Isn’t that what so many of us are worrying about even as we witness, each in our own way, the inauguration delirium now playing out in America’s capital city? That Obama: as Widmann is glad to put it, “The United States has in him one of the most intelligent, alert, and communication-gifted presidents in its history.” I mean, just go read his books, and compare them to other politicians’ tired, ghost-written literary output!

But Wildmann, in his adopted role of public gadfly is happy to bring out explicitly that qualification that many of us harbor at the same time in the back of our minds: Success is not going to depend on character as much as it will on sheer circumstances. And for Barack Obama it is likely, in his view, that the “Change” that he will end up most remembered for is running for and winning the American presidency in the first place. Things are so bad, on so many fronts, that really radical change is required, yet by his very nature Obama is not the man to bring it. Rather, as Wildmann so aptly puts it, “[i]n democratic societies the difficult steps must be taken by those who came into power promising to protect us from them.”

I’d like to call this the “Nixon-in-China” syndrome, although Widmann for sure mentions neither “Nixon” nor “China” in his piece. The American rapprochement in the mid-1970s with that titanic Asian power with which it had been bitter enemies for more than twenty years was something as unthinkable then as it later turned out to seem (once the many benefits to both peoples, primarily economic in nature, began to flow) inevitable. But no one could have pulled that breakthrough off other than that ferocious, redoubtable Cold-Warrior, Richard Nixon: no one could have taken the political heat for that act and survived than someone whose anti-Red China credentials were impeccable, i.e. someone who had been the last politician you would have predicted would do such a thing. But you could also call this the De Gaulle-in-Algeria syndrome, as well: only someone so embodying France’s military glory as Charles De Gaulle – and therefore the very last politician any of the French could have imagined capitulating to the FLN Algerian insurgents, and thereby flouting the will of the French Army – could have gotten the French out of the bloody mess that was Algeria in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

Widmann, naturally, also fails to mention De Gaulle or Algeria. Instead, though, he has a couple of convincing home-brewed German examples, of rather recent vintage, to back up his extraordinary “only possible by those who promised to protect against” assertion. There are the Harz reforms of earlier this decade, a set of fundamental modifications to aspects of the German economy – e.g. unemployment insurance, worker protections against being fired – done in order to make it more competitive and job-creating. These were ultimately pushed through, against the inevitable heavy domestic opposition, by Gerhard Schröder and his SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), i.e. by the Labor Party on the left side of the German political spectrum whom people ordinarily would have expected to be the last organization to put through any such reform. Or, if that example is a bit obscure for you, consider the very fact that the Bundeswehr, the German Army, currently finds itself partly deployed outside of Germany proper. It happens to be in Afghanistan (serving NATO, of course), but just ponder that fact: the German Army, of WWI and WWII fame, let loose again in foreign lands. In fact, ever since 1945 it has been the Germans, especially those of the Left, who have refused to allow it ever to depart their borders again – yet, as Widmann points out, the fact that it is (way) outside of them now is mainly due to the agreement for the move secured from Germany’s Green Party – again, the last party you would think would give its permission – back when they were part of the governing coalition with Schröder’s SPD.

The Best Is Just About Past

Widmann’s point is that the situation that America (together with much of the rest of us) now faces is bad, really bad. Nothing less than a tearing-down of the old Establishment, both economically and politically, will do to put things right – but now the former Senator from Illinois has become even more a part of that very same Establishment. And so, he concludes, “today’s swearing-in will be, and will remain, Barack Obama’s greatest performance.”

You obviously have to hope that he is wrong, but I confess to seeing a certain logic in this “Nixon syndrome” argument. But then the question naturally arises, “All right, so what does a society have to do to get done the things that need to get done?” The train-of-thought here would seem to lead to the conclusion that, in fact, John McCain (the Maverick!) was a better bet to elect to the presidency to save America from its crises! Think about it: He’s the last one (if you remember his party platform) whom you would expect to bring about a system of national health insurance, for example, right? Or to nationalize the banks.

                          

If we do get some sort of definitive result out of the day’s proceedings, Sabatier points out that it can only turn out one way, if you pay attention to the pollsters and other experts, namely a victory for Barack Obama. So why not go ahead and offer “four lessons” out of the American electoral campaign, as seen from a French perspective? Although, that said, Sabatier at the same time does take care to factor the possibility of a surprise McCain victory into his conclusions.

That willingness to keep a McCain victory in the picture that way is impressive, if perhaps what you could call the “price” of writing this kind of backward-looking piece while the election results are still undecided, but Sabatier does also make some good observations in his analysis. His first “lesson” (and section-heading) is “An Historical Election,” and that is pretty obvious: first serious woman/black candidates for president, the longest and most expensive campaigns, etc. It’s not until “lesson” #2 that he starts to get interesting: “A vote of rejection rather than adhesion.” If Obama wins, writes Sabatier, that will be most of all a grand rejection of the presidency of George W. Bush – and an explicit rejection of McCain, seen as closely linked to the current president. If McCain wins after all, that will similarly be due not to any of the Arizona Senator’s positive properties, but rather to a rejection of the too-inexperienced Obama in a time of great national crisis – oh, and also, according to Sabatier, a rejection by a predominantly white electorate of the concept of a black man as head of state. One important reason why this will be so, whoever wins, is that neither candidate, in Sabatier’s eyes, has taken the trouble during this campaign to give voters reasons to vote for them by truly confronting the serious issues of the time, which will after all be awaiting the winner, with well-considered and well-presented policy proposals. You can object that Obama has in fact done this, which to some degree is true, yet the Obama camp (along with McCain) really has not offered any measures to deal with the current financial crisis. Indeed, both candidates are inhabiting some sort of dream-world with talk of their various tax-cuts, in light of the clear fiscal needs of the country in the opposite direction, and this tends to reinforce Sabatier’s point.

His “lesson” number 3, like the first, is fairly obvious. Over the (long) course of the presidential campaign one fear has replace the other: the fear of terrorism and failure in Iraq has been replaced with fear of a new Great Depression. Naturally this has mainly hurt McCain, not only by drawing the national conversation away from the military and foreign policy spheres where he is said to have superior expertise, but also because of McCain’s various instances of unwise statements (“The fundamentals of the US economy are strong”) and unwise behavior in response to these economic worries.

“Red vs. Blue” Not Dead?

No, let’s rather take a look at the fourth, and final, “lesson”: “The civil war between blues and reds is not finished.” He is talking here about the great “culture war” said to have raged within the US for a number of decades now, between two different sets of principles and attitudes best summed up by “red vs. blue.” (Of course, Sabatier offers his own summary within the article of what “red” and “blue” are all about – actually, really only “red”; I assume nothing like that is necessary here to readers of this blog.) It has been the emergence onto the political scene – and (temporary) mass-popularity – of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin which has supposedly showed that this “culture war” is alive and well, followed by the “Joe the Plumber populist myth” that prolonged and reinforced it. (And yes, in Sabatier’s article it’s Joe le Plombier.) If McCain ends up winning after all, Sabatier goes on to write, that will show the continuing power of the “silent majority” upon which the Republican Party has based its power since 1968. Well yes, that would be true; however, other observers see this “culture war” influence fading in American politics, Palin or no Palin. (That’s from Salon, so if you don’t subscribe, you might have to endure a brief flash presentation.)

One footnote: We find out here how to say in French “the surge” – as in what happened in Iraq from early 2007, whose more-accurate expression in English is of course “escalation” instead – or at least Patrick Sabatier’s crack at the translation. It’s coup de boutoir, which my Larousse dictionary does translate as an entire phrase, namely as “sly hit, cutting remark.” Hmmm – so that’s supposed to be “surge” . . .

Oh, and while you’re on the webpage with Sabatier’s article – if you’re there – check out the “Video of the Day” embedded in the top-right corner. Yes, it’s none other than the video of Dick Chency giving his endorsement to McCain, with the mini-quotation there below in yellow type “I am delighted to support John McCain.” You can be sure that that endorsement resonates just as much to John McCain’s benefit with readers of Le Point – in terms of NOT! – as it did with the American public. And while you’re at it, why not click the button below that (past the box Plutôt McCain ou Obama?) where it says Quiz Présidentiel? Can you believe it: the question there actually reads “What is the American national anthem called? Star-Spangled Banner, Star-Strangled Banner or Star-Pringles Banner?” No joke: check it out yourself.

                          

In the meantime, you have the occasional foreign article about the US elections that you rather wish did not have to be there, like what we see today in the main Czech daily Mladá fronta dnes: You’ll be arrested at the polls, leaflets mislead American voters. The lede:

In the last hours before the presidential elections American voters are being flooded with dirty tricks. Misleading e-mails go to Americans, disquieting telephone calls occur, and people find under their doors slanderous pamphlets. Their purpose is to dissuade people from voting, to mislead and confuse them. A part of these tricks this year have a racist flavor due to Barack Obama’s dark skin.

The article (no by-line given) proceeds to give a pretty good list of the various don’t-get-out-the-vote schemes that have been uncovered so far; some of them I hadn’t even heard of yet.

• Leaflets which appeared in the predominantly-black Philadelphia suburbs warning people that they could be arrested when they showed up at the polls to vote if they had any outstanding local fines or judgments;
• More leaflets, this time in Virginia and featuring an authentic-looking official stamp, informing voters that the anticipated congestion at the polls had led the authorities to hold the voting over two days; Republicans would vote on Tuesday, and Democrats on Wednesday;
• A recently-broadcast e-mail in Pennsylvania, from the “Republican Federal Committee,” warning Jewish voters that a vote for Barack Obama could bring another Holocaust;
• Back to Philadelphia (you can tell that Pennsylvania is the ultimate “swing state” this time around): in another suburb, this one mainly Jewish, leaflets claiming that Obama is more pro-Palestine than pro-Israel, and including a picture – as if that proved anything -of him speaking in Germany, presumably during his extensive foreign tour of late last July;
• And over in Nevada, telephone calls plaguing Hispanic voters, coming from supposed Obama campaign staffers (so they are not robocalls), suggesting that they can just vote via telephone.

Readers should have no trouble discerning the one-way partisan direction of these fraudulent measures. The very way the electorate has changed for this election draws them out of the woodwork: the Obama campaign, in particular, has inspired a mass of what are probably millions of new voter-registrants, many of whom are young and/or black or Hispanic, most all of whom are first-time voters unfamiliar with the process. And these tricks are only what have been uncovered so far; presumably tomorrow, Election Day itself, will mark the climax of all these stratagems, whether discovered or not.

A Danish View – Mostly Correct!

Then we have a more comprehensive review of the almost-over American election process by Nils-Ole Heggland in the Christian Danish daily Kristeligt Dagblad: The world’s longest election campaign closes today. Heggland points out that this whole affair has not just run “only” for the ten months that have passed since the first primaries at the beginning of January; in actuality, the candidates had been gathering money and support – and visiting primary states, especially the early ones of Iowa and New Hampshire – for most of the previous year. (I know that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama formally announced their candidacies for president in February, 2007; Heggland does not mention this.) But if it has been a long process, it has also been a crowded one; Heggland marvels that a full 60 million Americans were involved in the primary process for one of the two main American parties, or a full one-fifth of the population.

Otherwise, of course it’s fun to pick out the things that this foreigner has gotten wrong in the short history he tries to give his readers here of the campaigns leading up to tomorrow’s Election Day. He incorrectly gives the total number of members of the House of Representatives as 438 (it’s 435), and gives the mistaken impression that governors of all fifty states are also standing for re-election tomorrow. Of rather more interest is his characterization of the two political parties: “Republicans include both strong Christian conservatives and more moderate people from the east and west coasts. Democrats stretch from union members to minority representatives to very conservative Southerners.”

And of course Heggland has to warn us that tomorrow’s election could well turn out to be a much tighter race than we can now imagine. After all, McCain “is known for his comeback-ability,” and there is always the “Bradley effect,” which he correctly explains to us as voters telling (exit-)pollsters that they will vote black, but actually voting white. Well, we’ll soon see; in the meantime, he recommends Real Clear Politics as the best place to follow the returns.

                          

You probably remember that Osama bin Laden did make his preferences known four years ago, when shortly before the November 2004 election he released another one of his video-hits in which he railed against the Bush administration – which, as the old Islamic fox knew full well, with its effect on the American electorate amounted to Good Housekeeping seal-of-approval for the incumbent president. Why would he do that? you may ask. Well, we have just seen the same logic in play here behind what we thought was al-Qaeda’s endorsement of McCain earlier this month: the “tough-guy” approach to addressing America’s interests in the Middle East which has been Bush’s trademark (and which McCain seems glad to continue) was just the ticket for ensuring the terror organization a steady supply of training-camp recruits.

Except that now it seems, according to De Volkskrant reporter Benneker, that that “al-Hesbah” website with “close ties to Al Qaida” that issued the McCain endorsement doesn’t actually have close-enough al-Qaeda ties to actually speak for bin Laden. Indeed, Benneker notes that there appeared yesterday another al-Qaeda video-hit in which an actual al-Qaeda leader by the name of Abu Yahya al-Libi let it be known that, as far as his organization was concerned, Allah should please “humiliate Bush and his party . . . degrade and defy him.”

So what’s all that supposed to mean? Will we finally get a video missive from bin Laden himself setting the official al-Qaeda’s line straight? (Election day is getting very near!) More to the point, should we still be bracing ourselves for some sort of terror attack, cleverly staged to advance the organization’s interests, whatever they may happen to be? Actually, in Benneker’s analysis the previous conventional wisdom that such an attack would aid John McCain’s cause no longer holds true; it would instead most likely be seen as a sign of the failure of McCain’s fellow Republican, George W. Bush, to do his job protecting the country.

No, according to the terrorist experts at the SITE Intelligence Group, the holy-war nasties are even still, at this late point, in discussion as to what to do, if anything, about the American elections. I think it’s quite possible that they have been preoccupied with going through their personnel files: McCain and his surrogates have made such an emphatic point in recent weeks about Barack Obama being a terrorist and al-Qaeda sympathizer that they feel called upon to thoroughly search through their records to see whether that might not in fact, somehow, be true.

                          

“What? McCain looking to Russia for help?” you might exclaim. (I mean, Iceland turning to Russia for some mega-financial help was bad enough. Don’t worry though, the Icelanders have ended up going to the IMF instead.) Yes, but it’s not what you think, even if the incident in question did provide Dalgård with the prompt for his piece and with his headline. You can find the details here, in a Washington Post article by Colum Lynch; basically, because of what seems to be merely an error in screening a mailing database for unsuitable target addresses, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin received a fund-raising appeal letter from the McCain campaign on 29 September. (“Please know this – we will not concede any region to the Democrats,” the letter vowed, together with other rah-rah language of the usual fund-raising sort.) In reaction, the Russian UN mission simply issued a statement reminding everyone that it is not the policy of the Russian government to “finance political activities in foreign countries.” It would be illegal under US law as well, by the way.

And that should be that – pay no mind to the “European official” Lynch quotes to the effect that “He [McCain] must have been really desperate.” Either this guy is joking, or he seriously misunderstood the situation. But Lynch can’t resist going further to hint strongly that McCain would in all probability not really be the Russian government’s first choice anyway, with the sentence “McCain’s tough approach has infuriated Russian leaders” introducing a series of paragraphs that outline the acrimony between McCain’s campaign and Russian officials.

Not Another Cold War?!

This is the theme that Dalgård takes further. In his eyes, it’s clear that Obama is preferred in Russia from Putin and Medvedev on down – yes, all the way down to the Russian masses, who opinion polls have shown to be solidly pro-Obama. The reason for this preference, at least on the part of the Russian government is clear: they fear the outbreak of some sort of new Cold War, complete with an arms-race, should McCain take the White House, and think that can be avoided with Obama. He reminds us that “We are all Georgians now” was John McCain’s memorable reaction to that crisis of early August, and McCain certainly did not help his relations with Russia when he declared in one of the debates that, when he looked into Putin’s eyes, he only saw the letters K-G-B. (Let’s leave the probable truth of that statement to the side for now.) Dalgård even claims that the Russians believe that Obama is a better bet for solving the raging financial crisis, which has also hit Russia hard (in concert with the plunging price of oil).

Of course, there has not been and there never will be any formal endorsement of any sort coming from the Kremlin. One thing, though, is for certain: the Russians are through with dealing with George W. Bush. According to what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a recent interview, the Americans had “promised us, in recognition of our concerns regarding the stationing of parts of missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland, to send a list of a series of steps for establishing [mutual] confidence and transparency, to ease those concerns. We are still waiting for them.”

                          

As with the latest FTD opinion column by Henning Jess – entitled Präsident Witzig, which literally is “President Witty” or “President Funny” – whose point is to ask, “In these very serious times, how come Barack Obama and John McCain are joking around so much?”

The object of Jess’ ire would seem primarily to be the dueling stand-up comedy routines the two presidential candidates delivered last Thursday (16 October) at the white-tie Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City. (Those of you with a subscription to the on-line magazine Salon, or the willingness to sit through whatever advertisement they present you to watch for temporary access, can go here for a useful summary of the best lines plus the embedded video; the rest can surely find the latter on YouTube). He also expresses his objection to McCain following after Obama and “aping” him (heräffen) with a “frivolous grimace” involving the outward extension of his tongue. This must be an incident at the last debate that Jess is referring to – you can contemplate McCain’s “frivolous grimace” here – and he has definitely misunderstood what this particular episode was all about. For I have also seen the video, not just the still, and this countenance which McCain had the misfortune of offering to photographic posterity only represents McCain’s mock-expression of frustration at starting out to exit the debate-stage along the wrong side, before he stopped short and obediently went out the other – and so not any expression of mockery at Obama, or indeed any real attempt at humor.

That is how Jess chooses to interpret it, however, and that together with the sheer fact of having, together with Obama, devoted the following evening (i.e. after that last Presidential debate) to humor in general, in these grim times, seems to tick him off. Admittedly, he does not express any such sentiment in so many words, but maybe we can safely conclude that anyway from the heavy sarcasm that follows, as he offers suggestions as to what these gentlemen can do if they truly have such an urge to be comedians:

Actually, they both could make a comedy-show: McCain as the genial host who warms the crowd up with a few opening gags. And Obama kids around in the pedestrian-zone with seniors who can’t hear so well anymore. Yes, that would be great.

And when Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad then comes to the White House, at the the state banquet he will first find himself sitting down on a whoopie-cushion [German: das Furzkissen - consider this your German vocabulary word of the day, all in furtherance of the educational function we like to fulfill here at €S], and everyone will be on the floor laughing. When visiting troops in Afghanistan the future US president will pull such long funny-faces that everyone all the way to the very last Taliban will be holding their sides, begging for mercy. And bankers, climate-activists, the unemployed, and single mothers will get the message: Don’t be such sour-pusses! You all get a free seminar in humor. This is the New Deal.

Oooooooooh – so serious! Tell me, someone, does the real (i.e. dead-tree) Financial Times Deutschland print cartoons of any kind, editorial or otherwise?

                          

(By the way, Kleine-Brockhoff’s name translates into something like “small crumb-court”! Was that the name he was assigned as a child, and then no one bothered to update it – e.g. to “big crumb-court,” or maybe just “crumb-court” – when he got older?)

First John McCain: His campaign narrative would have you believe that he is the calm, wise statesman from Arizona. But his behavior over the past week as the financial crisis has unfolded, in Kleine-Brockhoff’s eyes, has shown him as anything but:

On Monday he claims that the economy is strong and the fundamentals good. On Tuesday he opines that the fundamentals are in order, but the economy is in crisis. He proposes a bi-partisan commission to get to the bottom of the crisis, but then never mentions this commission again. He turns against the support-action for the insurance-giant AIG. When the federal government unveils an aid-action for AIG, he turns prudent and allows that it was inevitable. . . . On Thursday he demands that the chief of the financial market controllers [i.e. of the SEC], Christopher Cox, be fired, a man that he had never criticized before and whom he as president could not fire at all. Shortly thereafter he calls Cox a “good man” and mentions his demand for his resignation no more. When the Bush administration on Friday makes known its support-plan for the entire financial market, McCain praises it. He himself on the same day new proposed laws to regulate the finance markets, although he has been known nationwide for decades as a deregulator. On Sunday the next salvo: Now he criticizes the government’s rescue plan. For this Newsweek names McCain “Uncle Ziggy,” [or in German] Onkel Zick-Zack.

But maybe it is just the pressure of economic crisis that has temporarily fried his brain? No, says Kleine-Brockhoff, it seems all of a piece with McCain’s previous behavior and policies: the approval for the build-up of troops in Iraq [here he must be referring to that famous "surge"], and also his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, what Kleine-Brockhoff terms a choice-of-highest-risk (Höchstrisikoauswahl), made after McCain had had almost half a year to consider it. Not to mention his behavior during the Georgia crisis of early August – centuries ago, it seems – when Kleine-Brockhoff recalls that he was all-too-quick to figure out who was to blame for it and to declare “We are all Georgians.” In Kleine-Brockhoff’s eyes, there is certainty only about one thing that John McCain offers to American voters: uncertainty. He calls him a “jerk-politician” (Ruck-Politiker), but don’t get all up-in-arms, you McCain supporters: the “jerk” he means here is not the word meaning, roughly, “twit,” but rather meaning “sudden movement.”

Barack Obama’s behavior in the harsh light of the ongoing crisis comes off little better, but in the other direction: he is, in Kleine-Brockhoff’s estimation, “careful to the point of tedium.” Again, this might be surprising, as he is supposed to be the big harbinger of “Change,” and therefore you would think that all the financial turmoil – as Kleine-Brockhoff puts it, “America looking like a bankrupt banana-republic” – would be to his advantage. If it is, he surely has not seized it. No attacks on the other side; declining to issue comments on the administration’s rescue plan. “He behaved as if he were already President,” Kleine-Brockhoff writes – maybe that’s not such a bad thing, yet he instead cites and agrees with the assessment of Obama by Christopher Hitchens in a recent article in Slate, that he is being “vapid and hesitant and gutless.”

                          

I know: All that doesn’t matter a bit. America might get most of its oil from outside its borders; it might overwhelmingly be foreign money which funds the federal budget deficit, the debts (and therefore the continuing existence) of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and the countless other debt obligations of American private business and all levels of US government; but it doesn’t follow that there is any need for – as one colonial writer put it long ago – a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, or for any concern about improving America’s relations with the rest of the world.

(By the way, the maximum polling-difference between Obama and McCain that that BBC World Service recorded was 82% – in Kenya, of course. The minimum was 9%, in India.)

UPDATE: What’s more, opinion pieces like this one (in English, from The Guardian), which seem to bear the message “Elect Obama as your next president, or else!”, naturally can have no other effect (if indeed they are noticed at all) than to erode Obama’s support among American voters further. After all, as its writer Jonathan Freedland rightly points out, “that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the ‘candidate of Europe’ and making him seem less of a patriotic American.” Still, it is a viewpoint well worth checking out.

                          

That’s at least how Marc Pitzke, New York correspondent for Germany’s Der Spiegel, assesses the situation (Palin-effect turns forecasts on their head). He even maintains that the Obama campaign is now in Alarmstimmung – i.e. in a state of alarm – as the final, and toughest, 58-day period of electioneering up to November 4 gets underway. (First, however, there will be a brief non-partisan interlulde as both candidates appear on Thursday at New York City’s “Ground Zero” for a 9/11 anniversary commemoration.)

That Tundra-Trapper is a Game-Changer!

Yes, to Pitzke what McCain managed at the Republican convention was “a brilliant Sarah-Palin coup”; the choice of this “tundra-trapper with a gun-license” was what he has no hesitation in calling “a game-changer,” using the original English. This is primarily because of the motivating effect she already has had on the Republican Party’s Christian fundamentalist base. Whereas the McCain campaign itself has gone for months without being able to generate much enthusiasm among the party’s rank-and-file, now volunteers are joining the campaign at four times the former rate and money is pouring in to the Republican National Committee. (The McCain campaign itself cannot accept any more monetary contributions as of 1 Sept., unfortunately, having opted for public funds.) On a more profound basis, the Obama campaign has apparently lost its former monopoly of a widespread and rabid base of supporters. The enthusiasm gap that used to mark the difference between the two campaigns has closed; the crowd of 13,000 which showed up last weekend at the Colorado Springs, CO airport to great a joint appearance by the GOP candidates is a phenomenon that used to mark only Barack Obama’s campaign appearances. (Except that Colorado Springs is a poor example to use to make this sort of comparison. It’s the site of James Dobson’s evangelical Focus on the Family organization, and what Andrew Sullivan calls “the Christianist world capital.” Talk about going to find a super-friendly choir to preach to!)

By the way, Pitzke uses a small section of his on-line article for the public service of offering a series of summaries of Sarah Palin’s positions on various issues. Don’t get too excited: you won’t find “foreign policy” here, for example, or even “the credit crisis”; the tab headings instead read “Environment,” “Economy,” “Abortion,” “Education,” and “Weapons.” OK, “Environment” and “Abortion” are already easy (she’s against), as is “Weapons” (she’s for). “Education” turns out solely to describe her stated positions against sex-education and for an impartial, evenly-weighted debate between evolution on the one hand and the Biblical account of creation on the other. And then “Economics”: she’s a fiscal conservative who believes in the free market. That’s it, and that “fiscal conservative” claim itself may not stand up to scrutiny.

Now a quick note in passing on our old friend Tom-Jan Meeus and his weblog in the NRC Handelsblad with its latest entry: Why Obama is losing. Why, pray tell? Well, according to him it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin, other than – at a secondary level of importance – through what he calls Hillary Clinton’s present disinclination to attack her. No, Obama’s trouble can be traced to a higher plane, to the grand puppet-master himself, Karl Rove, whose acolytes now leading the McCain campaign have managed to keep him off balance and looking reactive and hesitant, by keeping control of each news-cycle through a steady stream of attacks. As it happens, few of these turn out to have any basis in fact, but that hardly matters, as they nonetheless keep the media-focus relentlessly on Obama. (As usual, Meeus’ writing is very link- and video-intensive, with what little explanatory context he provides naturally in Dutch, but I’m trying here to pass along the gist of his message.)

Karl Rove’s Sheherazade Strategy

Then we turn to the leading and world-famous French newspaper Le Monde and to a quite intriguing article which also looks to the Rove political campaign influence: The return of Karl Rove, scriptwriter, by Christian Salmon. (I realize that accepting this guy as an authentic French journalist, in view of his last name, might seem a fishy proposition – perhaps somewhat of a long roe to hoe – but just stop carping and take the big leap of faith with me on this, up over the rapids.)

For that grand puppet-master has no problem with Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice-presidential pick – he called her “refreshing.” But that should be no surprise, as she cuts just the figure he needs for his script. What Karl Rove is really the master of, as Prof. Ira Chernus of the University of Colorado tells Salmon, is the “Sheherazade strategy,” something he used to good effect to elect George W. Bush president twice and which he is now executing with the McCain presidential campaign through his representatives. Prof. Chernus explains: “When politics condemns you to death, start telling stories – stories so fabulous, so captivating, so bewitching that the king (or, in this case, the American electorate who, in theory, governs the country) forgets about the death sentence.” That political “death sentence” should clearly be in play this election year for the Republican party, after the policy disasters of the last eight years for which they are responsible. Nevertheless, the Rove machine succeeds in coming out with story after story, continually pushing back the execution date by turning politics into a morality play. Such stories invariably depict a great conflict of good-vs.-evil – as Prof. Chernus puts it, “stories in the style of John Wayne and ‘real men’ in combat against devils at the frontier,” but in the end they boil down to the upstanding and moralistic Republicans fighting the degenerate Democrats.

This is a scenario that a character like Sarah Palin – someone so “authentic,” with her all-too-human family – fits into quite naturally. And so the Republicans’ execution date keeps getting postponed again and again, and John McCain comes up even with Barack Obama in the opinion polls.

                          

The irony there was unmistakable, and I’m hardly the first or the only one to comment on it. But I’d prefer to bring up the more impartial judgment of Le Monde writer Corine Lesnes (that’s a woman’s name) and her article At the McCain’s, she’s the boss.

Lesnes in fact objects to the “Barbie Republican” nickname some who are ideologically on the other side have tried to pin on Cindy McCain wife. “That is very unjust,” she writes; she didn’t need John McCain, since she already had her fortune before she even met him. Indeed, he owes his entire political career to her, she who got him a management job in her family’s beer-distribution company as he positioned himself for his first run for the House of Representatives from Arizona, and then with similar financial and material support from them on out (including use of her private airplane during the dark days of the McCain one year ago when campaign finances were scraping bottom).

Yes, where the Obama’s present a conventional American family – although Lesnes does not bring in the racial aspect – “the McCains are in a category apart,” and that is not even taking into account the 18-year difference in their ages. From its very start in 1980 their marriage has been on the basis of separate property, of which Cindy has always brought by far the greater amount. “As to their properties,” she writes, “how could one insist that the candidate would remember their number? Everything belongs to Cindy.” Also very revealing is her account of how Bridget joined the family: Cindy brought her back in 1991 from an orphanage in Bangladesh for medical treatment that she needed, deciding while returning on the airplane just decided to adopt her and present her husband with a fait accompli.

Shot Down in Parallel

It’s eerie to read the account Lesnes gives here about Cindy’s father, James Hensley, who himself was shot down and injured while on a military flight – in his case it was in a B-17 on a bombing mission in the Second World War, shot down over the English Channel – and, while he made it back to England without being captured, he then proceeded to divorce the wife who was in the US waiting for him to return, and promptly to marry another. The parallels with the experiences of her husband are evident, although John McCain presumably has no experience with the black-market alcohol sales and racetrack ownership that James Hensley resorted to before finally gaining his fortune with (above-board) beer distribution. Then there is the addiction to prescription pain-killers that she fell into in the early 1990s, resorting to gaining them illegally from the medical-assistance foundation she had organized, which behavior was finally revealed by an FBI investigation.

In all, there is too much there in the life of Cindy Hensley McCain to write her off as a “Barbie Republican,” or even as “Ms. Bud” (as in “Budweiser”) which Lesnes reveals is how the personalized license plates on her current Lexus read. A more-accurate characterization is probably that of a rock of moral and financial support for a long-time actor on the American political scene now going for broke.