EDITORIAL

A moral dilemma

EDITORIAL — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:47:59 GMT

State and local politics is paralyzed by fear
We need serious action and strong leadership — and a public trust that is unlikely to be given.

Even by the relatively forgiving standards of Massachusetts politics, these are pretty disgraceful days. House Speaker Sal DiMasi and three of his associates are under criminal and ethics investigations relating to a large software contract and favorable legislation for companies for which DiMasi's pals were allegedly lobbying. John Rogers, House majority leader, has had to pay a $30,000 fine for campaign-finance violations relating to mortgage payments on a Falmouth beach house. Former state senator Jim Marzilli is facing charges of assaulting women, and was recently caught taking a junket to Germany when he was supposedly getting treatment for mental illness. He has resigned his seat, as has former state senator Dianne Wilkerson, who, after a career filled with transgressions and misdeeds, has now been charged in federal court with extortion.

The latest to join this list of scandal-plagued elected officials is City Councilor Chuck Turner, arrested last week and accused of accepting a $1000 bribe in connection with the Wilkerson investigation.

Our political officeholders — those who are suspected of some sort of wrongdoing, and those who have enabled or excused them — seem to have lost their common sense.

Their problems are threatening to stall the workings of local and state government — not because those already accused have been taken out of the game, but because so many other politicians are now frozen in fear and uncertainty over what these investigations will uncover.

This is no time for a leadership vacuum in the state legislature. We have very serious challenges to address, and significant recent turnover has produced a promising but inexperienced batch of officeholders. When the new legislative session begins in January, a quarter of all the state representatives, and nearly a quarter of the state senators, will have been in office for two years or less.

We need serious action and strong leadership — and a public trust that is unlikely to be given while so many questions remain unanswered. It would be nice to see our public officials demanding those answers — but that requires political courage, a quality clearly in low supply.

Which is why, for example, DiMasi can brush off the Ethics Commission's demands for documents — not to mention demands for explanations from the general public. Apparently DiMasi can thumb his nose at transparency and accountability, and still not fear losing his Speakership. This is both outrageous and pathetic.

She's back - almost

EDITORIAL — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:15:21 GMT

Why Clinton's appointment is good for Obama. Plus, better Boston graduates.
Why Clinton's appointment is good for Obama. Plus, better Boston graduates.

As the Phoenix goes to press, the news is that lawyers are beginning to vet Democratic New York senator Hillary Clinton to serve as President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of state. It appears as if the only bump in the road to her ultimate approval could be evidence of potential irreconcilable financial conflicts on the part of her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

Before his wife's appointment becomes official, Obama's vetting team will likely look into President Clinton's current international business deals, his foundation's activities, and the names of his library's donors.

President Clinton is, of course, a political wild card. He is irrepressible and, on occasion, cantankerous. But as in-your-face as the Clintons are — as individuals and as a couple — it would be hard to imagine their letting Hillary Clinton's candidacy for the cabinet's signature position go forward were there fatally compromising dirt to be dug. After all, Senator Clinton came close to winning her party's presidential nomination. If she had clinched it, the public scrutiny of her husband would have been extreme.

Media analysis of Obama's bold and, in most quarters, welcome move has been extreme. And it is hard to imagine that there is much new light to shine on the situation, absent fresh developments. It is, however, worth reconsidering the most clear-eyed observations, because they suggest the outlines as to what is on Obama's mind and what Senator Clinton's appointment implies about the future.

It is a given that Senator Clinton's consideration is a unity move, both within the Democratic Party and among women of all political stripes. If Clinton decides, for whatever reasons, to decline the job or further consideration for it, Obama scores a political win. (Hey, he tried.)

That does not mean it is not a shrewd policy choice.

Whoever serves at the State Department must be able to work with the vice-president. And Vice-President-elect Joe Biden has immense foreign-policy experience, which is one of the reasons Obama chose him.

In the Senate, Clinton has enjoyed an easygoing relationship with Biden. It's certainly not as long-standing as that between Biden and Massachusetts senator John Kerry, who also has been mentioned for the post. But neither is it tinged with the air of fraternal competition that is said to characterize Biden's dealing with the Massachusetts senator. (It is interesting to note that all three voted to support Bush's decision to wage the Iraq War.)

California’s shame

EDITORIAL — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:17:22 GMT

Equal marriage rights suffers a setback, but there is hope. Plus, young voters.
The politics of division as practiced by lame-duck president George W. Bush at the connivance of his onetime Svengali Karl Rove are not dead.

The politics of division as practiced by lame-duck president George W. Bush at the connivance of his onetime Svengali Karl Rove are not dead.

Democrat Barack Obama’s decisive national victory over Republican John McCain certainly dealt a body blow to those who would pit whites against nonwhites, the native born against immigrants, the haves against the have-nots, and those who practice their fundamental right to worship as they choose against those who exercise their equally constitutional right not to worship at all.

But anyone who doubts that the politics of intolerance and inhumanity are alive and well need only to look to California, Florida, and Arizona, which voted to deny same-sex couples the basic human right to marry that couples of differing genders enjoy. The Taliban would be proud.

The situation in Arkansas is even more dispiriting. Voters in that state went so far as to mandate that only married couples can adopt children or serve as foster parents. Since heterosexual unions are the only couplings recognized in Arkansas, voters removed the possibility that straight singles could adopt in order to bar gays and lesbians from becoming parents or guardians. Pity the children.

While the same-sex-marriage bans in Arizona and Florida (the latter, for good measure, also outlawed civil unions) undeniably hinder the just cause of civil rights, the vote in California was most significant.

In May, the Republican-dominated California Supreme Court issued a ringing declaration establishing that couples of the same gender had the equal right to marry as those of differing genders. “An individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights,” the court ruled.

California voters thought otherwise. Although the state went overwhelmingly for Obama, voters allowed the state constitution to be amended in order to outlaw marriage for gay and lesbian couples. In a predominately multicultural state like California, it is difficult to pinpoint the constituent groups responsible for the defeat. But the effect of African-Americans who approved the ban by a margin of more than 70 percent is difficult to deny.

The irony, of course, is bitter. The same day that a black American was elected president for the first time, his fellow citizens denied the dignity of marriage to same-sex couples. What a country.

Equally undeniable was the opposition of religious groups to same-sex marriage. The Mormon-led movement was joined by Catholics and Evangelicals Protestants who decided that the teaching of Jesus Christ to love your neighbor as yourself need not apply in California — or, by extension, to the rest of the nation.

Hope restored

EDITORIAL — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:09:55 GMT

Barack Obama's election has sparked international wonder. His task, however, is great.
Barack Obama's election has sparked international wonder. His task, however, is great.

Seventy-five days from this Thursday, America's long nightmare will have ended.

The reign of the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney junta will be over. Dubya will be winging his way to Crawford, Texas. There, he can comfortably adapt himself to history's probable judgment that he was the worst president in the United States' history. His henchman, Cheney, will have the leisure to prepare for what we hope will be a lifetime of defending himself against lawsuits for the torture he sponsored and the assault on civil liberties he engineered.

Democrat Barack Obama's decisive win over Republican John McCain in Tuesday's election is truly a triumph of hope. For some voters, McCain was no doubt more horrifying than Obama was appealing. But for legions of Obama supporters, his victory offers the transcendent promise of a new national beginning.

When Obama takes the oath of office in January, he will face the greatest battery of challenges any president has had to contend with since 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt crossed the threshold of the White House during the Great Depression.

The Cold War presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan all had to face the menace of an aggressive Russia, then known as the USSR. The Soviet threat, however, was singular. And the foundation of our security was a robust economy that exhibited resilience seemingly beyond strain.

The facts today are very different. America is in an economic retreat that promises to be far graver than a periodic downtick. Compounding this domestic anxiety, the nation is mired in two unsuccessful wars, the prosecution of which has led to more — not less — international instability.

This is the reality Obama inherits. But while the political and policy challenges he faces are daunting by any measure, they are at least tangible, concrete — even if solutions today appear elusive.

As Obama himself has defined it, his true test, his greatest challenge, will be nothing less than spiritual: to restore a modicum of comity to national debate, to dial down the rhetoric of division, and to promote a sense of common purpose. If Obama can renew America's faith in itself, he will be on the road to re-energizing and re-defining a sense of national purpose appropriate to the 21st century.

The "Yes, we can" message of hope preached by Obama on the campaign trail was the seed of his electoral success. It is a message that will be fortified and nourished by the pride so many feel for the achievement of an African-American being elected president, and is the ultimate realization of the refrain "Rosa sat so Martin could walk, and Martin walked so that Barack could run."

Obama for president

EDITORIAL — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:46:22 GMT

Vote for ‘that one.’ Also, approve pot reform.
The past eight years have been disastrous for America.

The past eight years have been disastrous for America: witness the failed (or — if you are an optimist — failing) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the parallel rise in Iran’s regional influence; the unconstitutional domestic spying and other violations of civil liberties; the appointment of radical right-wingers to the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court; the growing gap between the rich and the affluent and the rest of nation; the reckless economic policies that have led to the current economic meltdown; and an epidemic of congressional corruption.

It is impossible to emphasize the importance of redirecting America’s sorry course. The nation has lost its way.

For these reasons, the Phoenix endorses Democrats Barack Obama for president and Joe Biden for vice-president.

The idea of Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin in those jobs is simply too frightening to contemplate. The McCain and Palin candidacies are rooted in a Republican vision of America that is narrow, intolerant, and divisive. They promise to lead America deeper into even darker days.

The challenge facing the next president will be the greatest in recent memory: to restore the nation’s international standing while simultaneously rebuilding a shell-shocked economy. So great is the job ahead, it is difficult not to imagine that an Obama presidency at times might falter. But Obama’s energy, eloquence, intelligence, and temperament make him the candidate best equipped to inspire our nation and wrestle with the future.

Kerry for US Senate
Democrat John Kerry richly deserves to be returned to the United States Senate, where for nearly 24 years he has been fighting for a sane foreign policy and humane domestic programs. He has more than atoned for the sin of supporting President George W. Bush’s ill-conceived Iraq adventure by running for the White House in strong opposition to Bush’s policies — both foreign and domestic. Kerry, of course, lost that quest. But, in the process, he did far better than anyone had the right to believe he would. That the Democrats could begin this long and punishing campaign season with their heads held high is due in no small part to Kerry’s efforts.

Kerry’s opponent, Republican Jeff Beatty, is not ready for any prime-time spot — let alone the US Senate. Try as Beatty might to distance himself from the Bush-McCain agenda, he has only succeeded in digging himself deeper into the pit that the Republicans have dug for themselves and the nation.

The Phoenix urges a vote for Kerry.

Dictator McCain?

EDITORIAL — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:43:37 GMT

Don’t laugh: if the Arizona ‘maverick’ is elected, he’ll complete the job Bush started
The only thing standing in the way of Republican John McCain assuming the powers and prerogatives of a dictator should he be elected president is the vote of a single Supreme Court justice.

The only thing standing in the way of Republican John McCain assuming the powers and prerogatives of a dictator should he be elected president is the vote of a single Supreme Court justice.

Four of the nine current justices — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Joseph Alito, and John Roberts (all Republican appointees) — subscribe to the view that the president is a “unitary executive,” not subject to congressional oversight and able to nullify the Constitution if he thinks such actions are necessary.

In plain language, Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts believe that it is constitutional for the president to act unconstitutionally, to violate the Constitution. The idea, at first blush, seems bizarre, almost comical. But it is not a joke; or, if it is, it’s a very scary one.

It is almost a given that the next president will appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice.

Of the four justices who tend to favor more liberal or moderate interpretations of the Constitution, John Paul Stevens is 80, Ruth Bader Ginsburg 75, Stephen Breyer 70, and David Souter 69. The swing vote between the conservative and the liberal blocks, Justice William Kennedy, is 72.

McCain has promised to appoint the same sort of conservative judges as did President George W. Bush, who named Alito and Roberts to the high court. The nation can only assume that his sidekick, Sarah Palin, would do the same — or worse — if 72-year-old McCain were to die on in office.

It is telling that when Vice-President Dick Cheney, the dark brain of the Bush White House, was auditioning Alito and Roberts for their top-court gigs, he wasn’t particularly interested in their views on abortion or the execution of teenagers, two domestic issues dear to the hearts of some conservatives and most right-wingers.

Rather, Cheney was interested in Alito and Roberts’s views on executive power. He wanted to know whether they worshipped in the pew of the unitary executive.

Two things were at stake: not only, of course, the future of the Cheney/Bush-style imperial presidency (the legacy thing is big with traditionalists), but also the future criminal prosecution or administrative sanction of the hundreds — or perhaps thousands — of government employees and officials who executed the Bushies’ more questionable orders. (You have to credit that Dick; he thinks ahead.)

A step forward

EDITORIAL — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:49:32 GMT

Why the Connecticut Supreme Court got it right. Plus, ominous noises from the right wing.
The nation’s understandable preoccupation with the unfolding economic crisis has overshadowed a significant victory in the battle for same-sex marriage: the Connecticut Supreme Court, on October 10, ruled that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The nation’s understandable preoccupation with the unfolding economic crisis has overshadowed a significant victory in the battle for same-sex marriage: the Connecticut Supreme Court, on October 10, ruled that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The Nutmeg State thus joins Massachusetts and California as states that grant same-sex couples marriage rights equal to those enjoyed by other couples.

While Connecticut marriage licenses may be legally recognized only within that state due to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the ruling nevertheless expands the intellectual contours of the national debate over same-sex marriage.

The state’s high court did more than issue a ringing and eloquent endorsement of the right of all people to be married if they so choose. It did so while striking down an existing state civil-union law that, in effect, had granted gays and lesbians the rights and privileges of heterosexual marriage so long as those unions were not defined as marriages.

This sort of separate-but-equal thinking, the court said, violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law. In the past, separate-but-equal thinking has been used to deny interracial couples the right to marry, African-American citizens the right to vote and access to education, and women the ability to pursue careers and livelihoods of their choosing.

Three states — Vermont, New Hampshire, and New Jersey — embrace civil unions. At least four others — including Maine, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii — and the District of Columbia sanction domestic partnerships or some sort of legal union that affords various rights and responsibilities of marriage.

While such unions and partnerships are welcome steps along the road to full marriage rights, they are not equivalent to marriage. In the near view, the decision by the Connecticut court is certainly bold. But in time in will be seen as merely common sense.

The Connecticut decision also squarely addresses the issue of why appointed judges rather than elected legislatures are responsible for such decisions.

Again, the court’s thinking is rooted in past civil-rights battles. Gays and lesbians, like blacks and women, are the victims of clear and present discrimination, the Connecticut Supreme Court argued. Since domestic partnerships and civil unions are not full marriages and are therefore unconstitutional, and because there is little doubt that same-sex advocates would have little chance of achieving full equality through the legislative process, it falls to the court to act.

Explosively bad

EDITORIAL — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:13:51 GMT

The potential for even more public disillusionment and anger is huge as events outstrip the nation’s political imagination
Abroad and at home, the future looks grim.

Abroad and at home, the future looks grim. If the United States is lucky, the political and economic pain might last just two or three years. It is not, however, unrealistic to expect three to five years of troubled times. Maybe more.

This sort of dark, disturbing forecast is difficult for optimistic Americans to digest. Only a fool — or a Republican — would deny that these are the most challenging times the nation has faced in 40 years: stalemate in Iraq and Afghanistan, meltdown on Wall Street, and recession on Main Street. And that’s putting it mildly.

It is hard to escape the foreboding atmosphere, the sense that something even scarier than the events of the past several weeks is about to gel — as if $8 trillion of stock-market losses over the past 12 months is not nightmare enough.

America’s bad dreams are nudging the presidential prospects of Democrat Barack Obama higher. It is not necessarily the case that voters swinging toward Obama favor him and his policies; rather, they fear Republican John McCain and his program, which — putting vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin aside — is four more years of President George W. Bush.

McCain has shown himself to be a spooky figure. Gone is the avuncular “maverick” once celebrated by the romantics of the national media. McCain appears determined to channel his inner Nixon, to commune with the spirit of George Wallace. Nods to history aside, McCain stands before the American electorate for what he is: a rigid and nasty old coot, a jaded election junkie, a man who believes he has a divine right to rule. Don’t tread on John. He’s a dangerous guy, a swaggering guy, a guy unafraid to pick an ignoramus for his vice-president.

During the most recent debate, McCain sublimated his crankiest side — almost. There were two telling backfires: a gratuitous swipe at moderator Tom Brokaw of NBC News for not being qualified to be secretary of the treasury and a peevish reference to Obama as “that one.” Senior moments? Those flashes of bizarre aggression aside, McCain was relatively smooth, at times sophisticated, and unrepentantly supportive of the policies — foreign and domestic — that have plopped the nation into the hot water in which it now wallows.

Regular Phoenix readers will not be surprised that we think Obama was smoother, more sophisticated, and on point in his criticisms of what’s wrong with the economy and McCain’s belligerent world-view.

Debatable

EDITORIAL — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:19:42 GMT

Can Obama show grit? Will he connect? Can McCain stop lying? Will he remember?
With the presidential debates about to begin, political pundits are full of advice for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

With the presidential debates about to begin, political pundits are full of advice for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Obama, according to conventional wisdom, should try to provoke McCain’s legendary temper. McCain, the thinking goes, must ruthlessly attack Obama’s inexperience and elitism — to make sure, as his own campaign manager recently said, that this election is not about issues.

Our advice: forget the conventional wisdom. Voters desperately want that “straight talk” McCain once prided himself on, but which, in his run for the White House, he has abandoned in favor of crooked and warped pandering. They want to hear what the candidates really think is happening in the world, in the country, to the economy, and in Washington — and how the two men hope to tackle those problems.

As it happens, we have reached this stage of the campaign with two presidential candidates who, for whatever reasons, polls show most Americans like, trust, and respect. That’s certainly a testament of some kind to the voting public, who in extraordinary numbers took part in the careful selection of the nominees.

But the two choices for the office have enormous differences in policy, ideology, and priorities that voters need to hear — unscripted, unfiltered, and preferably without the petty squabbling over trivialities that has so far been a hallmark of this campaign.

Presenting such a serious debate will require some adjustment for both candidates. Obama, always a better orator than debater, needs to present specific ideas without lofty grandeur — and yet be compelling and forceful, rather than, as he often is in these situations, cautious and humorless.

McCain, a skilled panderer — and a quick wit — used those skills to outperform his Republican primary rivals in front of audiences who knew what they wanted to hear. Now, McCain must forgo easy point-scoring temptations if he is to convince swing voters that he is the right man to tackle challenges for which they themselves — and even he and Obama — don’t know all the answers.

On foreign policy — the pre-arranged topic for this Friday’s debate — McCain, mainly because of his age, tough talk, and former POW status, is presumed to hold an advantage. But Obama needs to stick confidently to his guns: he is right in his more nuanced, diplomatic approach, and the electorate agrees.

In particular, Obama should repeatedly demonstrate that McCain approaches world affairs with the same “us-against-them” cowboy mentality that people negatively associate with President George W. Bush.

Bad craziness

EDITORIAL — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:13:19 GMT

Wall Street’s meltdown is more dangerous than realized. McCain is clueless, but does Obama recognize the root of the problem?
The news from Wall Street this week is dire.

The news from Wall Street this week is dire: Merrill Lynch, the nation’s largest brokerage house, sold itself in a fire sale for about $50 billion, which is only a fraction of its previous worth; Lehman Brothers, a once venerable investment bank, filed for bankruptcy — at $399 billion, the largest in American history; and American International Group, a global insurance and financial powerhouse with a value in excess of $1 trillion, is going into a government-supervised purgatory in an effort to spare markets and customers from the pain of its collapse.

This triple-barreled blast of economic calamity is only the latest bulletin in an ongoing and frightening saga of economic dislocation and decline. In the wake of the subprime mortgage scandal, housing prices have plummeted and mortgage foreclosures have skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression. The distressed sale of Bear Stearns in March and the government bailout of seemingly whimsically named Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers of last resort, were clearly only dress rehearsals for this week’s meltdown.

What is truly scary is that the worst may not be over. Some investment experts fear another round of grassroots bank failures similar to the savings-and-loan crisis of almost 20 years ago. Although individual deposits are insured up to $100,000, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which safeguards savers, has only $50 billion to guarantee more than $1 trillion in deposits. Add to this bitter cocktail the growing suspicion that the wounded auto giant General Motors will fail without a government-guaranteed rescue plan, and you begin to understand that the crisis is far worse than anyone with authority in either government or business is admitting.

The criminally irresponsible policies — foreign and domestic — of President George W. Bush triggered this emergency. For the first time in American history, a president is waging war (in Iraq and Afghanistan — and maybe, before long, in Iran) without raising taxes. In other words, Bush is fighting with American blood and foreign credit. To keep voters fat, happy, and compliant, the Bush administration kept credit easy and regulation of the ensuing financial shell game ridiculously lax. Housing prices ballooned as people who had trouble keeping up with their big-box-store bills bought into the scam using home-equity lines of credit and their credit cards. Their housing prices — together with the economy and the financial superstructure — then crashed when these delusional souls failed to make their mortgage payments. The nation is now learning what junkies have long known: withdrawal is a bitch.

The right stuff

EDITORIAL — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:39:05 GMT

Senator John Kerry has it; challenger Ed O’Reilly doesn’t. Plus, Sarah Palin’s Hannah Montana equation.
Politics is often a matter of perspective.

Politics is often a matter of perspective. When Massachusetts senator John Kerry was the Democratic candidate for president four years ago, running against incumbent George W. Bush, the Republicans portrayed him as a left-wing liberal. These days, Kerry’s opponent in the Democratic primary, Gloucester lawyer Ed O’Reilly, is charging that Kerry is not progressive enough. Only in Massachusetts could John Kerry be attacked for being a dangerous centrist.

The O’Reilly campaign has three principal prongs of attack: Kerry is too aloof (it is not exactly news that the state’s junior senator is not a regular at the Eire Pub); Kerry was wrong to vote in favor of the Iraq War (this is something that Kerry has clearly acknowledged, as have other progressives, such as Senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden of Delaware, the latter of whom — if you haven’t noticed — holds the number-two spot on Senator Barack Obama’s anti-war ticket); and Kerry is wrong about same-sex marriage (bingo, a direct hit on that issue).

O’Reilly also contends that Kerry has not done enough to promote universal health care, which is a tremendously complex issue. There is no doubt that more Americans need to be insured. Our current state of affairs is a national disgrace. But at a time when the country’s finances are in crisis, thanks to the punishing cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the irresponsible regulatory and budgeting policies of the Bush administration, and the craven and short-sighted behavior of the banking and finance industries, candidates like O’Reilly dodge an important question: how are we going to pay for it? O’Reilly is not the only figure in public life to have a less-than-adequate answer. More experienced public figures, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, not to mention Obama, have failed to develop truly convincing plans to fund national health care.

Truth be told, O’Reilly’s is a soreheaded candidacy. He is backed by a coalition of principled progressives who truly are to the left of Kerry. But that core is supplemented by a band of Clinton supporters still angry that Kerry chose to support Obama over their woman, pro-Palestinian environmentalists whose grip on reality is at best tenuous, and people who for one reason or another just don’t like Kerry. Well, good for them. Viva democracy. If the O’Reilly campaign serves no other purpose than to hold Kerry’s feet to the fire for his unfortunate stance against full marriage rights for same-sex couples, then it has performed a public service.

Palin: The plain truth

EDITORIAL — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:37:36 GMT

Don’t be fooled by the Tina Fey styling, McCain’s vice-presidential pick is a menace
In selecting Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate, Republican nominee John McCain pulled a Clarence Thomas.

More coverage from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions

In selecting Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate, Republican nominee John McCain pulled a Clarence Thomas.

Today, Thomas is a headline name, a 17-year veteran of the US Supreme Court. But when he was nominated, Thomas was a relatively unknown, relatively inexperienced Republican legal bureaucrat.

Thomas had two things going for him: he was a hard-core right-winger, and he was African-American.

For the president — then George H.W. Bush — to name an African-American to the nation’s highest court required a certain sort of brass.

During the four years Bush held that office, and the eight preceding years when Ronald Reagan reigned, the well-being of black America was a low political priority, to the extent that it was at all a concern.

Thomas’s racial heritage provided a perverse sugarcoating for the bitter pill of his radical right-wing views. And it worked.

Now comes Sarah Palin, an articulate, untested radical right-winger. (The Phoenix went to press before Palin’s Wednesday-night convention address. For coverage of that and the rest of Republican National Convention, go to thePhoenix.com/election2008.)

Until 72-year-old McCain plucked 44-year-old Palin from the comfort of her frontier obscurity, she had served six years as the mayor of Wasilla, a town of about 6715.

Palin followed that star turn by winning the governorship of Alaska, the nation’s largest, least-densely-populated state, which is more of a wilderness preserve controlled by the energy industry than it is a functioning polity.

When she wasn’t busy wrestling bears or catching salmon with her bare teeth, Palin coached high-school basketball and ran the family taxi service to hockey practice. Along the way, she battled political cronyism and government corruption.

Clearly, Palin is the stuff of legend. It is a wonder that the Republicans are waiting for the election. Why not bundle her off to Russia today to set straight that nasty, trigger-happy strongman Vladimir Putin?

Palin has clearly stirred the passions of Republican conventioneers. Their enthusiasm is unrestrained. Anyone watching the St. Paul convention on television might think it was an over-caffeinated meeting of the American Association of Retired People. By the time McCain takes the podium, the frenzy will be stronger than Hurricane Gustav. B-12 shots all around!

What Obama must do

EDITORIAL — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:14:51 GMT

A new talent must wrestle with an old hand at political survival
For all the fawning press Barack Obama has received, the grace and favor with which he has been treated is nothing compared with the free ride McCain has enjoyed.

More coverage from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

During the past several national elections, whenever a Democratic presidential candidate has changed his or her mind on an issue, or trimmed his or her sails in the face of hostile public opinion, the mainstream media have been quick to tag that candidate a flip-flopper. When John McCain changes his mind, he is being a maverick, a tell-it-like-it-is hombre. For all the fawning press Barack Obama has received, the grace and favor with which he has been treated is nothing compared with the free ride McCain has enjoyed, at least from the predominantly old white guys who dominate convention coverage.

The benefits of the doubt Obama has been granted — and he is granted fewer every day — are probably attributable to his freshness as a tasty new morsel for a television-dominated process. TV demands lean meat it can fatten so it has someone to devour. The fact that Republican McCain as well as Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton have survived repeated cycles of this cannibalism gives them a special status: survivors.

Survival, in fact, is perhaps the most exalted state to which a politician can ascend in the ultimate reality show known as presidential politics.

Survivors have proven their very seriousness by having escaped scandal or defeat, or having weathered a particularly turbulent political storm. And because they have survived, they reap the benefit of extra consideration. Past skill warrants a suspension of judgment rarely extended to most politicians.

Senator Ted Kennedy is a case in point. His survival of a cheating incident at Harvard and the drowning of a female companion at Chappaquiddick (tempered as they were by the murder of Kennedy’s two brothers, as well as by other family tragedies) gives his career as a national icon an unspoken but palpable poignancy that is further enhanced by his ongoing cancer battle. Kennedy’s unexpected and moving speech at the Democratic National Convention was another triumph over adversity. As such, it was an apt metaphor for a nation that has had to endure eight years of President George W. Bush.

The Clintons may be on a path to achieving similar gravitas. Hillary’s speech certainly laid the foundation for such a reputation. She was breathtaking in the sweep of her Tuesday night convention speech, fortifying in her message that the Democrats must unite behind Obama to spare the nation four more years of Bush policies, this time with McCain’s name on them. It only remains for Bill to equal, or exceed, her performance for the Democrats to put behind them the memories of the Clintons’ attempt to blackmail Hillary’s way onto the ticket by holding her voters hostage. After Tuesday night, it is hard to imagine that stain having any relevance.

Cash-strapped government

EDITORIAL — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:56:35 GMT

Plus, what to do about Russia, and Obama’s upcoming convention
Most people realize that the nasty economic news is getting nastier.

Most people realize that the nasty economic news is getting nastier. Unemployment is rising. Pay checks have stopped growing. And the cost of essentials, such as food and gasoline, has hit painful highs. Yet significant pockets of state and local government seem oblivious to reality.

The MBTA is a case in point. What was transit leadership thinking when it granted 237 nonunion, executive employees nine-percent raises? Never mind that the state is already financially strapped. The T itself is running in the red. And while the agency — more vital today than ever — needs greater taxpayer support, the way to get it is not to act as if it is your due.

Governor Deval Patrick did the right thing when he pressured the T into rescinding those raises.

The Boston City Council has likewise shown questionable judgment in awarding many members of its professional staff with sizable bonuses. Those bonuses allowed the Council to pay staffers more than the authorized pay range for such positions — $65,000–$85,000 for the staff director, for example — listed in city statues.

While that might seem like a substantial salary range to the blue-collar Joes and Josephines who constitute the bulk of the Council’s constituency, the public sector — like the private sector — must offer competitive salaries to attract talent. Hence a State House staffer can, and often does, receive a much higher salary than someone who does similar work at City Hall, only five minutes away.

Should some Council staffer deserve higher pay than he or she currently receives, however, the compensation should not be rewarded in a stealth manner — that only plays into the hands of the mad dogs of talk radio, and others who seem hell-bent on trying to cripple government a time when their services are so necessary.

The public sector should raise the amounts in public instead, in a straightforward way. Let voters know what’s going on.

If not, it is not alarmist to say that next year Boston may find itself in a fiscal crisis, with truly vital services threatened.

Only some deft fiscal management by Mayor Thomas Menino saved the city’s school from serious pain this year. But the handwriting is on the wall. The city is so apparently strapped for cash that it asked for, and received, approval from the private, nonprofit Boston Public Library Foundation for $20,000 to help the newly appointed library president relocate here from Minnesota.

Georgia on your mind?

EDITORIAL — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:28:58 GMT

Why the Russians are acting like Soviets! And why it will be difficult to stop them!
So much for the Republican Party’s long-standing boast that Ronald Reagan neutered the Soviet Union.

So much for the Republican Party’s long-standing boast that Ronald Reagan neutered the Soviet Union.

Russia’s brutal Soviet-style invasion of the relatively small and decidedly democratic nation of Georgia this past week may not have been enough to provoke a “better-dead-than-red” backlash here in the United States. But the Russian tanks that rumbled toward the Black Sea must have made former Soviet citizens (such as the independent people of the Ukraine) and former Soviet clients (say, in Poland and the Czech Republic) more than a bit nervous.

The Kremlin has been off its game for much of the past 20 years. Losing control of Eastern Europe and watching the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolve into 15 different nations must have been a bummer.

Now, thanks to the corrupt and anti-democratic leadership of Vladimir Putin, together with a multi-billion surge in treasure from oil and natural gas, Russia is again flexing its muscles.

Putin, having squelched Chechnyan rebels in two multi-year rounds of bloody fighting, was emboldened to deal with the Georgians, who Russians traditionally consider to be obstreperous upstarts. The Kremlin likes its neighbors tame.

Georgia, with 4.6 million people (a bit more than half the population of New York City), is — or was — perhaps the most pro-American of the former Soviet Republics: witness the 2000 troops that nation committed to President Bush’s Iraq War.

The ostensible trigger for this latest invasion was the desire of provinces in western Georgia to break away and affiliate with Russia. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, an admirable democrat who nevertheless is considered a loose cannon by diplomatic standards, appears not to have handled the situation well. Two weeks ago, the long-simmering conflict erupted into mortar fire along the border, prompting air strikes from the Kremlin soon thereafter, as Russian troops and armored forces entered the fray in support of the splinter region. Early Wednesday, a cease-fire was agreed upon by both sides, but the peace remains tenuous at best.

However, when a big power like Russia (or China or the United States) desires to intervene militarily in a neighboring state, almost any reason can be manufactured.

Turmoil in the Georgian provinces is only a pretext for the Russian war. The underlying reason has more to do with the misguided American policy of seeking to integrate such former Soviet Republics as Georgia and the Ukraine, and such former subject Eastern European nations as Poland, into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — against Russia’s protestations.

Mao's ghost

EDITORIAL — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:58:50 GMT

The spirit of the chairman haunts the Beijing Olympics
When the 21st century is old enough to support a sense of historical perspective, the date 8/8/08 may well be more significant than 9/11.

Photo illustration by K. Banks.

When the 21st century is old enough to support a sense of historical perspective, the date 8/8/08 may well be more significant than 9/11. The Olympic Games, which begin today, mark China’s modern coming of age.

Beijing 2008: Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

“Modern” is an important qualification. As the planet’s oldest civilization with a recognizable sense of continuity, China has seen glory before. Gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass were all products of its ancient genius. But for much of modern history, China was a nation on the margins: misunderstood and discounted, shamelessly exploited by Western powers and brutally pillaged by the Japanese.

Chairman Mao Zedong changed that — though it takes a strong constitution to stomach the murderous nature of his achievement.

Mao brought China neither peace nor prosperity. His Soviet-inspired agricultural policies led to famine; his Cultural Revolution transformed the country into a massive concentration camp. Median estimates of the total number dead as a result of Mao’s will and whim float around 50 million — give or take 10 million. Whatever the body count, most historians agree that Mao was the greatest mass murderer of all time.

It was Mao’s perverse achievement to forge in the smithy of the ancient Chinese soul the makings of a reconstituted superpower. Whether the nation’s ascendancy is because of Mao or in spite of him is almost irrelevant. The DNA is too tight to unravel, the duality too synthesized to deconstruct. Mao, or a version of him, is China. China, in some manifestation, is Mao. Mao’s embalmed corpse on display under glass in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square taps into the Confucian ideal of ancestor reverence, and yet also transcends it. Mao, the great helmsman, washes all other ancestors with his wake.

The cult of Mao is a form of zombie politics; it is part of the voodoo employed by the shrewd, sophisticated bureaucrats who command the Middle Kingdom. They are, by Mao’s standards, faceless. The art of ruling the world’s most populous nation is to be one of a crowd. (During the terror of the Cultural Revolution, only Mao’s favor could save one from the chaos; to survive, the individual had to melt into the mob. Its memory disciplines the masses.)

China today is a dragon with a capitalist head and a communist heart. It is a living, breathing, thriving contradiction. Because the dragon is rising (the metaphor is no less apt because it is melodramatic), its momentum tends to mask its weak spots.

A sobering question

EDITORIAL — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:28:59 GMT

Can Obama make Democrats face up to economic reality?
With every passing week the nation’s already-screwed-up economy becomes even more distressed.

With every passing week the nation’s already-screwed-up economy becomes even more distressed.

Consider just two trends: food and fuel prices are rising faster than at any time in recent memory. Housing prices, meanwhile, have suffered their biggest decline in 21 years.

This means that average citizens will be paying more to put food on their tables, to drive to and from work, and to heat their homes this winter. While the nation’s average Joes and Josephines are dedicating a higher portion of their take-home pay just to get by, they also are helplessly watching the value of their homes — their principal and most basic investment — decline in value.

As for sending their kids to college, that, too, has gotten more difficult. Nationwide, more than 50 education-loan providers have discontinued offering both private and federal money. In Massachusetts, some 40,000 students will similarly go without loans because the state agency charged with helping low- and middle-income students could not secure funds due to distressed capital markets.

Will things get better? Sure, but not any time soon.

One factor that will keep the economy bollixed is runaway federal spending and borrowing. President Bush is going to saddle either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama with a record deficit of nearly $500 billion, once the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are factored in.

It is a fact of life — though most Republicans do not want to recognize it — that Bush squandered the surplus his presidential predecessor, Bill Clinton, left the nation. The Bush tax cuts, which favored the wealthy and the well-off, helped to wipe away the Clinton surpluses. These days, the United States borrows about one-third of its operating expenses (excluding Social Security) just to keep the government going.

Simply put, the national government is in even worse shape than the average American family. If that is not a sobering thought, then what is?

While Bush is certainly the poster boy for reckless handling of the economy, he is not the only culprit. Every president since (and including) Democrat Jimmy Carter has contributed to the sorry economic state in which we find ourselves. Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush helped dig the hole. And Clinton shoveled more than is commonly realized.

With the assent of Congress and the connivance of the Federal Reserve Board, the White House, for more than 30 years, allowed the financial industry — the banks, insurance companies, and brokerage businesses — to relax or abandon meaningful standards of regulation.

AG should probe BPL

EDITORIAL — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:58:41 GMT

Supposedly ‘independent’ trustees receive city funds. Why Birmingham rather than Bulger for the top job?
Political innocents who discount allegations that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is politicizing the Boston Public Library’s board of trustees so that he can directly control the nation’s oldest free municipal library received a rude awakening recently.

Political innocents who discount allegations that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is politicizing the Boston Public Library’s board of trustees so that he can directly control the nation’s oldest free municipal library received a rude awakening recently.

It turns out that three of the library’s nine trustees — who are appointed by the mayor, but by custom and tradition are expected to impartially oversee operations and development in the name of the public — do outside business with the city, and failed to disclose that fact.

This is an apparent violation of Massachusetts’s conflict-of-interest law. Attorney General Martha Coakley should act quickly and decisively to investigate the troubling situation. While she is at it, Coakley should also investigate whether this practice is an aberration from the norm, or whether it has occurred under previous mayors.

We’re not suggesting that Coakley must prosecute the trustees. (Although that would be in her purview, should she find that any laws have been broken. State law holds the penalty for failing to disclose potential conflicts of interest to be fines up to $3000 and jail terms as long as two years.)

Rather, the central concern here is that this revelation calls into question the integrity of the library system and the independence of the trustees from political pressure and mayoral whims or dictates.

News of the trustees’s business dealings with the city comes as a result of some deft detective work by Donovan Slack of the Boston Globe. Of the trustees in question, Slack established that Donna DePrisco of the family jewelry business bearing her name received $38,148 for city gifts and engraving; fundraising consultant Karyn Wilson was paid $48,300 for service rendered to the city; and Zamawa Arenas received payments to her company, Argus Communications, of $174,829 while on the board. Before Arenas joined the board in May of 2006, Argus received $488,845 for city work.

The tainted trustees said that they were either unaware of the requirement to declare potential conflicts or thought that the specifics of the law did not apply to them in their circumstances. Trustee chairman Jeffrey Rudman, a high-powered lawyer who practices with the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale in the Financial District and is widely viewed as Menino’s agent and go-to guy on the board, likewise said he was unaware of disclosure requirements and doubted that they applied. As an attorney, Rudman’s stated lack of awareness of a core element of nonprofit board service particularly stretches credulity; and, of course, ignorance of a law is never an excuse for not following it.

Voting right

EDITORIAL — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:04:37 GMT

Why Beacon Hill should adopt same-day voting and join the national popular-vote movement. Plus, that Obama cover.
The Massachusetts Legislature is expected to vote in the next several days on two proposals that would make democracy, well, more democratic.

The Massachusetts Legislature is expected to vote in the next several days on two proposals that would make democracy, well, more democratic. One of these would provide for the direct election of presidents by national popular vote; the other for same-day voter registration, allowing previously unregistered citizens to qualify at their polling places on Election Day. The Phoenix urges the legislature to adopt both.

The national popular-vote proposal would not replace the Electoral College; rather, it would modify its procedures.

The popular-vote plan is an interstate compact, a type of state law allowed by the US Constitution that enables states to enter into a legally enforceable contract to undertake agreed joint actions, such as electing a president.

The compact would take effect only when similar legislation has been enacted by states collectively possessing a majority of electoral votes — that is, 270 of the 538.

Those states will then vote as a bloc for the winner of the national popular vote, guaranteeing a supermajority of electoral votes and thereby preventing the candidate who receives the fewest popular votes from ending up in the White House, as was the shameful case in 2000. It would also eliminate the possibility that now exists of the election being thrown into the House of Representatives — where each state has one vote (regardless of population) — if no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College. And it would force presidential candidates to campaign nationwide, instead of concentrating their efforts in a handful of so-called battlefield states.

So far, the bill has been approved by the Massachusetts House of Representatives and awaits action by the State Senate. Around the nation, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland have already approved national popular-vote legislation. And in 20 other states, one body of the respective legislatures has also done so. The State Senate here should approve the bill.

Same-day voter registration is an easier concept to understand, but it faces a more uncertain fate on Beacon Hill. As this newspaper noted when it endorsed the idea back in April, voter turnout is depressingly low. Massachusetts ranks only 21st in the nation in this respect. The idea of making it easier and more convenient to register voters, by allowing those with proper identification to do so at the polls, should be a no-brainer.

Reality bites

EDITORIAL — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:24:56 GMT

Will Obama make good on his plan to exit Iraq by 2010? Don’t bet on it.
The war in Iraq has been on the back burner of the American political scene for some time.

The war in Iraq has been on the back burner of the American political scene for some time. During the final months of the interminable primary season, the headlines were dominated by relatively hollow talk about NAFTA, a vitally important discussion of Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the now moot question of whether onetime Democratic front-runner Senator Hillary Clinton could beat the math and wrestle her party’s nomination away from Obama.

Obama has yet to confirm when he will make his promised trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, which will also include visits to France, Germany, Great Britain, and Israel — though it seems to be scheduled within the next couple of weeks. Regardless of whether it comes before or after the August 25 Democratic National Convention in Denver, that trip once again will catapult the Iraq War to the center of political debate.

The presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, discounts the continuing psychic, political, and economic cost of maintaining a large American military presence in Iraq for as many as 100 years. Obama does not. But so far, at least, Obama has failed to communicate the grave and complex difficulties the nation will face in withdrawing from the Iraq quagmire. That none of his fellow Democratic presidential aspirants failed to fully appreciate those difficulties is beside the point. After Obama’s official August instatement as his party’s standard-bearer, that will be even more irrelevant.

At issue is Obama’s campaign position to immediately begin withdrawing combat brigades from Iraq, and to have achieved total withdrawal — save for some non-combat troops necessary to protect our diplomats — within 16 months of assuming office, which would be May 2010.

Putting aside the definition of what constitutes “combat” troops — and that is sure to become an issue in the months ahead — there are approximately 152,000 American servicemen and -women in Iraq. A close reading of the policy tea leaves that gather around Washington think tanks suggests that it would not be a surprise if the US still had somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 boots on the ground by the middle of 2010. (For readers interested in more detail than space here allows, check out former Phoenix political writer Michael Crowley’s piece in the May 7 issue of the New Republic, and George Packer’s report in the current issue of the New Yorker.)