Patriot Games

As Barack Obama closes in on the Democratic nomination, the conservative talk-show attack machine is gearing up.

Conservatives have been conducting an e-mail and Internet smear campaign for months, suggesting that Senator Obama is a Muslim intent on destroying the United States. During the weeks leading up to the recent Wisconsin primary, many Wisconsinites received the e-mail multiple times. Senator Obama and his campaign have been trying to correct the misinformation, but the smear goes on.

The smear campaign focuses on a symbol of patriotism -- a photo of Senator Obama at the Tom Harking picnic a couple of years ago, standing respectfully but not putting his hand over your heart, during the National Anthem -- that is used as evidence that Senator Obama is intent on destroying America.

The "Muslim" aspect of the smear campaign is so patently false that it is a bit much even for Bill O'Reilly, who devoted a few minutes of his program debunking the idea, but the conservative attack machine, including (not surprisingly, I guess) Fox News, have picked up and focused on the "patriotism" issue.

Steve Doocy, co-host of "Fox and Friends", had this to say: "First he kicked his American flag pin to the curb. Now Barack Obama has a new round of patriotism problems. Wait until you hear what the White House hopeful didn't do during the singing of the national anthem." Mark Williams, a former radio host, chimed in: "He felt it OK to come out of the closet as the domestic insurgent he is."

It doesn't take but a few minutes on Google to find an unheavenly host of other examples of the "unpatriot" campaign being waged on conservative talk radio and television.

The "kicked his American flag pin to the curb" reference, for those of you who do not follow the conservative attack machine, is a reference to the fact that Senator Obama does not wear an American flag lapel pin.

In October, Senator Obama told Iowa television station KCRG that he decided to stop wearing a U.S. flag lapel pin because it had become "a substitute for true patriotism", explaining "I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and, hopefully, that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

In my view, Senator Obama is dead right.

The modern conservative movement, beginning with Ronald Reagan, who was a master of image, has wrapped itself in the symbols of patriotism, but not the substance of patriotism.

It has gotten to the point where an increasing number of Americans no longer think that they have any obligation to serve their country, or to sacrifice for their country in time of war. That is frightening, but it explains why we fight supposedly "costless" wars, wars in which Americans think that it is acceptable hire other Americans to fight and aren't even will to help foot the bill by paying for it.

It was not always this way. My generation was raised by World War II veterans, and the obligation to serve was a given for those men and women, and that idea was passed on to us.

We had no doubt at all what our fathers and uncles thought about military service as an obligation -- if the country called you to service, it was your personal obligation to answer the call. We were expected to serve if called -- those of us who were not conscientious objectors were expected to serve in the military, if called, and those who were conscientious objectors were expected to serve outside the military. The underlying principle -- if your country needs you, you should serve -- was identical.

It don't think that's true today. I think that modern conservative reliance on symbol over substance has eroded this principle to the point where the young believe, any longer, that they have a personal obligation to serve. It is enough to "talk the talk" of patriotism, and let others do the service for you.

The substitution of symbol over substance -- measuring patriotism by things like flag lapel pins rather that military service -- is a sea change. And in the world of "talk the talk", things like flag lapel pins have become, to our discredit, important.

As I thought about the "unpatriot" attack machine, I recalled that I didn't remember seeing a flag pin on Senator McCain's lapel, either.

So I did a Google search on Senator McCain, and took a look at a hundred or so pictures of John McCain. In none is Senator McCain wearing a flag pin on his lapel.

I don't know why, of course, and if Senator McCain has explained why, I'm not aware of his statement.

But my guess is that John McCain doesn't wear a flag on his lapel because he carries the flag in his heart, and knows what I know and what all veterans know -- wearing the symbols of patriotism cost the wearer nothing, in marked contrast to military service, which always has a cost and which can cost everything.

So be it.

While I am not certain of Senator McCain's views about touting the symbols of patriotism, I am dead certain of one thing -- between now and November 4, we will not hear John McCain utter a single word questioning Barack Obama's patriotism. Not a single word.

Why am I do certain about that? Because I am a veteran and live in an area where I am surrounded by veterans.

I have yet, in all my years, to hear a veteran, particularly a combat veteran, speak lightly and recklessly about other people's patriotism. We know better, because we know the cost of service, and we know that the cost of service has been paid over the generations by millions of Americans of all political views and attitudes. We know better than to think that patriotism is born of a particular political stance, and we know that those who have demonstrated their patriotism beyond any doubt have no need to posture.

Not so, unfortunately, the right wing attack machine.

I sometimes read a blog called "Yellow Elephant", which tracks the Republican "performance gap" -- pointing out how few Republicans who talk military have actually served, at any point, in any of our armed forces.

I think that "Yellow Elephant" is often unfair because it holds the sons and daughters of prominent Republicans to the sins of their fathers -- criticizing the Romney sons for following the lead of their father and staying out of the military, for example, and that isn't right because the Romney sons are not the ones who have been out on the hustings insisting that the war be fought.

But "Yellow Elephant" does have a point -- the toughest talkers don't seem to think that they or their children have any personal responsibility to serve. As Vice President Cheney so famously put it when asked why he didn't serve in the military during the Vietnam era: "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service."

Along those lines, it is striking to me how few of the talk show patriots have served in the military. In fact, there seems to be an almost perfect inverse correlation -- the louder the mouth questioning someone else's patriotism, the less likely that the mouth is attached to a body that donned a uniform.

Enough said, I suppose, and I'm not expecting that pointing this out will change anything.

The conservative talk show hosts are beyond embarrassment, so pointing out the obvious is not going to get the paper patriots to shut up or put up. Talk is their stock in trade, and talk, unlike service, is cheap.

The Gay "Leadership"

Jason Rae, a student at Marquette University in Milwaukee, is the youngest Democratic "super delegate" this year.

Rae is a member of the Democratic National Committee, elected from Wisconsin, and is Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Youth Council. He is also openly gay.

Rae endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, primarily because of the large number of young voters that Obama has attracted to his campaign.

I am glad to hear of Rae's decision, of course. But Rae's decision brings to mind a fact that has been puzzling me for the last year -- the "leadership" of the GLBT community has largely backed Senator Clinton, with varying degrees of hostility toward Senator Obama.

365Gay.com, a widely read GLBT online news site, runs a blog called "The Visible Vote 2008". The blog has been, in both my view and Michael's more objective view, unrelentingly pro-Clinton during the primary process.

The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, which proclaims itself "the largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization", has been, as the Independent Gay Forum delights in pointing out, little more than a shill for Senator Clinton's candidacy.

As I watched in the last few months, I saw an unwelcome consistency across the board.

I don't understood it.

While I have real difficulty with Senator Obama's stand on same-sex marriage, his record and positions on GLBT issues is as good, in every respect I can think of, as Senator Clinton's. In fact, on DOMA repeal, his position is better, because Senator Obama favors repeal of DOMA, period, while Senator Clinton favors only partial repeal of DOMA.

My guess, for what it is worth, and that's not much, is that the GLBT "leadership", which has been largely recruited from the Washington insider crowd, has been so locked into the politics-as-usual obsession with special interest politics that it could not see beyond that box. But I'm not convinced that's all of it, because while it explains the virtually unanimous support of the GLBT "leadership" for Senator Clinton, it does not explain the hostility toward Senator Obama, which has ranged from catty to hissy-fit-ish.

The tide of national politics has turned now, of course, it is is unlikely that Senator Clinton is going to win the nomination. It is still mathematically possible, but the window of opportunity is closing fast, and anything other than a Clinton blowout in Texas and Ohio will mean the end of her viability.

If that happens, Senator Clinton is going to have to make an ugly choice -- step aside or divide the party into November defeat. In either case, the GLBT "leadership" is going to have to get over Senator Clinton and look at the facts on the ground.

I'll be curious to see what they do.

As I think about it, gays and lesbians are in somewhat the same boat within the Democratic Party as the Religious Right is within the Republican Party, in the sense that both constituencies have been used as means of garnering votes in the razor-thin elections of recent years, but neither constituency has seen any realization of the promises made to us. In each case, we are tossed overboard when the storm hits, with half-assed apologies about settling for what is "possible".

The Risk

I've taken the luxury of sitting back and thinking about Democratic politics, as opposed to writing about them, for the last few weeks.

I'm fascinated by the way in which the campaigns, particularly the Clinton campaign, are portraying the race in recent weeks.

Up until Iowa, the Clinton campaign played an "inevitability" strategy. The primaries were not contests so much as confirmations on the march to the coronation.

Iowa blew that rosy and comfortable strategy out of the water.

Then things got ugly.

In New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign characterized the contest as a choice between "tough and experienced" versus "dreamer" -- the battle-hardened broad against the callow youth still foolish enough to dream and think that dreams were important, so to speak.

The strategy got out of hand. The Clinton campaign, in the week before the South Carolina primary and in the days after, went racial. It turned out to be a disaster for the Clinton campaign, exposing the raw, divisive, win-at-all-costs politics of the Clinton era. The specter of eight more years of national food fight of the last sixteen years reared its head, and things went south rather quickly.

In the aftermath of the South Carolina debacle, the Clinton campaign briefly hopped on the "Change" bandwagon at the theme de jour leading into Super Tuesday, but it was a hollow effort because the Clinton idea of change -- a policy change from the Bush administration coupled with the "historic change" of putting a woman in the White House, that is, more of the same old same old in a pants suit -- was a pale imitation of the theme of the Obama campaign, and struck a cord with just about nobody.

Super Tuesday came down to a draw, and the Clinton campaign morphed yet again.

Now, the Clinton campaign is drawing a contrast between "emotion and soaring rhetoric" and "experience and humdrum competence". The Clinton campaign revels in "anti-charisma", touting it as a virtue.

The Obama campaign has been too restrained to point out the obvious -- Senator Clinton's one visible foray into executive management was the health care debacle of the early Clinton administration. While the root cause of the failure -- Senator Clinton's mismanagement, President Clinton's misjudgment or the overwhelming power of special interests allied with Republican self-interest -- is not all that clear, what is clear is that the health care debacle was a train wreck, and Senator Clinton became a lightning rod during the process.

So it takes balls to characterize Senator Clinton as a hum-drum technocrat, dull but competent.

Be that as it may, though, I think it misses the point.

The Obama campaign caught fire because, after sixteen years of the national food fight, and six years of drain in a war that should never have been fought, Americans are tired, discouraged, and yearn for inspiration, vision and renewal.

Senator Clinton is, in this phase of the campaign, portraying herself as a wet blanket on inspiration, vision and renewal, a competent but dreary technocrat, the personification of business as usual wrapped in a restoration, shifting policy but not shifting paradigm.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, is proposing a new paradigm.

What distinguishes Senator Obama from Senator Clinton is that his vision of hope, change and renewal, resonating so powerfully among the young and the educated who are his base, is aimed at every American, Democrat and Republican alike, reaching across the demographic divides that have created the politics of the last two decades.

Obama, I know from personal experience with him, is a man of principle, remarkable intelligence, and magnetism, a man who personifies and encourages hope. Obama's vision of one nation, working together for solutions to almost impossible problems, is the antithesis of Clinton's model of policy adjustment while maintaining business as usual.

I don't know what the Democrats are going to do in the next few months. So far, Senators Clinton and Obama have more or less balanced each other, and Democrats have been evenly divided between the two visions, the two strategies, the two paradigms.

I am no fool. Obama's candidacy is a risk for Democrats. Clinton's candidacy is safer -- as she says, we know what we are going to get, however unimaginative it might be.

But Obama is, I believe, a once-in-a-generation politician. Although hopes of what he might achieve exceed political reality -- we face hard facts and problems that cannot be solved, no matter who is president -- Obama has the potential to be a great president, a president who can lift us up and renew our national spirit.

I'll take the risk.

Uh, John

"I intend to nominate judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust that they take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people's elected representatives. Judges -- judges of the character and quality of Justices Roberts and Alito, justices who can be relied upon to respect the values of the people whose rights, laws and property they are sworn to defend." -- John McCain, Conservative Political Action Conference

John McCain may want to check with a lawyer. Or maybe a high school civics teacher.

McCain is a soldier turned Senator, and probably never studied the Constitution, but he should have paid more attention in high school civics.

The Supreme Court does not have the duty or responsibility to enforce laws made by Congress. Enforcement is the job of the Executive. The job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the laws.

This isn't a new idea. Marbury v. Madison established the principle in 1802, and nothing has changed. The Supreme Court is the final arbiter on interpretation of the Constitution, as it applies to laws that are passed by the "people's elected representatives", and is responsible to make the determination of whether or not the laws pass Constitutional muster.

We change that at our peril.

Too many "conservatives" believe that the Constitution is nothing more than an inconvenient "piece of paper" to be ignored at will, and that the "people's elected representatives" should have the final say, whether or not the laws they enact trample the rights of free Americans.

McCain playing with fire.