Category: Politics (2002-2004)

Meanwhile, in Room 101.

Nat Hentoff files another dispatch on Guantanamo, and it ain’t pretty. “The authority to unilaterally keep a defendant locked up — conceivably for the rest of his or her life — used to be reserved solely for kings, who could ignore any part of the realm’s legal system. This monarchical power — as I’ve indicated in reporting on the indefinite imprisonment, without charges, of American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla — has been expanded by George W. Bush to include defendants at Guantanamo.“

What did Dubya know, and when did he know it?

The Senate Intelligence Committee moves toward subpoenaing Bush for various documents regarding the lead-up to war, documents which the administration has tried to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege. Hmm, I wonder…will the shrill echoes of Dubya’s gay-baiting be enough to mask the whirring of the shredders? Somehow, I doubt it.

Gimli Sells Out.

“[Gollum] never hesitates to exploit a wedge issue, be it Frodo’s trust of Sam or the distribution of lembas bread, and is savage in combat until defeated, at which point he whines endlessly about how unfair it all is.” Salon ruminates on the current political applicability of Lord of the Rings, and notes how John Rhys-Davies, decrying the threat of Muslim civilization, is all the rage on the conservative circuit right now. Tsk, tsk, what would Sallah say?

Yet again, Fuzzy Math.

This won’t be news to most people out there, but nevertheless: The Bush White House has been lying about job creation for awhile now. “Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government’s fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create,” reports Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Hate and No. 28.

So, in an attempt to appease the stark raving Right, Dubya now wants a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Good God, what a colossally stupid idea. Since when did it become “conservative” to encode goofy prejudices into our founding document? And can someone please explain to me what jurisdiction the federal government has over the ecclesiastical institution of marriage anyway? Ridicky-goddamn-diculous. Surely Bush and Rove can find some other way to get out their base besides threatening to tinker with the United States Constitution.

Guess who’s back?

To the consternation of many Dems, Ralph Nader rides again in 2004 (although he’s assuredly going to have an even harder time of it without the Greens.) Hey, power to him. To be honest, I don’t really see him having much of an effect this cycle, other than that he’ll provide a steady stream of free anti-Bush invective that the press corps will be forced to cover.

Frontal Assault or Friendly Fire?

The Bush team start prepping their anti-Kerry ads, and, fortunately for the Dems, they’re still living in Fantasyland. “If they run ads about [the Vietnam era], they will probably focus on Kerry’s high-profile opposition to the Vietnam War and comments about U.S. atrocities that could neutralize his record as a decorated veteran.” Um, yeah, ’cause veterans are usually all for atrocities. Still, even amid all the wishful thinking, Dubya’s reps do allow themselves a moment of clarity: “Acknowledging that Bush has received major financial support from corporations, McKinnon said: ‘The issue is hypocrisy in saying you’re going to take on the special interests, not who took the most special interest money. You don’t hear the president in the Oval Office railing against the special interests.'” Well, that’s true, you don’t, but that fact hardly makes for a compelling campaign ad.

But what about the politics of cynicism and misanthropy?


As it turns out, I was able to make it to the John Edwards event on campus this morning, and, all in all, I’d give him a B+. He both read and rushed through the first half of his remarks, which involved some new formulation of his trade policy (more on that in a second), and I found his opening lines particularly ham-handed and speechwriterly. “I know y’all have been waiting for a Son of the South to come to NYC…A-Rod,” he said (and I’m paraphrasing.) “Well, I’m not A-Rod, but Wisconsin proved one thing: I can close!” Um, ok, but A-Rod is a shortstop and all, not a closer.

Anyway, nitpicking aside, Edwards improved measurably once he put the paper down and got into the rhythm of his “Two Americas” stump speech, which he’d clearly delivered many times. There were moments, however, when he definitely could have embellished his standard schtick, given the crowd. Edwards talked about how he was a lonely, legal David often going up and winning cases against a Goliath-sized team of corporate lawyers, a biographical stat which probably plays great in the Heartland. It went flat here, though, perhaps because the many law students in the auditorium seemed confused by his remarks: But we want to be those well-paid corporate shills!

Still, Edwards came off extremely polished and personable, and he definitely got the crowd on his side, even when he was blindsided by a sneak “Campaign on AIDS!” protest on the dais behind him. Several members of the VIP crowd unveiled red-ribbon shirts and began chanting right in the middle of his biographical portion (In fact, I could’ve sworn it was right after he gave the “son of a millworker” line, which was a clever signal to choose, if nothing else.) Edwards gave them a moment, asked the crowd to applaud the “activism of these young people,” calmly told a heckler he’d address their point after finishing his bio, and then said a few positive words about fighting AIDS at home and abroad (A critical world issue to be sure, but not a particularly controversial one in this day and age…c’mon, y’all, this isn’t 1988. And why try to derail a candidate who is politically sympathetic to your cause, particularly when Karl Rove is across town?) At any rate, no harm no foul for Team Edwards: He navigated this potentially rocky shoal extremely successfully, although I presume some advance guy or gal was given the serious what-for soon thereafter.

As for the trade stuff, I liked where he was going at first, but he eventually seem to fall back on the fair trade side of the usual dichotomy. As I see it, the problem isn’t free trade itself per se as much as the loss of American jobs, as well as the ugly spectacle of corporations firing tons of US workers only to turn right around and offer up a fat dividend. Edwards obliquely mentioned this formulation, then fell back on tax breaks for “good” corporations and the trouble with NAFTA. My feeling is, if you want to stop this kind of behavior, there needs to be more stick and less carrot. Hit business where it hurts: Tax the heck out of (or even, God forbid, disallow) corporate dividends that occur in the same fiscal year as the downsizing of X number of American jobs. Simply put, if you can’t afford to pay your workers anymore, you damn well shouldn’t be paying dividends to stockholders. Edwards came close to saying thus, but then fell back into the old free trade/fair trade rut, which to my mind is a bit like shouting into the wind. If you want to change corporate behavior, focus on corporate behavior…don’t blame the increasingly irreversible trend of globalization.

At any rate, all in all Edwards came off quite well, although not as inspiring or Clintonesque as I would’ve originally liked. He’s definitely got a great future in the party and in American politics, and he’d no doubt make a solid contender in this election season against the likes of Dubya (or Dick Cheney.)