Brass Tacks

Over the weekend I made the serious mistake of linking from Slate to an op-ed in the Washington Post by a Fellow named Peter Wehner about why Republicans like Obama. It reminded me of the old expression "Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas." I mean, that's how I felt after I read it -- itchy, squirmy, and a little disgusted at how I had contaminated myself by reading the piece. The gist of the Fellow's argument was that Republicans dislike Hillary Clnton because they remember the "mendacity and ruthlessness of the Clinton machine." He called the Clintons "unprincipled." My God! Compared to whom? Those lions of integrity, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice. Michael Mukasey, Alberto Gonzalez, Karl Rove, Michael Gerson? For sheer mendacity and ruthlessness, not to mention actual lawbreaking criminality, you can't really beat any Republican you can name. (For real outrage, I recommend Glenn Greenwald's Saturday column on the subpoena issued against James Risen of the New York Times.)

Anyway, Wehner yammers on about Obama transcending divisions and moving away from the "politics of rage." But Wehner has a warning for Obama -- if he continues to adhere to all the the views that have defined him in the public mind, and all of the beliefs that he has hitherto demonstrated, Republicans won't be able to support him. In other words, Obama is a great guy, and all he needs to do to get elected is to become a Republican.

Now, no one is surprised when a Republican advocates political and personal corruption -- that's what Republicans live for. That's why they can write pieces like this one for the Washington Post and still work for thinktanks such as the one the Fellow Wehner works for, "The 'Ethics' and Public Policy Center." From his op-ed, you know that the Fellow Wehner, Senior though he may be, wouldn't recognize an ethic if it whacked him in the face.

Here is why Hillary Clinton is mistrusted by liberals. It has nothing to do with ruthlessness or mendacity, except insofar as she has done exactly what Wehner advocates for Obama. In his HuffPost blog on January 30, Robert Scheer put it better than anyone:

"Isn't it disturbing that Sen. Clinton has received more money than any other candidate of either party from the big defense contractors? Why have the war profiteers given her twice the campaign contributions that they sent to McCain, if not for the expectation that she is on their side of the taxpayer rip-off that has seen the military budget rise to an all-time high? It's for the same reason that the bankers, Wall Street traders and other swindlers who produced our economic meltdown fund Clinton."

And this in addition to her continued lack of shame over her support of the Iraq war. In other words, Clinton did do what the Fellow Wehner advocates -- she failed to fight for liberal principles and she accepts money from enemies of liberal policies. Not content with one corrupt Democrat, the Fellow Wehner wants the other, more charming one to corrupt himself, too.

That at this late date there exists a human being, such as the Fellow Wehner, who admits that he once accepted blood money from the Bush administration and helped the administration promulgate lie after lie and crime after crime, does boggle the mind, and in fact is sufficient reason in itself for the "politics of rage" to last, like McCain's Iraq war, for a hundred years, or at least until the mess the Fellow Wehner and his cronies have managed to make of the government and the world while in power is cleaned up. Can Clinton do it, in spite of being in the pocket of the war machine and the finance machine? We don't know. Can Obama do it, in spite of not really seeming to understand the vicious ruthlessness and mendacity of the Republicans?

We don't know that either.

The underlying question of this primary and this election and the next four years is this -- was it the Clintons themselves who aroused the ire of the rightwing to such an extent that the administration they formed was unmercifully harassed from before the inauguration of 1992 to after the 2000 election, or were the Clintons simply the Democrats who happened to be there when the rightwing decided to take over? Everything the rightwing (and the media) latched onto about the Clintons, from Travelgate to the runway haircut to Monica Lewinsky seemed to me at the time to be merely a gambit in a slow-moving coup d'etat that was crowned in 2000 with the Supreme Court selection of the unelected George W, Bush. The one virtue of the Bush administration has been that their policies are so bankrupt and their members so incompetent that all but a few Americans can now understand the emptiness of the Republicans and their avid desire to destroy the U.S. in the pursuit of corporate power. The real danger of the next four years, as I see it, is that the election of any Democrat will trigger the rightwing deathsquads in all their different guises -- the media deathsquad, that hounds the president with nonsensical stories of scandal and distracts him from his business; the survivalist NRA deathsquads that pull off home-grown terrorist attacks, like the Oklahoma bombing; the lobbyist deathsquads, that gut all socially conscious or beneficial legislation, such as universal healthcare; the religious deathsquads, that harass and torment anyone who doesn't conform to a narrow and authoritarian social model; the thinktank deathsquads that propound deadly theories about the perfection of the "free market" or the horrors of "islamofacism" or the non-existence of climate change. It would actually be nice if the Fellow Wehner is telling the truth, that it is the Clintons personally that are the problem, because then the election of Obama would indeed signal a change. But if the goal of the corporatocracy is what it has seemed to be -- the permanent replacement of American democracy with a global imperialist empire and oligarchy of wealth, then Obama doesn't have a chance -- he will either be corrupted or destroyed.

The Fellow Wehner and his cronies are warning us already, but the warning is hard to read. A lot depends on your sense of how ruthless they are. My sense is that they are deadly ruthless. I hope I'm wrong.

Comments

[LewisWalsh]

Jane, you have a marvelous facility for seeing the larger picture. I try to understand the whole, but it is difficult when our leaders constantly attempt to focus us on the minute and the trivial.

Any time that the military budget is mentioned, as with your note on the Robert Scheer article, I cringe with anger and amazement. The 600 Billion dollars a year in US military expenditures is an outrageous sum which has no relationship at all with a reasonably adequate defense program. Many quarters of the US government are now embarked on a fear campaign regarding the Chinese military buildup. True, the Chinese are the next highest spending nation on military, but at 65 Billion dollars a year, it is a pathetic comparison with US expenditures.

The fact is that the 600 Billion in military expenditures is just another clever way to redistribute the national wealth upward. Think about it folks!

[montemalone]

Yep.

[Arleang]

Well, well, well . . . How easily you surrender your country to the emotion being promoted by the republicans and the "military industrial complex". Fear, fear, fear . . . here it is, no it's over there, watch out!

Have a little more faith in the American people who are at last ready to fight back, do something for themselves and make it not so profitable for corporations to sell out America. During WW-II war profiteering was a crime, but now the right wing applauds it. Well, the American Eagle has two wings, and the left wing is pissed.

And by the way, Americans have been exposed to the republican "death squads" often enough now to recognize them. The first Swift Boat that is launched will be torpedoed because it will be expected. A couple of E-mail assaults have already been launched but I guess we have become just too cynical to believe them.

The republicans really don't want to run against Obama which adds a great deal to his appeal.

[TXpastafarian]

Corporatocracy is right. We must first demand ethics in our corporate echelons. Only then will government follow suit. Corporate America controls the direction of our politicians. Therefore, our government is a reflection of the corporate sector, not the other way around. Votes will always follow the money. We must demand the return of ethics in our country's boardrooms. That is the only way - Obama for President, or not.

[gdwtch52]

Each of us has representatives in the Congress that must be replaced with real human beings this election. That is more of a fight than the current "big" election that usually amounts to no change in the near future. If we made a concerted effort to change out ALL of the congress that is blatantly corrupt, it would be a start and a clear message that change is needed.
I would say that short of all of us showing up on the same day and demanding impeachment, that will not happen. The corruption is on both "sides" of their imaginary aisle.

[standforpeace]

Once again, you are right on target. I think the American people sense that there is indeed a vast right wing conspiracy and that the conspiracy has infiltrated both parties. That's why so many voters are calling for change, even if their notions of what that change are foggy and even contradict one another. Obama seems to be the candidate who change voters have settled on, and there is a strong sense of hope surrounding his run for office and his message of unity. However, hopes will be crushed and a new generation will become as cynical as the rest of us if Obama is elected and allows unity to become the end game rather than a way of pulling Americans together to work for a more just society.

[blue22]

You're right.

[jazzman]

The Republicans calling Hillary unprincipled is like Hitler calling Ghandhi a war monger.

[Nutcase]

Jane, you are far too late. Obama receives more from the financial institutions than Clinton. He has passed her in donations from the drug companies. His donations from the health insurance industry, defense contractors, et al. are in the same ballpark as hers. Both have been bought and paid for. Facts are facts. Rhetoric is rhetoric. Change is a word stolen from Edwards. Hopes are not always realized and we usually must wake up from dreams to face the real world.

cognito ergo populistae

[lhaz]

I'm still concerned about Obama's smoking habit. Dr. Oz (of Oprah fame) stated on her "quit smoking" show that many or most smokers suffer from anxiety and/or depression. Having suffered from these myself, I would hesitate to vote for someone that is battling anxiety and depression.

[DumbDad]

Jane elegantly connects her intelligence to my fears, and I'm always moved and impressed. It might even be worse, though. It might be that the wonderfully-termed 'oligarchy of the wealthy' have much more insight into global dangers than they let the public know, and have been feverishly working since the l970's to maximize safeguards against their vulnerabilities to government responses to oil crises, climate change and huge immigration problems. Normally the rich resist economic justice out of mere greed; but since OPEC raised its head they've had fear to motivate them. And one thing American rightwingers have a lot of is cowardice.

[JackWOrf]

Actually, I still think that Republicans are SECRETLY FUNDING Obama, because he is a totally un-winnable candidate. Just his name alone is enough to destroy him.

And what Republicans will embrace Obama? He wants an immediate pullout from Iraq, Universal Health Care and renewal of high taxes on the rich. What are they going to love about Obama? His black face?

Recall that Republicans are generally more racist than Democrats, and unashamed of that fact.

Once Rush Limbaugh starts working on "Osama Bin Hussein", and once some skeletons come out of the closet, he would be dead meat.

Hillary and Bill are the Democrats' only chance.

[jbatch]

You're not wrong. But they are not so much immoral as they are amoral, which is in many ways worse.

Those who are immoral subscribe to the basic tenets of morality -- of an ethical frame rooted in values. Thos who are amoral don't believe in values -- in the case of Repugs, they believe only in the majesty of greed.

And that breeds a kind of ruthlessness that is scary

[Tennessean]

Right-wingers like Obama because he speaks in their language; his tactics and framing are right-wing. The Harry & Louise ad redux for instance. He takes money from lobbyists for Exelon and it influences his vote; his lobbyist donors are also in the telacommunications industry too; Big insurance and Big finance are huge donors for him. The corporates are hearing his 'privatization' and 'choice' rhetoric and loving it. That progressives are loving it too, just boggles the mind. He's running AGAINST the Democratic Party; and so are Republicans. Now, that's UNITY, baby!

[mouselion]

The Democratic Party will soon become the new conservative party of the 21st century. The global corporations have shifted their attention.

"It takes a corporation".

Through this process, we will see the ascendancy of the Green Party, but not until we drag ourselves through some hard lessons in at least three more presidential terms of Democrats.

Say "bye-bye", GOP.