With the election sweeps last night by Barack Obama and John McCain, the most pro-reform candidates in each party are headed toward the presidential nominations. McCain's victory may partially be a fluke of a weak competitive field. But it is no coincidence that McCain and Obama are careering toward a showdown in November--and that the other maverick hoping to rally moderates and independents, Michael Bloomberg, is being forced to the sidelines.
Both McCain and Obama speak, albeit in very different tones, to a broad and deepening sense among Americans not only that the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that there is something seriously wrong and corrupt with our democracy. McCain may represent more of the same failed Bush approach to foreign affairs--stay the course in Iraq (forever if necessary), project America's power unilaterally, and be prepared to bomb Iran--but he is one of the few Republicans who has had the principle and integrity to challenge some of the sleaziest elements of our democracy, such as the broken system of campaign finance and the swelling tide of wasteful legislative earmarks. Moreover, both McCain and Obama speak to (and will compete for) the large swath of the political center in America that is disgusted with the polarization and coarsening of our political life. With the march to the nomination of these two figures--one deeply conservative, the other genuinely progressive, yet each more inclined than his primary opponents to reach for the center--Americans are signaling that they want reform.
The resolve to repair our own democracy, and the debate on how to do so, cannot come too soon. The next president will face a staggering agenda of deferred problems and erupting crises: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, climate change, economic recession, collapsing home mortgages, unaffordable health care, Social Security and Medicare reform, and the country's disintegrating physical infrastructure (to name a few). Forging viable and creative responses to these vexing issues (any one of which could drag down the next presidency) will require a degree of bipartisan cooperation and mobilization for a higher national purpose that has been rare in recent decades. This is a major reason why not just independents but increasingly a majority of Democrats have been opting for Obama, and why not just independents but a large plurality of Republicans have opted for McCain as their strongest candidate.
The burning foreign and domestic challenges of the next presidency cannot be resolved with a narrow political majority. Getting out of Iraq will require vigorous diplomacy, shrewd military and political maneuvering, and bipartisan cover for the next president to take some calculated risks to try to stabilize Iraq and then draw down. The only way to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to offer it a bargain so sweeping and enticing that it could not refuse it without grave further damage to its waning legitimacy. To pursue such bold initiatives, the next president will need to rebuild at least some of the lost tradition of bipartisanship in foreign policy. Slash-and-burn politics as usual is not going to get us there. Neither can it get us to the kind of radical steps--a serious gasoline or carbon tax, a sweeping set of financial incentives to invest in renewable energy--needed to arrest global warming. Nothing would be more catastrophic for the United States (and the rest of humanity) than a global meltdown, and the tipping point for sparing the planet or not could well come as soon as the next presidency.
So pick a major issue and ask yourself: Can we really get the kind of transformative change we want without tearing up the deep trenches of the American political landscape and building new coalitions?
Next to bankruptcy of our social safety net, nuclear terrorism, or a melting of the polar icecaps, reforming American democracy may seem a quaint and secondary issue. So 97 percent of congressional incumbents waltz back to office every two years with the protection of obscenely gerrymandered districts. So public officials have to spend inordinate amounts of time raising money from big donors and powerful interests to get reelected. So we can't run an election as efficiently as India, and we are one of the few democracies without a national electoral commission that can at least set common standards. So what passes for a national electoral commission isn't even functioning because it has almost no members left, due to partisan gridlock. So the Congress and Executive branch have become a revolving door of lobbyists and special interests. So what?
So, how are we going to come to grips with the problems we have been kicking down the road for years and decades if we don't get a more open, honest, and responsive democracy? How are we going to outmaneuver the legions of special interests that will try to block fundamental reform--of health care, the housing market, energy, you name it--if we don't level their inordinate power? And how can we help other people to achieve freedom and democracy if we can't even defend it and repair here at home? What, then, is left of our shattered credibility and shredded soft power in the world?
One of the most fascinating aspects of this election season is how avidly it is being followed around the world. The dollar may be in the tank thanks to the Bush administration's fiscal recklessness. Our moral standing may be at an all-time low thanks to its global blunders and hypocrisy. But the world has not given up on America, and other societies know that none of the big global problems can be solved without America playing a responsible leading role.
Increasingly, policy makers and thinkers elsewhere in the world question whether the United States can recover its moral credibility, its economic vitality, and even its military capacity after squandering so much of it all in Iraq. Others doubt that America can craft the new kind of global leadership that is necessary for a multipolar world, or that it can--in the wake of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, and warrantless surveillance--become again a beacon for democratic practice and hope in the world. We have lost a lot of ground, treasure, blood, and time in the last seven years. But righting the damage is fist and foremost a question of leadership.
Can we recover? There seems to be an answer emerging from the creative turbulence of our democratic process. Yes, we can.
a 700 billion dollar defense budget that is really a offense budget that americans support year after year.
we are more than corrupt we are the worst threat to world peace in the world.
we are on our way to corp fascism and a second rate country.
one thing we americans know how to do. shop till we drop on credit.
we even call our soldiers heros for killing people in an illegal war. now that is corrupt as you get.
"A nation that spends more year after year on military offense (and I mean offense) than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death". (Gunnels)
we are a religious nation approaching spiritual death.
How do you get two disparate factions to work together? Obama talks about the value of listening, and in the midst of vast disagreements discovering small areas where the two sides might actually agree. The consensus might be for something completely unexpected, but that insignificant collaboration opens a door, and who knows where it might lead?
Its not a democracy - its a sideshow ,The MSM essentially showcases the candidate chosen by their advertisers and censors the rest.The whole campaign has been a financial boon to the media and they have played it to the hilt.
The only candidates not bought and sold on Wall St were Kucinich ,Edwards, Ron Paul, and yes,Huckabee.
Everyone else is a cartoon copy of each other-pick your shape and color, custom created by PR firms and sold to us by the media.
Capitalism, and more importantly today's capitalism (Chicago School Reaganomics of totally deregulated capitalism), can only lead a society to one place --- a stratified social class system that necessarily includes economic power elites, the minority of people who inevitably end up controlling the majority of wealth. It is this that points to the fact that capitalism and democracy are NOT INHERENTLY compatible. It makes no sense to think that powerful economic elites would be in favor of a system that levels the playing field, that redistributes wealth and power to "we the people". What else would we logically expect from a system predicated on greed and self-interest? To think that unregulated greed and self-interest can lead to democracy defies all logic.
The truth is that democracy, true democracy, shuns pure capitalism of the Chicago School Reaganomics type, and that type of capitalism shuns democracy. For definitive proof of this concept, look to the South American countries that have been victimized by this current form of capitalism. Those countries, and especially Bolivia, have demonstrated clearly that the two concepts can only coexist with serious restraints on capitalism, regulated markets, which enable the average citizen to participate equally in the "DEMOCRACY".
This article is so Obama-esquely hopeful while simultaneously ignoring the fact that candidates like Kucinich and Edwards who TRULY presented platforms of change have been so magnificently blacked-out by the media, and even by many citizens who don't really seem to understand what is at stake, and what is going on behind the scenes. I'm sure there is much more behind the scenes than ANY of us know, but I am constantly amazed at the level of ignorance that exists concerning the reality of America's exploitive involvement in other countries. "Our democratic process"? What democratic process?
Larry Diamond (2008)
The Founding Fathers would be so proud:
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson
Where is a Franklin or Jefferson when we need them?
HippieChick
I sure wouldn't want the crooks in office now messing with our constitution.
My last act of desperation will be writing in Dennis Kucinich as President, and calling for the present Bush-Admin to stand before a Fed-Court on charges of Crimes Against Humanity. Perhaps if time permits, the same can be accomplished with many now within the heirarchy and power structure of American leadership.
Analogy:
Raping a virgin.
They still look the same, but everything inside and out has changed.
their opinionated reporters don't even pee before they ask Rupert Murdoch.,, truth lol
I suggest that you may own only one media outlet per person corporation or conglomerate.
Everything that starts with "Fox"
New York Post
Wall St. Journal
The Weekly Standard
MySpace.com
TV Guide
DirecTV
20th Century Fox studios
HarperCollins books
Regan books
Speed Channel
National Geographic channel
MY network
William Morrow publishing