Mondoweiss

Obama's Obeisance to the Lobby Concerns Me Not

A friend is disturbed by Marty Peretz's renewed endorsement of Obama--"What Obama Said to Me About Israel", and by Obama's obeisance to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who my friend points out served in the Israeli army in the 80s at a prison where Palestinians were tortured. How can you have such faith in Obama to change U.S. policy? Well I have faith.

First off, it's interesting that this shidduch, to use the Yiddish phrase for marriage or a deal, is happening right now. Obama has clearly won, and now he is getting a laying on of hands by a prince of the Israel lobby, actually two princes, who pronounce that he's kosher. My crowd has always said that the lobby is important, this just shows it. Expecting Obama to cut the lobby out is naive. It is not for nothing that he sold out Ali Abunimah in Chicago some years back; I wish he didn't but he did, and it was a necessary step to his advancing to the national stage.

I don't mean to suggest that Obama is insincere either. The great demand of Walt and Mearsheimer, and of others who support Palestinian right of self-determination, is that We be included at the table of foreign policy. We're not asking that Marty Peretz be thrown out, or Goldberg, or Dennis Ross even, no; we're saying that other Americans be included, from Ali Abunimah to Zbig Brzezinski to Rob Malley to MJ Rosenberg to Leon Hadar. Of course we seek a great weakening of the Israel lobby, but what I have always said is that a robust debate of what the American interest is visavis Israel is all that we need. When that takes place, Americans will exercise real fairness in our dealings, and the situation will change. And I do think this is happening: that an Obama administration will include Chuck Hagel and many realists who believe that Israel is damaging our position in the world, and that its allies are promoting a dangerous idea about Islamofascism... Obama is a real smart guy. I am sure he has read Walt and Mearsheimer's paper on line.

It doesn't even bother me so much that Peretz is claiming Obama. Peretz is a Washington type, he loves power, he likes to be at the table. He has good political values in some areas, he held Al Gore's hat for him for a long time. The greatness I see in Obama is a cold ability to weigh the arguments of petitioners without being beholden. He doesn't anger, he doesn't fall in love. His language is considered. He has the unique ability to triangulate the Palestinian position and Marty Peretz's and maybe bring about an understanding, the ability not to frighten Holocaust-era Jews. I have that faith.

The most important lesson of Aaron David Miller's book is that the greatest achievement by any president in the Middle East came through the efforts of a guy who really liked Arabs 30 years ago. Jimmy Carter: Camp David. Carter was a rich, rural man who adored Anwar Sadat and even Hafez al-Asad. And he threw himself at the problem, in defiance of the domestic considerations his aides kept warning him about, and was willing to toss his presidency aside to achieve something here. After all, Sadat gave his life for what Carter was merely sacrificing position or reputation to achieve.

The other Democratic paradigm is Bill Clinton, who didn't want to spend any political capital on the problem--no, he'd been impeached and wanted to rise again with his wife's presidency. Clinton's Camp David team was almost all Jewish, its chief negotiator acting as "Israel's lawyer" (per Miller); and it achieved nothing, and the second intifadah began. Ambassador Kurtzer has now written that the next president should have a diverse team, including Arabists.

I recite this history only to say that Obama is more in the Carter camp than the Clinton one. I've read his wife's thesis at Princeton and Obama's first book. These people entered public service because they wanted to change things. No I can't imagine that he will torch prospects of a second term over the issue, but I think he truly understands, as Carter did, that this is the great hidden secret of American politics, and the great challenge to a true statesman is to lead America out of this swamp. Jews are powerful; he needs Jews to get there.

Pastel-Pantsuit Populism Pasted as Pander

The worst I felt the whole campaign was over the weekend, when the conventional wisdom had it that Hillary, a rich suburban woman, had successfully remade herself as a populist, and her gas-tax holiday was going to give her momentum out of Indiana and North Carolina.

Obama Never Played the Gender Card (Or Any Other Identity Card)

Hillary is playing the race card, saying that whites don't support Obama, they support her. It's interesting to consider that Obama--whose identity has plainly evolved from black-American to simply American--has never played the male card against Hillary.

Betsy Reed has a fine piece in the Nation, pointing out how disturbing it has been for women who have cheered Hillary in the past to be told that they should back Hillary "out of gender solidarity, regardless of the broader politics of the campaign." Reed interviewed black women on the subject, and their responses

ran the gamut from astonishment to dismay to fury. Patricia Hill Collins, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and author of Black Feminist Thought, recalls how, before they were reduced to their race or gender, the candidates were not seen solely through the prism of identity, and many Democrats were thrilled with the choices before them. But of the present, she says, "It is such a distressing, ugly period. Clinton has manipulated ideas about race, but Obama has not manipulated similar ideas about gender." This has exacerbated longstanding racial tensions within the women's movement, Collins notes, and is likely to alienate young black women who might otherwise have been receptive to feminism. "We had made progress in getting younger black women to see that gender does matter in their lives. Now they are going to ask, What kind of white woman is Hillary Clinton?" [emphasis mine]

Will Hillary's Exit Signal the End of the Jewish Establishment?

Watching Lanny Davis spin desperately for Hillary the other night on MSNBC, hearing Howard Wolfson work the same riff on NPR this morning, I wondered if the Jewish establishment is ending almost before it began. The Clintons were the greatest thing that happened to Jewish success. My people had been outsiders in American life for generations, then they came inside with a giant splash during the Clinton administration, in which 2 of 2 Supreme Court appointments were Jewish and countless political plums too, including even the president's lover (Monica) and sometime-chaperone (Evelyn Lieberman). Almost everyone was Jewish on the president's negotiating team at the disastrous Camp David, a team that acted as "Israel's lawyer" (in the words of Aaron David Miller). A couple of my extended family got to play roles in the administration, too.

Then Bush came along and, look Ma! we got to handle foreign policy.

Some of the desperation around Hillary's fall seems to me class-based, in the sense that a Jewish meritocratic group shared a sociological identity and interests: succeeding bigtime, and helping Israel while we were at it. Hillary's former strategist Mark Penn, whose millions became a symbol of the campaign's entitled feeling, was the son of a man who had sold kosher poultry (as he relates in his smart book on trends) and started out polling for Menachem Begin. That famous letter in March from big donors to Nancy Pelosi warning her not to shut the nomination process on Hillary was signed by a "cadre" of influential Jews (in the words of the Forward), the most notable being Brookings-backer Haim Saban, who supports the Israeli army (and who believes Hillary "is ten times more qualified" than Obama). Harvey Weinstein reportedly offered to help finance a Michigan primary on Hillary's behalf. The negative campaign against Obama was orchestrated in part by the devilish welterweight Sid Blumenthal. Lately Ed Koch has been working the Rev. Wright story and Lanny Davis has been working Wright and Bill Ayers too. Ann Lewis, Barney Frank's sister, was Hillary's mouthpiece at a Jewish event in March, chanting  "The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel." (A dangerous statement, if ever there was one.)

So It isn't just Hillary who has a lot to lose; establishment Jews do, too.

The Democratic base is changing. Lanny Davis recently insisted that Joe Lieberman is a "progressive Democrat" going back to civil rights days. But what does that say about the Lieberman camp in the former Democratic base; hawkish and Israel-centered, they may all defect to McCain come the general.

And speaking of civil rights, that old coalition united blacks and Jews. So maybe that's Obama's promissory note. It's the blacks' turn now!

Will Obama be as "good for the Jews" as Hillary? No. But I bet younger Jews aren't asking that selfish question. They don't feel themselves to be outsiders, and I imagine that many of them see our tragic Israel/Iraq policy, that deathly double-play combination of Pollack-to-Kristol-to-Perle, as the Jewish establishment at work. I often think of what Michael Walzer said at the Center for Jewish History last year. For 3000 years, "we governed only ourselves, as best we could... Sometimes [we were] semi-autonomous... responsible only for ourselves." Not so good, he added ruefully, at governing others. I'm looking forward to more power-sharing, in a rainbow establishment...

Being Right About Iraq War Finally Yields Career Dividends (Obama Closes In)

A week back I drafted a post saying that MSNBC should take Chris Matthews off air unless he says he's not running for Senate in '08 then never posted it because Matthews is such a political genius that I almost forgive him. Last night he had another crushing insight. At about midnight, as he and Buchanan and Russert were agreeing that the Dems' race is over, he said that the only reason Barack got his foot in the door in the first place and was now in a position to shut off the feeding tube was because of Hillary's vote in 2002 to authorize the war. That's why he got to run as a believable change candidate; and she didn't: She had made a terrible mistake in judgment on the most important decision of the last 40 years.

Not Obama. As an Illinois state senator in October 2002, Obama, with a real sense of the moment, and some courage too, opposed the war and took on the neocons.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

Supporters of the decision to invade a country that did not attack us have tried to argue these facts away for a long time. They say that Obama would have made the same decision as Hillary if he had been holding statewide office (highly unlikely) or that Hillary's vote was really not that meaningful because the whole establishment was sliding off the edge (exactly; the brave tried to stop the insanity). Or, yielding to Packerism, they say that George Bush and Rumsfeld just fought it the wrong way. These are all self-serving claims, so that war supporters don't suffer in position for having blown the call. Eric Alterman used to wonder when we who opposed this war were finally going to get our dividend. It occurred to me after Matthews's comment that the birds may finally be coming home to roost, six years on...

Hillary Was Initially Against Bosnia Intervention, Biographer Says

Yesterday Hillary defended her threat to totally obliterate Iran. Obama, god bless him, described this as GWB-style "saber-rattling." It's all political. As Hillary's biographer Sally Bedell Smith said on C-Span the other day--and wrote last year:

in 1993 she talked her husband out of getting involved in the war in Bosnia because she thought it would be like Vietnam and would harm the chances for her health care plan. Two years later, after being secretly tutored by a State Department official, she became an advocate for the use of force in Bosnia because she feared Bill's inaction was harming him politically.

On TV, Smith said the State Department tutor was Richard Holbrooke. And Smith suggested that Hillary was also against Rwanda intervention. I see Michael Crowley of TNR has picked up on the same issue. 

From Montana to 'Bama-- It's Bloomberg Obama!

Obama just said on Meet the Press that he's for the Democratic nominee come November. Hillary also said she'll fight for Obama if he wins. I think this is pillow talk. When one of them loses, they're gonna be sore. The party's divided for a reason. It's the old guard vs. the new guard (and let's leave the class issues out for a second). If Hillary wins, why shouldn't Obama grasp the nettle and break with the old politics--if he's for real about all that--and run for the great smart middle that is tired of Iraq, tired of the Israeli occupation, tired of special interests, tired of being patronized and pandered to. I believe Bloomberg's endorsement is still up for grabs; a spectacular triangulation would be to sign on Mike Bloomberg as VP. Blacks and Jews, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, a third way. Yes, two members of the elite, from Illinois and New York. But remember that blue states are elite and neither of these guys has shown real contempt for ordinary people (when not pandering to SF audiences that is); and the main thing these guys would be selling is creativity, intelligence, competence, new politics, a new generation, optimism and Yes we can--fix the country. Don't you want to fix the country?

Maybe Hillary Should Pull a Lieberman and Run All the Way to November

Obama is getting closer by the day. And yet the Democratic Party is split. Many Hillary supporters will turn to McCain in the fall if Obama's the nominee--just as many Obama supporters will vote for McCain if Hillary manages to pull it off. It's Lamont-Lieberman all over again, Connecticut, '06. And when Lamont, the insurgent, knocked off the establishment candidate, Lieberman ran as an Independent and beat Lamont in the general.

Maybe Hillary should do the same thing. This may be her last chance to be president, and she has broad appeal, who needs political parties? As her former pollster Mark Penn has shown, it's all about marketing and microtrends. She's got name recognition and money and many different strands of support, from hawkish Jews to truckdrivers.

She could keep running Obama's numbers down all spring summer and fall, and battle McCain for the neocon vote and the racists. She'd clean McCain's clock in a debate.

As an Obama man, I'm not really for this, but I don't know that it's a recipe for disaster. You could argue that she would split the white vote with McCain as much as you could argue she'd split the Democratic vote with Obama. Maybe this is the realignment some of us have been long predicting. It might be good for the country. Right now there are three distinct constituencies in the body politics: 

Right. McCain. Neocons and the remains of the fiscal/NRA Republican base, plus homeless religious righters.

Center. Hillary. Neoliberals and some neocons. Hawks, meritocrats. Older Jews, blue collar voters, the remains of the Democratic base.

Left. Obama. Elites, blacks, youth, paleocons, homeless Ron Paul voters.

Right now it looks like a lot of people are going to be left out in the rain by the Democratic party process. Why not have democracy all the way to November?

Hillary's Strategist Once Sought Full Accounting for Vietnam War Decision-Makers (Will Hillary Ever Apologize?)

A couple of readers have pointed out that I was unfair to Geoff Garin, Hillary's top strategist, in my suggestion that he was milking the Rev. Wright controversy on MSNBC Monday. They're right. Turns out Garin was actually saying it was time to move past the Wright business; it was Andrea Mitchell who was milking it. (I was making lunch, so the factchecking department was drinking wine...) Geoff Garin's a kind person and on the left; he's not the type to exacerbate racial divisions.

That said, I want to return to Garin's writings from college. Yesterday I wrote about his call for violent revolution. To be fair, a temporary mood on Garin's part, confined to 2 pieces at age 20. But a leftwing radical spirit characterized his work. That is the reason I as a young Jewish lefty looked up to him. He was clearthinking, he had figured out what he thought, he was never egotistical, and he had moral vision (at a time in my own life when I was immature and intellectually turbulent).

Garin often hit a theme I hit today: the need for accountability by our leaders and thinkers for a disastrous war policy--the Vietnam war in his case. And as I do he even blamed the meritocracy for producing the war:

Then there is the problem of meritocracy itself. Do we want, or does the rest of the world need, a Harvard that picks out an elite to do society's work when society's work means bombing Asian peasants... [emphasis mine]

Garin wanted war-crimes prosecutions. In 1975, at 22, he opposed the mood of let's-move-on. When Vance Hartke, an Indiana senator famous for opposing the war, said there must not be fingerpointing over who got us into the war, because it had been started by "desperate men caught up in a process that had a momentum of its own and which they neither understood nor could control"--which is sort of Hillary's line-- Garin wasn't buying. He wrote:

That way nobody gets hurt, at least not until the next time around... A conspiracy of silence will rob the United States of its Vietnam heritage: the moral, legal and political questions that American involvement raised but never quite settled.

Beautiful. Here's another inspired passage:

Is Carter Holding Off on Endorsement as a Favor to Obama?

I just saw Jimmy Carter on Charlie Rose defending his decision to talk to Hamas. Beautiful. Then Rose asked Carter about Obama and the famous Cheshire grin came out. Carter's not endorsing till the primary season is over, but his whole family is for Obama.

Isn't the truth that Carter doesn't want to endorse Obama because it could hurt Obama? What would Hillary do with a Jimmy Carter endorsement of Obama? What would that do to Jewish support for Obama?