What Bill Clinton’s Mea Culpa Should Mean

http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Ruth Messinger
Posted: March 29, 2010 01:59 PM

As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.

“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton said this month. “I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

Sadly, he’s right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can’t.

Prior to the era of so-called “free trade”, Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.

It is especially fitting that President Clinton’s mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.

Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country’s nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It’s hard to say.

The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we’ve used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive.

Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that’s the point. Maintaining the developing world’s cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.

Each year, during Passover, we say “let all who are hungry, come and eat.” Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors—at least metaphorically—and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ruth-messinger/what-bill-clintons-mea-cu_b_517328.html

7th Anniversary of Iraq War Passes—But Myths Endure

huffingtonpost.com
By Greg Mitchell, 03.30.10

Seven years ago The New York Times ran a prominent photo from a meeting of past Pentagon chiefs who had gathered at the White House for a discussion about 10 days into our invasion of Iraq. Victory still seemed assured but it was also becoming clear that we were not being greeted as liberators in most areas. The picture showed current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with a past master, Robert McNamara.

That day I supplied what I imagined McNamara whispering: “What part of ‘Vietnam’ don’t you understand?”

The seventh anniversary of the start of the Iraq War dawned about ten days ago with very little notice in the media, despite the huge (and ongoing) costs of the war, not the least of which are the nearly 4,400 dead US military personnel and at least 100,000 deceased Iraqi civilians. What we have heard from commentators, again, this year is that the United States went to war with the overwhelming support of the public and the press. Actually, this is a myth.

It’s true that polls showed that Americans believed Saddam had WMD—and no wonder, given the deceitful propaganda from the Bush administration—and that they backed an invasion if it came to that. But most surveys also showed a clear split between those who wanted to go to war soon, and those who wanted to wait for more diplomacy or to give the United Nations inspectors more time to work (remember, they had found nothing and then were withdrawn by the president).

Another myth: the nation’s newspapers on their editorial pages backed the invasion strongly.

You may be surprised to learn that in their final pre-attack editorials, at least one-third of the top newspapers in this country came out against President Bush taking us to war at that time. Many of the papers may have fumbled the WMD coverage, and only timidly raised questions about the need for war, but when push came to shove seven years ago they wanted to wait longer to move against Saddam, or not move at all.

“For apparently the first time in modern history, the US government seems poised to go to war not only lacking the support of many of its key allies abroad but also without the enthusiastic backing of the majority of major newspapers at home,” Ari Berman and I wrote at Editor & Publisher on March 19, 2003. Berman had just completed his fifth and final prewar survey of the top fifty newspapers’ editorial positions.

I had certainly been critical of overall press coverage of the war—and the editorial writers and pundits largely backed the adventure for years—but at least there was some sense of protest on the eve of the invasion.

Following Bush’s forty-eight-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein on March 17, newspapers took their last opportunity to sound off before the war started. Of the forty-four papers publishing editorials about the war, roughly one-third reiterated strong support for the White House, one-third repeated their abiding opposition to it and the rest--with further debate now useless--took a more philosophical approach.

But in the end, the majority agreed that the Bush administration had badly mishandled the crisis. Most papers sharply criticized Washington’s diplomatic efforts, putting the nation on the eve of a pre-emptive war without UN Security Council support--and expressed fears for the future despite an inevitable victory.

Once-equivocal editorial pages got straight to the point. “This war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure,” the New York Times argued, “Washington’s worst in at least a generation. The Bush administration now presides over unprecedented American might. What it risks squandering is not Americans’ power, but an essential part of our glory.”

Other papers were even more blunt. The Sun of Baltimore, consistently one of the most passionate dissenters on the war, began their editorial with the sentence, “This war is wrong. It is wrong as a matter of principle, but, more importantly, it is wrong as a matter of practical policy.”

USA Today asked Bush to finally disclose risks, costs and democratic government estimates for Iraq, while the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wondered “what ‘the peaceful entry’ of 280,000 troops would look like.” The Arizona Republic in Phoenix said that Bush and his “coalition of the willing,” with prodding by the French, “have left the United Nations in tatters.”

The Houston Chronicle said it remained “unconvinced” that attack was preferable to containment, and the Orange County Register of Santa Ana, California, declared it was “unpersuaded” that the threat posed by the “vile” Hussein justified military action now. The San Jose (California) Mercury News wrote, “War might have been avoided, had the administration been sincere about averting it.”

Even a hawkish paper expressed criticism. “The war will be conducted with less support than the cause should have commanded,” the Washington Post, in backing the attack, wrote. “The Bush administration has raised the risks through its insistence onhttp://blogger.huffingtonpost.com/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=3# an accelerated timetable, its exaggerated rhetoric and its insensitive diplomacy; it has alienated allies and multiplied the number of protestors in foreign capitals.”

There was always in the run-up a group of roughly a dozen papers that strongly supported regime change as the only acceptable vehicle toward Iraq’s disarmament. They included the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times, and Boston Herald. They continued their praise of the president this week and celebrated the fact that “the regime of Saddam Hussein is doomed,” as the Kansas City (Missouri) Star put it.

The majority of papers, however, remained deeply troubled by the position the United States found itself in. Even large papers such as the Los Angeles Times , the Oregonian in Portland, and Newsday of Melville, New York, which have long advocated (or at least accepted) using force to disarm Hussein, criticized their president as he prepared to send young men and women into battle.

“The road to imminent war has been a bumpy one, clumsily traveled by the Bush administration,” the Buffalo News wrote. “The global coalition against terror forged after the atrocities of 9/11 is virtually shattered. The explanation as to why Iraq presents an imminent threat requiring immediate action has not been clear and compelling.”

Many papers expressed hopes that a better world could prevail. “So the United States apparently will go to war with few allies and in the face of great international opposition,” the said. “This is an uncharted path...to an uncertain destination. We desperately hope to be wrong in our trepidation about the consequences here and abroad.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/7th-anniversary-of-iraq-w_b_518827.html?view=print

Father Of Dead Marine Ordered To Pay Legal Fees Of Westobro Baptist Church Protesters

AP/Huffington Post
First Posted: 03-29-10 04:30 PM | Updated: 03-30-10 12:51 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/father-of-dead-marine-ord_n_517614.html

UPDATE: The Snyder family is seeking donations to help them continue their suit:  http://www.matthewsnyder.org/

BALTIMORE (AP) — The father of a Marine killed in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters was ordered to pay the protesters’ appeal costs, his lawyers said Monday.

On Friday, Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered Snyder to pay $16,510 to Fred Phelps. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder’s funeral in 2006.

The two-page decision supplied by attorneys for Albert Snyder of York, Pa., offered no details on how the court came to its decision.

Attorneys also said Snyder is struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision adds “insult to injury,” said Sean Summers, one of Snyder’s lawyers.

The high court agreed to consider whether the protesters’ message is protected by the First Amendment or limited by the competing privacy and religious rights of the mourners.

WIKIPEDIA – FRED PHELPS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps

Lawsuit against Westboro Baptist Church

On March 10, 2006, WBC picketed the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, who died in a helicopter crash in Iraq. On June 5, 2006, the Snyder family sued Fred Phelps, WBC, and unnamed others for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[74] On October 31, 2007, WBC, Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebekah Phelps-Davis, were found liable for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

A federal jury awarded Snyder’s father $2.9 million in compensatory damages, then later added a decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and an additional $2 million for causing emotional distress (A total of $10. 9 million).[75][76] The organization said it wouldn’t change its message because of the verdict.

The lawsuit named Albert Snyder, father of Matthew Snyder, as the plaintiff and Fred W. Phelps, Sr.; Westboro Baptist Church, Inc.; Rebekah Phelps-Davis; and Shirley Phelps-Roper as defendants, alleging that they were responsible for publishing defamatory information about the Snyder family on the Internet, including statements that Albert and his wife had “raised [Matthew] for the devil” and taught him “to defy his Creator, to divorce, and to commit adultery.”

Other statements denounced them for raising their son Catholic. Snyder further complained the defendants had intruded upon and staged protests at his son’s funeral. The claims of invasion of privacy and defamation arising from comments posted about Snyder on the Westboro website were dismissed on First Amendment grounds, but the case proceeded to trial on the remaining three counts.

Albert Snyder, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, testified:

They turned this funeral into a media circus and they wanted to hurt my family. They wanted their message heard and they didn’t care who they stepped over. My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside.

In his instructions to the jury U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett stated that the First Amendment protection of free speech has limits, including vulgar, offensive and shocking statements, and that the jury must decide “whether the defendant’s actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection.”

See also Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, a case where certain personal slurs and obscene utterances by an individual were found unworthy of First Amendment protection, due to the potential for violence resulting from their utterance.

WBC sought a mistrial based on alleged prejudicial statements made by the judge and violations of the gag order by the plaintiff’s attorney. An appeal was also sought by the WBC. WBC has said that it is thankful for the verdict.

On February 4, 2008, Bennett upheld the ruling but reduced the punitive damages from $8 million to $2.1 million. The total judgment then stood at $5 million. Court liens were ordered on church buildings and Phelps’ law office in an attempt to ensure that the damages were paid. [77]

An appeal by WBC was heard on September 24, 2009. The federal appeals court ruled in favor of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, stating that their picket near the funeral of Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder is protected speech and did not violate the privacy of the service member’s family, reversing the lower court’s $5 million judgment.[78]

A writ of certiorari was granted on an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, so the case will come up for review in the court’s next term in October 2010.[79]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps

Governor Moonbeam vs. eMeg. The diary of yet another insane political race in California

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/governor-moonbeam-vs-emeg?page=0,1
Ed Kilgore March 27, 2010 | 12:00 am

It’s obvious that the Golden State isn’t golden anymore. As a new transplant here, the first state political event I watched up close was a May 2009 special election, featuring six ballot initiatives designed to avert a titanic budget crisis. California’s voters responded with what can best be described as snarling apathy. Turnout was 20 percent, which beat the previous California record for low turnout in a statewide election. The five initiatives that dealt with spending and revenue—which needed to pass in order to implement a major fiscal comprom ise—all went down, hard. (Most of them lost by two-to-one margins; a sixth initiative, denying legislators pay raises when the budget’s not balanced, passed.) Californians weren’t just experiencing a momentary fit of pique, either: In 2005, a similar package of eight budget deal-related ballot initiatives met the same fate. 

As of March 21, the approval rating for Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stood at 23 percent, which was where his Democratic predecessor, Gray Davis, was when he was recalled and booted out of office in 2003. But that level of support looks robust compared to that of the state legislature (controlled, if that’s not too strong a word, by Democrats), which stands at nine percent, not far from statistical zero. 

California’s bad case of political self-loathing goes beyond a terrible economy, the state’s chronic monstrous state budget deficits, and the endless gridlock over virtually all major decisions in Sacramento. On the structural level, California’s permissive ballot initiative system has inserted voters—or, to be cynical about it, the special interests backing initiatives—into matters normally left to governors and legislators, resulting in constitutional limits on property taxes; excessive reliance on recession-sensitive income taxes; a crippling two-thirds vote requirement for legislative enactment of a state budget or for increasing taxes at any level of government; and a variety of spending mandates. Polls consistently show that a majority of citizens oppose tax increases and most spending cuts (they do favor cutting spending on prisons, which are operating under court rules and stuffed with inmates who have run afoul of the state’s many mandatory sentencing laws, some imposed by initiative). “Waste” is where Californians seem to want lawmakers to look for the massive savings necessary to balance the budget. Too bad California already ranks near the bottom among states in per capita state employees and infrastructure investment, and below average in per-pupil spending on education.

The obvious question is why anyone would want to be the next governor of California. But three viable candidates—two Republicans and one Democrat—are defying logic by offering themselves for this post. One Republican, state insurance commissioner and former tech executive Steve Poizner, is running on a systematic right-wing platform of massive spending cuts, new personal and business tax cuts, and, for dessert, another effort to ban access to public benefits for undocumented workers and their families. The second GOP candidate, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is running far ahead of Poizner, floating her campaign on an extraordinary sea of early money. Three months before the June primary, and eight months before the general election, Whitman (or eMeg, as local political journalists often call her) has already spent $46 million, mostly from personal funds on her campaign, and has threatened to spend up to $150 million if necessary. She has launched an astoundingly early series of saturation media ads, becoming ubiquitous on the California airwaves, as recently explained by David Crane of the influential political blog Calbuzz:

The campaign’s Gross Rating Point report, measuring total delivery of the current week’s broadcast ad schedule in 11 markets in California, shows that eMeg’s buy is comparable to what a fully-loaded campaign might ordinarily deliver in the closing weeks of a heated race—not three months before a primary that she’s prohibitively leading.

“These are some big fuckin’ numbers,” said Bill Carrick, the veteran Democratic media consultant after reviewing the report. “She’s buying the whole shebang.”

Whitman’s ads mainly convey, with numbing repetition, her claim to offer a fresh start for the state, delivered by a rock-star business executive committed to cuts in spending, tax cuts, and education reform. But she recently launched another batch aimed at primary opponent Poizner—whom she leads in the most recent Field Poll by 49 points—depicting the hyper-conservative as, believe it or not, a liberal who thinks just like Nancy Pelosi. (Poizner is reportedly planning to fire back using $19 million of his own Silicon Valley fortune, which may force Whitman to tack in a conservative direction on issues that she’d just as soon avoid, such as immigration.)

These assaults have raised some old concerns about her reputation in corporate circles for being ruthless in the pursuit of her goals, and a bit deranged—exhibiting an “evil Meg” alongside the “good Meg” of her press clippings—if denied her wishes. She’s also bought herself grief by refusing, until very recently, to answer press questions or elaborate beyond the happy talk of her biographical ads about her positions on various issues. All in all, she’s in danger of earning the reputation of being something of a robo-pol like her political mentor, Mitt Romney. 

Indeed, Whitman’s overall strategy appears to be to clear the primary field by bludgeoning Poizner out of the picture with attack ads, and then to run as a can-do moderate conservative who’s worth a gamble for the relatively few voters who bother to show up at the polls. And she is reportedly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building a library of negative information to use against her general election opponent, a guy named Jerry Brown.

That’s right, Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown Jr., who is, on paper, the least likely person imaginable to become the frontrunner for governor of a state that is so passionately disillusioned with politicians. The son of an old-style liberal Democratic governor who served two terms before being bounced from office by Ronald Reagan, Brown was first elected to statewide office 40—yes, 40—years ago. After a term as secretary of state, he was governor for eight years, and later state party chair, mayor of Oakland, and currently attorney general of California. He also ran unsuccessfully, and somewhat fecklessly, for the U.S. Senate once and for president three times. (Coming second to Bill Clinton in 1992.) Not many Californians can remember a time when Brown or his father wasn’t in office or pursuing office, and most can remember more than one occasion when Brown Jr. did something quirky, embarrassing, or controversial. Indeed, Whitman may be wasting her money reminding them. 

But that’s the funny thing about Jerry Brown’s candidacy. Instead of being the fattest target in America for a Republican opponent, Brown is even with or slightly trailing Whitman in recent polls, despite her massive unopposed spending on TV ads—and, given California’s Democratic registration advantage, he’s a good bet to win unless the effectiveness of Whitman’s spending significantly outstrips the likely backlash against it.

You see, Jerry Brown is a tough challenger because he is hard to confine to the standard political and ideological boxes. His long political career may be a handicap in some respects, but it has also helped him defy typecasting and create unusual coalitions. Long an ally of Democratic liberals—in the 1990s, he had a show on the lefty Pacifica radio network—Brown governed California as a fiscal hawk in the wake of the property tax-slashing Proposition 13 (which he had opposed) in 1978. Similarly, as mayor of Oakland from 1999 to 2007, he became known for a strong law-enforcement record, and for his championship of charter public schools, including one controversial military school. He can be broadly characterized as a social liberal and fiscal conservative, which is a good fit for his state. But his leitmotif as a politician has always been unpredictability and a knack for anticipating and sometimes embodying the zeitgeist.

What’s more, his unique form of personal charisma makes him freakishly appropriate for the contemporary madness of California politics. For instance, here’s a characteristic snippet from an interview that Brown conducted with The New York Times, just after he was elected attorney general in 2006:

Over the years, you have moved from being a fabled liberal to a centrist position.

I don’t know. I don’t use that spatial metaphor.

Then how would you describe yourself politically?

I’m very independent. There’s a great line from Friedrich Nietzsche: A thinking man can never be a party man.

Charming. Yet, despite his willingness to name-check Nietzsche, Jerry Brown prefers the idea that politicians should tamp down their own passions, in a way the philosopher might have abhorred. He seriously studied Zen Buddhism in the 1980s, underwent training for the Jesuit priesthood, and worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Not surprisingly, he conveys a certain aura of ironic detachment and self-control.

Indeed, over four decades of engagement in public life, Jerry Brown has developed a remarkable knack for displaying a sense of his own—and government’s—limits. He began his gubernatorial first term in 1975 with an off-the-cuff “address” that ran seven minutes; replaced the traditional inaugural ball with an informal dinner at a Chinese restaurant; traded in his gubernatorial limo for a 1974 Plymouth from the state car pool; rented a small apartment instead of living in the governor’s mansion; and reportedly slept on a mattress on the floor. (As governor, Brown was far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes and spending several times. His austerity, which created vast budget surpluses, prompted one Reagan aide to joke that the Gipper “thinks Jerry Brown has gone too far to the right.”) Appropriately, one of Brown’s publicly identified gurus was Small Is Beautiful author E.F. Schumacher, and he once described his governing style, using a strikingly Zen phrase, as “creative inaction.” That could be very handy if he gets the job he is running for, where limits have been placed on virtually everything a governor can do, and it also provides a strong contrast to Whitman, whose campaign screams hubris. 

Short of having their own grossly rich and relentless attack dog in the race, Democrats are probably blessed to have Brown, who can be expected to shrug off Whitman’s certain assault on his record and land a few coolly delivered blows of his own. He’s already reminding voters that California hasn’t had a particularly good recent experience with “outsider” governors promising to come in and clean up Sacramento by sheer force of will. And, without a doubt, Whitman’s campaign will bring back bad memories of another California candidate who boasted of vast executive experience and spent money like water on unconscionable attack ads: Al Checchi, whose over-the-top 1998 campaign eventually elevated the most boring candidate in the field, Gray Davis, to the governorship.

Meanwhile, Brown will have the luxury of leaving the anti-Whitman dirty work to surrogates and supporters who are planning a half-million ad assault on the Republican. And it’s not exactly a bad time to run as something of an anti-corporate populist, as Brown is doing, talking up “the people who work for the people, the firefighters, the nurses, the hospital workers, the janitors.” I don’t have to spell out which billionaire CEO-politician might be caught in that rhetorical net.

And Brown’s other ace in the hole could well be the Latino vote. Dating back to his close association with pioneer farm-labor organizer Cesar Chavez—who backed Brown’s 1975 candidacy in hopes of finding a political solution to the United Farm Workers’ problems—Brown has longstanding ties to California’s Latino community. Even in polls showing Whitman in the lead, he is beating her badly among Latinos. If Poizner gains traction in the primary, she will be under heavy pressure to move closer to his harsh positions on denying state aid to undocumented workers. And it hasn’t escaped notice that one of Whitman’s closest advisors is former governor Pete Wilson, whose sponsorship of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 back in 1994 decisively alienated Latino voters from the GOP and materially contributed to the state’s current Democratic majority.

It’s a long time until November. The Brown-Whitman tilt will have to share media attention and airtime with a Republican challenge to Senator Barbara Boxer and, before that, with a close and entertaining Senate primary battle between Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell. At the state GOP convention two weeks ago, Fiorina, like Whitman an “outsider” business executive, was the star of the show. Her quirky web ads going after Campbell (the “demon sheep” ad, already a cult classic) and Boxer (a new ad unveiled at the GOP gathering that showed the senator morphing into a hot-air balloon.) are as imaginative and attention-grabbing as Whitman’s TV spots are shrill and heavy-handed. The high point of Meg’s appearance was a press conference where she finally answered press questions. Her leaden convention speech and an over-produced Mitt Romney endorsement provided a glimpse of how poorly her act could wear on Californians over the long haul. 

And it’s not as though Jerry Brown is likely to present Whitman with an unmoving target. As protean as California itself and as wily as any other 40-year veteran of political wars, Brown nicely defined himself in an interview with Calbuzz just after officially announcing his candidacy: “Adaptation is the essence of evolution,” he explained. “And those who don’t adapt go extinct.”

Indeed, such adaptivity may be the only thing that can serve California’s needs right now. With the state no longer in its political golden age, the harsh reality of running—and governing—in a place with such baleful political realities will require a truly kaleidescopic ability to make the best of a hostile environment. And, in a contest with a Republican who seems determined to prove that she and her checkbook can win it her way or no way, I wouldn’t place any bets against Jerry Brown becoming California’s right-man-in-the-right-place, one last time.

Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic. He is also managing editor of The Democratic Strategist and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Hatred as a political strategy

bostonglobe,com
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | March 27, 2010

NEWT GINGRICH had a nerve. No, wait. He hit nerves no one wants to talk about.

In an interview this week with the Washington Post, the former speaker of the House who led the charge to slash social programs during the Clinton presidency, said President Obama and the Democrats would regret pushing to pass the health care bill. Gingrich called the bill “the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times,’’ so radical that Obama and the Democrats “will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years.’’

The Post said the quote referred to civil rights bills enacted under Johnson. Gingrich said that was not what he meant. In a correction, the Post wrote, “Gingrich said he was referring not to the civil rights legislation but to Johnson overreaching on his management of the economy, the Vietnam War and the cultural divisions that emerged partly because of that war. Gingrich said Johnson erred on civil rights by supporting busing to integrate schools and by failing to take a firmer stance against racial violence in urban areas.’’

By clarifying, Gingrich helps us get why health care became the most divisive social-program debate since Gingrich’s successful attack on welfare in the 1990s, an attack that had racial overtones. Health care is breaking the backs of millions of families of all colors, but the Republicans chose to gin up the masses with unbridled fear, with House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio declaring the vote “Armageddon.’’

It was Armageddon all right, a battle between selfishness and sharing. Some Americans who believe health care reform represents a heist of “their’’ resources for the undeserving betrayed their underlying feelings as Democratic congressmen were either called the N word or spat upon, a Latino congressman was called a “wetback,’’ and Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, who is gay, was called the F word.

No Republican had the courage to remind the rabid that America, at other great crossroads, did put government into their lives. The wealth of countless white middle class families today stems from World War II veteran housing bills that too often, we conveniently forget, discriminated against black veterans along with housing segregation. Surely, more than one tea partier has Medicare or uses a VA hospital. Yet most Republicans do anything they can to deflect responsibility for the frenzy.

None is more representative than Gingrich who, after saying there was of course no place for such behavior, told the Journal-Constitution, “I think the Democratic leadership has to take some real responsibility (for choosing) to use corrupt tactics that bought votes, that bullied people and as a result has enraged much of the American people.’’

Some things just add up. The vast majority of tea partiers, at least from all the photos, are white and the nearly all-white Republican congressional delegation stood as a brick wall against reform. The rage around health care, going back to the disruptions of Democratic legislator town halls last summer, continues to raise the temperature not just on health care, but on the dangerous debate on who is a “true blue’’ American.

One cannot forget how, in a last gasp before Obama’s election, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said of Obama, “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America as you and I do.’’ One cannot forget the level of disrespect shown to Obama in the “You lie!’’ outburst by South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson. Wilson has been rewarded for his outburst with the most campaign contributions of anyone in the House, $3.4 million in the 2010 election cycle.

In the final stages of the health care debate, Palin and other Republican leaders resorted to telling their masses to “reload’’ or get ready for the “firing line’’ in November. Republican Congressman Randy Neugebauer had to apologize for shouting “baby killer’’ when anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan gave his support for the health care bill. The Republicans need to find someone with courage to disarm the rhetoric, before someone reloads for real.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/03/27/hatred_as_a_political_strategy?mode=PF