While “disastrous” was among the more charitable descriptions of Bobby Jindal’s performance Tuesday night, we would like to thank him for mounting so ineffectual a response to President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. (The joke in the White House press room is that Jindal has gone from being a rising star to a black hole.) We take no pleasure in the derision—laughter at a governor who has made a fool of himself on national television only makes our state look bad—but we’re glad that he put up no serious resistance to the persuasiveness of Obama’s progressive agenda. Jindal has done us the favor of leaving his party even more leaderless and dispirited. His faux-optimistic speech, titled “Americans Can Do Anything,” was clearly written before the G.O.P. knew what Obama would say; they were expecting a gloomy assessment of the economy without an equal measure of confidence that the nation can rebuild and come back stronger than before.
Politics/Economy
Mr. Jindal, Tear Down This Ambition
Who says brainy, high-I.Q. types can’t be stunningly obtuse? Or cold-hearted?
We were already highly irritated with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, by some accounts an educated man, for supporting and signing the creationist, Orwellian-named Louisiana Academic Freedom Act, a law that officially weakens the teaching of evolution and now punishes New Orleans as a national science association sadly announces it would rather meet in Salt Lake City (!) than convene its 2,300 members in an anti-science state.
Roll Up Sleeves, Pick Up Phone
All week we’ve been wondering Where are the f—ing Senate Democrats?! It’s as though the camera hogs have turned into groundhogs, frightened of their shadows, leaving Obama to do all the heavy lifting on the American Recovery and Investment Plan, better known as The Stimulus.
Get Congress on Track to Stimulate Mass Transit
Elana Schor at TalkingPointsMemo.com reports that the economic recovery package being considered in the House of Representatives gives “only $10 billion for rail and other public transportation projects, compared with $30 billion for roads.” The Senate Appropriations Committee is considering even less for mass transit projects: $9.5 billion. In a package projected to cost $825 billion, in a nation where public transit has been shortchanged for over a decade, that just ain’t enough. The U.S. spends about $12 billion each month in Iraq. Ten billion is as much as has been given to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (each) in the $700 billion bailout for banks and insurers—and only one-fifth of what Citigroup is getting.
President Obama.
On the warmest cold day in recent memory, we joined about 200 fellow rejoicers to watch the Inauguration at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street in the lower East Village in Manhattan. (Landmark and sunshine indeed!) If we couldn’t be in Washington—obviously the place to be on Inauguration Day—then we wanted to be in a public place with fellow citizens rejoicing to see the passing of the torch. And so, with some of the same campaign volunteers with whom we drove from Brooklyn to Philadelphia in October, we sat in a warmly crowded theater to watch on the big screen CNN’s coverage of the fulfillment of our campaign efforts. (See ‘Yes We Can Get Out the Vote’ [10/29/08] below.)
George W. Bush Takes the Long View
Part of the history that Mr. Bush won’t be reading can be found in a transcript of his speech from Jackson Square on Sept. 15, 2005, two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Rather, historians can note the great gulf between the promises made in that speech (examples below) and the inaction that followed. More than fifteen visits to New Orleans and vicinity, which the President repeatedly referred to as “that part of the world,” were not accompanied by a concerted federal effort to rebuild the city and region, its schools and hospitals and housing, its infrastructure, or its storm protection systems whose funding had been repeatedly whittled down by Bush administration budgets before the storm.
‘Change Has Come to America . . . This Is Your Victory’
Glory hallelujah! are the first two words that come to mind. After eight long years in the wilderness, it hardly seemed possible anymore that such a fine, worthy candidate could win in the United States, especially by such a large margin. And yet over the course of the past year we’ve felt the tide of history moving in a new, more hopeful direction. That new direction was celebrated last night in Grant Park, Chicago, and around the nation and the world.
Yes We Can Get Out the Vote
This weekend we drove in a carload of Obama volunteers from Brooklyn to North Philadelphia—to the Germantown section of North Philly, to be precise. (McCain is pushing hard to win Pennsylvania.) When we arrived, there were about 100 other volunteers from New York—where Obama’s victory is assured—being coached by a bright and energetic field organizer named Kimeka Campbell. Kimeka runs a tight ship in North Philly, and Obama-Biden’s is the most efficient operation we’ve ever seen.
Abnormal Psychology: Days of Rage in a Fact-Free Zone
Did he really say that? We had to play it back several times to be sure. (Check it here, on NBC Nightly News.) John McCain says he’s going to win the White House by fooling us? This comes just a week after his campaign aides acknowledged they couldn’t win by talking about the economy, and just days after an apparent Hanoi Hilton flashback in which he addressed a crowd as “my fellow prisoners.” • Even his fellow Republicans are alarmed about his grip on reality and the potential for violence. (See remarks by Gergen and Weaver below.)
The Credit Crisis and the Social Contract
It’s significant that the economic crisis threatening the U.S. and the global economy is a credit crisis, a collapse of confidence. The word “credit” derives from the Latin credere, to trust, believe. But how can financial institutions believe in each other when they’ve played Enron-like shell games to the point where no one knows what anything is worth anymore? How can anyone have confidence when regulations are legislated away and there is no adult supervision?
Scraping Away the Lipstick
The clever folks at TalkingPointsMemo.com designed this perky little porker, and now you can buy T-shirts from Zazzle.com by clicking here for women’s and for men’s.
Further Thoughts on Obama and New Orleans
A few days ago, prompted by an article by Naomi Klein in The Nation (“New Orleans: The City That Won’t Be Ignored”), we were asking, “Where was Obama while McCain was exploiting Gustav?” On further reflection, we should acknowledge that as the hurricane was approaching and two million were evacuating, fearing Katrina II, Obama said he did not want to get in the way of the emergency preparations. Also, it was easier for McCain to join his fellow Republicans, governors Barbour and Jindal, and with help from President Bush, all of whom had an interest in the GOP’s being seen as handling the emergency effectively.
Where Was Obama While McCain Was Exploiting Gustav?
In a powerful article in The Nation (9/22), Naomi Klein points out that “The City That Won’t Be Ignored” is being neglected by Obama—who blew it when he let McCain and Palin fly down to Mississippi to show their concern while he stayed away. Maybe McCain’s act was lame, but at least he came. Gustav didn’t inconvenience the Grand Old Party so badly after all. Maybe McCain’s visit was only setting the stage to demand new offshore drilling, as Bush did the very day after the storm, while more than half a million were without electricity and New Orleanians weren’t yet allowed to return home. Great: Republicans got credit for caring about storm victims.
Palin’ by Comparison: Miss Wasilla, a Heartbeat Away
We already knew John McCain was not serious about governing, but his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate tells us he is not even serious about winning. This choice pleases the evangelical ‘base’ that had been cool to him, but McCain apparently doesn’t care in what contempt he is held by the more adultlike members of his own party, much less by the rest of the nation and the world. (How seriously would he be taken in foreign capitals after this show of poor judgment, cynicism, or desperation? Compare this.) What does this tell us about how he would choose a Supreme Court justice? (He has already said he would pick someone like Alito and Scalia.)
Calm Down: First He Has to Win
In our last post we urged our readers to keep the pressure on Barack Obama about his commitment to ending the war. We don’t take that back, but we want everyone to read “Playing Down the Middle” by Bill Boyarsky, a former editor for the Los Angeles Times and a lecturer in journalism at USC. Like any Democratic candidate, no matter how special, Obama has to move to the center to win the White House. FDR’s liberal supporters were often disappointed by his playing the middle, but Roosevelt understood that “I cannot go any faster than the people will let me go,” as he once said to Upton Sinclair. And we’ve never met a Democrat who holds a grudge against FDR for having compromised when he had to. Read what Boyarsky has to say. Maybe, just maybe, Obama knows what he’s doing.
Get in Barack’s Face @ my.barackobama.com: Hold Firm on Iraq Withdrawal
We are confident that despite the media reports and rumors that Barack Obama is thinking of ‘refining’ his plan to end the war in Iraq, this does not mean he is retreating from his commitment. People are asking if Obama is backpedaling to the center, willing to relax his positions to win votes. (Arianna Huffington details “Seven Things Barack Obama Should Do to Keep from Blowing It” in a recent post on Huffington Post.) Incredibly, yet predictably, the McCain campaign claims that Obama is now coming around to McCain’s position on the war. Not bloody likely. The Republicans want to blur distinctions, but the candidates’ positions are starkly different.
In memoriam: Tim Russert, 1950–2008: A Father’s Day Tribute
We were dumbfounded and profoundly saddened to learn yesterday of the sudden and untimely death of Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of “Meet the Press.” The high professional esteem in which he was held by colleagues and public officials was inseparable from their personal affection for this dedicated and friendly journalist. He is praised for his command of the issues and keen analysis, and his nonpartisan, “equal opportunity” thoroughness in questioning guests of all political stripes. While he made his subjects sweat, he also exuded a genuine enthusiasm for politics.
Now Entering a New Phase of a Neverending Contest?
After 16 months and 54 contests, Barack Obama has clinched the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. He gave a stirring, uplifting speech to a raucous crowd of some 18,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota—taking the fight to the city where the Republicans will hold their convention in September—but Hillary Clinton has not yet conceded or endorsed him. Speaking to a fervent crowd of supporters in the basement of Baruch College in New York City, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe introduced her as “the next president of the United States,” and Hillary claimed, “Thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the last word,” when Montana voters were still pulling the levers.
Hillary’s Assassination Dream: ‘An X-ray of a Very Dark Soul’
Through this long primary campaign season we have not had much to say about Hillary Clinton, but after her RFK assassination remarks to the Sioux Falls, S.D., Argus Leader, we cannot stay silent. This is an outrage. It is sickening—especially as the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination approaches—and to say this just days after the announcement of Senator Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor? There is no excuse for this kind of talk. This is not the first time she has invoked the spectre of assassination. Her meaning is not being misconstrued or ‘taken out of context’: It’s very plain: She is cold-bloodedly anticipating that ‘something might happen,’ and if it does, she’ll be around to pick up the nomination.
Tribute and Prayers for Senator Kennedy
Senator Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama on Jan. 28 in an appearance
with Caroline Kennedy and Rep. Patrick Kennedy at American University,
Washington, D.C. Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/New York Times.