The Power and Promise of an Ugly Word

As Barack Obama stands at the crossroads of race in America and offers himself as an agent of healing, he is a symbol of both the fears and hopes aroused by an ugly word, miscegenation.

When he was born in 1961, his parents' marriage was illegal in 17 states of the Union. It was six years later that the Supreme Court struck down a Virginia statute against racially mixed marriages as unconstitutional and ended anti-miscegenation laws in America.

Such unions have always been denounced by both black and white extremists. Louis Farrakhan, who received last year's Jeremiah Wright A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award as a man "who truly epitomized greatness" from Obama's church, has always opposed intermarriage and called it "unnatural." In doing so, he was echoing the classic sneer of white bigots, "Would you want your sister to marry one?"

Yet, as long ago as 1963, in a memorable article in Commentary titled "My Negro Problem--and Ours," Norman Podhoretz, confessing his "twisted" racial fears and animus, came to the judgment that "the wholesale merging of the two races is the most desirable alternative" to resolving the American dilemma.

The irony now is that Obama, who wants to transcend race, is being pressured to reconcile his heritages while subtly distancing himself from the pain of both, rejecting both his pastor's rage and his white grandmother's fears.

In an era of more and more talented biracial people like Obama, Derek Jeter, Halle Berry and so many others, it's sad to see the power of an ugly either-or still distorting the possibilities of a beautiful both.

Nuclear Hiccup

Oops. "A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold," the New York Times reports today.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, issued a statement spinning the new National Intelligence Estimate as good news rather than a sign that the same intelligence mistakes that got us into Iraq are still being made today.

“It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons,” Hadley said. “It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem.”

Shameless but par for the Bush-Cheney course to toss off their months-long drumbeat for invading or bombing Iran as a slight glitch that proves we scared Ahmadinejad in stopping a nuclear weapons buildup that never was.

It was only five weeks ago that a Zogby poll showed that more than half of voters would support a military strike to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon and believed it was likely the US would do so before next year's election.

But all that is old news. Looking to the future, Hadley now says, “The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically--without the use of force--as the administration has been trying to do.” Did Barack Obama sneak into the White House and take over without anybody noticing?

Someone please get the smelling salts for Joe Lieberman and Norman Podhoretz, and wipe the foam off the snouts of Cheney's Neo-Con attack dogs.

Insanity Over Iran

We're in recurring nightmare territory here. Today's Zogby poll shows more than half of voters would support a military strike to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon and believe it likely the U.S. will do so before next year's election.

On PBS' News Hour, normally an oasis of rationality in the TV news desert, we have a solemn debate about attacking Iran between Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and Norman Podhoretz, the Neo-Con relic Rudy Giuliani is propping up to prove he is a true conservative.

When Zakaria points out we have used deterrence and containment against nuclear threats from China, the Soviet Union and North Korea, Podhoretz accuses him of "an irresponsible complacency...comparable to the denial in the early '30s of the intentions of Hitler that led to what Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions and millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough."

If Zakaria's informed rationality and Podhoretz's apocalyptic drool are given equal weight as two sides of the argument, we may be headed for another Iraq, propelled by the same political and media cowardice of five years ago.

The Senate passes the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment designating the Iranian Revolution Guard as a terrorist organization by a vote of 76 to 22, with Hillary Clinton, among other Democrats, failing to see that the Bush-Cheney Administration will surely use it to justify an attack on Iran without seeking Congressional approval.

Such willful blindness now leads to apparent public approval of what would surely be another act of national insanity, putting American troops in harm's way in three Muslim countries based on no compelling national interest beyond the loopy theories of a gaggle of armchair warriors in a discredited lame-duck Administration.

To top it all off, we have Rudy Giuliani war-mongering for votes in New Hampshire by accusing Clinton and Obama of wanting to negotiate with bad people and debating whether to invite Ahmadinejad and Osama to "the inauguration or the inaugural ball."

Why aren't more politicians and media people speaking out about this recurrence of madness?

Crazed Converts: Bush and Giuliani

Half a century after a book inspired President Eisenhower to warn about political fanatics, Americans have one in the White House and another who would get there by exploiting the hatred and fears described by Eric Hoffer back then.

The life paths of George W. Bush and now Rudy Giuliani fit Hoffer's description of how "The True Believer" converts personal failure to political success: "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance."

The disastrous consequences of Bush's midlife crisis are now clear, but the effects of Giuliani's conversion are just coming to light. On September 11, 2001, a lackadaisical lame-duck mayor with no political prospects and two failed marriages was transformed into a money-making preacher and then the zealous leader of a crusade against Islamofascism.

In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman cites the Republican front runner's dedication to spreading what Franklin Roosevelt called “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” inspired by those described by Frank Rich as "the mad neocon bombers shaping his apocalyptic policy toward Iran" after giving Bush an outlet for his new-found religious zeal in attacking Iraq.

For a time, Giuliani seemed merely cynical in courting Republican extremists who find his social values distasteful, but more and more, the alarming truth seems to be that he may really believe what he is saying about a holy war.

As he surrounds himself with more and more Podhoretzes and Kristols, the future Republican nominee may want to ponder the words of Hoffer, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan: "The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led."

The rest of us will have to take comfort in another Hoffer observation: “It is cheering to see that the rats are still around--the ship is not sinking.”

The Podhoretz Plague

In 1967, he wrote a book confessing he craved “money, power and especially fame.” Norman Podhoretz got all three but, at the age of 77, he wants more and this time his attention-getting devices are to call for bombing Iran now and starting a world war against “Islamofascism.”

Such Neo-Con nuttiness would be pitifully laughable if it weren’t influencing George Bush, who this year gave Podhoretz the Medal of Freedom, and Rudy Giuliani, who has taken him on as his foreign policy adviser.

Far be it for me, of all people, to denigrate senior sages, but Podhoretz sticks in my aged craw. Here he is, on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal this week, calling anyone who disagrees about Iraq part of a liberal cabal going back to the 1960s with "faith in America the ugly."

Here is Podhoretz aboard the recent National Review cruise, as described by a British journalist:

“Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been ‘an amazing success.’ He waves his fist and declaims: ‘There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better.’ He wants more wars, and fast.”

If this is Rudy Giuliani’s gray eminence on foreign policy, prayers for Fred Thompson may be in order.

Giuliani's Base Campaign

America’s Mayor wants to become America’s President in the worst way, and it’s beginning to show.

With Mitt Romney’s money producing results in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, and Fred Thompson’s footsteps getting louder, Rudy Giuliani is pressing his case to the Republican Right with a prosecutor’s zeal.

Exaggerating his 9/11 presence and then having to apologize for it are only the latest signs that he is feeling the heat.

After saluting the Confederate flag in Alabama, taking on a racist adviser in South Carolina and puckering up to Pat Robertson, Giuliani has now turned to out-Bushing Bush on bellicosity by bringing aboard as foreign policy adviser Norman Podhoretz, who wants to bomb Iran yesterday and, just in case the Base should doubt his conservative conversion, adding to his retinue the rabid Admiral who swift-boated John Kerry in the 2004 elections.

When Fred Thompson announces, it is sure to get uglier as the Senator-actor’s new pal Alfonse D’Amato starts slinging 9/11 mud from his firefighter friends at Giuliani.

Up to now, the former Mayor has had Right Field pretty much to himself, but Mike Huckabee is gaining traction and Thompson is set to drive his pickup-truck appeal onto the scene.

Before long, the Republican rumble may make the Clinton-Obama feuding look like a Sunday picnic.

Nutsy Fagin Conservative Notions

Maybe they should sell the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch after all. How much worse could its Editorial Page get?

Aside from the estimable Peggy Noonan, the space seems to have been taken over by escapees from the old Commentary booby hatch. A couple of weeks ago, Norman Podhoretz prays on its pages for Bush to bomb Iran immediately if not sooner. Now Dorothy Rabinowitz compares Patrick Fitzgerald to Duke lacrosse prosecutor Mike Nifong.

It’s a stunning parallel except for the tiny problem that the Duke players were innocent and Scooter Libby was covering up blatantly criminal activity by the Vice President of the United States and the President’s chief adviser.

But before we start carpet-bombing Terehan, let’s disbar Fitzgerald just for the hell of it. Alberto Gonzales never liked him.