The Pope/Obama: Control/Chaos

What would that clichéd anthropologist from another planet make of the doings on ours this week?

One gaggle of aging men selects an infallible leader for multitudes while another hobbles the choice of millions into political impotence.

As Barack Obama expresses hope that new Pontiff will have “a tremendous and positive impact on the world,” he admits discouragement about reaching agreement with Tea Party Republicans on anything for the American future.

Are complete control or chaos the only two choices for social organization in this century? Are an all-powerful Pope and an intractable John Boehner the only alternatives in this complex technological world?

Even under all its strictures, the Catholic Church shows more signs of evolving than the GOP. The new Pope chooses a name inspired by a saint synonymous with love and concern for the poor while Boehner rants at Obama for not acceding to his protections for the rich and powerful.

For those not blessed with devout religious faith or absolute political beliefs, this is not a time for trusting that doubt and reason will lead to human progress, but the new Pope’s humility is more encouraging than anything in our new world.

As Joe Biden prepares to attend the installation in Rome, we are reminded of what he said in debate with fellow Catholic Paul Ryan last year:

“My religion defines who I am. Life begins at conception. That’s the church’s position. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians, and Muslims, and Jews.”

Tell that to Boehner and his true believers.

Update: To confirm his priorities, Boehner, who is Catholic, turns down an Obama invitation to join the delegation attending the Pope’s installation. Too busy with spiritual matters on Capitol Hill, no doubt.

Dr. Paul's Drone Delusion

Before entering the family business, libertarian politics, Rand Paul was an eye doctor. After a 13-hour foray into urology this week, his career prognosis is a subject for psychiatry, subheading delusions.

Topping the list is 2016 presidential ambition, closely followed by paranoid resentment of John McCain for dining with the President rather than supporting his filibuster.

"I treat Sen. McCain with respect,” he tells Mike Huckabee on Fox. “I don't know if I always get the same in return."

When McCain and Lindsey Graham are so far to your left, some rethinking may be in order.

For those who feel that Paul’s ostensible subject, the use of drones against American citizens, may have been of merit in considering the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA, it’s crucial to realize that the net result of Paul’s droning on the Senate floor added absolutely nothing to the debate and was quickly followed by Brennan’s confirmation and swearing-in.

Yet Rand Paul’s stunt droning on the Senate floor will serve his own political purposes if not the nation’s. A self-congratulatory OpEd in the Washington Post will no doubt be the centerpiece of the kind of online fundraising for 2016 that buoyed his father’s presidential runs in previous go-rounds.

With that kind of long-distance vision, Dr. Paul must have been a dynamite eye doctor before straying beyond his field of expertise.  

 

GOP Vote: Filet Mignon Over Filibuster

Republican Senators had a choice last night of breaking bread with the President or breaking wind with Ron Paul. Refuting suspicions that politicians would rather talk than eat, diners outnumbered gasbags by 12 to 6.

It may not have been a definitive display of cooperation over obstruction but a hopeful sign no less that GOP legislators emerged from the two-hour Obama dinner “more optimistic” about a Grand Bargain on budget differences while Paul headed for the rest room after 13 hours of futile filibustering against the appointment of John Brennan to head the CIA.

Most of the Obama getogether, according to Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, “was spent on budget and a way forward. His goal is ours. We want to stop careening from crisis to crisis.”

He was joined by Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), Richard Burr (NC), Saxby Chambliss (Ga), Dan Coats (Ind), Tom Coburn (Okla), Bob Corker (Tenn), Lindsey Graham (SC), John Hoeven (ND), Ron Johnson (Wis), John McCain (Ariz) and Pat Toomey (Pa).

Paul, in his feeble imitation of James Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” was bolstered by newcomer Ted Cruz (Tex), Marco Rubio (Fla), Jeff Flake (Ariz), Tim Scott (SC), Ron Johnson (Wis) and the ever reliable Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky).

“Springtime in Sequesterland” is looking more and more like the show in Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” designed to fail but, despite itself, perhaps destined to succeed somehow as brilliant farce.

Obama’s revival of “The Man Who Came to Dinner” seems to have helped.

A Losing Romney Does Not Disappoint

The man who promised to kill Big Bird is now devoting his foundation to children. In defeat, Mitt Romney is still the same shape shifter Americans knew so well before last Election Day.

He reappears on Fox, clueless as ever to explain that darned 47 percent again, “What I said is not what I believe” and concede “We weren't effective in taking my message primarily to minority voters—-to Hispanic-Americans, to African-Americans, other minorities. That was a real weakness."

Commenting on the current Washington crisis, he offers the insight, “They may be more interested in showing pain and saying, ‘See what the other guys did.’ Nero is fiddling.”

Romney’s lack of wit and grace recalls a politician with so much of both who lost the presidency twice to Dwight Eisenhower half a century ago, Adlai E. Stevenson, whose qualities of mind and heart seem as distant in these days of Sequesterland as Downton Abbey.

During his losing quests, Stevenson told supporters, “When the tumult and the shouting die, when the bands are gone and the lights are dimmed, there is the stark reality of responsibility in an hour of history haunted with those gaunt, grim specters of strife, dissension, and materialism at home, and ruthless, inscrutable, and hostile power abroad...Sacrifice, patience, understanding, and implacable purpose may be our lot for years to come. ... Let's talk sense to the American people! Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains.”

As Romney retreats into his riches, it is impossible to envision a future in public service for him like Stevenson’s moment shortly before his death as JFK’s Ambassador to the UN confronting the Russians over missiles in Cuba, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over.”

The only consolation for today’s chaos lies in the realization of how much worse the mess in Washington would be if Romney were in the White House rather than Obama.

Time dubbed Stevenson “The Graceful Loser” for his post-election behavior, including the explanation, “I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best, frankly and forthrightly; no man can do more, and you are entitled to no less.”

That should be recalled not only to Romney the loser but those who have won and are up to whatever it is they are doing now in Washington.

Scalia's America

The nation’s life today is being shaped less by elected politicians in the headlines than a 76-year-old man who prefers any other century to this one.

Antonin Gregory Scalia is the longest-serving justice on the Supreme Court and, without doubt, the most aggressively backward-looking ever.

After turning the history of the Second Amendment on its head five years ago to restore a gun-crazy America of the old Wild West, he is now embarked on dismantling a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

If last November’s presidential election had gone the other way, Scalia would now be one obituary away from overturning legalized abortion as well as weakening the rights of anyone other than old white men.

In 2000, the Reagan appointee was joined by his Bush I echo Clarence Thomas in handing the White House to Bush II.

In 2008, Scalia’s deciding vote turned the Second Amendment on its head, reversing almost a century of legal interpretation that the “right to bear arms” was not meant for individuals.

His arrogance shines through again in yesterday’s assertion that Congress’ almost unanimous re-approval of minority voting rights in Southern states is more an entitlement than a protection against exclusion. How far will his second-guessing of the legislative branch go?

The only heartening news is that Scalia’s retrograde views are being openly challenged by Obama appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. In an era when even the Vatican is changing its old guard, there is some hope that America can in the coming four years.

Update: Scalia is not alone. Now it turns out Chief Justice John Roberts is with him on voting rights and misusing statistics at that to “prove” Massachusetts has a lower black turnout than Mississippi. The air must pretty rare up there on that bench.

Woodward's War on Obama

In four decades, he has gone from journalistically exposing widespread White House criminality that forced a presidential resignation to elder-statesman pique that places himself at the center of a false balance between Barack Obama and the GOP pygmies threatening the economy.

Summoning up the days of Deep Throat, Bob Woodward complains publicly about being pressured by “a very senior person” at the White House over blaming the President for the sequester:

'Look, we don't go around trying to say to reporters, if you, in an honest way, present something we don't like, that, you know, you're going to regret this.'”

Never mind that the negative “threat” was embedded in a long e-mail preceded by an apology: “I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. You’re focusing on a few specific trees that give a very wrong impression of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.”

Holy Haldeman, Erlichman, Mitchell and Colson! These Obama people must be getting ready to bring down the FBI and CIA on the intrepid reporter who dares to oppose them.

Woodward’s effort to put himself up front in the sequester story will no doubt be dramatized in a future episode of HBO’s “Newsroom,” but it’s disheartening to see him elbowing his way into a distraction as the drama unfolds.

Any young beat reporter would remind him that there is no equivalence between a gang of muggers and what the victim does or fails to do in trying to ward them off.

Update: A White House statement insists that "of course no threat was intended. As Mr. Woodward noted, the e-mail from the aide was sent to apologize for voices being raised in their previous conversation. The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more. And Mr. Woodward responded to this aide's e-mail in a friendly manner."

Not exactly a Dick Cheney-Scooter Libby reprise, but it will keep Woodward in the cable news spotlight for a few days.

And the Winner is...Sarah Palin

On the eve of sequester, both sides are outdoing themselves in terrifying Americans about catastrophic cuts, but the name in the award envelope is a golden oldie with a double feature of horrors.

Sarah Palin returns to warn that government will not only break down but is hoarding bullets to deal with the enraged taxpayers.

“If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits,” she confides to Facebook, “then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.”

She noses out John Boehner whose latest horror scene is over an "outrageous" move by federal immigration officials to release hundreds of illegal immigrants as a way to save money ahead of Friday's deadline.

The competition has been bipartisan as Washington Post columnist David Ignatius suggests the  White House has been joining them in weeks of “blame-game politics. Doesn’t the president see that the GOP is addicted to this showdown at Thunder Road? This is all the power the GOP has these days, really--the ability to scare the heck out of everybody and run the car into the ditch.”

In all this sturm und drang, it is the nation’s union leaders, Obama’s strongest backers, who are calling for sanity by repealing the law that set up sequestration.

“We urge,” says the AFL-CIO executive council, “President Obama and members of Congress of both parties to reject the Republican ransom demands and disarm the hostage takers instead. Only then can we focus on the urgent challenge of fixing the economy, raising wages, investing in our people and putting America back to work.”

Not as sexy as Palin’s call to “stop the hysterics,” but any sign of agreement is heartening.

Boehner's Anatomical Anarchy

The Speaker shoots himself in the foot urging that “the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something” about sequester cuts. The Upper House fails to agree, leaving John Boehner and his Tea Party captors stuck in the slow-motion anarchy they have unleashed.

GOP politicians these days are racing through thick mud of their own making, gasping for TV air, feet churning, going nowhere—-to create the sight of a government stumbling toward anarchy on the sequester, gun control, immigration and any other serious issue that might come up.

Boehner’s self-inflicted wounds have led the President to his only viable option, two more years of stumping against Republican madness in the hope of wresting control of the House from them in 2014. Meanwhile, he is setting them up for their own voters’ realization that tax money pays for actual services.

That’s a hard and messy lesson for the best-educated electorate in history to be learning at this late date but, even as GOP diehards give up their loony opposition to Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry is making the point for German students about our differences with their country in the last century.

“As a society,” he tells them, “we live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and...political tolerance, whatever the point of view.

"People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it's the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another.”

That, says Kerry, is “freedom of speech. In America you have a right to be stupid--if you want to be."

As Boehner, Mitch McConnell and their cohorts keep abusing that privilege, isn’t it time for more Americans to be speaking truth to stupid?

Unsequestering Morality

Pace Bill Maher’s aggressive atheism and the Religious Right’s heartless Puritanism, mainline Protestant leaders step forward to urge that the fiscal standoff be framed in “moral choices.”

Almost 100 leaders of the nation’s largest and most influential Christian congregations, calling themselves the “Circle of Protection,” urge Congress and the President to resist “budget cuts that undermine the lives, dignity and rights of poor and vulnerable people.”

Their concern reflects a Norman Rockwell America that still exists somewhere under today’s layers of sound-bite meanness and cynicism, when “love thy neighbor as thyself” could be heard from pulpits.

As the White House warns of how the sequester would cut airport security, teaching jobs and vaccines for children, Republicans keep digging in to avoid taxes on corporations and the richest Americans.

In a reversal of traditional clichés, more realism can be heard inside church walls than in the halls of Congress as Protestant leaders proclaim:

“Important choices must be made: we must weigh the benefits of tax credits for low-income people and tax breaks for high-income people; of nutrition assistance to low-income families and subsidies to agricultural businesses...

“Congress can and must develop a balanced and thoughtful path forward that protects the most vulnerable and preserves economic opportunity.”

For those who respect the faith of religious Americans even though they do not share it, this effort to unsequester their traditional moral beliefs is a heartening sign of sanity.

Downton Abbey's Dubious Departures

Season 3 is gone and so are two of the most appealing characters, reflecting not the choice of series creators but career moves by young actors, latest in a long list of modestly talented young people who keep overestimating their contributions to a TV triumph.

Julian Fellowes, mastermind of “Downtown,” makes it clear that killing off Lady Sybil and Matthew Crawley was not his idea, that “the actor wanted to leave rather than anyone's dying just for the sake of the plot...They would both be in the series till the end of it, if it were up to us."

There is something primal here about young people rejecting nurturing homes to strike out before they are ready, causing pain to those who love them. If precedent is any guide, Jessica Brown-Findlay and Dan Stevens will survive in show biz, but “Downton” will be their high point.

Stevens’ Broadway debut in “The Heiress” is labeled “shiny, well spoken and lacking in discernible undercurrents” by the Times, while Brown-Findlay bears her breasts in a movie “Albatross,” notable for “the clang of cliché.”

Mediocrity has been the fate of their predecessors such as Shelley Long, who prematurely departed “Cheers” to sink without trace, as well as David Caruso, who left “NYPD Blue” for movie stardom but is now back on series TV, playing middle-aged versions of his original role.

In the middle of its long run, Rob Lowe left “West Wing” to star in movies and two other TV series that sank without trace.

As we grieve for Sybil and Matthew’s youthful demise, old age consoles us with Maggie Smith’s return for Season 4. Dame Maggie, who told “60 Minutes” she has never watched “Downton,” will return as a concession to time that has ended her stage career.

Fellowes is auditioning a new life partner for the now-widowed Lady Mary and her baby heir, so we can be sure that life will go on upstairs at the Abbey even as the Bateses, Carson et al thrive below.

The lesson here may have best been summed up in the show business classic, “All About Eve,” when an exasperated playwright yelled at the temperamental star, “When will the piano realize it hasn’t written the concerto?”

“Downton Abbey” will play on. 

Sex Scandal Rehab: Sanford and Petraeus

As a former governor tries to wash himself clean in South Carolina, David Petraeus surfaces briefly to underscore what was lost in last year’s media circus, a much more able and honorable public figure.

Mark Sanford has to explain away deception and misuse of public funds, while the former General is still serving time in publicity purgatory for one large misstep, more preyed upon than predator, acknowledged and paid for with a no-excuse resignation.

Petraeus is praising an inspirational book by a dying soldier who has called him hero and mentor, “Tell My Sons” by 41-year-old Lt. Col. Mark Weber, who served under him in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now fighting terminal cancer.

Weber’s book, addressed to his three boys, has been lauded by the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and three of his predecessors as well as Donald Rumsfeld and former Vice-President Walter Mondale.

Petraeus’ testimonial is the most poignant: “The book arrived at a challenging time for me. It is wonderful--equal parts inspirational and sobering. It is a tremendous reminder of the blessings that we all have, regardless of our personal situations...it was inspirational, at a key moment.”

Whether or not Sanford can rehabilitate himself is of no great moment, but the loss of Petraeus is another matter. His military-political skills will be missed.

The man who got us out of Iraq without a Vietnam-like disgrace is still only 60. When the next President takes office in 2017, Petraeus will have been out of the armed forces for the six years required to qualify for Secretary of Defense.

In the light of current doubts, even among Democrats, about the stature of Chuck Hagel, a President Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Jeb Bush might be well advised to turn to Petraeus, who understands the Pentagon in his bones and who, if the armed forces were still plagued by abuse of women, would be highly motivated to solve the problem.

That could be a second chance for both a man who fell from grace and the nation.

GOP Hope: Jeb Bush's Great Society?

After Marco Rubio runs second to a Carnival cruise ship in last week’s watery mishaps, a fellow Floridian bobs to the surface hugging a fifty-year-old life preserver.

In a speech, Jeb Bush asserts that a neo-Lyndon Johnson is the answer to refloating the sinking GOP:

“He went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen.”

By no means is Bush III advocating a new Great Society, but his 2016 self-positioning is another sign of a new Republican undertow, following such other ripples as Karl Rove’s pushback against Tea Party crazy Steve King’s Senate bid in Iowa.

The sight of a Bush and Rove as centrists is one measure of where the GOP is heading in its efforts to rebalance in a second Obama term with embrace of immigration reform and a possible deal on sequesters.

As John McCain and Lindsey Graham run out of steam on their Benghazi bluster and Hagel-blocking while Rand Paul pipedreams of a Presidential bid, the Washington scene seems set for easing gridlock.

If the President is relaxed enough to be seen golfing with former pariah Tiger Woods rather than John Boehner, anything can happen as Jeb Bush tells Republicans, “We can’t be anti-progress, we can’t be anti-innovation, anti-technology.”

GOP moderation is on the march.

American Split-Screen Night

As cops close in on the fiery last stand of a mass murderer, a continent away Barack Obama tries to smoke out those who have been holding America hostage with lethal ideology.

The Christopher Dorner story may be over, but the President’s State of the Union assault on Tea Party barricades is just the start of a long siege.

For over an hour last night he fired off a fusillade of rational proposals to raise the minimum wage, reform immigration, expand education and otherwise invest in the economy, but he will have to take the battle with Congress to the streets.

As polls show even more Americans than those who reelected Obama solidly behind him, the President will have to keep campaigning across the country in coming months to pressure GOP incumbents into action between now and 2014.  

Marco Rubio’s lame response underscores their rote resistance. Looking like a sweaty Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News,” the party’s New Hope offers nothing but bromides against big government and the news that he has just finished paying off his student loans.

All this was to be expected, but the highlight of the night was Barack Obama’s impassioned peroration on legislation for gun control.

To an audience including families of victims, he pointed to the parents of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who attended his inauguration and was killed “a mile away from my house” in Chicago a week later:

“Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote.

“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote.

“The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence--they deserve a simple vote.

“Our actions will not prevent every senseless act of violence in this country. Indeed, no laws, no initiatives, no administrative acts will perfectly solve all the challenges I’ve outlined tonight. But we were never sent here to be perfect. We were sent here to make what difference we can, to secure this nation, expand opportunity, and uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but absolutely necessary work of self-government.”

John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and their minions were there to hear those words, but will their constituents persuade them to act on them?

Paranoid State of the Union

The President will promise progress, GOP and Tea Party rebuttals will predict doom, but a provocative report on America’s state of mind is already available online in sniper Christopher Dorner’s manifesto, a mélange of over-the-top paranoia gripping California with fear and hero-worship, a rogue society-trained killer out of the Bourne movies meets Charlie Sheen in media land.

Exactly 50 years ago, on the eve of JFK's assassination, historian Richard Hofstadter delivered a lecture that morphed into a classic book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” predicting the escalation of madness in which we live today, in Washington, Hollywood and elsewhere.

The prototypical figure, he wrote, “traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization... he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”

As the President tries to marshal the forces of reason on gun control and other issues, a paranoid opposition is still obsessed with Benghazi and blocking his cabinet nominees. Do their rhetorical rants make any more sense than those of Dorner, who kills innocents to satisfy his grievances against those remotely related to his imagined oppressors?

“Since the enemy,” Hofstadter wrote, “is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.”

This all-or-nothing state of mind dominates the culture beyond politics and crime. Netflix comes along this week with its first self-made series, a brain-dead version of “The West Wing” in which everyone in Washington is evil, outdoing even “Homeland” in its award-winning sourness about the mentality of those who govern America.

Whatever politicians tell us about the state of the union, beyond and beneath the speeches is a nation wallowing in paranoia and resisting reason in favor of rising madness.

Dorner may be captured or killed, but his spirit will live on.

"Support Mental Health or I'll Kill You"

That message from an ancient bumper sticker comes to mind as a frustrated Congress tries to paper over American gun madness by throwing money at services for the mentally ill instead of keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of mass killers.

Who will quarrel with a proposed law to spend $1.4 billion over ten years to “strengthen the nation’s mental health services and perhaps stave off violent acts by the mentally ill?”

Such services could certainly help desperate families with nowhere to turn for help, but will they be more than a band-aid to cover the Second Amendment insanity afflicting the whole society?

Only if mental health professionals set up shop in Washington to treat lawmakers with anxiety disorders over opposing the National Rifle Association’s paranoia in keeping them from limiting automatic weapons and bullet clips that end scores of lives in seconds.

Would any clinic have disarmed the man who pleaded guilty yesterday to shooting up a Family Research Council Office with a pistol, two magazines and 50 rounds of ammunition to "kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims' faces?"

After World War II, when mental illness was still a subject not openly discussed in polite society, it took decades to raise public awareness of the need to support medical help for treatment, however uncertain the results might be.

How long will it take to change attitudes toward the gun madness of a whole society? Dr.  Joe Biden and his colleagues have a long way to go. 

The New Age of Contact Sport

Super Bowl Sunday comes and goes with reminders of how violent American life has become in 2013.

Before the Game, “Meet the Press” unwittingly juxtaposes a parallel between politics and sport as outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta anguishes about the Tea Party threat of automatic budget cuts by sequester, “Why in God’s name would members of Congress elected by the American people take a step that would badly damage our national defense? But more importantly, undermine the support for our men and women in uniform. Why would you do that?”

In another segment, sportscaster Bob Costas bewails how “dangerous” and “barbaric” football has become to the point that President Obama tells an interviewer, “If I had a son, I’d think long and hard before I let him play football.”

Hard-fought but clean competition is long gone in a time when winning isn’t enough—-there are bounties to “splatter” opponents and knock them out of the game. (In the Hagel hearings, McCain attacks like an obsessed linebacker.)

Elsewhere in the news, public shooting deaths proliferate as Congress wavers on even small steps toward gun control and fights every attempt to ease the plight of Baby Boomers who see their expected retirement melt away in a continuing recession.

On this day of cold pizza and reheated chili, the aches and pains of Super Sunday will be felt by millions more than the players who were on the field.