MAYBE IT’S AS SIMPLE AS THIS

Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed in today’s New York Times calling for Barack to show passion when it comes to the economy. I might go further and say that he needs to show passion with respect to at least one or two issues involving the economy and at least one or two issues involving international affairs.

For a young statesman to inspire a huge portion of the American public, as Barack will need to do in order to be elected, passion is a must. He showed that passion in his stump speeches earlier in the year, but it has been largely absent from his recent performances. That much change.

Barack will win or lose depending on what he says in his campaign ads and his upcoming debates. The one big speech at the Democratic Convention can only do so much for him – the other performances, collectively, will be much more important.

When Barack enters a debate, is he prepared to show honest-to-God indignation – not merely professorial disagreement -- at the way the GOP has handled the war and the economy? Is he prepared to demonstrate with fire that John McCain has sold out and checked his maverick past at the door? Is he prepared to prove that candidate McCain and President Bush disagree on virtually nothing, and that McCain is rapidly assembling the administration of Bush III? Is Barack prepared to identify particular facets of his domestic and foreign agenda in which his heart is engaged every bit as much as his mind?

More to the point, would doing the above come naturally to him? That may be the single most critical question for the fall.

THE FAITH FORUM

I normally don’t post twice in the same weekend, but this time I must. I don’t know how many of you watched last night’s forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren, but if you didn’t, please read this carefully and consider taking these points to heart:

First, as I said yesterday, this election is FAR from over. Those Democrats who assess Barack’s political talent well above McCain’s fail to recognize that Barack is still learning his trade. In light of his inexperience as a politician, this can yet become a dog-fight

Second, when Barack and McCain are giving speeches, the disparity in skill level is indeed mind-blowing. Barack is a brilliant orator. McCain is marginally competent at best. I mention this disparity in part because oratorical skills are extremely important for Presidents who hope to be inspirational leaders. So, too, is the ability to put together and oversee an excellent organization. For those reasons, among others, I suspect that Barack would make an infinitely better President than McCain. But … the issue of the moment isn’t who would make a better President; it’s who is more electable. There, as I indicated above, the call may become a close one.

3. In town-hall meetings – and last night’s meeting was almost like a town-hall meeting because there were no follow-up questions and essentially no rules as to how, and for how long, to respond to the questions – McCain has some definite advantages: (a) McCain tells stories and, in doing so, draws from 70 plus years of experience and a wellspring of accomplishments. Barack, by contrast, speaks a bit like an academic. By that I mean that he answers questions thoughtfully, relatively directly, and attempts to “instruct” us on his positions. Many people will prefer this latter approach, but I suspect it is less effective for the “swing-voters.” (b) Barack enters into an I-Thou relationship with the questioners … he faces the questioners, responds to them directly, and acts like he owes them personally an answer that is authentic and relatively complete. McCain, by contrast, processes the question, tersely and viscerally responds to it, and then quickly goes into stump-speech mode, which, as I indicated, often amounts to story-telling. Again, advantage McCain. What matters isn’t whether the questioner likes the answer but whether the swing-voters at home like the answer. (c) McCain is invoking a familiar archetype of the white, male, experienced, conservative, patriotic, God-fearing American statesman. Barack is trying to be a 21st century, third-way kind of politician. Unless Barack can get Americans affirmatively to distrust McCain as a person, or at least to distrust whether McCain is right for his times, McCain’s the one who is farming in a proven-fertile field.

The upshot of this isn’t much different than what I said yesterday, but my point was graphically illustrated by last night’s forum. Barack can’t simply run-out-the-clock on McCain like he did on Hillary during the final couple of months of the campaign. He must take some chances and show America why it REALLY doesn’t want McCain, not merely why it wants Barack.

It shouldn’t be that hard to expose McCain as wrong for his times. Listening to McCain talk about foreign policy last night was a perfect example of his vulnerability. McCain analyzes overseas issues like a ten year old. In his comic-strip world, there are heroes (like the leader of Georgia, who McCain extolled, even though his screw up is partially responsible for the violence with Russia) and villains (Putin, Saddam, etc.). Coming across less as a Christian than as a Manichaean, McCain suggests that our job – as the superheroes of the world – are to defeat evil every time it manifests itself. So we can spend a trillion plus dollars and many thousand lives on Iraq based on a justification that turned out to be a mistake, and then brag about it for years on end. And we feel obliged to wax eloquent about “following Osama to the gates of hell” even when, in truth, we strangely let him elude our grasp and don’t seem able to look for him.

To be sure, you don’t hear much from the media about McCain’s weaknesses on foreign policy. But believe me, they’re out there, just waiting to be exposed for everyone to see.

In short, John McCain, far from acting like the senile idiot so many Democrats make him out to be seemed last night like someone who could very easily be elected President. To defeat him, his downside must be made manifest to the swing voters who don’t read the Huffington Post or watch the Daily Show. Fortunately for Obama, McCain has serious problems – this man, who never bothered to take his studies seriously in college and frequently as an adult has been unable to control his temper, now, in his old age, appears to be influenced more by Superman and Batman (or is it Whack a Mole?) than by the great works of political theory. That’s the last person in the world you’d like to have ruling our military.

Are you going to expose him, Barack? Or are you going to play three-yards-and-a-cloud of dust and pray for luck at the polls? That’s pretty much your choice.

DEAR BARACK,

This is the second time I am addressing you directly. The first, which was face to face, lasted perhaps twenty seconds. Now, though, I feel entitled to more of your time. On Monday night, I became the proud owner of brand, spanking new Honda Civic Hybrid. After taking one for the (global) team with that purchase, I figure there are some extra privileges coming my way this week. I can think of no greater privilege than grabbing a bit of your attention.

Let me begin by thanking you for running such a superb campaign. I chuckle when I hear people tout John McCain’s experience over yours, because the last time I checked, the two of you have the same amount of experience in serving as the CEO of a major enterprise – your respective campaigns – and while he has made a mess out of his, yours has been a model of excellence.

I began to lose hope in your candidacy when Hillary started to pull away in the polls last summer, but I hadn’t realized how superior your campaign organization was to hers. How was I to guess you’d destroy her in such states as Idaho and Utah? How was I to guess that while she’d win decisively in California, New York and Massachusetts, you’d still hold your own on Super Tuesday? I expect that the amazing organization you’ve put together will pay major dividends this fall in states like Virginia and Ohio that have previously gone Republican. Just as McCain could “out poll the polls” because of the Bradley effect, you may well do the same by bringing new voters into the system.

Clearly, your advantages this November are not confined to your organization. You are an incredible speaker -- infinitely better than McCain. Your views coincide more with those of the American public. Your candidacy is truly historic because of your race. Being a Democrat, you aren’t saddled with the unpopularity of George Bush. And last but hardly least, you are the better looking of the two candidates … and have a much more likeable personality. Your opponent may best be characterized as the second coming of that crusty curmudgeon with the dry wit, Bob Dole. We all remember Dole as the last GOP candidate who got blown away at the ballot box by a much younger, livelier, more intellectually-vibrant opponent.

All these advantages cause me strongly to expect your victory this November. But you know, I may be less optimistic than many of the Democrats I know. And that’s because you’re starting to remind me of Livingstone Bramble.

Please tell me you know the name. It’s important that you do. After all, I continue to maintain that you can always predict the winner of a Presidential campaign on the basis of which of the candidates would do the best job providing color commentary on an NFC Championship Game … and I suspect that most half-decent football commentators over the age of 40 would remember the name of Livingstone Bramble.

For those of you who aren’t so knowledgeable about sports generally, or “the sweet science” in particular, Bramble could aptly be termed the “Prince of Boxing.” This isn’t because of his prince-like skills, but because the dude kept changing his name, much like a certain musician from Minnesota. Known alternatively as Livingstone Bramble, Abuja Bramble, and Ras-I-Bramble, this colorful character won a world title in 1984 after upsetting Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and kept the title for more than two years. Bramble was also known for his dread-locks, Rastafarianism, practice of witchcraft, and love of snakes – in fact, he enjoyed entering a ring with a snake around his neck. But what I remember most about the former champ is that he is probably the only titleholder in the history of boxing with whom I could have lasted fifteen rounds.

Yup. You heard me, Barack. I, Dan Spiro, who is nobody’s idea of an athlete could have lasted fifteen rounds with Ras-I-Bramble. Why? Because Bramble, at his peak, may have been a precise, poised pugilist, but he was a mere counterpuncher. I don’t recall ever seeing the guy initiate a punch on his own – he simply waited for guys like Boom Boom to throw a right, before Bramble dodged it and threw a combination of his own. It can be a dazzling approach – and for two years, it worked to perfection. But after 1986, Bramble’s counterpunching style netted a record of 16-24-2 … hardly what the doctor ordered.

If I fought Ras-I, my strategy would be quite simple. Never punch the guy! Never. I’d just stand there with my gloves up, and some bizarre force field would apparently prevent him from throwing the first punch. Maybe if I threw one with .1 seconds left to go in the last round I might actually win on points. Who knows? He’d knock me out for sure, but probably after the bell.

Counterpunchers mystify me, because if you don’t put a top puncher in the ring with them, they just dance … they don’t fight. It was a style that netted Ras-I the Lightweight Belt. But Barack, the last time I checked, you’re running as a heavyweight. And in that classification, we don’t tend to need counterpunchers. We need initiators. We need brawlers.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been watching your counterpunching style at work. It seems that you want the campaign to stay positive, but whenever John McCain throws a right cross or a left hook your way, you respond with a punch of your own. “Thou Shalt Not Be Swift-Boated” is the new Democratic mantra. That’s another phrase for “don’t forget to counter every big punch.”

Fair enough. But don’t you see what’s happening? John McCain and his team of slime-peddlers are initiating all the punching. They’re determining (1) precisely when you guys engage and (2) the general topic of the engagement. They always seem to be plotting the next flurry … and you seem content to dance, dance, dance … and counter when called upon to do so. Is that really the way heavyweights fight?

Now please don’t give me a “Muhammad Ali” analogy. Ali was no Ras-I. The Louisville Lip initiated one stinging jab after another. Would you honestly analogize the ads you are running this Olympics as stinging jabs? I see them as the kind of upbeat, friendly ads that are typically run by an incumbent with a big lead. I wish I were confident enough to think that these ads – combined with an occasional counterpunch – will really work.

While we’re on the subject of boxing, I find myself disturbed not merely by your counterpunching style, but by the nature of your counterpunches. They are more like counter-jabs. McCain compared you to Paris Hilton and Britny Spears – all pizzazz and no substance. And then, in an ad that was truly the height of sleaze (because it took certain of your comments out of context in order to fundamentally misrepresent what you were saying) he compared you to Moses. More specifically, he compared you to those pompous asses we all seem to know who think they’re Moses, when in reality they’re merely mindless narcissists … like so many celebrities.

And how did you respond to these ads? I can’t friggen remember. What I can remember is that Paris Hilton saved your bacon by putting on an excellent counterpunching ad in which she essentially compared McCain to Methuselah. She gave us a choice between young and sexy, and aged and cantankerous. By implication, you were included in the former category. Now that was an effective counterpunch!

So many of fellow Democrats are expecting a clear victory this November based on your track record in defeating Hillary. But when you think about it, once Hillary went negative, you didn’t really defeat her. Returning to the football context, you took a big lead in points (i.e., delegates) into the fourth quarter, and ran out the clock. I won’t second guess that strategy – it did earn you the nomination – but it’s hardly a demonstration that you’re able to defeat a relentlessly negative campaign. And, in fact, the “running out the clock” strategy may well have backfired, but the strategy always yields a close outcome – close enough, in your case, that you feel obliged to turn what should have been your convention into what is shaping up as a Clinton Nostalgia event.

As a guy who has backed you from the start, that prospect makes me wince. And yet, once again, I can’t criticize your decision to hand the mike to Hillary … and Chelsea … and Bill, all the while allowing the delegates to vote for Hillary in droves. Why? Because apparently, you still haven’t sealed the deal with her supporters.

All of this leads me to believe that you still have some work to do. In other words, this might not be the time to put the car in cruise control just yet. You might have a lead in points, and a huge talent advantage, but the score is close and the game is early. To win it, you still have to take some chances. You still have to throw some punches.

But when should you punch? And how? Those are the questions. I’ll answer the second first.

Your goal should be to turn this into an election about two people, not just a referendum on yourself. One of the reasons why you’re having so much trouble with the Hillary supporters is that they don’t seem to fear a McCain Presidency. They are anything but desperate about getting you elected. That’s because nobody on your side has bothered to mock and ridicule him, whereas he has made mockery of you the centerpiece of his campaign.

There are so many ways to mock McCain, you just have to choose between an embarrassment of riches. First, you have the man’s war mongering. McCain was a leading cheerleader for a “war of choice” that has turned into a disaster of epic proportions. He has spoken of this war like a crazed child playing a video game -- “I want to win, WIN, WIN!” The idea of him following Osama Bin Laden into the gates of Hell is comical, given that the war he has supported in Iraq has made it impossible to capture Bin Laden in the war we should have waged in Afghanistan.

You can practically turn this man into a real-life version of Jack T Ripper from Dr. Strangelove – the crazy soldier whose concern about his precious bodily fluids resulted in thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. At a minimum, you can make people nervous about having a hot-tempered, bellicose fool in charge of the Red Button.

If you don’t like that approach, here’s another: Ask women what they think about John McCain’s preferred choices for the Supreme Court? Or his likely choices for a cabinet? Comparisons between George Bush and John McCain may seem unfair until you realize that McCain is still a Republican, and if he hopes to get elected, he has to appeal to the hard right of the Republican Party. So who would he find to protect abortion rights on the Supreme Court? And who would he find to lead the Executive Branch departments? Likely, he’d be fishing in the same pool where Bush has been. The choice should be very clear: Do you want four years like the last eight? If so, McCain is your man. If not, vote Obama, or quit your complaining, but you’re merely another “enabler” if you won’t support him.

Want a third approach? Try calling the Republicans the party of high taxes. You heard me – label them the tax-and-spend party. Because truly they are.

You can mock the GOP as the height of hypocrisy in calling for “low taxes” when, in fact, they have consistently fought to increase the most pernicious tax of all: the national debt. Our debt is, quite obviously, a hidden tax on our children and grandchildren. Under the last few Republican Presidents, and especially under the current Prez, it has expanded wildly. But under the only Democrat we’ve had in the last 28 years, the country was actually running a budget surplus at one point. That should be a huge campaign issue. And you, Barack, can paint yourself as a true fiscal conservative who will have the stones to ensure some sanity in the budget. By contrast, you can paint McCain as advocating opening up one war-front after another and paying for it with our sons’ lives and our grandsons’ property.

Finally … there are the really dirty attack strategies. These are the ones your opponent would be using against you if the tables were turned. The attacks on character.

John McCain’s story isn’t exactly spotless, now is it? Need I detail how he screwed around in the Naval Academy, got special benefits in the military, dumped his wife as soon as she lost her looks, got embroiled in a financial scandal, completely flip-flopped on his principles (even to the point where he is now “moderate” on torture)? Any or all of these points could be major campaign themes.

To be clear, I’m not advocating that you start hurling mud to destroy McCain’s reputation for character. But just keep that weapon in mind, because (a) he and his minions would be resorting to that against you, and (b) it should be a reminder that everything short of that is fair game. The point is that you must hit him and hit him hard on the issues to the point where Americans would be put off by the thought of a McCain Presidency independently of whether you were running against him. You’re not going to get most voters to thirst for an Obama Presidency. But if you can combine your fans with another large group of voters who are anti-McCain, then you’ll have a winning coalition.

As for “when” to attack, I’m satisfied with your decision to run a positive campaign through the end of your convention. I’m satisfied with the idea that you must come across as a “different kind of politician” who offers more hope than fear. But when, starting in September, he punches again, you should let him have it – and not just with one counter-punch combination but with a sustained offensive. That’s what’s critical. As I learned long ago when I became prosecuting fraud cases for the government, because of the primacy of ethics, a government lawyer has to tie one hand behind his back … just don’t tie both!

There is one final point to make. The Veep decision you’re about to make in the next couple of weeks will be critical to your ability to attack in the fall. Please do not inoculate McCain against criticism for supporting the Iraq War. Please do not neutralize your “judgment” advantage in opposing that war by nominating a Senator who supported it.

I won’t suggest who you should nominate. But allow me to suggest who you shouldn’t: anyone who publicly supported that awful decision to invade Iraq. That includes Biden (who I’d otherwise support), Bayh, and, of course, Clinton. If you can just stay clear of making that mistake and then wage a hard-hitting but above the belt campaign, you should come out victorious in November.

Thanks for listening.

REACTIONARY DONKEYS

I was raised to have disdain for reactionaries. As described to me by my parents, these were people who couldn’t accept that times have changed. They pined for an earlier era, a simpler era – when the man of the house ruled the roost … and whites and blacks weren’t so integrated … and government wasn’t so profoundly involved in lifting up the poor … and homosexuals were closeted … and big corporations were able to behave pretty much as they pleased … and entertainment was always wholesome … You get the drift. My parents told me that the people who espoused these values called themselves “conservatives,” but they were anything but. Conservatives want things to stay as they are, I was told. By contrast, these pseudo-conservatives want to go into a time machine and take the rest of our society along with them. They are right-wing radicals, my parents said, and we need to expose them as such.

Fine. So exposed. But I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t expose my friends on the left when they display the same tendencies.

Before I address my topic – sex – let me express my bias. Professionally, I enforce a statute called the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act prohibits misconduct by those who submit false or fraudulent claims to the Government. But in order to be found culpable under the Act, the defendant must have acted with more than simple negligence. By law, the defendant must have been at least reckless. And if the Government can prove recklessness, it is entitled to treble damages plus penalties.

I had this concept very much in mind when Monica Lewinsky came into my life. I had already lost faith in her boyfriend Bill by the time that their tryst was exposed, but at least I had thought that he would not recklessly endanger his entire Presidency. I had assumed that he cared enough about his country that he wouldn’t take the kind of chance that a drunk driver takes when he risks human lives on the highway – for in this case, if he had an affair with an intern and it was exposed, he would clearly have risked any credibility he had as a politician. Well, sure enough, it was exposed. The media seized on the story day after bloody day; Clinton was “impeached” (though not “convicted”); he became “still-President Clinton,” the lamest of ducks; his VP ran for President while understandably distancing himself from Clinton; Clinton thus couldn’t really help to campaign for his VP; his VP lost the election by the slimmest of margins, and surely would have won comfortably if only Clinton had not been so reckless; the guy who won the election decided a couple of years later to get us involved in a meshugah war in Iraq; and now the country has lost thousands of soldiers, hundreds of billions of dollars, and international standing. All because of blow jobs.

Were these events foreseeable consequences of what Slick Willie did with his willie? Obviously, you can never foresee a fact pattern so specific. But what he could have foreseen was that (a) the chances of getting caught were enormous, and (b) the consequences of getting caught were devastating. Did I mention drinking and driving? His conduct was even more reckless … much more devastating than taking out a single motorist or vehicle.

At the time Clinton was exposed, I was devastated. You see, back in 1992, I was a true believer. I even joined the Saxophone Club. I shook the man’s hand. And now, I thought to myself, he’s revealed his true colors. Night after night I was glued to the TV and I listened to the talking heads ruminate about what the President did and why. The Republicans who lambasted him – the same ones who had been pissing me off for years – they were the ones who were making sense to me. And the Democrats? One after another, they made excuses for Clinton. They would trivialize his misconduct – “merely about sex, so what?” Or “he made a mistake, fine, let’s move on.” Or, “he’s just a man with an overactive need for sex.” It’s that last one that really enraged me. This friggen guy was in his 50s, right? Well, when my friends and I were in our late-teens, I thought, we surely had five times the sex drive of any 50 year old man, and when we weren’t getting any – which was nearly all the time – we took matters into our own hands. If we could, why couldn’t he? The Democratic apologists never explained that one to my satisfaction.

All of that alienated me a bit from the leadership of the Democratic Party. Ah, but there were a few Democratic voices who reminded me that I wasn’t alone. Joe Lieberman was one of them. He spoke out in the Senate against Clinton – and I was thrilled to learn that he was later nominated for VP. (If only Joe had known that Clinton’s sexcapades would give rise to the stinkin’ Iraq War, maybe The War Monger would have applauded the Clinton scandal … but I digress.) Another Democratic leader also presented views similar to mine: “I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen.” Wonderful words – so concise, and yet so devastating. I’d say the speaker of those words hit the nail on the head.

And he did it again, this week, when he described his own, eerily similar conduct, as “egocentric and narcissistic.” That’s right; the speaker of those profound words was none other than John Edwards.

OK. I’ll spare you my thoughts over the years about Mr. Edwards. Readers of this blog know that even though I have written early and often about the need to address rampant poverty as perhaps the fundamental issue facing this country, I haven’t trusted Edwards as far as I could throw him. The idea of an anti-poverty activist building a 30,000 square foot house reduced him, in my eyes, to an absurdity. But this post really isn’t about Mr. Edwards. Hypocrites are a dime a dozen, and to some degree we’re all counted among their ranks.

No, the focal points of this post are my fellow liberals who persist in making excuses for men like Willie and Johnny – quinquagenarians who don’t know how or when to jerk off or what it means to be one. (Maybe they need to make masturbation classes mandatory for men if they wish to graduate from college. Or at least before they’re allowed to run for public office.) Just last night, one of my best friends sounded the same lame excuse: “This should never have been reported. Back in the old days, it never would have been reported. It’s none of anyone’s business.” There you have it. Just another reactionary, pining for the halcyon days – in this case, the days when the press corps winked at the politician when he took the bimbo up to the hotel room and did to her what he had been doing to the nation … and not to his wife.

Folks, get it. Maybe those were the good old days. Maybe the press shouldn’t be reporting about politicians’ trysts. Maybe it is disgusting to think of yourself – or a member of your family – working for one of those tabloids that collect trash on people’s sex lives. I’ll grant you all that. BUT THIS IS THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN, AND IT’S NOT CHANGING ANYTIME SOON! Clinton knew it, and I say that because his IQ is obviously astronomical. And Edwards knew it, and I say that because he basically said as much in the 1999 quote that I’ve posted above. The rules are simple: if you cheat, you stand a really good chance of destroying your credibility as a statesman. Period.

In spite of all that, in spite of the fact that Edwards supposedly told his wife about this little frolic back in 2006, one year later, the two of them – husband and wife – were shaking down their fellow Americans for tens of millions of dollars in campaign funds, presumably based on the assumption that maybe, just maybe, this bimbo-tryst wouldn’t get exposed in time for the election. Forget the fact that Edwards could have been elected and then it could have been exposed, thereby marring his ability to lead. Just concentrate on the fact that this couple knowingly requested and received tens of millions of non-deductible contributions from Americans without disclosing this “material fact” about their candidacy.

Last December, Elizabeth Edwards received the “Woman of the Year” award on this blog. That’s how much I thought of her. And truly, I do respect her in many ways. But she’s dead wrong in calling this a “private” affair. Quite the contrary, for all the reasons her husband enunciated in 1999, his affair was anything but private. It belongs to this nation as a reminder that when you seek the highest office in the land, you implicitly promise that you will not disgrace yourself according to the prevailing morality of your society. And it belongs to this nation as a reminder that liberals who shrug off this type of conduct are doing the same thing as right wingers who pine for the days of Ward Cleaver. It’s time for all of us to wake up and walk out into some 21st century sunlight. Gays are here to stay. Women’s lib is here to stay. Tabloid journalism is here to stay. And the respect for marital fidelity is here to stay.

And before we leave the topic, can I at least pine for something myself: Before I die, can at least one prominent politician’s wife please throw the bum out of your life? Back in the good old days, you see, cheatin’ men used to find their clothes thrown out on the front lawn instead of finding their wives standing next to them, all supportive, at press conferences. Now I’m not saying they deserve the Bobbit treatment, but seriously, can’t at least one politician’s wife tell us that they’ve had it with their perverted hubby? Or is that just another utopian, reactionary dream? Stay tuned – it shouldn’t be long before another politician’s wife gets to weigh in on the topic.

MYSTERIES GREAT AND SMALL

Last week, in a space of just a few hours, I went from reading about the philosophy of Martin Heidegger to watching Patrick Buchanan and Joe Scarborough on the “Morning Joe” program. Talk about a comedown.

Both Heidegger and those two Republican pundits were talking about mysteries. But Heidegger’s mysteries are truly worthy of the term. The Morning Joe mystery, which happens to be the one that political pundits have been ruminating about all summer, is no mystery at all. It is merely a sad commentary on the state of our political marketplace.

Martin Heidegger is a philosopher about which few Americans know anything. It is easy to dismiss him as a Nazi – much like it is easy to praise Scarborough and Buchanan as small D “democrats” – and there is no denying that Heidegger not only was a member of the Nazi party who publicly spoke in favor of Hitler’s break with the League of Nations and who later, after the war, had virtually nothing to say about the Holocaust, let alone an apology. To be sure, Martin Heidegger the man is no hero. But Martin Heidegger the philosopher is dismissed at a thinker’s own peril. If you, like me, equate God to Being itself, you dare not ignore Heidegger. After all, in the history of our species, it would appear that no philosopher has been as consumed with the meaning of Being – of isness – as Martin Heidegger.

Need I say more about why Americans find him so irrelevant?

Heidegger, like the other great philosophers, spends at least as much time evoking questions as he does answers. No question is more central to him than “What is the Being which makes possible all being?” This question can be asked in related forms, such as why is there something, anything, instead of nothing? Or why do we, as individual human beings, exist -- or for that matter, why does a particular stone exist – when we can just as easily conceive of ourselves not existing?

Heidegger views these questions as fascinating mysteries, and I must agree with him. After posing them, he goes on to lament about the history of western civilization as an environment where the question of Being has been more and more trivialized to the point where most of us tend to neglect it almost entirely. People who ask these questions, Heidegger points out, are in touch with their ability to view the world with wonder, or more precisely, with radical astonishment. That is the attitude that has spawned many a philosopher and many a mystic. But when you think about the “western” mindset, radical astonishment is not exactly the perspective that immediately comes to mind -- quite the contrary. We westerners are busy people, and well too involved in our “work” to admire the work of God, or the Absolute, or whatever name you choose to give to Being, when considered not as an It but as a Thou. We don’t behold with awe. We define and categorize. And then we take what has been defined and categorized and manipulate it for our own chosen ends. I heard yesterday that scientists are even attempting to manipulate the weather during the Olympics by firing some sort of projectiles into the rain clouds in order to keep Beijing dry. And yes, this isn’t even the “western” world. But scientists are westerners wherever they may reside, just as mystics are easterners.

It is not hard to guess how the profound writings of Heidegger would be “defined and categorized” by political pundits like a Buchanan or a Scarborough – or their fellow travelers like Lou Dobbs. Surely, these so-called “populist” pundits would approach Heidegger’s questioning of Being with little more than relentless mockery. From what I can tell of these pundits, they have contempt for so many types of academicians. Philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, sociologists, scholars in ethnic or gender studies departments … The list isn’t a short one. These people are treated with contempt by our talking heads. Their work is viewed as mental masturbation, and they themselves are dismissed as ultra liberal, out of touch, and ultra elitist. And it is to that “elitist” label that the Scarboroughs and the Buchanans of our society most commonly turn when they wish to mock just about every fascinating question that they don’t understand and don’t want to understand. To ask these questions is essentially un-American, according to the narrative of the populist pundits, because the questions are irrelevant to the “real” Americans – the kind that wouldn’t know the difference between ontology and oncology. And that, of course, is the ultimate sin of our talking heads: they elevate the uneducated over the educated to the point where the former are treated as authentic Americans and the latter are not. That’s why, just as I have trouble thinking of Heidegger the philosopher as a Nazi, I have even more trouble thinking of the Scarboroughs or Buchanans as small-d democrats.

And yet I listen to them anyway. They are, after all, part of our democracy, and their views reflect those of millions of Americans who share their biases and would find Heidegger as trivial as he is impenetrable. So, if the pundits haven’t been ruminating about the mystery of Being, exactly what mystery has been astonishing them? If you can believe what they say – and I’m not sure I do – the great mystery of the moment involves our Presidential campaign. Over and over again they’ve asked the same question. And they rarely try to answer it – or perhaps they prefer to leave the sense of ineffability in the minds of their audience. The mystery can be stated succinctly as follows: If (a) this is a year where Americans are so profoundly dissatisfied with the direction our country is going; (b) Americans associate that direction with the policies of the Republican party; (c) John McCain is viewed as an old man who is essentially arguing for a third Bush term and admittedly knows very little about the subject that most concerns Americans, our economy; and (d) Barack Obama, by contrast, is a brilliant, charismatic, fresh-faced, Democrat who is poised to take the country in a new direction but without the spirit of divisiveness … then why the hell isn’t Obama clobbering McCain in the polls?

There you have it. The mystery du jour – or more specifically, the mystery of the entire summer. Are you all as “radically astonished” by that mystery as so many of the pundits claim to be?

Please tell me the answer is no. For the above assessment of McCain and Obama’s relative strengths and weaknesses is characteristically biased and incomplete. Allow me to flesh out a few more details.

First, in the last 30 years, we’ve elected exactly one Democrat to the White House. In the same time period, the Republicans have elected three.

Second, the one Democrat who was elected was a Southerner with 12 years of experience as the Chief Executive Officer of a state – precisely the type of experience that people want in their President. Even so, he didn’t even receive 50% of the vote.

Oh, and did I mention that this one Democrat was not only extremely charismatic, but also extremely white?

Today, by contrast, the Democrats are offering up a Northerner who, in the oft-stated words of Joe Scarborough, had “only one year of experience in the Senate before he started to run for President.” Oh yeah, did I mention that this latter fellow is not only relatively “unaccomplished,” but also young and black? His Republican opponent is a revered war hero who has had an extremely accomplished career in the Senate (one that justifiably earned him the label of “maverick” because of his willingness to take on his own party).

So, given that assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of these combatants, perhaps the better question is: why isn’t McCain giving Obama one hellacious ass whipping?

I’ll tell you why – because Obama is indeed a brilliant, brilliant talent. And McCain seems to have aged three decades in the last eight years. And yet … did I mention that Obama is relatively inexperienced and relatively black? It is that last fact that the pundits don’t like to talk about when assessing the polls, but how can you not? Just consider the words of the two greatest white spokesmen for human rights in our nation’s history. One, wrote about holding as self-evident the truth that “all men are created equal,” and yet he privately mused about what it said about black people that orangutan males are more attracted to black women than to other orangutans. Yes, Virginia, our Thomas Jefferson thought that African-Americans were genetically inferior. As for Honest Abe, he made the following pronouncement when speaking before a Red State (South Carolinian) audience in 1858: “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. … I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Those are the words of our human rights advocates. I need not bother to cite the comments of the George Wallaces, the Strom Thurmonds, or the Jesse Helmses. And do I really need to point out the various levels at which John McCain is communicating to Americans when he mocks Obama as a man who thinks he’s the new Moses and has the chutzpah to address adoring crowds overseas when he ought to be competing for votes here at home?

Obama cannot afford to tell the truth, but I can. McCain and his campaign are mining some pure gold here. They are speaking to millions of white people who have, for centuries, held some fairly defined stereotypes of African-Americans. You have your house blacks – your Stepinfetchits – and then you have your “uppity N----rs.” Barack Obama is being not so subtly portrayed as an “uppity N----r.” Nobody is calling him that directly – Mon Dieu! -- but they are hammering home the “arrogance” theme so frequently and so baselessly that I am hard-pressed to come up with another explanation. After all, once you stop taking Obama’s statements out of context, and especially once you consider the tone of his campaign taken in its entirety, how can he possibly be viewed as arrogant … unless you are expecting a member of his race to be ultra, ultra humble?

As long as the above stereotypes exist, and as long as McCain is determined to exploit them, this race will be relatively close. Indeed, the only real mystery about this election is how, in a realm that is seemingly packed with mediocre politicians and the occasional outsized talent with the equally outsized ego or libido, we have found a man whose talent is so brilliant that he can compete for President despite being young, male and black?

It is a credit to the sheer genius of Barack Obama that he is still given a roughly 62% chance of winning this election according to the betting markets, even though the polls are essentially even. Presumably, when he and McCain go toe-to-toe in the fall, the election will be decided. McCain will continue to rely on mud-throwing, mocking, and covert racism, whereas Barack will show the nation – and yes, the world -- just what it means to be the Tiger Woods of politics. Apparently, most betters are expecting that, faced with such a spectacle, a few more white voters might get their heads out of their butts and vote for the Democrat.

McCain’s only hope stems from the fact that Obama is still the Tiger Woods of 1997, not the Tiger Woods of 2007. In other words, Barack lacks some experience, and is still learning, for example, how best to respond to negative campaigning. But then again … a genius is a genius is a genius. Mozart at 4 was still pretty damned good.