MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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The New Republic

McCain trolling

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Sen. John McCain’s relentlessly desperate, dirty attacks against Sen. Barack Obama should not be forgotten no matter how this election comes out on Tuesday. His name should go down in infamy with that of Sen. Joe McCarthy for the worst kind of guilt-by-association attacks.

The New Republic’s John Judis points out in this video the latest filth being hurled by McCain’s campaign.

It has been an impressively inspirational campaign waged by one man, Obama, as he is buffeted by the most bigoted assault on his character and good by his opponent.

I fear the nation will reward McCain with the presidency and the squalor of his campaign would become part of lore, the way people now remember George H.W. Bush’s savaging of Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988. The elder Bush is not a disgraced figure in the nation despite his seamy tactics.

McCain is counting on that kind of amnesia on the part of our nation. It should not be so.

October 30, 2008
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Maybe We Can't

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The black case for Obama-skepticism

by Cinque Henderson, The New Republic, Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Ninety percent of black Democrats support Barack Obama. So that might leave an observer wondering: What the hell is up with that other 10 percent? Are they stupid? Do they hate their own race? Do they not understand the historical import of the moment?

I can shed some insight on this demographic anomaly. In gatherings of black people, I’m invariably the only one for the Dragon Lady. I’ll do my best to explain how those of us in the ever-shrinking minority of a minority came to our position.

But, before going any further, let me fully disclose my predispositions. I disliked Obama almost instantly. I never believed the central premises of his autobiography or his campaign. He is fueled by precisely the same brand of personal ambition as Bill Clinton. But, where Clinton is damned as “Slick Willie,” Obama is hailed as a post-racial Messiah. Do I believe that Obama had this whole yes-we-can deal planned from age 16? No, I would respond. He began plotting it at age 22. This predisposition, of course, doesn’t help me in making the case against Obama, especially not with black people. But, believe me, there’s a strong case to be made that he isn’t such a virtuous mediator of race. And it’s this skepticism about Obama’s racial posturing that has led us, the 10 percent, into dissent.

Let’s begin with the locus classicus of Obama love, Andrew Sullivan’s encomium in The Atlantic. He writes:

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May 20, 2008
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The color of thought

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I’ve just about had it with my friend Jim Sleeper.

This is what he does to infuriate me:

He writes these deep, complicated pieces, which are really essays, not blog posts, that are layered with links to other thoughtful pieces that very nearly grind you to the ground as you contemplate what they mean, that by the time you catch your breadth to even think of what to say about them, the moment to comment has almost passed. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press) Barack Obama’s campaign wants to stem concerns about his viability in a general election race.

And, as you’re doing this, knocking on your consciousness, demanding to be considered, would be another Sleeper piece, equally as thoughtful, complex and reasoned as the one you’re wrestling with.

All I can say is, thank God for this interminable presidential primary election season.

Ok, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, what of the substance of Jim’s piece?

I (partly) disagree with Jim (but is this his argument, or is he limning another’s) and agree with one of the responses to his TPM Cafe piece offering Sen. Barack Obama a “Way Out of the Race Trap” in this campaign.

Sleeper referred to Ed Kilgore’s piece at TPM Cafe highlighting a debate at The New Republic over whether Obama is fated to be another McGovern. Kilgore gently demolished that trope. Sleeper wondered why none of these guys mentioned Obama’s race when the importance of race had just shown itself in the recent Pennsylvania primary.

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April 28, 2008
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From The New Republic, a poem

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An Azalea Blooms in the Murderer’s Yard

Ralph Sneeden, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, April 23, 2008

And shirtless boys fire rocks with rackets

from the lawn next door. Ping and twang,

then sounds of invisible tunnels torn

through the canopy of indifferent oaks.

Perhaps it was them I saw, the scoundrels,

casting their lures in the middle of February,

hoping to snag the swans parked at the rim

of the flooded bog’s unfreezing pupil.

He shot his family with a twenty-two

not long after debarking the bus from school,

the quiet campus photographer, always

in the dark room, it was said, waiting

for the images he’d abducted from the world

to unfurl in shallow toxic pans.

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April 10, 2008
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"The joyless Panglossianism of Iraq"

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That was Eve Fairbanks describing in The New Republic Gen. David Petraeus at yesterday’s Senate appearance.

Ms. Fairbanks was talking about the verbal pantomimic performances of the senators as well as Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and the, ultimately, meaninglessness of the whole exercise:

But of all the posturers, Petraeus and Crocker were the worst. Their mode of self-protection was linguistic: Working in concert, they tried to brand this phase of the Iraq war with two specific words, “fragile” and “reversible.” “Such inflection points underscore the fragility of the situation in Iraq,” said Crocker. “Like so much else, Iraq’s economy is fragile … I must underscore, however, that these gains are fragile and reversible … Progress is real, though still fragile …” “The progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible,” Petraeus echoed. “Fragile and reversible,” snorted California Democrat Barbara Boxer, after the two were all done. “Those are terms of art.”

She was right. “Fragile” and “reversible” were consciously, artfully crafted words, meant to evoke a military and political situation so precariously balanced it cannot be touched. (If a hospital patient’s condition was described as “fragile,” would you try to move him?) It’s a Catch-22, as Fred Kaplan puts it: “If things in Iraq get worse, we can’t cut back, lest things get worse still; if things get better, we can’t cut back, lest we risk reversing all our gains.”

I had a favorite Petraeus line from the hearing, which contained no mention of “fragile” or “reversible,” but, I think, best revealed his real state of mind. “It is very easy to dislike where we are and be frustrated by it,” he told a red-faced George Voinovich, “but we are where we are.”

We are where we are, it is what it is: Call it the joyless Panglossianism of Iraq, in which we dislike the state of things simultaneously believe it represents the best of all possible worlds. Our imaginations become so captured by the disaster that could happen if we dramatically alter the way things are that we start just drifting along, aggressively preferring the status quo. It’s an attitude that seems to infect even the most ambitious Iraq fixers in the end, and made Petraeus and Crocker shadows of the confident men that appeared before Congress in September.

Perhaps more than anything else, Petraeus and Crocker’s performance reminded me of this exchange from Waiting for Godot:
ESTRAGON: I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t have been better off alone, each one for himself. …
VLADIMIR (without anger): It’s not certain.
ESTRAGON: No, nothing is certain.

Who can break the hold of this attitude?

April 9, 2008
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Coinkydink?

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In light of our recent posts regarding the racial overtones of the Vogue magazine’s recent cover on LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen, The New Republic magazine has weighed in with an edition with the above illustration.

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what that cover illustrates in this TNR issue. The issue has a vaguely environmental theme. But is this how one illustrate environmental issues? It’s truly a head-scratching cover.

I can’t and I won’t say anything.

April 8, 2008
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Tone Deaf

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Leon Wieseltier over at The New Republic had heard Sen. Barack Obama’s song and he, for one, is totally immune to this call:

It is not “the politics of fear” to remind Obama’s legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)

I have to say his play on the “Yes, We Can” rhetoric is quite clever. Sen. Obama, I believe, threatened to pursue Osama bin Laden into Pakistan, if necessary, and was roundly lambasted for rashness.

You cannot win against Wieseltier’s argument because he is refusing to be convinced about anything and there’s nothing a person could say to change his mind. Sometime this fall, expect the erstwhile liberal magazine, The New Republic, to endorse ultra right wing Republican John McCain for president.

February 17, 2008
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