Standing "O" for outstanding line...

"Maverick" McCain makes first appearance in GOP primary race

From the Atlantic Monthly online edition:

The only standing ovation belonged to him for his classic line about Hillary Clinton's Woodstock museum earmark: "I’m sure it was an historical and pharmaceutical event… I was tied up at the time."

McCain, obviously, was referring to his time spent as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton. It was a lighthearted moment, to be sure, but it gave conservative viewers something they could take home with them--a soundbyte.

What's in a line?

McCain's quick-witted barb may have been just what the doctor ordered. He is making a late charge at the nomination, after faltering out of the blocks like Barbaro at the Preakness.

McCain's campaign got a much needed shot in the arm last night in Orlando. The senior senator from Arizona had the "Straight Talk Express" running on all cylinders, looking like the strongest candidate on the stage with an ingenious mixture of beltway and belt buckle.

He shot from the hip on social issues, defense and even put his convervative credentials up against those of anyone on the stage.

In reference to the Russia Tsar-to-be, Vladamir Putin, McCain said "...when I look into his eyes I see three letters: K, G, B." (An obvious reference to President Bush's claim that he could see into "Puty Poo's" soul.)

McCain's performance was downright shocking after having the appearance of a doddering old man in the last debate in Dearborn, Michigan.

He was the "I'm going to beat Al Gore like a drum" McCain of old.

This MIGHT be a very serious development in the race for the nomination because it could have the effect of robbing Giuliani of his "the only guy who can beat Hillary" base.

The John McCain I saw during the Immigration Bill debate couldn't beat Hillary; the John McCain I saw in Dearborn earlier this month couldn't beat Hillary; but, the John McCain I saw last night could.

Welcome to the race.

A morning with Mr. Malaise

This past Sunday morning, I had a truly unique experience: Sunday School with a former President of the United States.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President, was born about nine miles from my little outpost in southwest Georgia, in the tiny hamlet of Plains.

Plains is nuts; it's nuts about Jimmy Carter; it's nuts about nuts.

Carter was actually a peanut farmer as a youth, living on a farm just down the tracks from downtown plains--the tracks that young Carter would take most every day to sell his peanuts.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have only owned one home since they married in 1946--a ranch just off highway 280 in Plains, only a few hundred yards west of his brother Billy's old service station.

Carter had attended Plains Baptist Church, situated right across the street from the town's high school, since his childhood. Only after a controversy in which a black man from Albany, Georgia, was denied membership in the church (on dubious grounds) did the Carter's rescind their membership (this came after he "involuntarily" left office in 1980).

The Carters moved no more than 1000 yards down the street to Maranatha Baptist Church, where they have been attending ever since.

Carter, who has been teaching Sunday School regularly since the age of 18, routinely packs more than 300 people into the sanctuary at Marantha. Those who fail to get there early, so I was warned, have to sit in the overflow room and watch Carter on television.

I arrived an hour early to find cars, trucks and buses parked all over the church yard. I drove around the rear of the church looking for a spot in the high grass, popping ground nuts with my tires all along the way.

Walking up to the church, I immediately noticed the jet black SUVs parked out front. This would be the first time I would get a pat down on my way into church. The Secret Service gentlemen really look the part--stone-faced, all business.

I walked into the back hallway and, after being greeted by two elderly ladies, was led to the overflow area where I thought I would have to watch the television with the rest of the Johnny and Jane come-latelys.

After about 20 minutes, one of the deacons of the church came in and said that Carter doesn't like to have anyone in the overflow unless it is absolutely necessary. Since I was there by myself, I was one of the first stragglers to be led into the sanctuary.

Maranatha is the quintessential 1970s-era protestant church, complete with the lime green carpet to clash with nearly everything in the room. The choir loft sits no more than a foot off the main stage to accommodate about 20 people--plenty, one would think, for a church of only 30 members.

A clock hangs high on the back wall of the sanctuary as a reminder to those who would dare become haughty and long-winded--time waits for no one, not even a former president. (The New Testament precept that everything should be done in a "fitting and orderly way" now, at least unofficially, also reads "timely".)

After a FAQ session with a deacon in which she assured the congregation (comprised mostly of visitors) that the Carters weren't just symbolic members of the church--"they're as involved as anyone else"--Maranatha's heavy-set young pastor did a quick devotional.

Mr. Carter arrived, preceded by three Secret Service agents, and, after placing his Bible on the lecturn, commenced politicking with the audience.

(Everyone, at this point, who had a camera decided to use it. The sound of cranking film cameras merged to mimic the washboard section of a jug orchestra. I abstained. For some reason, I thought it was just a little uncouth to do such a thing.)

"Where are y'all from?" asked Carter, still not looking his age (83).

An honest question, considering there were nearly as many people in that small church as live in the entire town.

Folks from Michigan, Wyoming, Utah, Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Florida, Canada and even England piped up to represent their home states and countries.

After a couple minutes, Mr. Carter offered quick update on his recent trip to Sudan and their tenuous (if not feckless) peace agreement. (You might remember that Carter was involved in a highly-publicized donnybrook with one Sudanese official at the outset of his trip to Darfur.) His jet-setting comrades, known, if only colloquially, as the "Elders", teams Mr. Carter up with other visionaries like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

Mr. Carter's lesson was taken from the 28th Chapter of Genesis--a snapshot of the life of Jacob, a swindler, whom God loved.

For a geography junkie, listening to Mr. Carter teach the Old Testament was truly a pleasure. Mr. Carter has walked the streets of the towns I've only read about--Beersheba, Bethel and Ur.

For a political junkie, hearing Mr. Carter talk about his relationship with Anwar Sadat was fascinating. Sadat, the former president of Egypt who lost his life when he was ambushed by Islamist militants in 1981, was the last best hope for peace in the Middle East.

Sadat, as Mr. Carter correctly pointed out, wasn't an avowed secularist like Nasser before him or like Turkey's Mustafa Kemal. He was a moderate Muslim (a nationalist, to be sure) who dared to suggest that all three "children of Abraham" (Jews, Muslims and Christians) could worship together, and in peace. He dared to make peace with Israel, and it cost him his life. (Egypt's current President Hosni Mubarak, for his part, has staved off six assassination attempts thus far as he continues an ugly crackdown on Islamist groups in Egypt.)

After a few of these geopolitical tangents, all of which fascinated me to no end, Mr. Carter returned to his theme of the week--perhaps, more correctly, the theme of his life.

Grace.

God's grace was evident in the life of Jacob, and there are plenty of corollaries in the New Testament--the life of Christ is one long case study in grace.

God loved Jacob, in spite of himself. (In fact, Jacob is the only person in the Old Testament whom God said he loved.)

In short, Mr. Carter's life in Christ is nothing if not full of grace. He is at-once loved and hated for his willingness to believe in the goodness of all people, often ignoring their fruits to believe in their roots.

He believes that God's grace is universal and transcendent.

That was his lesson.

The clock on the wall said 10:45, and after more than 80 years in the Baptist Church, Mr. Carter, perhaps more than anyone, knows the rules.

He snatched his Bible off the lecturn and exited stage right before remembering one last thing: "If anyone wants to get their picture taken, Rosalynn and I would be willing to do that outside after the service. I used to say 'delighted', now I'm just willing," he quipped.

The controversial Carter

No president is without fault. The system of politics in this country is, increasingly, driven by the moral equivalent of the survival of the fittest--only in reverse.

My opinion of Carter, as a man, is exceedingly positive. He is a statesman, a gentleman and a servant of his God and country. He is the genuine article, and my personal disagreements with him on geopolitical issues need not affect my respect for him as a man--a perspective rightly considered lost in our hyperpartisan society.

In a depraved world, living a life directed by grace will lead you to sup with some unsavory characters--and Mr. Carter has entertained more than his fair share: Yasser Arafat, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Omar al-Bashir, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Kim Il Sung, and members of ETA (Basque separatists) just to name a few.

As President and leading diplomat, however, grace hasn't proven to be an effective foreign policy in many cases. Mr. Carter's pacifist (read full of grace) stance on Iran after Reza Shan was deposed earned for the world the Islamic Republic of Iran, the most dangerous country since Hilter's Germany. (It's an unpopular, though legitimate, assertion that western--chiefly U.S.--trifling in the affairs of oil-rich countries in the Middle East led to the rise of Islamism in the region. In much the same way, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America led to the rise of what could be labeled militant populism.)

His grace toward Omar al-Bashir in Sudan may prove to be shrewd diplomacy or dangerous glad-handing of a cruel dictator. Mr. Carter's insistence on not labeling the catastrophe in Darfur as a "genocide" belies (at best) an understanding of what the term really means--it's more than just a body count.

And while Mr. Carter might be able to see some shred of goodness in the lives of men like Bashir, Mugabe, Eyadema and their ilk, most of us cannot or will not even consider the possibility.

Most of us prefer to veto grace at various times, replacing it instead with justice.

Further, Mr. Carter's ardent critiques of the Bush Administration's foreign policy do, at least on the surface, seem brazen when placed in the context of his own failures on the world stage.

That being said, however, it is clear that President Bush was, indeed, co-opted by the Neoconservatives in the White House and Pentagon in the run-up to war. Further, failures do abound in the aftermath of the "shock and awe" campaign at the outset of the war in Iraq. After the plan of attack, it seems, the planning stopped. The United States government, at least ostensibly, is no more adept at protecting the Iran-Iraq border than the border with Mexico.

This is simple discourse.

The policies of the Bush Administration, it appears, are more regrettable than criminal. They are worthy of critique and, to be sure, some bit of incredulity about our future in Iraq is reasonable.

There is grace in fighting for the termination of the United States' embargo against Cuba (more correctly, against Cubans); it's a good fight and one that is worth winning for us, and them. (Do most Americans even understand why China is our most favored nation when it comes to trade and Cuba is locked out?)

Who's talking about Cuba other than Mr. Carter?

There is grace (not to mention several other fruits of the spirit) in attempting to broker peace deals between rival factions in Darfur and Palestine, where common people are being used as pawns in a geopolitical chess game.

There was grace in handing over the Panama Canal to Panama--there just wasn't a lot of money (or electoral votes) in it.

Presidential historians won't remember Carter as a particularly great politician. In fact, he'll probably take his place behind "memorable" presidents like Chester Arthur and Martin Van Buren.

Even so, he is a shining light inside a most exclusive fraternity.

He was a sitting president and a standing civilian.

Giul to wear the crown

When I was a kid, my two favorite things in the world were sports and politics.

When I wasn't watching the Lions or the Tigers, I was reading about the Asian Tigers (NIEs in the Far East) and the so-called "Lion of Judah", Haile Selassie.

Politics, like sports, is competitive and truly dramatic; and it occurred to me at some point along the journey, that politics is actually sport in the truest sense.

It was no surprise, then, that Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) and James Traficant (D-Ohio) were every bit as inspiring to me in my youth as Dominique Wilkins (F-Georgia) and Corey Dillon (RB-Ohio).

I shudder to think of it. (Gingrich, a noted history buff, turned out to be an adulterer while Traficant, of "beam me up Mr. Speaker" fame, is in jail serving time for extortion.)

But, for someone as disgusted with partisanship as I've become, it's still somewhat bizarre that the campaign trail has its same old appeal.

I can't get enough of this stuff.

And, what have I taken away from every presidential election in my lifetime (at least the ones I can remember)?

The issues are secondary; what matters most, it seems, is who you would have a beer with (root or otherwise). Who has that certain something that political wonks like me have come to know as "gravitas"?

And so, with that in mind, here are my projections for campaign 2008...

The Right's Big Three

Mitt Romney - He could be the first Republican to win Massachusetts in a general election since Reagan. To do that, he would first have to win the nomination. Unfortunately for the Religious Right, he won't. He is much too rehearsed and business-like in his approach to appear genuine (likeable) to the all too important swing voters.

His connection to the church of Latter Day Saints doesn't hurt him as much as many pundits had projected, mostly because he is the most culturally conservative of the big three. His gaffe (stating that he would consult lawyers before taking action against Iran) at Tuesday night's debate in Dearborn, Michigan, will follow him everywhere he goes. In a moment of national security urgency, do we really want someone wringing his hands over the War Powers Act?

Fred Thompson - The mainstream media's lovefest with Thompson is officially over. The tardy Thompson, inexplicably, turned his quasi-celebrity (he is a reoccuring character on NBC's "Law and Order") into excellent poll numbers based on nothing. His campaign, it seems, is more "Seinfield" than "Law and Order" to this point.

After Tuesday night's hum-drum performance at the debate, I am left wondering how the debate's organizers found a big enough lecturn to hold the guy up. He's not a bad man, but he couldn't inspire most people to zip-up their fly. He, like Bob Dole in 1996, appears to be setting aside his gregarious disposition in favor of a more laconic one; it's one that may, if relevance has anything to say about it, earn for him a spot somewhere between Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter in the next debate.

Rudy Giuliani - Rudy is the most skilled debater I've seen since Bill Clinton. He has a command of the issues to go along with a Clintonesque "I feel your pain" aura. How are you going to dislike this guy when you want to like him so bad? This phenomenon is quite functional, too, when you consider that Rudy, like Bill Clinton, has his share of skeltons in the closet.

Fringe Leftists hate Rudy because he's not progressive enough and fringe Rightists hate him because he's not conservative enough; it sounds like a perfect mix. At the very least, Rudy doesn't have to worry about appealing to a base that he doesn't have.

Also, if history is any indicator, Americans are somewhat less than inclined to perceive members of Congress as anything more than do-nothings. That, perhaps more than any other factor, has led Giuliani and Romney to the top of the heap. They have resumes and experience behind the desk where the buck stops. Romney will win the opening salvo in Iowa, but Giuliani will be the nominee. He's the only one with a popsicle's chance in hell of beating Hillary. Heck, my state of Michigan might actually be back in play in 2008.

Rudy is the only candidate who can beat Hillary in a general election. That alone should compel voters into the booth to pull the lever for Rudy, even if they have hold their nose while doing it.

The Left's Big Three

Barack Obama - Obama is still young, so his best days are ahead of him. Unfortunately for the Dems, I believe their best in brightest is not Obama, but Harold Ford who failed in his run for the Senate in Tennessee last year. Obama, unlike Ford could, simply does not appeal to the red states in middle America (known by many elitists as the "flyover states"). He is not as far left as John Edwards, but he's close enough to read the "kick me" sign on his back.

Sure he's playing well in Iowa, but he has invested more time and money in Iowa than any other candidate. He has to win the Hawkeye state to have any chance against Hillary. Further, his "audacity of Hope" is cute but hardly effective in a battle against the Clinton cabal. If he chooses not to go after Hillary, he will be heading back to the Land of Lincoln with his tail between his legs.

John Edwards - The North Carolinian looks fairly presidential in primary debates because, as is normally the case, he isn't challenged to a great extent. In a general debate, Edwards would try and fail to justify the great chasm between word and deed that his political life so aptly represents. It is, after all, Edwards who talks about "two Americas" during the day, the haves and have-nots, and at night hits the hay in a 20,000 square foot home on property worth millions. He is a guardian class elitist who doesn't even believe the tripe coming from his own mouth. Additionally, he has more than $500 haircuts to worry about. Republicans will kill him on the Iran issue (namely his vote against the characterization of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as "terrorist") as well as certain other peccadillos that will soon come to light.

Hillary Clinton - Mrs. Clinton is the prohibitive favorite not because of who her husband is, as odd as that sounds. She, perhaps as a result of her experiences with her husband, is the smartest politican on the Democratic side. She is the most conservative Democrat of the big three, despite what you might hear on conservative talk radio shows; she is, by comparison, a hawk with respect to national security issues. She knows that being seen as a moderate, while still being critical of the Bush Administration's failings, may be her ticket to the White House. She's tougher than Geraldine Ferraro; heck, she's tougher than Obama and Edwards. Obama may win Iowa, but Hillary wins the nomination.

2008 Prediction

Giuliani d. Clinton

"America's mayor" will be the 44th President of the United States. He will get the evangelical votes, despite their misgivings about his record on social issues (gay unions, gun control, abortion, etc.), as well as the votes of the moderate Republicans and the anti-Hillary bloc (and the swing voters therein). Hillary will turn out a lot of voters, and many of them for all the wrong reasons.

24 years of rule by the "two families" (an obvious organized crime reference) just reeks of old world monarchy, and I don't think that's lost on the minds of many Americans.

An ideological timeline

I thought it might be fun to revisit my youth for a little insight into the development of ideologies--or, more correctly, the acceptance and denial of ideologies.

Everyday we are bombarded with misinformation about every kind of noun, and it’s increasingly difficult to decipher between reality and imagery.

Luckily, ideologues stand at the ready to train you in the art of groupthink—conformity to a certain set of ideals to achieve a certain end.

(I hope you caught the sarcasm there, because as David Spade quipped in Tommy Boy, "I'm laying it on pretty thick.")

Ideologies are certainly not new; that being said, it does seem like a somewhat modern phenomenon to have two consolidated ideologies transform the discourse of an entire country (America in this case) into a simplistic binary opposition—left versus right, Democrat versus Republican, liberal versus conservative, however you choose to label it.

I don’t want to turn into one of the “what happened to my country” blowhards, but I would like to present a somewhat helpful, if not cumbersome, timeline of my own experience with these two noxious ideologies.

I can remember, in my younger days, always being very positive about my country in every way. What was not to like?

I was educated in arguably the most diverse school district in the state of Michigan, and I didn’t even know it at the time. My America wasn’t a “diverse America”, though, it was just America.

I didn’t know that being there, in that time and place, would shape the way I looked at the world. And I didn’t know then that it would take so long to get back to where I was.

Micah, who wanted to be a weatherman, and Ken the math whiz weren’t black, they were Micah and Ken; Jeff and Gabby weren’t Jews, they were Jeff and Gabby; Genie wasn’t Greek, she was just the smartest girl in my class; Jameel wasn’t Pakistani, he was one of my best friends.

Those were the good old days before my brain was convoluted with all manner of misgivings. Everything was just right because I knew of no other way; but, that quickly began to change.

I didn't question the politicians who constantly boasted from the stump that our country was the greatest country in the world. Why not? Things seemed pretty good for me and pretty bad for a lot of other people.

I didn't live in the Middle East with all the brown people who wore towels on their heads and threw rocks at tanks? Who does that? What could a rock do to a tank, anyway? And why weren't they in school? As an older child, I finally found out what Muslims and Jews “looked like” and the only ones I knew back then were rich and they were the ones driving the tanks—we started calling them SUVs around that time.

I didn't live in Canada where the jealous "wannabe" Americans lived. I remember thinking about just how pathetic Canadians actually were; I mean, how many of those colorful bills could I get for just a few greenbacks? Pathetic. Canada was so close and yet so far away. And in what parallel universe could "The Kids in the Hall" and “Mr. Bean” actually be considered funny?

I didn't live in France or Belgium or any of those feckless Scandanavian countries. What did those frogs know about fighting a war? Where were those Nordic-types during World War II? Probably skiing someplace, whittling wooden shoes or erecting goofy windmills. Those poor saps live in welfare states where transient junkies huddle around every corner; who were they to question my country when the tanks rolled into Baghdad? In America we lock our junkies up and throw away the keys.

I didn't live in Africa where the dark people lived; well, the dark people and the missionaries that is. Africa never made sense to me. Why didn't they have roads or phones or televisions? I knew they were poor, but how much poorer could they have been compared to the kids down the street? You know, the kids whose father squandered his paycheck entering junk cars into the demolition derby. But, they were poor and I knew it.

I had to sit through boring missions services at church on a fairly regular basis--complete with pictures of kids forcing smiles in squalor. It made me feel good to think that Christians were helping Africans go to heaven. But why do we have to help them? Why us? It seemed to me that we were blessed and they were forsaken for a reason; I just couldn't figure out why.

I didn't live in South America or Mexico where the machete-wielding banana republicans lived; I never understood those people either. Were they Indians or Spaniards? Why were they speaking Spanish a half a world away from Spain? And why were those Mexicans still trying to take over Texas? Texas is ours and always has been, right?

I didn't live in Asia where the smart people lived. They seemed very American in a lot of ways, but they were certainly smarter than us. The kids over there go to school year-round and would certainly have all of our jobs before too long. All the I was told were Asian were smart, rich and named Neil, or Michael or Johnny. Asians never seemed threatening to me, but, then again, I didn't have a job for them to take.

As the world became more complicated, I became somewhat obsessed with explaining it away. I loved books because they provided answers; right or wrong, I had something I could turn to in my attempt to figure it all out.

As I grew older, non-threatening people were increasingly few and far between in my world. Everyone, as far as I was concerned, who wasn't American, or at least openly pro-American, only wanted to bring us down--down to their level. That wasn't going to happen on my watch. I stood at the ready to defend my country against anyone who had one negative word to say about it. I read books by authors who were of like mind. Men like Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and Alan Keyes really appealed to me. They recognized the greatness of my country and they wanted to keep it that way.

These ideologues had an affect on me before I even knew what the term meant.

All this changed for me when I became an adult and began to take an inventory of the interested parties. The "what" was no longer good enough in my life; I had to know the "why."

I knew I was supposed to be a conservative, but why? What did I have in common with my intellectual heroes and the wisdom they were espousing? The answer, I soon found out, was very little.

So, I looked elsewhere.

When I got to college I immersed myself in the works of the heroes of the left—Marx and Engels, Zinn, Nader and Chomsky. The same curiosity that led me to the right was now pushing me left. But there was still a lot of unanswered questions that nihilist leftist ideologies only served to expand.

And so, in an attempt to rebuke one ideology I pursued another.

But that’s life. It’s full of questions in need of answers. And it’s this pursuit that has led me to the point at which I can say with confidence that, at least for a time, ideologies destroyed the natural tolerance of my youth.

Today, everywhere I look I find little bits of truth in need of gathering. I don’t find them piled up in one corner or another—my old expectations are gone.

Our house is full of truth, but it’s a big house; and I’ve learned that one must be willing to look in some strange places to find it. And, in order to do that, we must spurn these noxious ideologies that pit us against one another.

In the end, I came back to the center where the boring people live, breathe and wring their hands. From here, I can gravitate toward the truth in whichever direction it pulls me.