The Consultants and the Endorsement

After reading an article in today's New York Times Magazine, I have decided the real problem with the American political scene is the consultants. Democrat and Republican alike: Lee Atwater, Mary Matalin, Karl Rove, Bob Shrum, James Carville, and now, David Alexrod, these hucksters have undermined the potential greatness of this country by propping up candidates like the newest and best products for us to buy. No small wonder candidates are bought and owned by the highest bidder: the American corporation.

No small wonder the American corporation bought a candidate who has done everything possible to protect American business as he has methodically and covertly dismantled the structures put in place to protect American citizens. From civil liberties to environmental protection to equipment and health benefits for our soldiers and veterans, the American corporation has been provided governmental protection while citizens have been left out in the cold.

These consultants have understood for a long time what I was just able to articulate in the last few months; Americans, vote not for issues but for personalities. They understand the power of myth and the power of hero archetype and they use it to its full extent. American voters are so disinterested, apathetic, and lazy, it works! Even I've been taken in and when I haven't been taken in, I've succumbed to whichever candidate the consultants decide should be the messenger. Vernon Clover was right in 1985, there is a cult of personality.

John Kerry is a perfect example. So are John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and unfortunately, George Bush.

I never liked Kerry when he was a senator. I did like Teresa Heinz Kerry. In contrast to her husband, she had spark, was outspoken, and clearly not tamed by the consultants. But it was hard to get excited about her husband. Even she got bored when he was speaking. I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the New York primary and I voted against George Bush in the general election with my vote for John Kerry.

As you all know, when I saw Barack Obama, I thought he was different. He wanted to lead a united country and he was going to do it without becoming like the Democratic machine who kept propping up the same easily-bought white men. But he's not different at all.

I can no longer support his candidacy because it represents the methodology of the Democratic party which has allowed the presidency of George Bush to succeed. Twice. It allowed Bill Clinton over and over again to repudiate those who got him elected. It allows Obama to play nasty politics and then pretend he didn't. So much for that higher standard.

I can't tell you how sad it is not to be riding the Obama wave. The wave is exciting, it feels fresh, cool, and full of hope. But I can't ignore the reality - the more I dig in support of his campaign, the more I find that it really is politics as usual.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. MLW won't get fooled again.

Stupid Journalists

This could be a regular feature in MLW but in today's issue, I include a note about the author of the Times Magazine feature that I linked above. He wrote the following in a profile of Senator Obama in Rolling Stone.

Then, running preliminary polls, his advisers noticed something remarkable: Women responded more intensely and warmly to Obama than did men. In a seven-candidate field, you don't need to win every vote. His advisers, assuming they would pick up a healthy chunk of black votes, honed in on a different target: Every focus group they ran was composed exclusively of women, nearly all of them white.

There is an amazingly candid moment in Obama's autobiography when he writes of his childhood discomfort at the way his mother would sexualize African-American men. "More than once," he recalls, "my mother would point out: 'Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.' " What the focus groups his advisers conducted revealed was that Obama's political career now depends, in some measure, upon a tamer version of this same feeling, on the complicated dynamics of how white women respond to a charismatic black man. "I remember when we realized something magical was happening," says Obama's pollster on the campaign, an earnest Iowan named Paul Harstad. "We were doing a focus group in suburban Chicago, and this woman, seventy years old, looks seventy-five, hears Obama's life story, and she clasps her hand to her chest and says, 'Be still, my heart.' Be still, my heart -- I've been doing this for a quarter century and I've never seen that." The most remarkable thing, for Harstad, was that the woman hadn't even seen the videos he had brought along of Obama speaking, had no idea what the young politician looked like. "All we'd done," he says, "is tell them the Story."

For the record, the only people I know who have ever sexualized African-American men are men, black and white. I've never had a conversation with a woman whether she was white, black, Latina, or Asian who discussed this. I've discussed a lot of charismatic black men in my life with my girlfriends. But I can't remember a single moment when I've discussed Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Medger Evers, Jesse Jackson, Corey Booker, and James Baldwin that I talked about hooking up with them.

For the record, what Obama's mother was attempting (and I've read both of his books) was to make her biracial child understand that even though he didn't look like her or her mother or her father, she still thought him and others who looked like him beautiful.

Pretty easy to understand if you are woman and not a single drop of sexuality to it. Only a man with an juvenile and clearly insecure sense of his own sexuality would suggest such a concept in a political profile. Perhaps, Mr Wallace-Wells will be writing next about whether or not Hillary Clinton's lead in the polls is based on her sexual appeal for most white men.

Health Care

Back to the substantive issues. I watched a three hour and then some webcast of a health care forum in Las Vegas last weekend. All presidential candidates were invited, seven showed up - all Democrats. They were John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Bill Richardson. I thought the most impressive were:

• John Edwards who was forthright and demonstrated that he had considered the issue at length
• Hillary Clinton despite having no details demonstrated such a strong command of the issue you forgot she didn't have any specifics
• Dennis Kucinich who speaks the truth. He is always labelled the "far-out candidate who we can't take seriously." If ever politics becomes a business of the people - he'll be the number one candidate.

Richardson was business as usual and frankly, full of bull. A universal health care package won't require new taxes? Obama looked like the kid who didn't finish his term paper on time. Kudos for showing up but his charisma failed him and supported his critics who say he has no substance. The others - not that memorable.

The Last Word

So I end this post with my official support for a candidate who is an underdog.

I don't think he's a hero, I don't think he's going to save the world, and I don't think he's perfect. I do think both he and his wife demonstrate an long-term and ongoing support for the underrepresented in America. I think they are plain and simple, decent people.

And I think it's time for American voters to grow up and stop looking for a leader to save us and our country. I think this candidate asks us to do it together.

They are criticized because they live in an expensive house. Who cares what kind of house someone lives in? If they lived in a rundown house in a bad neighborhood would that make their concern more genuine? All the candidates are millionaires except for Kucinich. You can't be rich and caring? You can only be genuine if you live like Mother Teresa? Let me poke that one full of holes for you.

Our current President pretends he is a good ole boy from Texas when he is the product of East Coast prep schools and has been bailed out time and time and time again by his daddy's rich friends. (For more details, read this - straight from the heart of Texas where journalists have a lot more chutzpah than our liberal elites of the East.) From Vietnam to drunk driving to Harkin Energy, Daddy's men have done the job. And for a more current example, think Iraq Study Group. Unfortunately, Mr. Baker, the Bush family consigliere (a nod to Ms. Dowd) couldn't convince Junior of his missteps. I guess the family will intervene in a different way cause you know Poppa Bush, when he isn't patting Teri Hatcher's ass, he is cringing at his son's excesses. But that's another post.

So back to the candidate.

I know his wife has been criticized for continuing to support his professional ambitions. Mostly by other folks who made the exact same choice. (Yes, I'm talking to you, Katie Couric) and that others have said his wife's health is karmic payback for what he's done to doctors. In the end, their choice is their choice and is illustrative of how they've lived their life - with a belief in service to others.

That's about as honest as you can get in our age of politics. And I'll take it.

MLW Supports John Edwards for President.