During the 2004 general election campaign, former Secretary of Defense William Perry--one of the great public servants in the post-World War II history of the United States--actively campaigned for a presidential candidate for the first time. Speaking repeatedly and passionately on behalf of John Kerry, the normally understated Perry described the 2004 election as "the most important in my lifetime." For a man who had grown up during the Great Depression and World War II, who had reached professional maturity and brilliant engineering and business success during the Cold War, and then had served as undersecretary of defense in the Carter Administration, it was a powerful statement--and a completely honest one.
The Iraq war had been a disastrous mistake and we had to find a way out. Our moral authority and military strength in the world were being squandered. Our domestic problems were piling up and we needed a new sense of purpose, clarity, and resolve to address them. The president that was seeking reelection showed no sign of understanding the nature of its resilience and its capacity for eventual self-correction. That may remain true, but "eventual"--the ability to look to some time in the future--is what we no longer have. The defining character of the 2008 election is what Barack Obama has called "the fierce urgency of now." We simply cannot drift through another four years of aimless "staying the course" in Iraq while the principal Iraqi parties dig in their heels on the big constitutional questions which cry out for compromise. Already, the indicators of our military strength--in terms of military recruitment quality, officer retention, and readiness for other military engagements--are in worrisome decline.
On issue after issue, from the home mortgage crisis to the ballooning budget deficit to the crisis of exploding health care costs and imploding insurance coverage, it is increasingly apparent that America's future as a great and successful nation is going to be at stake in the coming years, defined by whether we can find effective answers to these challenges--and pretty soon. How long can we go on being, as Thomas Friedman recently put it in his New York Times column, "Dumb as We Wanna Be," (and I would add, lazy and irresponsible as well)--"borrow[ing] money from China and ship[ing] it to Saudia Arabia"--before our profligacy catches up with us and defeats us? How long can we keep falling further and further not just our European peers, but countries like Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China, and India in the quality of math and science training, before we lose the core foundation of our superpower status, our technological edge? This long national fling of careless self-indulgence cannot go on forever. Eventually, every bill comes due.
There is no problem that existentially challenges the United States--and every other country in the world--more than energy and climate change. As Friedman has repeatedly demonstrated in his columns, we are burying our heads in the sand and kicking the problem down the road. Now--when the need to incentivize the switch to wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy is more palpable and urgent than ever-- the renewal of tax credits for these alternative sources of energy is stuck in the Congress, as Bush and the Democrats lock horns again. Years after it became apparent that we had to break our addiction to carbon-based fuels and especially to imported oil, we face the worst crisis ever in global oil prices and supplies, and with barely improved efficiency in America's long love affair with the car. And now, as Friedman stresses, in the peak of the crisis, the answer of John McCain, and (very sadly) Hillary Clinton following him, is to suspend the one mild (and pathetically inadequate) incentive to improve fuel economy--the federal gasoline tax.
Anyone who thinks the problem can wait for another few years, or the next American administration after this one, should take a hard look at the gathering global food crisis. As more and more corn and other food crops are sucked up into the production of biofuels, and as climate change already begins to affect production of food crops in a number of countries, while population growth surges forward in most of the world's poorest countries, a global crisis is gathering. Already governments from Asia to Africa to the Middle East have been rocked. Food riots cost the prime minister of Haiti his job and are accelerating the danger of a sudden political convulsion in Egypt.
As numerous experts, like the head of the UN World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, are warning, the crisis not only threatens the ability of tens of millions of poor people to get enough food to survive (with declining quality of food intake already risking permanent impairment of young children in particular), but it also threatens global peace and stability. Where is the place of this issue in the presidential campaign? It's easy to celebrate the virtues of ethanol in a primary election in Iowa. But what are the candidates going to do as president to confront the hard trade-offs between food and fuel and to get serious--as if it were the dawn of the Great Depression or World War II--about the existential threat that dependence on oil and gas poses to our security and well-being, nationally and globally?
In the face of these obvious and deeply sobering challenges, of the greatest accumulation of crises facing the United States since World War II, what we have had from our media is a frenzy of obsession with personalities and the hunt for scandal worthy only of the tabloids, or entertainment TV. Within a spell-binding 24 hour period not long ago, CNN devoted more time to live, full coverage of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's two speeches about his theories of race in America than it has given (insofar as I can tell) to the speeches of any presidential candidate in any 24-hour period in this entire presidential election campaign. Normally, once the candidates start getting into the really serious talk about the issues, CNN cuts away to go to the latest scandal of some depraved lunatic holding a sex slave in his basement. There was also the sad spectacle of one of the best television news organizations--ABC--spending the first half of the last presidential debate grilling the candidates on nothing but personal charges and questions of character.
How about a debate where the candidates talk about nothing but energy and climate change? It is increasingly apparent that this is the most serious challenge human civilization globally has ever faced. The Bush Administration has utterly failed in its moral and historical responsibility to act. How will the next president lead and cooperate internationally to achieve steep reductions in carbon emissions before it is really too late? What sacrifices are they going to ask of the American people? Or are they going to give us the same shameless froth that we have had for the last seven years of this presidency--that we can have it all, our war, our big homes and cars, our high-debt, high-consumption lifestyles, and not pay any price at all?
We need answers to these questions now, during this campaign. Because, if the presidential candidates do not speak some hard and difficult truths now to the American people, none of them will be able as president to mobilize the policy innovations and intensive investments that must come, with the speed that must come.
This is not a challenge for some time out there in the future when, if it doesn't work out the way we want this time, we can get a president who gets it. We have run out of time. We have reached that fierce and painful moment where we must change and act, urgently, now.
We can't even get something as seemingly trivial as gay marriage ratified in this country because that would somehow lead to the downfall of society.
This administration has led us down this road, and everyone everywhere, in newspapers, on the TV, everywhere, says that we need change, but they never quite get to the part as to why we need change. They never connect the dots that everything in this country has precipitously dropped in the past 7 years; everything except for profits for the top 1%.
You have all of this going on, and we cannot even hold those responsible to account for what they have done.
There is no justice anymore, there is denials. There is no truth anymore, there is the left arguement and the right arguement. There is no equality, there are levels of standards governing each corresponding class.
War is peace, and death is life. We are living in America's end times.
You not only have the audacity of hope you have been blinded by the light!
My take?.....Look for the urgency level to ratchet down a bit post-election.
I do know he is the best choice, but without sweeping victories in Congress he will have a hard time getting much done. The reality is other than the war and all things tied to the War Bush accomplished little real change and none one could define as visionary.
If energy independence isn't the foundation of this next presidency we're going to see things go from bad to worse. As we meet all our energy needs through domestic production we'll create millions of jobs, meaning billions more taxes to pay off the debt. But we also need to tackle the biggies health care and retirement.
It's not just the federal government who has made promises it can't keep, but businesses and state and city governments. The amount of unfunded pensions is mind boggling and through accounting slights of hand they've hidden the real cost.
I'd say Obama represents the same old thing. Radicalized left wing politics that does nothing to control spending or shrink our over large government and as a "progressive" he also opposes much of our foreign policies in favor of those who hate the west and wish to bring it down.
And you spin and pump propaganda and tell us this is change. Well, it's not MUCH change and what change it is, is bad change.
BWAH HA HA HA HA!!!
Oh wait ... were you serious?
It pains me to burst your bubble, Steve, but the US hasn't had a serious "leftwing" since the 60s. It *has* become popular to characterize the Left-of-Center as "The Far Left," primarily to hide the power-shift to the Right, the past decade or so. But your "Angry Left" is basically "everyone who isn't Far Right." Threatening to paint the Center as "Left" and the "Mildly Left" as "Far Left" is a sophist bit of trickery that we see through.
Reality, words are cheap action is missing. You will see more of the same from whomever. I remember being told 2006 was critical for action, "vote Democrat and everything will change". That worked well. Words are cheap, excuses easy to come by, results are missing.
Remember Obama on Iraq "no precipitous withdrawal" "after one year in the Presidency, we will evaluate options for reductions"
We have 3 candidates who want more government, more taxes, more control. Americans will get it and pay the price. Lots of fine promises, things will get worse and excuses will flow. But, results will be missing.
Unless we all agree to take it to that level what are we to do if not choose the best of that being offered?
I am no Obama fan, for Obama is just a man, but he has shown himself to be a better man than the others who vie for my vote, they offer no changes and no hope. What is one to do when he sees society totally different than it is, yet he has to pay the bills, he has to meet his responsibilities, he has to live? As he runs through that maze that is the Habitrail of life, he sees the green grass beyond just as he sees the stars at night. Yet the society around him sees what it sees and wants it wants and postures itself --right. Acceptance becomes the cry in such a case. One accepts their lot in life and they wipe the tears from their face, and then continue on knowing that justice will find the mark some day…somehow…some way. But until it does, do not let life steal the great gift that is love. Find a way to put love in action and you will reduce the effect of flawed governmental factions of divide creating inaction to decide and provide, so they keep distracting the public with lies as generation after generation dies. But the people vote for it, so do not ask why!
It is a Canadian's view of how McCain might actually win. Though not an indepth piece, I am afraid it could be very accurate.
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/424410
The Congress of the United States has developed this ability to the point where it can be viewed as a finely-honed art form. A case can be made, Gentle Readers, that the government of Iraq has taken the US Congress as its working model.
When you think back on the last 8 years of this Country, it is absolutely unbelievable the difference in topics that come up on the Nightly News. I bet, 10 years ago, most Americans, never would have thought we would be dicussing How to torture people, Abu Guhraib, Gitmo, Haliburton, KBR, BlackWater, Pat Tillman, Attorney General Scandel, oil prices, food prices, mortgage crisis, the Middle East in Crisis, and the list can go on and on and on. Can you believe One Administration did this? In 8 Years?
President Bush has given us, just the opposite, of what he told the American People. If the American People don't get that by now, by Democrats and Republicans, than these people have been hoodwinked and there is no return for them. We just better hope these people leave when there time is up. Thats what worries me, will they leave?
The "message' that we would send by voting in Obama is one of surrender, weakness, and an end to American leadership on any issue.
As I recall, Kerry-like Nixon-had a "secret plan" for winning the war, for turning the "disasterous mistake" of Iraq into a resounding victory. Kerry's secret plan wasn't credible and he was defeated by Bush..
Now we have Barack Obama going to the opposite extreme saying that the Iraq war is unwinnable; that we must withdraw our troops ASAP from Iraq and the region and leave both to its fate. Compared to Barack's solution for Iraq, and his utopian faith in diplomacy with Jihadists, McCain's stay the course policy looks sane and reasonable.
Ah, but McCain's solution to burdonsome credit card debt is to cut the debtor's income. I guess Cindy pays the bills in his household.
I'm supporting Obama this time around because I believe in the Obama the Movement, if not necessarily Obama the Man, but I'd turn on him in a second if he started advocating things like "let's make gas even more expensive". The reason places like Europe can get away with that is they have an awesome transit infrastructure and shorter commutes. It would take the US decades to come up with a system to match. The best we can do right now is penalize gas guzzling SUV lovers, not the general populace.
There is a proposition which says that in order to unite you must divide. America has gone through a long history of divide. This may be the year when the poles of division snap back from the extreme edges to give the country a concentrated mass of focused energy and will to affect meaningful change as a response to the fierce urgency of now.
Thanks for making me think via the ideas expressed in your article.
Independent for Obama '08
the elimination of the middle class will allow the have more capitalists to control the media and the corporations and government. fascism is here cannot be turned back. will last for decades before americans wake up to the reality of capitalism. then too late middle class power is gone as it is all but eliminated in numbers.
the very foundation of capitalism is to enhance the wealth of the have mores. check out russia and how capitalism worked for them. lots of billionaires but very few middle class.
bye bye middle class and you thought reagan was a great president. he gotcha. pure genius by a second rate actor from hollywood.
let you in on a little secret "dutch" hated the middle class. he knew deregulation and free trade would eliminate the middle class. also his idea of privatization of gov services would develop a have more and have not society. brillant move on his part.
Glad to have you aboard, Mr. Diamond -- on these issues. Now let's talk about repealing Bush's tax cuts so that we can have the resources we need to fulfill our responsibilities on climate change and otherwise.