underscore his own experience by tapping former governor, businessman and Olympics organizer Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who is 61.

Is McCain qualified for the job?

Les Payne
The Philadelphia Inquirer
July 30, 2008

If elected president, Sen. John McCain promises to stage a news conference every week, a singular horror that, of itself, should be enough to doom his chances.

This McCain threat shows no mercy for his staff, which trails this creaky circus doing what the man with the shovel does for the elephant. “Being human and tripping over your tongue occasionally doesn’t mean a thing,” said one top official for the GOP nominee. By contrast, McCain dismissed his opponent’s verbal appeal last week as Sen. Barack Obama blitzed the Middle East and Europe, smooth-talking 200,000 in Berlin.

Time and again, McCain staffers must return to his messes and explain what their boss meant to say. In addition to the verbal slips, even in his so-called areas of expertise, McCain rolls out his thoughts with a disquieting inexactitude.

At least twice, under coaching from Sen. Joe Lieberman, McCain confused the Sunnis of Iraq with the Shias. Darfur he misplaced in Somalia. And in speaking about “Czechoslovakia,” he reunited the Czech Republic and Slovakia, separated since 1993.

Sometimes, the slip is a matter of geography as when, on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the Arizona senator spoke of an Iraq-Pakistan border that does not exist, at least not yet.

Some blame such McCain errors on the turning of his leaves. He will be 72 next month. But, as with the current commander in chief, the blight appears to have set in early on. It practically took an affirmative action appointment to eek this wacky rebel into the U.S. Naval Academy. His legacy posting came courtesy of his admiral grandfather and on-track-to-become-admiral dad. The blood of the third generation, however, apparently ran thin as little John, a carousingly weak student, finished fifth from the very bottom of his 1958 academy class of 599 graduates.

Nothing in McCain’s career demonstrates that his bulb has brightened. His vaunted reputation as a maverick and contrarian could just as well be attributed to a short-circuiting of his command of facts and standard operating procedures.

What about his qualifications for commander in chief?

As President George W. Bush has proved, any scion of a wealthy, white family can be taught to fly a jet fighter by a patient, long-suffering military flight instructor. As for getting one’s plane shot out of the sky, as McCain did over North Vietnam, we need seek no analysis beyond that of Gen. Wesley Clark’s.

The general’s point was not that McCain isn’t a war hero, the counterattack that put Clark on the defensive. It was rather that McCain’s heroics have not prepared him, ipso facto, to be commander in chief, as the GOP candidate claims. Incidentally, Clark ranked No. 1 in his 1966 class of 579 cadets at West Point. Other knowledgeable war veterans, and I humbly include myself, know that cocky flyboy pilots like McCain, indeed, tend not to have the right stuff to be named commanders.

Furthermore, some actual commanders, Gen. William C. Westmoreland for example – as well as some commanders in chief, such as George W. Bush – do not have the winning stuff that makes leaders successful. In the former case, Westmoreland, who got the U.S. snookered on the battlefield in Vietnam, scored in the middle of his 1936 West Point class of 276.

As for the verbal and scholastic prowess of the current commander in chief, perhaps the less said, in these tumultuous times, the better. It suffices that the closer we look at the makeup of McCain, the more we find traces of Bush. Both have been given to waywardness, one born to money, the other marrying into it.

The salient point about this duo that troubles those of us who care deeply about the country is that McCain doggedly insists upon staying the Bush course. Also, it’s a sure bet that McCain would continue to offer David Letterman material for his “Great Moments in Presidential History,” a nightly spoof of Bush’s inarticulate rambles. Can we afford any longer to ponder our sitting president each night and laugh – just to keep from crying?

WASHINGTON — Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican senator in United States history and a figure of great influence in Washington as well as in his home state, has been indicted on federal corruption charges.

Mr. Stevens, 84, was indicted on seven counts of failing to report income. The charges are related to renovations on his home and to gifts he has received. They arise from an investigation that has been under way for more than a year, in connection with the senator’s relationship with a businessman who oversaw the home-remodeling project.

The indictment will surely reverberate through the November elections. Mr. Stevens, who has been in the Senate for 40 years, is up for re-election this year. Mark Begich, a popular Democratic mayor of Anchorage, hopes to supplant him.

The Justice Department announced the charges at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. The document says that, from the spring of 1999 through the late summer of 2007, Mr. Stevens failed to report “things of value” that he received in connection with his home in the ski resort city of Girdwood, about 40 miles south of Anchorage.

Prosecutors say Mr. Stevens, who referred to his home as “the chalet,” accepted goods and services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, ranging from an outdoor grill to extensive home remodeling and architectural advice. Not only did Mr. Stevens fail to report the items on his Senate financial disclosure form, as required, but he took active steps to conceal the receipt of the goods and services, the indictment says.

All the charges are felonies. Justice Department officials declined to discuss how long a prison term a conviction on the charges might bring, noting that the maximum sentences allowed by law are rarely imposed. Mr. Stevens was in Washington on Tuesday, and was allowed to turn himself in for paperwork processing.

The business executive at the center of the affair is Bill J. Allen, a longtime friend of the senator’s and the founder of VECO, a company that builds pipelines and does other construction work for oil companies. Mr. Allen pleaded guilty in May 2007 to making $243,000 in illegal payments to a lawmaker, who was later identified as State Senator Ben Stevens, Ted Stevens’s son.

Ben Stevens, who was once president of the Alaska State Senate, is one of a half-dozen lawmakers under scrutiny for their relationships with Mr. Allen and his company.

Republicans on Capitol Hill were already jittery over a lobbying and influence-peddling scandal related to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is now in prison. Mr. Stevens’s troubles are not linked to that affair. Instead, they stem from his ties to an oil executive whose company won millions of dollars in federal contracts with the help of Mr. Stevens, whose home in Alaska was almost doubled in size in the renovation project.

Under Senate Republican party rules, an indictment on felony charges compels a member to temporarily give up his leadership posts, and Republican senators were told at their weekly luncheon on Tuesday that Mr. Stevens would do so. Mr. Stevens has been the ranking minority member on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Mr. Stevens is a former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he is still on the panel. As chairman, he wielded huge influence, and did not hesitate to use it to steer money and projects to his state.

“No other senator fills so central a place in his state’s public and economic life as Ted Stevens of Alaska,” the Almanac of American Politics says. “Quite possibly, no other senator ever has.”

Mr. Stevens, one of only a handful of World War II veterans left in the Senate, grew up in Indiana and California and moved to Alaska in 1950, before it was a state, according to the political almanac. He first ran for the Senate in 1962, losing to Ernest Gruening, a Democrat. He was appointed to fill a vacant seat in the Senate in 1968 by the governor at the time, Walter Hickel, and has been re-elected six times since then.

Word spread through the Capitol like an electric current, prompting whispers among senators and staff. The Democrats were gathering in a room near the Senate chamber for their weekly conference lunch. Republicans, meanwhile, moved their lunch to the headquarters of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, a common change of venue when the primary topic of discussion is politics.

Mr. Stevens is seen as a legendary, even heroic, figure in Alaska, who played a crucial role in its achievement of statehood, which became official in 1959. According to Senate Republican rules, Mr. Stevens will have to give up his leadership positions, which include some hugely powerful posts, as the senior Republican on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the defense appropriations subcommittee.

The long-running federal corruption investigation in Alaska has been hanging over Mr. Stevens as he faces his toughest re-election contest in many years. Mr. Begich was expected to mount a strong challenge even before word of the indictment spread.

Alaska, which last elected a Democratic senator in 1974, is one of several seemingly unlikely states where Democrats believe they have a strong chance of pulling off upset victories in the November elections.

The indictment comes nearly a year after federal agents raided Mr. Stevens’s home as part of a continuing investigation into corruption that had already ensnared the senator’s son.

Though lawmakers have been aware of the Justice Department inquiry for some time, the news of an indictment still came as something of a shock this week, as both houses of Congress are trying to wrap up legislative business before the monthlong August recess.

Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, who is the chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee and a friend of Mr. Stevens, said Mr. Stevens should be presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty.Mr. Inouye said he did not expect that the indictment would interfere with Senator Stevens’s ability to work in the Senate.

Other lawmakers, including Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, the chairwoman of the ethics committee, said they needed to know more about the indictment before commenting.

Cal Thomas
Tribune Media Services
July 29, 2008

There is a reason the psalmist warned: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3)

It wasn’t that he was cynical about humanity. It appears the writer observed that the best efforts of humankind were unable to produce the satisfaction people sought in earthly leaders.

Which brings us to the expectations surrounding Barack Obama.

It is a truism in politics that you are supposed to lower expectations in order to boost your political stock should you exceed them. Obama has done precisely the opposite. He has raised expectations so high there is only one way he can exceed them following his nomination in Denver. That is to climb to the top of a mountain peak, be transfigured and ascend into heaven. No wonder Jon Stewart lampooned his messianic persona on “The Daily Show,” saying that while in Israel, Obama made a short visit to the manger in Bethlehem where he was born.

In his Berlin speech, Obama promised to tear down more walls than Joshua did at Jericho. He’s going to destroy walls separating black from white; walls between Jews, Muslims and Christians; walls dividing rich from poor and East from West. Prior to the advent of Obama, such powers were reserved for the Messiah, who, we are promised, will beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, make the lion lie down with the lamb, and we will study war no more.

No politician can live up to such great expectations. That is because neither the problems nor the solutions emanate from Washington. Politicians in one party want us to believe that politicians in the other party caused our problems. Each party has had its turn in the White House and a congressional majority. If one party is better than the other, shouldn’t one of them have solved the problems by now?

With expectations so high, if Obama is elected president and his party maintains, perhaps expands, its margins in the House and Senate, he will have to immediately solve at least some of the problems he has promised to solve, lest his opinion polls take a dive and cynicism makes a comeback.

Obama is to be commended for lecturing black men about their role as real fathers, not just sperm donors. But he is not the first to give that lecture. Rev. Jesse Jackson and comedian Bill Cosby have also given it. Yet the targeted behavior has not changed. America’s primary problems are not economic and political; they are moral and spiritual, and there government cannot go, with or without “faith-based initiatives.”

In our self-obsessed, entitlement age, politicians send the message that if you’re breathing you should expect a government check. Few want to hear a message about personal responsibility and accountability. Obama disciples want to hear more about what government will do for them, not what they can do for themselves in a free country that offers opportunity to those who will seize it. They want to punish “the rich,” who they used to want to emulate but now just envy. And so those few who are already paying more than half the taxes are told they aren’t paying enough.

John McCain might mimic Ronald Reagan by saying that America is struggling, not because government is doing too little, but because it is doing too much – sapping the strength of the country, which is not found in Washington, but rather in “we the people.” If McCain can lower expectations from Washington and raise them in individuals, showing them what tenacity and hard work can produce, he might win.

Should we expect such a message from him? We should, but will he deliver it? My own expectations aren’t very high, which means he might exceed them.

July 28, 2008

By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON — In the contest for president, Barack Obama is a magnetic candidate supported by a disciplined, well-organized campaign. John McCain seems wooden, with a campaign that appears to be in shambles. Yet Obama’s lead in the polls over McCain is fragile because he so far has not won the support of a majority of American voters.

An effective and massively publicized foreign trip failed to push Obama to the 50 percent mark. Hopes of Democrats and fears of Republicans that he would get a major bounce in the polls when he clinched the nomination and then on his campaigning abroad have not been realized.

Overnight surveys by Gallup and Rasmussen for the past two weeks have shown Obama hovering around 46 percent, while McCain has declined from 45 percent to 41 percent after the wild acclaim for Obama in Berlin, for a 6-point deficit that is by no means insurmountable. These numbers have prompted speculation among Republican political practitioners that McCain can back into the presidency, just as he backed into his party’s nomination.

Not even Bob Dole’s dismal candidacy in 1996 generated less enthusiasm in GOP ranks than McCain’s current effort. However, in winning the nomination this year, when he had been counted out after the disintegration of his campaign structure, McCain showed more fortitude than skill. He was blessed by a weak field of Republican competitors, who eliminated each other and left McCain as the last man standing.

But Obama is no Huckabee, Giuliani or Romney. He is the most spectacular campaigner of his generation, with appeal well beyond Democratic ranks. That he lingers below the 50 percent mark is a mystery among politicians of both parties. It is particularly troubling to Democrats who recall past Democratic candidates taking a huge lead over the summer before being overtaken or nearly overtaken by a surging Republican opponent. In 1976, Jimmy Carter took a 33-point summer lead over President Gerald Ford and won in a photo finish. In 1988, Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush by 17 points after being nominated in Atlanta before he lost the election. Al Gore and John Kerry were ahead of George W. Bush in the summer.

One candid Republican consultant says that the massive Carter and Dukakis summer leads were illusory, based on large generic Democratic leads. But their generic lead is back at 15 points after 12 years of a Republican Congress and eight years of George W. Bush.

Clearly, Obama has not yet closed the deal with the people to accept a young, inexperienced African-American as their president. Obama had virtually clinched the nomination when white working men in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia poured out to vote and carried their states comfortably for Hillary Clinton. It was not because of unalterable affection for her.

Obama’s difficulty in reaching the 50 percent mark reflects an overwhelmingly white undecided vote at 10 to 15 percent.

These were target voters for Obama when he ventured into the war zones to demonstrate his mettle as a future commander in chief. He looked good, sounded good and committed no serious gaffes. But sitting by the popular Gen. David Petraeus and disagreeing with his military judgment may not have been the way to win over undecided white working men.

The toughest interrogation of Obama was CBS anchor Katie Couric’s in Jordan last Tuesday. She asked four different times whether the troop surge he had opposed was instrumental in reducing violence in Iraq. Each time, Obama answered straight from talking points by citing “the great effort of our young men and women in uniform.” That sounded like the old politics. He would have sounded more like a new politician if he had simply said, “Yes, the strategy did work.” That would have infuriated anti-war activists, but not enough for them to drop Obama.

Several Democrats I have talked to noted that recent Democratic presidents got elected with a minority of the vote and also that McCain is further below the 50 percent standard than Obama. But McCain, running a flawed campaign in a big Democratic year, is dangerously close. He still could back in unless Obama closes the deal.

 

 

 

Jamie Barnett
The Washington Post
July 28, 2008

Did you know that your safety and security depend on gay men and lesbians?

An estimated 65,000 gay men and lesbians serve in the U.S. armed forces, though by law they cannot be open about their sexuality. As we fight two wars, our military is stretched thin. Those gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and members of the Coast Guard are essential.

Without them, we would stretch to a dangerous point the length of time troops must spend in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without them, we would lose crucial military leadership, expertise and skills. Without them, we would have a hard time meeting our military commitments worldwide.

A hearing of a House Armed Services subcommittee this week offered a critical opportunity to break the silence surrounding how military preparedness has been hurt by the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gay men and lesbians from serving openly. The military has spent more than $363 million since 1994 to throw out gay men and lesbians whose expertise we desperately need, including expensively trained and hard-to-recruit linguists, jet pilots, cyber-warriors, doctors and combat-tested master sergeants. This purging of talent takes place at the same time the military, in order to meet its manpower quotas, feels compelled to increase the number of waivers it grants to people who have had problems with the law – in some instances almost twice as many as in years past.

These patriotic gay and lesbian warriors want to serve. Yes, some “out” themselves to leave the service, usually because they have been made to feel unwelcome, unappreciated or even unsafe in their units. An estimated 3,000 gay service members depart each year rather than continue to serve under a policy that forces them to deceive their fellow warriors and to contradict the honor and integrity that are core values in our services. Those members who stay make an incredibly difficult personal sacrifice.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” also damages our nation’s ability to recruit the best and the brightest. Competing with industry is hard enough already. The military estimates that only three in 10 high school graduates are qualified to serve; the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy further reduces the pool of eligible recruits. And would you want to serve when you have to hide an essential part of yourself or would be unable to tell the chain of command about discrimination or harassment without risking your career?

Some fear a backlash from heterosexual service members, but I don’t. I grew up in Mississippi and attended segregated schools until I was a sophomore in high school. Integration was tumultuous, but it led to respect, understanding and, ultimately, a greater opportunity for blacks and whites alike to succeed. I believe integration of lesbians and gay men in the military will be easier: It has already taken place. Sadly, we just don’t recognize the gay service members among us for who they are.

It is up to Congress and the president to craft policy on gay men and lesbians serving in the military, but it is the responsibility of senior military commanders to advise our nation’s leaders on how law and policy affect military readiness. I raised this issue in 2003 when a task force I served on worked on the Navy’s diversity strategy. Senior leaders must state plainly how “don’t ask, don’t tell” affects recruiting, retention and our ability to develop essential military skills. They should speak up about how it affects military honor and integrity. It is our duty, something military leaders understand well, to speak openly of how “don’t ask, don’t tell” injures our military and weakens our preparedness.

 

Michael Barone
U.S. News & World Report
July 28, 2008

Sometimes public opinion doesn’t flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. Gas at $3 a gallon didn’t change anybody’s mind about energy issues; $4 a gallon gas did. Evidently, the experience of paying more than $50 for a tankful gets people thinking we should stop worrying so much about global warming and the environmental dangers of oil wells on the outer continental shelf and in Alaska. Drill now. Nuke the caribou.

Our system of divided government and litigation-friendly regulation makes it hard for our society to do things, and easy for adroit lobbyists and lawyers to stop them. Nations with more centralized power and less democratic accountability find it easier: France and Japan generate most of their electricity by nuclear power and Chicago, where authority is more centralized and accountability less robust than in most of the country, depends more on nuclear power than almost all the rest of the nation.

In contrast, lobbyists and litigators for environmental restriction groups have produced energy policies that I suspect future generations will regard as lunatic. We haven’t built a new nuclear plant in some 30 years, since a Jane Fonda movie exaggerated their dangers. We have allowed states to ban oil drilling on the outer continental shelf, prompted by the failure of 40- or 50-year-old technology in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969, though current technology is much better, as shown by the lack of oil spills in the waters off Louisiana and Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina.

We have banned oil drilling on a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that is godforsaken tundra (I have been to the North Slope oil fields, similar terrain – I know) for fear of disturbing a herd of caribou – a species in no way endangered or scarce.

The ANWR ban is the work of environmental restriction groups that depend on direct-mail fundraising to pay their bills and keep their jobs. That means they must always claim the sky is falling. They can’t get people to send a check or mouse-click a donation because they did a good job, the restrictions they imposed on the Alaska pipeline in the 1970s have done a good job in preserving the environment or because clean air acts of the past have vastly reduced air pollution.

ANWR is a precious cause for them because it can be portrayed (dishonestly) as a national treasure and because the pressure for drilling there has been unrelenting. Democrats have enlisted solidly in their army, and they have also been able to recruit Republicans who wanted to get good environmental scorecards to impress enviro-conscious voters.

Now all that is in danger, because the pain of paying $60 for a tank of gas has persuaded most Americans to worry less about the caribou or the recurrence of an oil spill that happened 39 years ago. Democratic leaders are preventing Congress from voting on continental shelf and ANWR drilling or oil shale development because they fear their side would lose and are making the transparently absurd claim that drilling won’t lower the price of oil. They’re scampering to say that they would allow drilling somewhere – mostly in places where oil companies haven’t found any oil.

In a country with less in the way of checks and balances, which can be gamed by adroit lobbyists and litigators, we would be building more nuclear plants and drilling offshore and in ANWR. We would be phasing out corn ethanol subsidies that are enriching Iowa farmers and impoverishing Mexican tortilla eaters, and we would be repealing the 54-cent tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol.

On balance, of course, I prefer our system over the more centralized, less accountable systems of France and Japan (and Barack Obama’s Chicago). But it sure does have its costs.

But it also has its benefits: Public opinion, when it has changed as it has with $4 gas, has an effect. Environmental restrictionists like Al Gore have been selling a form of secular religion: We have sinned against Mother Earth, we must atone and suffer, there can be no argument, but we must have faith.

That was an appealing argument to many, perhaps most, Americans when gas was selling for $1.40. It has a much more limited appeal now that gas is selling for $4.10. The time may be coming when our lunatic environmental policies are swept away by a rising tide of common sense.

 

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Join Roland Martin for his weekly sound-off segment on CNN.com Live at 11:10 a.m. Thursday. If you’re passionate about politics, he wants to hear from you.

ACCRA, Ghana (CNN) — “All I want is for my children to get the best education they can.”

That statement, along with so many others, has been a consistent one that I’ve heard on my radio show and in discussions with parents for years, especially those whose children are stuck in inner-city schools with decrepit buildings and a lack of critical resources.

And for the past 20 years, one of the most talked-about solutions for parents stuck in dead-end, failing schools is to give them the option to use vouchers to send their children someplace where they could get a quality education.

Republicans have made vouchers a linchpin of their education overhaul initiatives. Democrats have steadfastly refused, saying it would take vital dollars out of the public school system.

This year’s presidential candidates are lining up right along with their parties. Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, says vouchers are the right way to go to give parents an option for a better education, while Sen. Barack Obama says the GOP has talked and talked about vouchers, and it hasn’t amounted to much more.

But part of the reason why vouchers have been denounced and dismissed is because Democrats have been far too obstinate on the issue, and have not listened to their constituents, especially African-Americans, who overwhelmingly support vouchers.

There is no doubt that on this issue, McCain has it right and Obama has it wrong.

The fundamental problem with the voucher debate is that it is always seen as an either/or proposition. For Republicans, it is the panacea to all the educational woes, and that is nonsensical. For Democrats, it is something that will destroy public education, and that too is a bunch of crap.

I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There simply is no one sure-fire way to educate a child. We’ve seen public schools do a helluva job — I went to them from K through college — and so have private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives. This is the kind of innovation we need, not more efforts to prevent a worthy idea from moving forward.

Obama’s opposition is right along the lines of the National Education Association, and the teachers union is a reliable and powerful Democratic ally. But this is one time where he should have opposed them and made it clear that vouchers can force school districts, administrators and teachers to shape up or see their students ship out.

It is unconscionable to ask a parent to watch as his child is stuck in a failing school or district, and ask him to bank on a politician coming up with more funds to improve the situation. Fine, call vouchers a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but I’d rather have a child getting the best education — now — rather than having to hope and pray down the line.

McCain and Obama have presented comprehensive education plans, and those are noble. But leaving out vouchers does a tremendous disservice to the parents who are fed up with deplorable schools, and allows school districts to operate with impunity and without any real competition.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. He is the author of “Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith.” Please visit his Web site at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/

This article was suggested by R. Damiano.

by Glenn Beck

Editor’s note: Glenn Beck is on CNN Headline News nightly at 7 and 9 ET and also hosts a conservative national radio talk show.

NEW YORK (CNN) — A few days before the Fourth of July, I read a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer that said America didn’t deserve to celebrate its independence this year.

It claimed that all of our so-called atrocities have shamed the memory of our founding fathers and, as a result, we should cancel our parades, put away our fireworks and all sit quietly while we atone for our sins.

I guess that was one way to go.

Another way to go would be to fire up the grills, bring the kids to the beach,and gather the family on a blanket to watch as your tax dollars ignite into colorful bursts.

I’m guessing that most of us chose the second option.

But just because I had fun with friends and family doesn’t mean that I believe America is perfect. It just means that, for one day, I chose to celebrate the fact that America is still closer to perfect than any other country in the history of the world.

For 364 days a year we talk about high gas prices, crooked politicians, and how much people from one political party allegedly hate everyone from the other. But for 24 hours we get to put it all aside and marvel at how a few brave men risked their lives to stand up for what they believed in. Of course, I would prefer we celebrate that every day, but for now, or at least until that Inquirer columnist gets elected president and bans it, I’ll take the one.

As someone who works in the media in New York City, I’ll admit that I am part of the chorus of people who talk about our problems. But there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you also occasionally take the time to talk about the other side. And that’s what I want to do now by asking the question that never seems to be of interest to the mainstream media: What’s right with America?

Let’s start with our much maligned economy. I’m not trying to sugarcoat it, times are definitely tough for an awful lot of families right now. But you know what? We’ve made it through a depression; we’ve made it through wars, oil shocks, and major terrorist attacks and we’re still standing. In fact, we’re not just standing, we’re towering over the rest of the world.

Our economy is almost as big as the next four largest economies on Earth (Japan, Germany, China and Great Britain) combined. The state of California alone has an economy as large as the entire country of France. Illinois has the same GDP as all of Mexico. New York matches the entire GDP of Brazil. Florida’s economy is as large as South Korea’s. Texas has a GDP roughly equal to Canada’s. Michigan’s economy is as large as the entire country of Argentina.

It takes a lot longer to turn around an aircraft carrier than it does a dinghy, but the problem we have is with our ship’s captain — the pea-brains in Washington — not her crew.

What’s right with America? How about the way we educate our children. Sure, I complain a lot about left-wing professors and how some wealthy private universities hoard their billions while charging obscene amounts for tuition, but the truth is that our universities are always ranked among the best in the world.

Students aren’t fleeing America to go to college in Japan, India, or China — it’s the other way around. We open our colleges and universities to more than 80,000 foreign professors, scholars and educators a year and we have more students in college right now than those three countries combined.

What’s right with America? Our world-class universities don’t require you to have an elite family name or Rockefeller-type wealth to get in. We don’t care about your race, gender or nationality. You just have to be smart enough and work hard for it. What a concept, huh?

What’s right with America? How about the way we treat the less fortunate? With no help from our government, Americans gave a record $306 billion to charities last year alone. We give twice as much as the next closest country and, relative to the size of our economies, we give 1,000 percent more than the French.

What’s right with America? It’s not just the wealthy who are generous. Two-thirds of American families making under $100,000 a year give to charity. Compassion is ingrained in our culture like no other.

What’s right with America? How about our supposedly third-world health care system? We spend more on health care per person than Switzerland, Germany, Canada, or any other country you can think of. Do we still have problems? Absolutely, but don’t fall for “the grass is greener” crowd; every country has health care problems.

What’s right with America? We love our country. World Values Survey found that 77 percent of Americans are very proud of their nationality. That puts us in a first place tie with the Irish. Australia was next and no one else was really even close.

I could go on and on, but my point is that we don’t need the so often wished for “change” in this country, we just need perspective.

While most of us inherently know that we’ve won the lottery by living here, we don’t often think about the reasons why.

So, for at least that one day, let’s just remember that America still leads the world in the principles that matter most: The rule of law, freedom of religion, equal rights, freedom from an oppressive government and, fortunately for the Philadelphia Inquirer, freedom of speech.

This article was suggested by R. Damiano

QUESTION:  Who do you think each party should put forth as their VP nominee?  Defend your selection.

July 26, 2008 By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The principal reason why former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has climbed to the top of Sen. John McCain’s practical wish list for vice president is the possibility that he could bring Michigan’s 17 electoral votes to the Republicans for the first time since 1988.

Private polls show Romney could make all the difference in Michigan. A McCain-Romney ticket carries the state by a moderately comfortable margin. With any other running mate, McCain loses Michigan.

George Romney, Mitt’s father, was a Detroit auto executive and the popular three-term governor of Michigan. The younger Romney won the 2008 primary in Michigan over McCain, who had won there in 2000 against George W. Bush.

Jindal Survives
Reports of a decline in the popularity at home of Louisiana’s first-year Gov. Bobby Jindal over his mishandling of more pay for state legislators have been greatly exaggerated. His long-shot chances for the Republican vice presidential nomination remain.

A private Louisiana survey of 800 registered voters taken July 6-8 by The Polling Company shows 60 percent favorable (with 39 percent strongly favorable) and 18 percent unfavorable for Jindal. Those numbers contradict Jindal’s reported precipitous decline after the 37-year-old governor reversed himself twice on the legislative pay issue but ended up opposing it.

A footnote: A select audience of New Hampshire Republicans was startled Tuesday when McCain told them “you are really going to like” Minnesota’s 47-year-old Tim Pawlenty — what sounded like a possible tip-off of his vice presidential choice. But McCain’s intimates are accustomed to hearing him praise Pawlenty.

Fundraiser Obama
Sen. Barack Obama is employing his fundraising prowess to raise money not only for his presidential campaign but also for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, seeking a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Recipients of Obama’s summer mailing include many lobbyists who are called “switch hitters” in political parlance — contributors to lawmakers of both parties who seek to open Capitol Hill doors to them on a bipartisan basis.

A footnote: While Democrats have a good shot at picking up four more Senate seats to put their majority at 55 to 45, collecting the 60 seats needed to break filibusters without Republican help seems out of reach. “We must have a deadlock-proof Democratic majority,” Obama said in his letter.

Gramm Gone
Although former Sen. Phil Gramm’s resignation as national co-chairman of McCain for President was considered to be essential by the campaign, he resigned on his own without being asked.

As this column reported a week ago, Gramm apologized to his old friend and political ally John McCain for embarrassing his candidacy, and McCain told him not to worry about it. Shortly thereafter, Gramm resigned rather than become an attack target for having called America “a nation of whiners” whose recession is “mental.”

The same McCain strategists who felt Gramm had to go also consider his departure a major loss. McCain valued Gramm’s economic and political advice.

Endangered Democrat
Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a 71-year-old, 12-term congressman from a solidly Democratic Wilkes-Barre, Pa., district, may be the only incumbent House Democrat to lose in what shapes up as a disastrous 2008 for the Republicans.

Kanjorski is running behind Lou Barletta, the Republican Mayor of Hazleton, Pa., who has made a national reputation as a foe of illegal immigration. Kanjorski has a big money advantage and is waging a substantial television campaign, while Barletta has not yet been on television. But Barletta has 89 percent identification in the district, four to one positive. Kanjorski, who voted against the Iraqi troop surge, has been under fire for saying he “forced” President Bush to make the move.

A footnote: Barletta did not show up for Sen. McCain’s rally Wednesday in Wilkes-Barre. No more than 600 of the 2,500 theater seats were filled for the event.

 

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

By John R. Bolton

July 26, 2008

SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it “allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer.”

If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

These troubling comments were not widely reported in the generally adulatory media coverage given the speech, but they nonetheless deserve intense scrutiny. It remains to be seen whether these glimpses into Obama’s thinking will have any impact on the presidential campaign, but clearly they were not casual remarks. This speech, intended to generate the enormous publicity it in fact received, reflects his campaign’s carefully calibrated political thinking. Accordingly, there should be no evading the implications of his statements. Consider just the following two examples.

First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, “The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.” Having earlier proclaimed himself “a fellow citizen of the world” with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved “that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because “the world stood as one.” The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator’s own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik — “eastern politics,” a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance — continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.

But there are larger implications to Obama’s rediscovery of the “one world” concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War’s realities.

The successes Obama refers to in his speech — the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism — were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by “one-worldism.” Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.

Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: “The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”

This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn’t see all these “walls” as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that “walls” exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side — our side — defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively “tearing down walls” with our adversaries.

Throughout the Berlin speech, there were numerous policy pronouncements, all of them hazy and nonspecific, none of them new or different than what Obama has already said during the long American campaign. But the Berlin framework in which he wrapped these ideas for the first time is truly radical for a prospective American president. That he picked a foreign audience is perhaps not surprising, because they could be expected to welcome a less-assertive American view of its role in the world, at least at first glance. Even anti-American Europeans, however, are likely to regret a United States that sees itself as just one more nation in a “united” world.

The best we can hope for is that Obama’s rhetoric was simply that, pandering to the audience before him, as politicians so often do. We shall see if this rhetoric follows him back to America, either because he continues to use it or because Sen. John McCain asks voters if this is really what they want from their next president.

John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option.”

 

Susan Estrich
Creators Syndicate
July 26, 2008

The Sunday opinion section is gone. So is the book review section. So are literally hundreds of the reporters I have come to respect over years of reading my local paper. What is happening in my hometown is happening in every city across the country. Layoffs. Cutbacks. Slow death.

Meanwhile, talk show hosts, who don’t pretend to “report,” who don’t try to be “objective,” who will tell you themselves, if they are being honest, that they are in the business of entertainment, sign record contracts. I don’t begrudge them their riches. They’re making money because their shows do. But for those of us who care about the role of a free press in a democracy, something is askew.

Not long ago, a fine newspaper reporter who covers the Supreme Court came to lecture in one of my classes about some of the cases then pending before the court. Frankly, I didn’t expect that many of my students would be familiar with his work. But I was wrong.

How many of you read the paper every day? he asked them. A surprisingly large number of hands went up. We looked at each other, puzzled. We both knew that circulation was dropping, that young people don’t buy the paper in the same numbers that their parents did. How many of you read it on paper, I asked. Most of the hands went down. They read the paper; they just didn’t buy it.

I’m not going to mourn the decreasing demand for newsprint. Let the trees live. The danger of reading newspapers online, I have discovered, is that you miss all the stories you don’t think you’d be interested in until they catch your eye as you’re turning the page. When I read papers online, I always read the political and legal stories, but I miss an interesting book review, a surprising sidebar, an obituary that doesn’t make it to the front index. The challenge for newspapers as they go online and off paper is to find a way to tell me about all the good stuff inside that I don’t know I’m interested in until I read the first few lines or see the picture.

The bigger problem goes to the question of standards. “All the news that’s fit to print,” the motto of the New York Times, isn’t really about printing, but about standards of fitness. It’s about old-fashioned values like professionalism and fairness, about good and demanding editors who take the time to make sure you’ve checked the facts and given everyone a chance to respond before they put the story in the paper. It’s about the difference between the news pages and the editorial pages, the difference between reporting the news and commenting on it, and the need to respect that line and make sure readers can see where it is being drawn.

I’m not a reporter and I don’t pretend to be. I write commentary. I offer opinions. I do so based on many, many years of working in politics and teaching law, not to mention raising kids and taking care of family. I try to be fair and I value my reputation for being honest, but I don’t pretend to be objective. That’s not my job.

But it should be somebody’s. It has always been the job of newspaper reporters and editors to live by a set of rules that ensure that when you read a “news story,” as opposed to an opinion column, you can assume that a substantial effort has been made to document the facts, to tell a story rather than opine about it, to ask the tough questions and fairly report the answers. Moreover, when it comes to news, the evening news still tends to be guided by the morning paper. If the latter declines in quality, so will the former.

Of course, some television and radio reporters try to live by these standards, as do some bloggers. The problem is that the most-watched programs on television, the reporters who make the most money and the sites that get the most hits are not necessarily the best journalistically.

In all the years I’ve done television, I can count the number of times someone has complimented me for what I said. People watch TV; they don’t listen to it. If you do well, they’ll tell you how good you looked, not how smart or knowledgeable you sounded. What’s worse, when it comes to the substance, you get attention not for being well-informed and reasonable, but for being out there and outrageous, even if you know nothing about what you’re talking about.

I want to be a political pundit, pretty young girls and boys tell me all the time. No, they don’t want to actually do politics, study politics, learn the game. They just want to get paid to look good and give opinions. Lawyers barely out of law school, who have never argued a case in their lives, decide to be legal commentators. And too many good reporters, looking for television slots and the paid speeches that come next and trying to dodge the pink slips that are everywhere, are aiming to play the same game. They may win, but the rest of us are losing.

David S. Broder
The Washington Post
July 24, 2008

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture.

Foreign leaders, who can read the polls as well as anyone, would go out of their way not to embarrass a man who may, six months from now, be president of the United States.

Obama prepares thoroughly for the big occasions. He is almost always well-briefed, and he was traveling in sharp company – with Sens. Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel – so the chance of a major screw-up was minimal.

And, as millions of Americans who watched the primary campaign learned, Obama is invariably articulate and well-spoken. There would be no verbal gaffes.

So where was the risk? It existed mainly in the minds of some journalists and, perhaps, in the musings of Obama staffers who wanted to hype the journey. Acknowledging all that, it is still the case that Obama has pulled it off in great style and thereby enhanced his credentials for the Oval Office.

What he could not have guaranteed was the role that luck played. When, on the first day of the trip, he stepped onto the basketball court at the air base in Kuwait and sent his first three-point shot cleanly through the basket, you knew the gods had decided to favor him.

He could not have known in advance that on the very day he left Chicago, President Bush would suddenly reverse six years of policy and send a high-ranking State Department official off to a meeting with Iranian and European nuclear negotiators.

He could not have guessed that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, eager to promise his constituents that the American occupation would not be endless, would persuade Bush to declare agreement to “a time horizon” for U.S. troops leaving.

And he could not have assumed that a Maliki spokesman, briefing reporters on the meeting with Obama, would volunteer the comment that “the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal” of U.S. troops.

Suddenly, long-standing Obama policies – direct talks with Iran and a 16-month timetable for withdrawal – seemed to be ratified by events.

So it was a confident and contented Obama who faced reporters in Jordan Tuesday in his first news conference of the trip. He handled the expected question about his meeting with Gen. David Petraeus by saying he perfectly understood the U.S. commander’s opposition to any timetable that would limit his options, but that as commander in chief, he, Obama, would weigh Iraq’s needs against those in Afghanistan – and also the domestic economy.

It was a skillful answer, not rejecting Petraeus’ views but asserting Obama’s own larger responsibility.

On the other hand, his saying there was no way to know what would have happened in Iraq if the United States had followed his advice to start the withdrawal of troops two years ago and oppose the “surge” seemed disingenuous. Obama still has trouble admitting when he is wrong.

But his troubles are minimal compared to John McCain’s, who looks like the odd-man-out in the ongoing foreign policy debate. Having given steadfast support to the policies of both Maliki and George Bush, he has a legitimate complaint: They owed him more consideration in the way they announced the shifts they were suddenly going to make. As it is, McCain appears isolated from trends in both Baghdad and Washington.

McCain’s frustration at the turn of events is something he cannot conceal. The domestic economy was always going to be a problem for him – even before gasoline hit $4 a gallon. But he had a credible position to argue on national security issues, and a record that was consistent and in some respects prescient.

But now the ground has shifted – and his opponent was right where he needed to be to capture the advantage. July has been a cruel month for McCain.

Kathleen Parker
The Orlando Sentinel
July 24, 2008

Drum roll. Suspense. Who will it be?

In this corner, we have Stormin’ Mormon Mitt Romney. In the other, we have Brain-Buster Bobby Jindal.

Amid speculation that John McCain will announce his vice presidential pick soon, political nail-biters have begun placing bets. Favorites include Louisiana Gov. Jindal, with whom McCain is meeting Wednesday, and former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, whose resume is familiar.

Can McCain’s former foe become his new best friend? Romney would bring more than squeaky clean qualifications and youthful good looks to the ticket. New polling in Michigan by Ayres, McHenry & Associates shows that Romney gives McCain a significant jump – “off the charts,” as someone familiar with the poll described it – and makes him competitive in a state that hasn’t voted Republican since 1988.

Given the importance of even that single state, where 17 electoral votes are at stake, Romney would seem a logical choice. Then again, as conservatives frequently note, logic doesn’t always work with McCain, who seems to enjoy doing the opposite of what he senses people want him to do.

Although Jindal is less well-known, and though he insists he’s not interested in the VP slot, he’s got rising star power. Importantly, he’s young – and looks even younger. If he had cheeks, you’d want to pinch them.

Reed-thin, Jindal has the metabolism of a hummingbird and the kind of intellect that makes Vulcans uneasy. Often referred to as the smartest man in the room, Jindal’s mind can wrap around anything but the idea of repose.

More to an important point, he’s not another white guy. The son of Indian immigrants, Jindal is both the Republican Barack Obama and the anti-Obama. To a vote, he’s a fiscal and social pro-life conservative who came to the governorship on a promise of reform in the wake of Katrina.

While then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco told President Bush she’d get back to him about what she needed after the hurricane, Jindal orchestrated a national emergency system of volunteers, faith-based agencies, retail providers and truckers to donate and deliver supplies to the drenched and homeless.

That can-do spirit is a thread that runs through Jindal’s life. Before becoming governor, he served in the House. Before that, he was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, taking the state’s bankrupt Medicaid program from a $400 million deficit to a $220 million surplus. He also served as president of the University of Louisiana System.

Oh, and he delivered his third child when his wife awoke in the middle of the night in labor. Yeah, but can he juggle machetes?

In one of his toughest challenges as governor, Jindal vetoed a bill that would have doubled state legislators’ pay. Jindal had long opposed the raise, but also had promised to let the Legislature handle its own business. Caught between two vows, Jindal erred on the side of ethics, admitting that he had made a mistake in promising too much.

“As with all mistakes, you can either correct them or compound them – I am choosing to correct my mistake now,” Jindal said at a news conference.

Too good to be true? Perhaps. If Jindal gets close to the White House, Americans will hear about his conversion to Catholicism. He was smitten in high school by a young lady who stole his heart and led him to the cross. In college, he witnessed and wrote about an exorcism.

Though such talents might be needed in the nation’s capital, Hindu converts to Catholicism who admit to belief in demons have some ’splainin’ to do.

It seems clear that Romney would agree to serve as McCain’s wingman. He has stumped for McCain for several months after graciously dropping his own candidacy for president.

Jindal has a tougher call. He’s been governor for only six months and has the unique opportunity to create a new state, literally, from the ground up. Politically, the fallout would be significant, as Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, a Democrat and brother of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, would take Jindal’s place.

Staying put might allow him time to further burnish his executive credentials while honoring his contract with Louisiana voters. Jindal’s resume would suggest that he’s always been a man in a hurry, but there’s no rush for the nation’s junior governor.

When you’re Bobby Jindal, the night really is young.

Stephen Braun
Los Angeles Times
July 24, 2008

WASHINGTON – The competing tax plans laid out by Barack Obama and John McCain would add trillions of dollars to the national debt and could add to the tax system’s complexity, a nonpartisan tax research group concluded in a report released Wednesday.

Both campaigns have insisted that their plans to continue many Bush-era tax cuts and offer new reductions would aid the economy without requiring massive new spending. But the Washington-based Tax Policy Center warned that under either candidate, “the debt would likely continue to rise as it has over the past eight years.”

Obama’s plan – a combination of cuts targeted to middle- and low-income Americans and increases for the wealthy – would increase the national debt by an estimated $3.4 trillion over the next decade, the center reported. Under a similar analysis, McCain’s tax proposals – largely a continuation of the Bush tax reductions – would add $5 trillion. The current national deficit stands at $9.5 trillion.

Both candidates would maintain the Bush tax cuts for the working poor and middle-income taxpayers. But they differ drastically on how to target the richest Americans.

The report estimated that under McCain’s plan, middle-income Americans who make between $38,000 and $66,000 a year would see average tax cuts of up to $1,400 annually in 2012. But McCain would aid the wealthiest 1 percent – those who make more than $603,000 per year – with annual tax reductions averaging $127,000.

Under Obama’s plan, the tax center reported, middle-income taxpayers would have tax cuts averaging $2,100 in 2012. But the affluent top 1 percent of taxpayers would see increases on average of $38,000 a year.

Leonard E. Burman, a Tax Policy Center senior fellow who was among a team of analysts who reviewed the candidates’ plans, said in an interview that important portions of Obama’s and McCain’s plans have yet to be fleshed out.

Burman also said that while the candidates’ plans attempt to streamline the tax system, they create potential new complexities for taxpayers.

Obama and McCain would continue the alternative minimum tax, long criticized for adding to the tax bite and complexity for middle-class and many upper-middle-class taxpayers.

McCain would allow taxpayers to circumvent the AMT with an “optional alternative tax system” that could cause new chaos.

“If the new alternative tax system does not offer significant tax cuts, having to figure taxes under two systems and estimate which one would be better would add complexity, not reduce it,” the center cautions.

And although Obama seeks to aid low-income taxpayers with a proposal in which the government would prepare their tax returns, and they would approve them, he has committed only vaguely to “fiscally responsible” AMT reform, the center notes.

Another concern, Burman noted, is that Obama and McCain have presented “somewhat differing” versions of their plans on the campaign trail than what they have issued on the Web and in position papers.

July 21, 2008

 

ROBERT NOVAK

I asked one of the Republican Party’s smartest, most candid heavy hitters whether John McCain really has a chance to defeat Barack Obama in this season of Republican discontent. ”No, if the campaign is about McCain,” he replied. ”Yes, if it’s about Obama.” That underlines the importance of Obama’s visit to Iraq, beginning weeks of scrutiny under a GOP spotlight.

Four years ago, I asked the same question about George W. Bush and John Kerry, and he gave the same answer. He proved prophetic because Bush’s campaign made Kerry the issue, and Kerry flunked the test.

Obama is a far more interesting personality and an incomparably more appealing candidate than Kerry. But why then, in a year when the nation clearly has rejected the GOP, does McCain have a real chance to be elected? Why does Obama have trouble breaking the 50 percent barrier, nationally and in battleground states?

The answer, as seen by McCain’s closest associates, is the issue they hope to ride to victory: leadership. They believe voters are hesitant to fully accept this charismatic newcomer because of doubts about whether he can lead the nation. Now, in visiting Iraq, Obama tests that issue. In what on the surface looms as a public relations coup for Obama, the McCain camp will be scrutinizing — and commenting on — his every move.

Obama may have been goaded into visiting the war zone by taunts from Sen. Lindsey Graham, McCain’s friend and adviser, that the Democratic candidate had not been to Iraq since January 2006. But once he decided on going to Europe, Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama had Republican loyalists worried sick. Predictably greeted as a conquering hero by Bush-hating Europeans, a champion by apprehensive Afghans and a liberator by war-weary Iraqis, Obama may get the big bounce in the polls that eluded him when he clinched the nomination.

Nevertheless, Obama in Iraq spotlights the question that McCain wants asked: Who can best lead America in a dangerous world? The difficulty posed for Obama by the leadership issue was demonstrated last week, when he preceded his fact-finding mission with a speech pronouncing that he has not really modified the hard anti-war line he used to defeat Hillary Clinton. (In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama’s emphasis on Iraq — her Senate vote for it, his against it — defeated her.)

Obama has been cautiously executing a Nixonian post-primary pivot toward the center. He weathered outrage by his ”net-roots” bloggers over his vote for the national security wiretapping bill. But hedging on Iraq was vastly more dangerous, particularly when it appeared he was modifying his famous pledge to remove U.S. troops within 16 months after becoming president.

So, in his pre-trip speech last Tuesday, he reaffirmed the 16-month deadline (though in less robust style than on the primary election circuit): ”We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months.” But he added, cryptically, ”We’ll keep a residual force” for ”targeting any remnants of al-Qaida,” ”protecting” remaining U.S. troops and officials, and training Iraqi security forces provided they ”make political progress.”

How big would this more or less permanent ”residual” force be? Obama did not say, but advisers leaked it could reach 50,000. That would be far too much for the netroots to swallow, but a token force of about 2,000 would be ludicrous. Obama will face a test of how he handles this after he meets in Iraq with the esteemed Gen. David Petraeus.

Obama’s speech continued his campaign’s theme depicting a McCain administration as Bush’s third term, continuing present Iraq policy. But the spotlight of scrutiny will be on Obama, not McCain, because of his decision to visit Iraq, and therein lies McCain’s hope for victory.

 

by Dee Dee Myers

July 21, 2008

Tomorrow, CBS’s Katie Couric will interview Barack Obama from Jordan. On Wednesday, ABC’s Charlie Gibson will chat with him from Israel. And on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams will do the honors from Germany. Call it the presidential campaign equivalent of Shooting the Moon.

And to think, a few short months ago the Washington establishment was buzzing about the press’s pending dilemma: With Obama and John McCain looking like the all-but-certain nominees of their respective parties, how would the media choose between its new crush, Obama, and its long-time paramour, McCain? The Illinois senator has been a media darling since he burst onto the scene at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2004, and during the Democratic primary season, he bested Hillary Clinton in both quantity of coverage (he got more) and tenor (his was way more positive). But McCain has gotten so much favorable media attention over the years that he often joked that the press was his political base. In a head-to-head competition, who would win?

So far, the answer is clear: Obama is The One. In the first quarter of the general election, he has simply gotten more and better coverage than McCain. For those who need more evidence than the enormous press entourage that is treating Obama’s current trip not like the campaign swing of a presidential candidate, but like the international debut of the New American President, there are several new studies which help quantify the disparity.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which evaluates more than 300 newspaper, magazine, and television stories each week, found that from June 9 (after Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination) until July 13, Obama was more prominently covered every single week. During one particular week, July 7–13, McCain was a significant presence in 48 percent of the stories—but Obama met that mark in 77 percent of the pieces. Similarly, the Tyndall Report, a media monitoring group, found that Obama received substantially more media attention.

I can only imagine what the gap must be like this week, as Obama continues to meet with world leaders and adoring crowds, while the mere presence of media’s biggest and brightest stars stamps each and every event as important!

Given all that, it’s not surprising that voters, particularly those of the Republican persuasion, think the media is more or less in Obama’s pocket. A recent survey by Rasmussen found that 49 percent of the likely voters they talked to believed that reporters would favor Obama in their coverage, while just 14 percent said the same about McCain. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans thought the press would try and help Obama win, while only 21 percent of Democrats thought journalists were in bed with McCain. Complaints about bias are only exacerbated when the New York Times (the bête noire of the right) rejects an opinion piece written by McCain comparing his position on Iraq to Obama’s—just days after the Times ran a similar piece by Obama.

Suspicions of pro-Obama bias began in the primaries. A Pew survey in late May and early June found that 37 percent of Americans believed that Obama received preferential coverage; only eight percent said the same about his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton.

There are lot of “explanations” for the lopsided coverage: Obama is new and what’s new is “news.” As the first African-American to run a serious race, let alone win a major party’s nomination, Obama is running an historic campaign. Obama has created a “movement,” and Americans are simply more interested in him than in his opponents. Obama is running a smarter campaign, and he knows how to court media attention. It’s also true that intense media coverage is a double- edged sword: the attention is great when things are going well, but it can doom a candidate if and when things start to go badly. And so far, Obama has had way more good days than bad days. Each of those rationales is largely true—and somewhat less than satisfying.

At the end of the day, this will be a long campaign, and what’s true in July may not be true in November. But what seems indisputably true—to quote another dazzling young Democrat who received disproportionately favorable media attention, John Kennedy—is this: “Life is unfair.”

 

David S. Broder
The Washington Post
July 21, 2008

Last Wednesday morning, the Washington Post published a poll of registered voters giving Barack Obama an eight-point lead – largely because the voters said they trusted him more than John McCain on handling their No. 1 issue, the economy, by an astounding 19 percentage points.

That noon, I had lunch with two veteran Republican operatives not working in the McCain campaign and asked them what they would recommend for the Arizona senator.

“Get Alan Greenspan to run with you,” said the first. “Or Warren Buffett,” the second offered.

Neither of those celebrated financial wizards is likely to be available. But it got me thinking about the question of whether the vice presidential choice offers McCain a way to deal with his problem. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone, asking the same question of other Republicans.

Several suggested that McCain has been so candid about his own lack of expertise in economics that he cannot hope to build personal credibility on that issue. Instead, he could be well advised to tell the public that he wants his running mate to be the “deputy president” for domestic affairs, while McCain handles the issues of war, peace and national security.

But who?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did not equivocate. “I’m for Bobby Jindal,” the freshman governor of Louisiana, he said. “He’s the smartest governor in the country. He’s got youth, energy, optimism.” And, Gingrich said, as the son of Indian immigrants, “Jindal represents the most successful entrepreneurial culture in the world.”

Several others expressed admiration for Jindal, but as the afternoon wore on there were three other names that came up more often – though each had notable drawbacks.

One was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He showed his financial prowess by building a multibillion-dollar journalistic enterprise, specializing in Wall Street and employing all the high-tech tools of the new media. Then he jumped into politics, running as the Republican candidate for mayor after being a lifelong Democrat. Lavishly self-financed, he won twice in that Democratic city and then declared himself an independent.

Bloomberg has been an innovative, successful mayor, but one person I interviewed said that, given his political history, “there would be an absolute donnybrook” at the GOP convention if McCain picked him. Besides, this Bloomberg friend said, the only job the mayor wants is secretary of state, “and he’s not qualified for that.”

The second name I heard was Rob Portman, the former trade representative and budget director in the Bush administration and, before that, an admired member of the House of Representatives. Portman is plenty smart, very smooth and respected on Capitol Hill and abroad.

He is from Cincinnati – in the always crucial swing state of Ohio – and his many friendships on both sides of the aisle in Congress could be an asset to McCain in dealing with what is likely to be a Democratic majority.

But the problem is, as one Republican told me, “he is totally tied to the Bush administration,” which he left just a year ago. “As budget director, he had to sign off on everything they did.”

The third and final name that was frequently mentioned was Mitt Romney, McCain’s closest challenger for the nomination. Like Bloomberg, he built a spectacularly successful private-sector career for himself before winning his first public office as governor of Massachusetts. He has strong family ties to Michigan, a potential battleground, and he won friends in many other places while campaigning for president.

On paper, Romney looks perfect – great looks, a wonderful family and squeaky clean. But there is a problem.

McCain, who rarely develops a strong personal distaste for another politician, Democrat or Republican, expressed disdain for Romney, publicly and privately, when they were opponents. He came to believe that Romney was a serial flip-flopper, devoid of strong convictions. He was not alone in that judgment, but for McCain, that was a serious failing.

Since their contest ended, Romney has proved his loyalty by joining McCain on several successful fundraising trips. Many Republicans outside the intimate McCain circle are lobbying hard for him to pick Romney.

But McCain relies on his instincts for the big decisions, and I can’t tell whether he has really abandoned his initial thumbs-down judgment about Romney. He clearly needs help from someone to compete with Obama on the economy. Greenspan and Buffett aren’t going to do it for him.

Washington Post
July 20, 2008

PIERRE, S.D. – In a victory for antiabortion forces, doctors in South Dakota are now required to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the procedure “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit last week lifted a preliminary injunction that prevented the language from taking effect. A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, which runs the state’s only abortion clinic, said doctors will begin reciting the script to patients as early as this week.

On another front, South Dakota voters will be asked in a Nov. 4 referendum to consider broad limits on abortion for the second time since 2006. The ballot measure includes exceptions for rape, incest and the woman’s health that were not part of the 2006 wording rejected by voters.

Antiabortion forces in South Dakota have been trying for years to halt the procedure and to build a winnable challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide.

A law that took effect July 1 requires doctors to ask a woman seeking an abortion if she wants to see a sonogram of the fetus. About 700 abortions are performed in South Dakota each year.

The doctors’ script that officially took effect Friday has been tied up in court since 2005, when Planned Parenthood challenged a law that instructed physicians what to tell abortion patients. Under the law, doctors must say that the woman has “an existing relationship” with the fetus that is protected by the U.S. Constitution and that “her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.” Also, the doctor is required to say that “abortion increases the risk of suicide ideation and suicide.”

The message must be delivered no earlier than two hours before the procedure. The woman must say in writing that she understands.

Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post Writers Group
July 19, 2008

Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast – a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins – would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Reagan earned the right to speak there, because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final “tear down this wall” liquidation. When President Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop?

What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 – who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap – called “a Europe whole and free”?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It’s as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history – “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” – when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone.

Obama may think he’s King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

After all, in the words of his own slogan, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” which, translating the royal “we,” means: “I am the one we’ve been waiting for.” Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium, until general ridicule – it was pointed out that he was not yet president – induced him to take it down.

He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, “you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish” – a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how “embarrassing” it is that Europeans are multilingual but “we go over to Europe, and all we can say is, ‘merci beaucoup.’” Obama speaks no French.

His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism … that you come out of your isolation. … Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall – I’m no expert on this – Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

Larry Eichel
Philadelphia Inquirer
July 18, 2008

What Barack Obama is to do in the coming days sounds like a no-brainer for a presumptive nominee with limited foreign-policy experience.

Go overseas. Visit the troops. Drop by the Middle East. Hobnob with major European leaders. Try to avoid gaffes. Look presidential.

Except that historians say no one in his position has done it before.

Not Jimmy Carter in 1976. Or Ronald Reagan in 1980. Or Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992, George W. Bush in 2000.

Then again, none of them was trying to get elected president in a time of war.

“If Obama says he represents a new politics, he’s certainly smashing an old paradigm by going,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, of Rice University. “And for 10 days, he’ll own the media. It’s gigantic for him.”

The Democratic candidate, in his continuing attempt to establish his national-security credentials in a post-Sept. 11 world, is embarking on an expedition that reportedly will take him to Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain.

Exactly when he’s going and where isn’t altogether clear. For reasons of security, official details have been closely guarded. It is known that the three main network news anchors will be with him next week.

Many analysts have described the journey as a savvy move in Obama’s campaign against Republican John McCain – even though it comes with risks attached.
“This is a high-stakes trip,” said veteran Democratic political consultant Robert Shrum. “But voters understand that for America to be strong in the world it’s important to have a president who handles himself well and is liked and admired overseas. And I think that’s what we’ll see with Obama.”

Republican strategist John Feehery highlighted the potential downsides.

“It diverts people from the big issue in the campaign, which is the economy, and it elevates the issues of experience and credentials and whom Americans trust on Iraq, which are strengths for McCain and not Obama,” Feehery said. “This is fraught with peril for him.”

By traveling overseas and visiting the war zones – that part is considered official Senate business, the rest a campaign trip – Obama is trying to address the reservations some voters have about his limited national security resume.

In a Washington Post/ABC News poll out this week, McCain outscored Obama 63 percent to 26 percent on which candidate has better knowledge of world affairs.

Almost three-quarters of respondents said McCain would be a good commander in chief; fewer than half said the same of Obama.

Such voter concerns are among the most significant drags on candidacy of Obama, even though he leads in the polls, and the trip is one way to quiet them.

This assumes, of course, that his performance abroad is seen as appropriate – not acting as if he already were president, or being overly critical of U.S. policy on foreign soil, or getting embroiled in local disputes – and free of mistakes.

The latter is not a given, as McCain demonstrated in March. The presumptive Republican nominee, in Iraq on a Senate trip, made a widely reported misstatement, saying that Iran was helping al-Qaida operatives in Iraq rather than Shiite extremists.

McCain’s error, which he corrected after a helpful whisper from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., had little lasting impact. But that trip didn’t get the attention this one will.

“If all goes well for Obama, he’ll be able to start chipping away at McCain’s advantages on foreign policy and national security experience,” said Bruce Buchanan, an expert on presidential politics at the University of Texas. “It’s also a way to get the attention of a somnambulant (American) public in the middle of the summer.”  (On a side note:  “somnambulant” is such a cool word that I will give the first person to use it correctly in class discussions on the first day 20 pts. extra credit – Kautzman)

In another time, Obama might have reason to worry about getting a too-enthusiastic response overseas. Foreign support, particularly from Europeans, has not always been seen as a plus for U.S. presidential candidates. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry was ridiculed for having French relatives and roots.

But now the image of the U.S. in the world is not good, and analysts say Americans are eager to see it improve. So pictures of adoring crowds abroad, should they materialize, might be a political asset at home.

In the Washington Post/ABC News Poll, Obama beat McCain 2-1 when voters were asked which candidate would do more for the U.S. image internationally.

Republicans say Obama was goaded into this trip, at least part of it.

Two months ago, the McCain campaign started providing a count, updated daily, of how long it had been since Obama had been to Iraq (now more than 920 days) as well as constant reminders that he’d never been to Afghanistan. McCain even offered to accompany Obama to Iraq.

Beyond that, McCain’s supporters claim that the visit to Iraq is pure show for Obama; he pledged again this week to withdraw the bulk of U.S. troops within 16 months of taking office.

“Let’s drop the pretense that this is a fact-finding trip and call it what it is: the first-of-its-kind campaign rally overseas,” Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s spokeswoman, said on Fox News on Thursday.

McCain, who said Thursday that he welcomes Obama’s travels, has made several foreign trips since announcing presidential candidacy 15 months ago, most of them on Senate business.

In the last month, he’s made campaign visits to Canada, Colombia and Mexico, trying to highlight his ability to deal with foreign leaders and concerns.

He hasn’t, however, done anything as big as what Obama is about to do.

“It’s a huge event and probably a net plus for Obama,” said Allan Lichtman, a political historian at American University. “McCain couldn’t duplicate it because he wouldn’t get the same kind of reception abroad.”

“It is a gamble, but one worth the risk,” Buchanan said. “To shoot for the job of president is the biggest gamble in American politics.”

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Michael Barone
U.S. News & World Report
July 15, 2008

Sixty years ago this summer, the top story in campaign year 1948 was not the big poll lead of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey or the plight of President Harry Truman. It was the Berlin airlift.

On June 23, the Soviets cut off land access to West Berlin. Gen. Lucius Clay, the military governor in Germany, called for sending convoys up the autobahns, but Allied troops were vastly outnumbered by the Red Army, and everyone feared they would overrun Western Europe unless the United States retaliated with the atomic bomb.

Air Force generals said that there was no way planes could ferry the 8 million pounds of food and coal Berlin would need every day. Secretary of State George Marshall and Joint Chiefs Chairman Omar Bradley, two of America’s most respected generals, felt Berlin was indefensible and we should withdraw. One man disagreed. President Harry Truman, in one crucial meeting after another, said, “We’re not leaving Berlin.”

And we didn’t. Truman had no idea how Berlin could be supplied. But Clay persuaded him to order the Air Force to send more planes that it wanted to keep, pristine and at the ready for other missions, at home. Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg, at the prompting of Gen. Albert Wedemeyer, appointed Gen. William Tunner, who had run the airlift “over the hump” from Burma to China, to run the airlift in Germany.

Tunner imposed brute efficiencies so a plane landed and took off every 90 seconds, and pilots devised ingenious ways to increase payloads and gain favor from Berliners by dropping handkerchiefs full of candy to the children lining the runways at Tempelhof Airport.

This tale of American expertise, ingenuity and generosity is told vividly by Andrei Cherny in “The Candy Bombers.” Today, we know how it ended: the airlift supplied West Berlin all winter until the Soviets opened up land access in May, and Truman was re-elected to almost everyone’s surprise in November. But Truman couldn’t know those things in those first days in June and July. He only knew that we weren’t leaving Berlin.

There are lessons aplenty in this story. One is that the kindness of American soldiers – the candy bombers – can be a national asset. There are many similar stories out of Iraq and Afghanistan, even if today’s media, unlike the media of 1948, are not disposed to tell them.

Another is that presidential determination to avoid defeat and retreat can prevail against the advice of experts. Just as Truman’s Pentagon opposed the airlift, so George W. Bush’s Pentagon mostly opposed the surge strategy in Iraq. In late 2006 and early 2007, the advice from experts, notably the Baker-Hamilton Commission, was the same as that Marshall and Bradley gave Truman: get out with whatever fig leaf you can. The surge, like the airlift, was said to put undue strain on the military, to degrade the readiness of men and materiel for other missions. All these claims were plausible and, in the case of the surge, dominated press coverage and were supported by the incoming leaders in Congress.

But Bush, echoing Truman, said, at least in effect, we’re not leaving Iraq. He embraced the proposals for the surge, which had been worked up by retired Gen. Jack Keane and American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan. He found a commander, Gen. David Petraeus, who had rewritten the Army’s manual on counterinsurgency and who had the character and skill to put the surge into effect.

As was the case with Tunner, the men and women serving under him showed unexpected ingenuity and the ability to adapt to unpredicted turns of events, like the Anbar awakening, which enabled them to convert Iraq’s deadliest province into a friendly, peaceful territory. And, I am sure we will find out sooner or later, those troops also performed acts of generosity, which made their task easier and will produce goodwill that will last for decades to come.

The lessons are clear. Stand fast. Put the right men in charge. And never doubt the capacity of the men and women of the American military, when given the right orders, to perform far better than the experts predict.

Jim Camden
Staff writer
July 13, 2008

Related story: Questions and answers about the primary
More election news: Briefings, multimedia and more

Washington voters have a new system this summer to winnow out candidates for the general election. The first “top two primary,” on Aug. 19, will pare a long list of partisan and nonpartisan offices.

Some races are overflowing with candidates.

The governor’s race has 10 candidates, although most voters would be hard-pressed to name more than incumbent Chris Gregoire and the man she edged out in 2004, Dino Rossi. Gregoire, a Democrat, and Rossi, who lists his party preference as GOP, share the ballot with two Republicans, another Democrat, one candidate each from the Reform Party, the Green Party and the Independent Party, and two who say they have “No Party Preference.”

Other races are merely a warm-up for the general election, with just two candidates in the primary who will face each other in November unless a major write-in campaign knocks one out of the running. The state lands commissioner race seems already set, with incumbent Republican Doug Sutherland facing Democrat Peter Goldmark, as are six legislative races in districts completely or partly in Spokane County.

Party affiliation may be the most confusing thing about the top two primary, which was adopted by a voters initiative in 2004 but only made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this March. A candidate doesn’t file as a member of a party, but does list a party which he or she “prefers.”

Candidates can list their party preference any way they wish, and neither the state nor the parties have any control over it. Rossi lists the GOP, for Grand Old Party, which Republicans often use instead of the formal party name. He says voters know the two names are synonymous; Democrats say he’s trying to fool some voters into thinking he’s not of the same party as an unpopular president.

Other incumbent Republicans, including Sen. Mark Schoesler, of Ritzville, also list GOP after their names. It’s the way he’s listed his name on brochures and signs over the years, he said.

At least one identifiable Republican, county party Chairman Curt Fackler, listed “No Party Preference” in his run for state insurance commissioner. The race already had a Republican candidate, John Adams, and Fackler said he’s hoping to attract votes from independents and Democrats willing to consider someone other than incumbent Mike Kreidler.

However candidates lists their preferences – and however many candidates appear on the ballot for a particular office – the primary is designed to send the two candidates with the most votes on to the general election.

It allows a voter to pick any candidate in any race, but only one candidate in each race. In that sense, the top two primary is similar to the state’s old “blanket primary,” which was in place for about 70 years but ruled illegal by the federal courts in 2003.

Last week, the state’s Democratic and Republican parties argued that the top two is still illegal. It was put on hold by a federal judge, and the state never had the injunction removed after the Supreme Court ruled this system could pass constitutional muster. The state is arguing that a Supreme Court ruling trumps the district court injunction and plans to proceed.

Unlike the blanket primary, there’s no guarantee the general election ballot will feature one Democrat and one Republican. If the first- and second-place vote getters for a particular office are both Republicans, they face off in the November election and there is no Democrat.

That’s true whether the primary race has candidates with differing party preferences or all list the same party, such as the 7th Legislative District race with five candidates who are all Republicans.

That rule doesn’t apply to nonpartisan races, like the judiciary seats. The statewide ballot includes three Supreme Court positions, and the ballot in Spokane and the surrounding counties to the north and west has an Appeals Court race. Counties also elect judges to their Superior Court, where felonies, major civil suits and domestic cases are heard.

A judicial candidate who gets a simple majority in the primary goes on the general election ballot unopposed, so barring an actual tie, any race with only two candidates is essentially decided in the primary.

Even if the race has three or more candidates, if one gets a simple majority of the votes, that candidate appears alone on the general election ballot.

An overview of the top two system

The Spokesman-Review’s election-answer person responds to some of the frequently asked questions about the upcoming Washington state primary:

Q: So, with all these campaign yard signs I’m seeing everywhere, do we have an election or something coming up?

A: Yes, the state primary, also known as the top two primary, is Aug. 19.

Q: Isn’t that a bit early?

A: It might seem that way, particularly for longtime Washington voters who got used to the primary being in September. But last year the Legislature moved the primary to the third Tuesday in August to put more time between the primary and the general election in November.

Q: And they did this to …?

A: To allow more time to print up and mail out the general election ballots. Most of the state votes by mail now, and there were concerns that military members serving overseas wouldn’t get their ballots in time to mark them and get them back if a primary race was so close it needed a recount.

Q: So this year’s primary is like last year’s primary?

A: Only as far as scheduling is concerned. This year the state will debut the top two primary, in which voters get a single ballot with all the candidates’ names on it. A voter can choose a candidate from any party for any race, but only one candidate per office. Last year’s election was primarily for municipal offices, which are nonpartisan, but two years ago, the partisan primary was limited by party and voters had to pick one party’s ballot and select only among that party’s candidates.

Q: That doesn’t sound right. Weren’t we able to pick a Democrat for one office, a Republican for another and even a communist for a third if we wanted in primaries?

A: Once upon a time, but not in 2006. What you’re thinking of is the old blanket primary, which Washington had for about 70 years.

Q: Yeah, I remember that system. Why’d we get rid of that?

Because the federal courts said it was unconstitutional. It infringed on the political parties’ ability to make sure that Democratic nominees were selected by Democrats, Republican nominees by Republicans, and so forth, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in 2003. So the voters opted for the top two primary in an initiative in 2004.

Q: But if it passed in 2004, how come we’re just doing this for the first time in 2008?

A: Because the major political parties, who successfully sued the state to get rid of the blanket primary, also sued over the top two primary. While the suit was pending, the state used an alternate system it cobbled together after the federal court ruling, which required separate party ballots or at least divisions for the parties on a single ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the top two primary could pass constitutional muster until this March.

Q: So now everyone’s happy with this top two system?

A: The major political parties think the way it has been set up for this election is unconstitutional and sent letters to Secretary of State Sam Reed last week to that effect. They’ll probably be back in federal court at some point, but Reed says the election will go on as planned.

Q: How will it work?

A: You’ll get one ballot with all the races on it, partisan offices as well as the nonpartisan races like the judges. Most counties vote completely by mail, so those ballots will arrive around the end of July, and must be postmarked no later than Election Day, which is Aug. 19. It’s a fairly busy election year, so all the statewide executive offices, from governor on down, are on the ballot, as are the U.S. House races (there’s no U.S. Senate race this year in Washington), legislative races and county commissioner posts in many counties.

On the partisan races, candidates will list their party preference, but you can vote for any candidate in any race.

Q: So I can vote for Barack Obama for president but Dino Rossi for governor?

A: No. The presidential primary was in February, so Obama and John McCain won’t be on the Washington ballot again until November. But you could vote for Rossi, who lists his party preference as GOP, for governor; Brad Owen, who lists his party preference as a Democrat, for lieutenant governor; Marilyn Montgomery, who lists the Constitution Party, for secretary of state; and Curt Fackler, who lists no party preference, for insurance commissioner. In the old system, the Democrat who got the most votes and the Republican who got the most votes automatically went to the general election. So did any third party candidate or independent candidate who got a minimum vote threshold. Under this system, the top two vote recipients, regardless of party preference, go on to the general.

Q: Why do you keep saying “party preference” instead of just “party”?

A: Because the candidates are only asked which party they would prefer to have listed. The parties still have no say in determining who gets to call themselves a Democrat or a Republican and can endorse a candidate or not as they see fit. The winner isn’t the party’s nominee.

Q: So in some races, we could have two Democrats or two Republicans in the general election?

A: That’s possible. It will happen in a state House race in the 7th Legislative District, because only Republicans are running. It could happen in a race with candidates of several different party preferences listed, although it’s mathematically unlikely in a race with several candidates from one major party and a single candidate from the other major party.

Q: What about the Greens, the Libertarians, the other minor parties and the independents?

A: In theory, they’ve got the same chance as any candidate listing Democratic or Republican preference. In reality, it could be difficult for them to get to the general election if there’s a Democrat and a Republican in that race.

Q: So this is the way the primary is going to be from now on?

A: Hard to say. We’ve had three different systems since 2004, so it would be a bit of a surprise if something didn’t change between now and 2010. In the meantime, don’t forget: any candidate for any race, but only one candidate per race, and the ballots must be postmarked by Aug. 19.

July 12, 2008

The last Texan to put so much of his money into a campaign was Ross Perot, who entertained the political world in 1992 with charts and rants of impending doom.

But his message about the budget deficit was serious, and he helped push the U.S. government into the black for a fleeting stretch of the late 1990s. Now comes T. Boone Pickens, an 80-year-old Texas oilman who is pushing, of all things, the power of wind. Pickens promises to be nearly as recognizable as the presidential candidates on TV this fall, which may be a tall order given Barack Obama’s fundraising prowess.

Like Perot, Pickens brings a serious message worth listening to.

The oilman-entrepreneur-takeover artist has sponsored nationwide ads with a clearer, more declarative energy proposal than either Democrat Obama or his Republican rival, John McCain, has offered. Obama would sink $150 billion into alternative energy research and raise car fuel standards. McCain would offer a $300 million bounty for the developer of a better electric car battery and favors more oil exploration. But each campaign has spent so much time attacking the other’s plan that it has muddied the energy debate and left a wide opening for Pickens’ straightforward, unifying message.

“It’s our crisis,” Pickens says in his new ads, “and we can solve it.”

Do not underestimate the power of can-do in this political moment. Most Americans are made aware of the problems facing the country every time they fill a gas tank, pay a light bill or worry about health insurance. Stipulate that no one in the government, Democrat or Republican, deserves an energy policy star over the last 35 years. Stipulate that expensive choices lie ahead. But quit pointing fingers and tell us how this can be fixed.

Pickens, a self-described oilman through and through, is an unlikely messenger for the moment. He’s gone from boom to bust and back, the Oil Patch’s equivalent of Al Gore. So Pickens embracing wind is tantamount to Nixon going to China. He says the country can’t “drill its way out of this problem,” that his plan is doable “with the right kind of leadership” and with “everyone pulling together.” Besides proposing a big wind-turbine construction plan, he wants Congress to either extend construction tax credits set to expire at year’s end or establish other incentives for new wind generation.

Oilmen may be the most despised romantics in the American West. But as big dreamers, they have rarely sold short on the possibility of America. Pickens is putting his money behind his idea, funneling big bucks to a TV ad campaign and building a $10 billion wind farm near Pampa, Texas.

His plan, available on www.pickensplan.com, is a relatively simple but big step. Over the coming decade, he wants to build enough turbines in the nation’s “wind belt” from Texas to North Dakota to provide more than 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs. Pickens says that would free up enough natural gas to reduce foreign oil imports by 38 percent, ostensibly accelerating the trend to cars powered by something other than oil.

Such a plan would cost $1.2 trillion, he estimates, but it would allow the United States to keep at least a third of the $700 billion it annually sends abroad for oil. He says the potential is there. This is one of the windiest countries on the planet, and that’s no commentary on our perpetual campaigns. As the cliche goes, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of wind.

Pickens’ Web site is Perotesque in its use of charts and chalk and Texas talk. On his explainer video, you half expect Pickens to mention crazy aunts or vow to get under the hood, as the bantam billionaire Perot often did in the ‘92 and ‘96 elections.

Wind is already catching on in flyover country, where gigantic trucks can be seen hauling massive components of the 1- to 3-megawatt turbines headed for hillsides and bluffs in the wind belt from Washington state to Texas.

About 50,000 Americans are now employed in the wind generation industry, but Pickens’ plan could boost that figure to 500,000, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Reaching 20 percent of the nation’s electrical needs through wind also would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent by 2030, something that could put power behind the 50 percent greenhouse gas reductions agreement at the just-concluded G-8 meetings in Japan.

Last year, I heard Pickens tell a class of high school graduates that he would trade all the money he ever made, all the fancy things he ever enjoyed, for their futures. He urged the 18-year-olds to learn from their failures as much as their successes.

This capacity to correct is an unheralded power of America. The nation’s energy thirst will have to be quenched by something other than oil, and soon. If it takes an oilman to push the politicians out into the wind, so be it.

David Lightman
McClatchy
July 11, 2008

WASHINGTON – The presidential race remains volatile and unpredictable, largely because of a huge bloc of undecided swing voters.

“The middle of the electorate is reasserting itself in this election,” according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.

Among all voters, Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain by 48 percent to 40 percent. Pew polled 2,004 people by land line and cell phone from June 18 to 29.

The White House hopefuls face an unusual number of variables, and as a result “the outlook for the presidential election in midyear is substantially different than at comparable points in time in recent campaigns,” the survey found.

Among those variables:

•Independents make up about one-third of the electorate, and those who have preferences are split virtually evenly between Obama and McCain, with 42 percent for Obama and 41 percent for McCain.

However, some 46 percent of independents are undecided or only lukewarm toward their current choices. Only 28 percent of them said they’d certainly vote for Obama, while only 26 percent said they were sure to back McCain.

•Both candidates “face formidable challenges in consolidating their bases.” McCain has “an enthusiasm problem” among Republicans, while Obama “has a unity problem” among Democrats.

McCain has the bigger hurdle, as Pew found that he “receives far less strong backing from his supporters.” Only 35 percent of McCain’s supporters say they back him strongly, while 55 percent of Obama’s voice strong support for him.

Though Obama is slowly gaining support among backers of Hillary Clinton, his former rival, problems remain, as he has the backing of only 69 percent of her loyalists. Only 35 percent of them said he was “personally qualified,” while 43 percent said McCain was.

•Turnout is likely to be far higher than in previous recent elections.

Voter interest, particularly among Democrats, continues at high levels. Younger people in particular are more interested than usual. Pew found that two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds have given “quite a lot of thought” to the election, up from 53 percent four years ago and 35 percent in June 2000.

•Domestic issues are foremost on voters’ minds.

Some 44 percent said they most wanted candidates to discuss the economy, with Iraq a distant second priority at 19 percent.

McCain and Obama keep talking about rising above personal attacks

Michael Tackett
Chicago Tribune
July 11, 2008

The Republican consultant had it all figured out.

His candidate: The hero. Wounded in war, stand-up guy, the real face of a generation. His opponent: No military service. Suspicious activity in his past.

He had an unofficial slogan in mind: The patriot vs. the punk.

He said this in 1996, when Bob Dole, the last leader of the World War II generation to seek the presidency, was facing Bill Clinton, who avoided the draft during Vietnam and protested the war, in a race that Dole would lose by a near-landslide.

It is not that the consultant had the wrong framing. But he clearly did not have a good fix on what really motivates voters.

Last week we saw, repeatedly, the same kind of argument being offered, only this time it seemed to be coming from both sides. A supporter of Barack Obama had the temerity to question the national security expertise of John McCain, the son of admirals who also was a prisoner of war in Hanoi for more than five years.

If the election were merely a function of who was the better warrior or flag waver, McCain would have an easy time of it. But in the past four presidential elections, the candidate with the greater military credentials lost.

Patriotism is fairly easy to demagogue. Just recall the photos in which Obama was shown not holding his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Or the scurrilous allegations that he didn’t wear a flag pin because of some anti-American animus. Then there is the stubborn fact that his father was Muslim and gave him the middle name that in the Muslim world is as common as, well, John.

So it is not surprising that there are those who think a race to the bottom – focusing on all these non-issues – is the path to victory.

Obama, clearly mindful of that, started a patriot game of his own with a speech in Independence, Mo., where he tried to be the arbiter of what is and is not out of bounds on the patriotism debate. As he has done several times in the campaign, he delivered a forceful, coherent and convincing argument. At least as long as no one else was talking.

But that is not the world he lives in, and so the talking continued. And he wasn’t helped when his own surrogates, such as former Gen. Wesley Clark – who may have talked himself out of consideration for vice president or any other prominent post – started to make some sleights about McCain’s experience in Vietnam. It was bad enough when Republicans made swift-boating a verb while challenging John Kerry. Surely no one will seriously try a version of that with McCain.

The distressing part of this is that Obama and McCain claim to be where they are in part because they were willing to take the high road and not engage in overtly personal attacks. So far, that is not what is happening.

What do voters care about? Gas prices much higher than $4 a gallon. A stock market in bear territory. Home prices in decline or homes in foreclosure. College tuition rising faster than inflation. Manufacturing jobs that will never come back.

Oh, and those hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cold one with Iran.

Instead, we keep hearing the hollow, hectoring calls about each candidate’s sense of country. Obama and McCain keep talking about rising above it.

Now would be a good time to start.

Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post Writers Group
July 11, 2008

On the day the Colombian military freed Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other long-held hostages, the Italian parliament passed yet another resolution demanding her release. Europe had long ago adopted this French-Colombian politician as a cause celebre. France had made her an honorary citizen of Paris, passed numerous resolutions and held many vigils.

Unfortunately, karma does not easily cross the Atlantic. Betancourt languished for six years in cruel captivity until freed by a brilliant operation conducted by the Colombian military, intelligence agencies and special forces – an operation so well executed that the captors were overpowered without a shot being fired.

This in foreign policy establishment circles is called “hard power.” In the Bush years, hard power is terribly out of fashion, seen as a mere obsession of cowboys and neocons. Both in Europe and America, the sophisticates worship at the altar of “soft power” – the use of diplomatic and moral resources to achieve one’s ends.

Europe luxuriates in soft power, nowhere more than in l’affaire Betancourt, in which Europe’s repeated gestures of solidarity hovered somewhere between the fatuous and the destructive. Europe had been pressing the Colombian government to negotiate for the hostages. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez offered to mediate.

Of course, we know from documents captured in a daring Colombian army raid into Ecuador in March – your standard hard-power operation duly denounced by that perfect repository of soft power, the Organization of American States – that Chavez had been secretly funding and pulling the strings of the FARC. These negotiations would have been Chavez’s opportunity to gain recognition and legitimacy for his terrorist client.

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative and close ally of President Bush, went instead for the hard stuff. He has for years. As a result, he has brought to its knees the longest running and once-strongest guerrilla force on the continent by means of “an intense military campaign (that) weakened the FARC, killing seasoned commanders and prompting 1,500 fighters and urban operatives to desert” (Washington Post). In the end, it was that campaign – and its agent, the Colombian military – that freed Betancourt.

She was, however, only one of the high-minded West’s many causes.

Solemn condemnations have been issued from every forum of soft-power fecklessness – the EU, the U.N., the G-8 foreign ministers – demanding that Robert Mugabe, of Zimbabwe, stop butchering his opponents and step down.

Before that, the cause du jour was Burma, where a vicious dictatorship allowed thousands of cyclone victims to die by denying them independently delivered foreign aid lest it weaken the junta’s grip on power.

And then there is Darfur, a perennial for which myriad diplomats and foreign policy experts have devoted uncountable hours at the finest five-star hotels to deplore the genocide and urgently urge relief.

What is done to free these people? Nothing. Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy – Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about – the only solution is foreign intervention.

And who’s going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the past two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor – the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world’s first democracy – and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.

And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done – often with the support of the American military. “Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work,” explained the Washington Post. “It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces … a vast intelligence-gathering operation … and training programs for Colombian troops.”

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States.

David S. Broder
The Washington Post
July 10, 2008

Just shy of eight years after they squared off in the Florida recount battle, James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher have joined forces to clean up one of the ugly legacies of the Vietnam War: the misguided piece of legislation called the War Powers Act.

Passed in 1973 when Congress was mightily frustrated with the undeclared war in Southeast Asia, that statute is proof of the adage that hard cases make bad law. Cases don’t come any harder than Vietnam, and the War Powers Act has turned out to be one of the worst bills ever to reach the president’s desk and be signed into law.

Its constitutionality is suspect, but no one has ever found a way to test it in court. Now Baker and Christopher, both former secretaries of state before they became lawyers for George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively, in the 2000 struggle over Florida’s decisive electoral votes, have found common cause as co-chairmen of a National War Powers Commission created by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

When I went to see the two men during their visit to Washington, D.C., this week, I found no lingering sense of the partisan animosities that marked their Florida encounter. Instead, they communicated a shared passion to help the next president and Congress find a way to solve a problem that has vexed the capital since the early days of the Republic.

The Founders left a ton of confusion about a pretty important question: Who has the authority to make war? Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right to declare war, but Article II makes the president the commander in chief. Nowhere does it say where the authority of one stops and the other begins.

The War Powers Act tried to resolve the question by putting a time limit on the president’s ability to deploy troops into a combat zone, but no president has accepted as legitimate that limitation on his authority, and Congress has never tried to enforce it.

Baker and Christopher told me that as they dug into the issue, they and their fellow commission members quickly concluded there was no way to nudge the Supreme Court into settling the issue. The court has an aversion to arbitrating a “political question” arising from a conflict between the elected branches.

But Baker and Christopher were reluctant to accept the status quo, in part because, as lawyers, it offends them to have a law that no one takes seriously governing a vital area of public policy.

Instead, they focused on the question of how to encourage substantive discussions between the branches before the weighty decision is made to put troops into combat. Their proposed substitute is called “The War Powers Consultation Act.”

It calls on the president to consult with key legislators before sending troops into “significant armed conflict,” defined as a situation in which fighting could last more than a week. It creates a Joint Congressional Consultation Committee, composed of leaders of both parties and senior members of six key committees, and it guarantees that the committee and its staff have access to all the relevant intelligence the president sees.

It requires Congress to vote up or down on a deployment within 30 days, and it permits a cutoff of funds for deployments disapproved by two-thirds of the House and Senate.

That complex procedure, Baker said, is designed to preserve the constitutional authority of both the president and Congress. It avoids some of the practical and legal infirmities of the current War Powers Act. But as he readily conceded, “You can’t legislate trust,” and without trust, no set of procedures can be guaranteed to work.

It could be argued that if there were trust between the leaders of the elected branches – as there has been for substantial periods of our history but not in recent years – you would need no statute to replace the War Powers Act.

But Baker and Christopher argue that with a new president and a new Congress arriving in January, agreement on a workable substitute for the War Powers Act could, in itself, be a confidence-building step.

I have trouble seeing this as a high priority on the 2009 agenda. But I do think the Florida antagonists have devised a clever way to signal a healthy change toward bipartisanship in foreign policy.

Karen Heller
The Philadelphia Inquirer
July 8, 2008

When did teen pregnancy become entertaining?

You know, the stuff of a break-out summer comedy, an Oscar-winning independent film, and now the ABC Family series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Nothing quite says “a new kind of family” – the network’s slogan – like a 15-year-old’s unplanned pregnancy.

It’s only a matter of time before some artist makes “Large Times at Gloucester High.”

Apparently, pregnancy provides a better plot device than abortion, especially since the procedure has become one of culture’s dirty words. In “Knocked Up,” one pothead slacker is so uncomfortable he calls it schmabortion, putting a lie to Hollywood’s leftist tendencies.

Teen pregnancy is on the rise for the first time after a 14-year downturn. In real life, misguided teens think pregnancy is a wondrous adventure – that is, until they have to care for a baby on a daily basis.

“A teenage pregnancy immediately turns the odds against mother and baby,” says Dayle Steinberg, president of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Teens believe they’re superheroes when it comes to birth control and health care. Young expectant mothers, the poor ones not depicted in “Juno” or on ABC Family, are more likely to risk unhealthy behavior (smoking, drinking) and less likely to receive prenatal care, putting mother and child at risk.

A baby proves a powerful hindrance to schooling, while tethering young mothers to government services and financial dependency. Education, not family income or background, is the great indicator of economic success. Teen pregnancy stagnates education, obstructs future career choices and clogs income.

“Hollywood entertains and Planned Parenthood prevents,” Steinberg says. “Responsible behaviors aren’t promoted enough.”

Studies show teenagers aren’t receiving adequate information at home or in the classroom about sex and reproductive health. Abstinence-only sex education, granted substantial federal funding in recent years, teaches the fallibility of contraception and inaccurate information about abortion, according to a congressional investigation.

The lessons have had no effect on curtailing teenage sexual activity, which nearly half of 15- to 19-year-olds experience. Meanwhile, one in four teenagers contracts a sexually transmitted infection. They represent a fourth of the sexually active population, but half of the people with sexually transmitted infections, suggesting a laxity when it comes to prevention. Last year, an 80 percent increase of gonorrhea cases occurred in Delaware County, Pa., for example, more than a quarter among teenagers.

But that doesn’t exactly make for entertainment, does it?

“Secret Life” offered a public-service announcement on teens talking to adults, though the show seems more likely to boost pregnancy-test sales. Scenes from future episodes suggest that the heroine will continue school and get help from her mother.

If only. Teenagers come to Philadelphia’s Women’s Medical Fund when life doesn’t work out like that.

“These are teens who can’t tell their parents, and they don’t have any money and don’t have access to help,” says executive director Susan Schewel.

Recently, the Women’s Medical Fund helped a 16-year-old obtain an abortion. She felt she couldn’t tell her mother – her father isn’t in the picture, and the father of her child isn’t, either.

“By making my decision,” the girl wrote to the fund with her $25 contribution, “I am now able to move forward in my life and continue my schooling, knowing I can still reach for the stars.”

There’s a secret life of an American teenager you don’t tend to see in movies or on television.

Our View: First Amendment principles uniquely American

July 6, 2008

A neo-Nazi is jailed for displaying swastikas. A woman is prosecuted for denying the Holocaust. A man is arrested for using a racial epithet. A magazine that publishes an article bemoaning the rise of Islam as a threat to Western values is forced to stand trial.

If you find any of that appealing, you might be better off living in another country. There’s plenty to choose from: Germany, Canada, Great Britain and France are just some of the examples of countries that clamp down on speech more than the United States.

While other countries have chosen to head off thoughts that cause discomfort, Americans see the First Amendment as a bulwark against government oppression and a key protector of freedom. Well, not all Americans. There are plenty who would willingly forgo free-speech rights in times of war or when hate is spewed or when indecency is shown.

Many people wanted to deny parade permits for Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations followers. Others fight for hate-speech laws and other forms of government censorship. In other words, they’d like for America to be more like France or Germany or Canada.

It’s remarkable that the United States stands alone in protecting free speech to the extent that it does. Because of the First Amendment, no other citizens have the right to speak their minds like Americans. Yet so many otherwise patriotic people hate to love it.

Some conservatives feel there’s too much freedom in times of peril. They’d prefer more controls on the media, for fear that criticism or bad news will aid our enemies. Some liberals feel that reasonable speech does not provide a sufficient counterbalance to hate speech.

The irony is that these First Amendment critics are free to bash it and its defenders with indecent language that is brimming with bile. And they often do.

Other countries presume to reach a consensus on what is over the line and then construct laws to protect civility. And so in an otherwise progressive country like Canada, the magazine Maclean’s had to explain itself to a government tribunal after publishing an opinion piece by Mark Steyn that mocked and heaped scorn on the religion of Islam. On June 28, the magazine prevailed.

As the New York Times recently noted, Steyn’s screed isn’t unlike many seen in conservative magazines and blogs in the United States. But if the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal had decided that the article was sufficiently injurious to the “dignity, feelings and self-respect” of Muslims, the magazine could’ve been forced to print a rebuttal or compensate the “wounded.”

It might seem nice to drive vile thoughts underground, but as civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silvergate told the New York Times: “Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.”

Ultimately, the controls clamped on free speech in other countries are condescending. It’s the government telling people that they are too impressionable or ill-equipped to form their own opinions and to fire back.

“Only in America” is often the punch line to a putdown. But in the case of the First Amendment, it’s a point of pride.

Kathleen Parker
July 3, 2008

Being shot down may not qualify one to be president, as retired Gen. Wesley Clark infamously said recently. But what men do under fire might tell us about the character we may discover in a president.

Clark’s precise words, aimed at undermining John McCain’s executive experience, were: “I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.” In fairness, Clark also praised McCain’s heroism, saying that he honored his service as a prisoner of war and even that “he was a hero to me.”

Predictably, Republicans were outraged and Democrats were outraged at the GOP’s outrage. For his part, Barack Obama performed the political minuet of condemn ‘n’ distance. He condemned the remarks and distanced himself from his surrogate/general.

McCain made a few tepid remarks, but mostly let others put Clark in his place. And, though McCain is clearly content to use the iconic image of his younger pilot self for campaign purposes, he also has shrugged off his heroism.

“It doesn’t take a great deal of effort to get shot down,” McCain himself is fond of saying.

As the news cycle churns, Clark’s comment was yesterday’s chum. It was in poor taste, yes, but it wasn’t the first time he had expressed similar thoughts. National Review’s Byron York blogged in March that Clark viewed McCain’s combat experience as inferior to Hillary Clinton’s qualifications for office.

“If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the first lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she’s the most experienced and capable person in the race,” York quotes Clark as saying.

Ahem. Well. So much for that. Now that Clark is a military adviser to Obama, he apparently is still skeptical about McCain’s qualifications.

Let’s concede that surviving torture doesn’t necessarily endow one with presidential mettle. And, fine, being shot down doesn’t qualify one to direct the executive branch.

But Clark misses the point of McCain’s story.

McCain isn’t a hero because he was tortured. He’s a hero because he declined an offer by his captors to be released, refusing to leave his fellow Americans behind.

It may not take much effort to get shot down, but it must take a considerable act of will to consign oneself to more deprivation and torture. It must take a level of courage unknown to most to place concern for others above one’s own interest.

Surely self-sacrifice, courage and loyalty figure somewhere in the calculus for selecting a president.

We can make no similar analysis of Obama, since he hasn’t fought in any wars in his lifetime. But we have been given a glimpse at how Obama responds to external pressures and where he draws the line on loyalty and self-sacrifice. When it comes to family and friends, it seems Obama is first a survivalist.

A few months ago, when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright first came to national attention, Obama was nearly demure when he said: “I can no more disown (Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother.”

He may not have disowned his white grandmother, but Obama didn’t exactly paint a sympathetic – or loving – portrait of her either. He essentially threw her under the bus, saying that she had made racist remarks while he was growing up, a statement that served only to highlight Obama’s own remarkable transcendence.

After several weeks of balancing his professed love for Wright with the controversial statements of his chosen father figure and spiritual mentor, Obama eventually left his church of 20 years. But why then, after all those years, did Obama finally find the door?

What changed was the degree of his self-interest. As long as Wright was helping Obama burnish his bonafides within the African-American community, it didn’t matter that the minister’s rhetorical flights of fancy bordered on paranoid, racist delusion. Only when Wright became a potential obstacle to Obama’s ambition – by saying that Obama was simply behaving as a politician – did Obama show Wright the underside of that very busy business.

Clark is right that getting shot down doesn’t qualify one to be commander in chief. But it is relevant to wonder with whom one would rather share a foxhole.

by David Broder of The Washington Post

June 26, 2008
When Barack Obama decided last week to throw off the constraints on campaign spending that go with the acceptance of public financing, he was rightly criticized for rigging the system in his own favor.
That was a predictable response. For the better part of four decades, the press and public interest groups have focused on campaign spending as the most serious distorting force in our elections.
Meanwhile, they have paid much less attention to what may well be a larger problem – the way district lines are drawn to create safe havens for one party or the other, in effect denying voters any choice of representation.
It is not a new problem. The original gerrymander was a creation of 18th century Massachusetts, and politicians have been using ever more sophisticated tools to rig the game ever since. With computer technology, their ability to design districts that meet the legal requirement for equal population, while guaranteeing their fellow partisans easy passage into office, has never been greater.

In 2002 and 2006, the most recent off-year elections, about nine out of 10 congressional districts were won by more than 10 percentage points – a clear sign that the game had been rigged in advance, when the lines were drawn in the state legislatures. In the first of those years, only eight incumbents lost; in the second, only 21.
As a number of scholars have pointed out, the scarcity of real competition in nearly all districts has many consequences – all bad. It makes legislators less responsive to public opinion, because they are in effect safe from challenge in November. It shifts the competition from the general election to the primary, where candidates of more extreme views can hope to attract support from passionately ideological voters and exploit the low turnouts typical of those primaries.
Gerrymandered, one-party districts tend to send highly partisan representatives to the House or the legislature, contributing to the gridlock in government that is so distasteful to voters.
These are familiar complaints in academic and journalistic circles.
And this week, another count was added to the indictment, with a report from the Democratic Leadership Conference titled “Gerrymandering the Vote.”
It makes the point that these rigged districts have the effect of suppressing the vote.
The numbers are startling. In both 2002 and 2006, voter turnout in districts where the winner received at least 80 percent of the votes struggled to reach 125,000. Turnout in the districts where the margin was 20 percent or less exceeded 200,000.
If there were some other device that was reducing voter turnout by almost 40 percent, you can be sure it would be the chief target for reformers. The ballot anomalies and the “voter suppression” tactics that marked the Florida election of 2000 affected far fewer people than that.
The study compiled by the Democratic Leadership Conference’s Marc Dunkelman found big variations among the states in the competitiveness of their House districts. The average margin in Massachusetts in 2006 was almost 75 percent. Next door in New Hampshire, it was under 5 percent.
Dunkelman calculated the potential turnout increase for individual states, if their district lines were redrawn to emphasize competitiveness.
The gains ranged as high as 59 percent for Louisiana and 49 percent for New York. Other that which could see much higher public participation with redrawn districts include West Virginia, Virginia, California, North Carolina, Alabama, New Jersey, Mississippi, Georgia, Hawaii and New Mexico.
Dunkelman estimates that competitive districts might attract 3 million more voters in California and almost 2 million more in New York. Overall, 11 million more Americans might show up at the polls, helping mitigate our chronically low voting participation rates.
How to change the lines? Two states – Iowa and Washington – have instituted nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting systems, and have been rewarded with much more competitive House races. So it can be done.
But the politicians are unlikely to do it on their own. Only if the voters demand reform is there a chance it will come.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post

June 26, 2008

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute someone who rapes a child, issuing a broad decision that reserves the death penalty for murderers and those who commit crimes against the state.

The 5-4 decision continued the move by a slim majority of the court to narrow the circumstances under which capital punishment is allowed, even when society views the crime with “revulsion.”

“There is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in what will be a term-defining decision for the court.

While the latter may be “devastating in their harm,” Kennedy said, “they cannot be compared to murder in their severity and irrevocability.” He was joined by the court’s more liberal members: John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

No one has been executed for rape in the United States since 1964. Though capital punishment can be imposed for crimes against the state such as treason, espionage and terrorism, of the 3,300 inmates on death rows across the country, only two face execution for a crime other than murder.

The decision prompted outrage from the conservative wing of the court.

Justice Samuel Alito questioned the majority’s logic that every murderer sentenced to death is more “morally depraved” than any child rapist.

“I have little doubt that, in the eyes of ordinary Americans, the very worst child rapists – predators who seek out and inflict serious physical and emotional injury on defenseless young children – are the epitome of moral depravity,” he wrote. Alito was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

The decision overturned the death penalty for Patrick Kennedy, 43, who was convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana in 1998 – an assault so brutal that the girl required surgery.