by David Steven | Apr 1, 2008 | North America
A few weeks back, John McCain was asked whether taxpayers should fund contraception to combat AIDS. Here’s the response:
Mr. McCain: “I haven’t thought about it. Before I give you an answer, let me think about. Let me think about it a little bit because I never got a question about it before. I don’t know if I would use taxpayers’ money for it.”
The reporter asks the obvious follow-up: “Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”:
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”
Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”
Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”
Fortunately, bloggers have now persuaded themselves that McCain, at 5′ 7″ is too short to be elected. Don’t be too sure, though. Maybe he’ll follow the example of the even-shorter Nicholas Sarkozy, who sick of being compared to his taller wife, is said (ahem) to be planning surgery that will stretch him by 5 inches over the next year.
There should be plenty of time for McCain to add a couple of inches, while Hilary continues her kamikaze destruction of Obama…
by Alex Evans | Mar 7, 2008 | North America
As you pity Samantha Power for having to resign for calling Hillary a ‘monster’, the story of the week’s other Obama leak is still developing. As readers will recall, that leak was to do with a meeting last month between Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s senior economic adviser, and officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. As the FT reported earlier this week,
In a summary of the meeting, a Canadian diplomat wrote that Mr Goolsbee “acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign … He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,” said the memo, which was obtained by the Associated Press …
The Canadian embassy in Washington expressed regret for how the meeting had been interpreted. “There was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private,” it said.
At the time, my reaction was simply: how embarrassing for the Canadian embassy. But there’s a twist. Since then, media coverage has reported that the leak actually came from Ian Brodie – chief of staff to the [highly conservative] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper – after ABC News identified him as the source of briefing to reporters. As Jeet Heer remarks on Comment is Free,
In Canada, the whole story is emerging as a major political scandal. This sort of interference into another country’s elections is not just a huge diplomatic faux pas, but also a deep affront to democratic norms.
(more…)
by Jules Evans | Mar 5, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks
Am back in Moscow for a week, working on a story. The impression I get from my meetings so far is that the West has underestimated the extent to which a new era has begun in Russian politics, and the extent to which Russia genuinely has a new leader, with his own agenda, in Dmitry Medvedev, who was elected president on Sunday.
The consensus Western view is that Medvedev is Putin’s stooge. The Western press were full of cartoons last week depicting Medvedev as a puppet sitting on Putin’s knee. Western politicians have been happy to parrot the same negative opinion of the new president. Hillary Clinton, for example, said the new president (whose name she couldn’t even remember – see this video. Man, that’s foreign policy experience for you!) is “someone who is obviously being installed by Putin, who Putin can control, who has very little independence”.
Obama was similarly down on the new guy, saying “Putin will still have the strongest hand”, while John McCain, well-known Russophile, said Medvedev’s election meant that “Putin had just made himself president for life”. Nice one fellows – how to offend the new Russian president before he’s even been inaugurated!
Russians themselves are unsure how seriously to take their new president. I haven’t met anyone who’s voted for him, in fact, I haven’t met anyone who voted at all. When he appeared on stage at a rock concert with Putin on Sunday, it was Putin’s name the crowd chanted, which must have been somewhat gutting for Medvedev. The public have already given the diminutive president a nickname though: ‘nano-president’.
But we shouldn’t be too quick to write off Medvedev. Kremlinologists tell me Medvedev is his own man, with his own team, and his own agenda. And, as president, he has vast powers of appointment. In fact, the rumours from the Kremlin are that there is already tension between him and Putin over personnel changes. Medvedev wants to bring in his own team, and get rid of some of the old guard.
What can we expect from the forthcoming personnel changes? It may mean out with the spooks, in with the lawyers. (more…)
by David Steven | Feb 28, 2008 | North America
Hilary Clinton’s futile and self-defeating attacks on Barack Obama are obscuring a much more significant phenomenon. At the margins, a robust, effective and alluring (to some) anti-Obama narrative is in gestation. And it’s going to be interesting to watch this migrate into the mainstream with every step Obama takes to the White House.
A good place to see what’s brewing on the fringes is this extraordinary column from the pseudonymous Asia Times columnist, Spengler. Like his namesake and fellow apostle of Western decline, Spengler revels in his role as a contemporary Cassandra. Based on scant evidence, he has peered into Obama’s soul and has come away repelled by what he sees.
The root of the problem, Spengler argues, is Obama’s parentage. His mother hated America so much that she married outside her culture and race, not once but twice. His father was ‘an abusive drunk and philanderer whose temper soured his career’, typical of a class of Kenyans who collaborated with their colonial masters and became “hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.”
Her second husband, meanwhile, the Indonesian Lolo Soetero, took his new family into “the kitchen of anti-colonialist outrage, immediately following one of the worst episodes of civil violence in post-war history.” Young Obama may not have become a Muslim, but his early experiences have left him anti-American to the core.
Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother’s milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion.
He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.
And behind this deracinated and tragic figure is the obligatory harpy, his wife Michelle. She, Spengler argues, burns with the rage felt by all ‘descendants of slaves’ and thinks nothing of ‘bitch slapping’ her husband when he fails to live up to expectations. Like Lady Macbeth, she will drive her weak-willed spouse down to the road to inevitable ruin, whether of himself or America.
So there you have it – a mother who betrays her race and a father who betrays his. A step father and wife who help produce a toxic rage. The result: the Presidential candidate as cuckoo, the archetype of an “embittered outsider manipulating the system from within to achieve his goals.” Spengler finds only one consolation:
It is conceivable that Barack Obama, if elected, will destroy himself before he destroys the country. Hatred is a toxic diet even for someone with as strong a stomach as Obama.
I think Obama can survive this stuff – but come the Autumn and assuming Hilary doesn’t make an extraordinary comeback – he’s in for an ugly ride…
by Richard Gowan | Feb 28, 2008 | Conflict and security, North America
This is now nearly a day late, but I can’t resist juxtaposing two stories from Tuesday’s New York Times – stories which oddly enough, the NYT ran entirely separately. Put them together though, and you may find the magic equation for who will win in November. Story #1 concerned John McCain’s cheerful admission to journalists that “he needed to convince the American people that the troop escalation in Iraq was working and that American casualties there would continue to decline. If he did not, he said, “I lose” the election.”
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made clear that he believed his prospects in November would rest in large measure on the way the situation in Iraq played out.
“If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose,’ ” he said. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me.”
Mr. McCain said he believed opinion was shifting to his point of view, referring to a recent USA Today poll that, he said, showed that “now the majority of Americans believe the surge is succeeding.”
Fair enough. Now here’s story #2: the Pentagon has projected that U.S. troop levels in Iraq will still be at 140,000 in July – that’s 8,000 more than the pre-surge figure. And, judging by comments from the Joint Chiefs’ Head of Operations, the numbers may stay nice and high:
General Ham stressed that his projected number of 140,000 was subject to change depending on security conditions, but it was the first time the Pentagon had publicly estimated the total.
Asked if the total would be below 132,000 by the time President Bush leaves office next January, General Ham said, “It would be premature to say that.”
In other words, the military strategy in Iraq is likely to favor Mr McCain all the way through to November. No surprise, then, that he and Barack Obama have spent the last day trading insults on Iraq. But please don’t take my welcome for the European parliament’s new report on securing Iraq to be an indirect McCain endorsement – the Dashboard remains studiously neutral.
