Al's Opinions

It looks likely that the Democratic ticket will be Obama and Clinton. Since she can't now get the Presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton will fight as hard as ever for second place. Someone today pointed out the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960. Something like that may be needed this year to keep disgruntled Clinton supporters with the ticket and discourage them from staying at home on election day or voting for John McCain.

I ask myself, does it matter to me? No. Since there are no longer any Republicans like Earl Warren or Wayne Morse or even Everett Dirksen in position to achieve the Republican nomination, I will never, never, ever vote for a Republican for President. If the Democrats manage to choose someone that I really can't stand, I will vote for the Green, Peace and Freedom, or Libertarian candidate.

Do I have a preference? Yes; my first choice was John Edwards. Barack Obama is a second or third choice. I think he will be a good President. At least, he will be much, much, much better than George W. Bush.

Do I like Mrs. Clinton? No. I don't strongly dislike her. I would vote for her and campaign for her if she had won the nomination. However, there's something about her that I don't like. She rubs me the wrong way. Many politicians of both parties have rubbed me the wrong way.

Do I dislike her because she is a woman and I don't think a woman should be president? I don't think so. However, what I dislike about her is her abrasiveness. Perhaps she learned long ago that, as a woman, she has to be abrasive and assertive to have other people in politics, mostly men, treat her as an equal and take her seriously. In that case, the characteristic that I don't like is, or may be, her response to being a woman.

Does it bother me that if she becomes the Vice President her husband Bill will have an important influence on government policy? Not at all. I think Bill Clinton was one of the best Presidents in my lifetime and certainly the smartest and best educated. He would be a welcome influence in an Obama administration. In fact, I would like to have Obama appoint him to an important cabinet position, such as Secretary of State.

There are, of course, voters who are enthusiastic about Barack Obama but who can't stand Hillary Clinton. These voters might not vote for an Obama-Clinton ticket and might even vote for McCain. Senator Obama has to weigh the possible loss of these voters against the possible loss of enthusiastic Clinton supporters in deciding whether to offer the Vice Presidency to Senator Clinton. I hope he makes a good decision. I don't want four more years of ultra-conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Kennedy-Johnson ticket, Prejudice against women, Vice-Presidency

Some news pundits are dumping on Barack Obama for recent comments he has made about working-class people in small towns being “bitter.” Senator Obama, in common with Senators Clinton and McCain and, in fact, all the other ninety-seven senators, is a rich man. Does being rich and having a Harvard law degree disqualify him from being President? Mr. Obama was not born rich. He was raised by a single mother in straightened circumstances. By hard work, skill, intelligence, and good luck he was able to earn a law degree at Harvard University and go on to a successful career in Illnions politics and eventually become a United States Senator. In the process he has also amassed a personal fortune. That is to say, he is now a lot richer than I am.

Compared with Senators Clinton and McCain, it seems to me that Obama should have the best appreciation from his own life experience of what the “bitter” working-class folks in small towns are experiencing. He lived in poverty as a child. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain can make that claim. Actually, they can, but no one will believe them.

Does a childhood of poverty or near poverty qualify one to be President? Presidents Lincoln, Truman, and Nixon come to mind. Lincoln and Truman are rightly revered. Nixon is scorned for his crimes, but he was in other respects a better than average President. He managed to extricate us from Viet Nam and he created an opening to the new Mao regime in China. He tried to establish a system of universal health care. On the other hand, he spawned a school of thought, championed by Vice-President Cheney, that the President is and ought to be free of legal restraints imposed by the Congress and the Constitution.

The charge of elitist applied to Obama implies that he is not electable, not that he wouldn’t be a good President. Candidates who appear to be “elite” turn off the ordinary working-class voter, or so it is said. I don’t think that charge can be proved true by history. My recollection of Presidents and Presidential candidates goes back as far as Herbert Hoover. I recall candidates Hoover (1932), Roosevelt, Landon (1936), Willkie (1940), Dewey (1944 and 1948), Truman (1948), Stevenson (1952 and 1956), Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon (1960 and 1968), Johnson, Goldwater (1964), Humphrey (1968), McGovern (1972), Ford, Carter, Reagan, Mondale (1984), Bush I, Dukakis (1988), Clinton, Dole (1996), Gore, Bush II, and Kerry. I’m not sure of which ones should be called “elitist” because I’m not sure what the word means. However, I’ll assume that it means that the person is, either in fact or by repute, a member of the “well-born and able” class rather than an ordinary person like you or me. By this definition I would classify Roosevelt, Willkie, Dewey, Stevenson, Kennedy, both Bushes, Gore, and Kerry as members of the “elite.” Out of the nine, four of these were elected to the Presidency. Eisenhower and Truman defeated “elite” candidates Dewey and Stevenson. Non-elite candidate Clinton defeated elite candidate Bush I. Bush II defeated Gore and Kerry. All three men belonged to the “elite” or “well-born and able” class. One can argue that Bush II has taken great pains to try to distance himself from the “elite” class into which he was born by adopting the speech mannerisms of poorly educated residents of western Texas. The fact remains that if he were not a member of the “elite” Bush family he would have gotten nowhere in politics.

So, there we have it. We’ve had Presidents who experienced poverty or near-poverty in childhood, Presidents of “ordinary” parents, and Presidents who were born rich. The best one in my lifetime was Roosevelt and the worst was the present Bush. Both men were born into wealthy households and had good educations. By my definition they were members of the elite. Presidents Truman, Ford, Nixon, and Clinton could all make the claim that they grew up in either poor or lower middle class households. They were “average Americans” and better than “average” Presidents. There seems to be no correlation between a President who is “just like the rest of us poor slobs” and the achievements and benefits of his term of office. Also, there seems to be no correlation between “electability” and membership or non-membership in the “elite” class.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Bush Family, Elitism, Franklin Roosevelt, George McGovern, Harry Truman, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, wealth of Senators, working class voters

The conventional news media and the bloggers are busy today writing about the New York Times article that deals with a relationship between John McCain and a female lobbyist a few years ago. The implication is that McCain was:

1. having an affair with the woman;
2. granting special favors to her clients;
3. risking his image as a squeaky clean legislator and not like the rest of the womanizing crooks that infest our national legislature.

Senator McCain has denied these implications with a simple response: "NO."

Some McCain partisans imply that the New York Times, a liberal newspaper, made up the story just to embarras McCain. They see a liberal plot to "swift boat" McCain.

The "swift boat" charge uses a poor analogy. John Kerry presented himself as having done something heroic during his service in Viet Nam. The swift boaters attacked and tried to disprove and discredit his claim as a war hero. The implication of the NYT story has no bearing of McCain's service during the Viet Nam war. A better analogy would be to liken the story to stories published during Bill Clinton's Presidency of his dalliances with various ladies.

My own reactions to the story are:

1. It probably is factually correct.
2. McCain is correct in denying an intimate sexual relationship with the woman.
3. Even if he had such a relationship, it has no bearing on his ability to handle the job of President. We have had many Presidents who had relations with women. These relationships did not detract from their abilities to lead this great country.

Regarding item 3, we must remember that it requires a person of extreme ambition and desire, as well as ability, to get as close to the Presidency as John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton, or Barack Obama. Persons with these extreme characteristics are apt to have very strong sexual desires as well. We should not be surprised or shocked or even put off by stories of sexual adventures by those with the ambition and ability to lead us. We should not put a President on a pedestal and worship him or her as a role model for our children. Next November we will elect a President, not a saint.

I defend and excuse John McCain for any affairs he may have had or may be having. I admire his short answers to the reporters who quizzed him about the implications of the story. I still won't vote for him. If he becomes President, he will almost certainly continue Mr. Bush's program of loading the federal courts with ultra-conservative judges and justices. If McCain becomes President, Roe v. Wade will be overturned after he appoints a successor to John Paul Stevens, the oldest member of the present Supreme Court.

Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, John Paul Stevens, President as a role model, Supreme Court, swift boating, womanizing Presidents, Womanizing Senators and Representatives

It is said that many Democrats favor Senator Hillary Clinton over the other candidates for President because she is "strong." She is said to be stronger than Senator Obama. Nobody even compares her with the third most popular person in the race, former Senator John Edwards. (He's my favorite.) Her husband once said that the American public prefers a candidate who is strong but wrong to one who is right but weak, or perceived to be weak. Actually, it's the perception of strength or weakness that counts, not the real strength or weakness of the candidate. Senator Clinton has a manner of speaking and expressing herself that gives the public the perception that she is a strong person.

I ignore her personality and her manner of speaking. In thinking about positions she has taken, about her unwillingness to concede that her vote for the resolution that allowed the President to start a war with Iraq was a mistake, and in particular about her health care plan, I see her as a politician who is cautious and unwilling to take a position or support a proposal that she thinks would be unpopular with a significant part of the public. She knows, for example, that most Republicans still support the war and believe that it was the right thing to do. In her campaign for the Presidency, she hopes to get a few Republican votes. She knows that although most Democrats favor a single-payer plan to achieve universal health coverage most Republicans and many independent voters distrust a government-run health insurance plan. She also knows that the insurance industry is implacably opposed to any plan that will reduce the number of potential insurance purchasers.

She is not willing to take on and oppose publicly the insurance industry or the independent voters who still think that we should not leave our armed forces in Iraq to prevent a genocidal civil war. I do not think that this cautiousness indicates that she is a particularly strong person.

It comes down to something a friend once said to me. His name was Henry Whitelock and he called himself a conservative Democrat. I was appalled at some of the things that a particular political leader was saying. Henry agreed that they were appalling things, but he liked to hear them said. Senator Clinton has a manner of speaking that suggests great personal strength. People like to hear her speak in that manner. People perceive her to be strong. It doesn't matter that perhaps she is wrong about some of the issues.

Labels: Bill Clinton, health insurance industry, Hillary Clinton, Republican support of the Iraq war, single-payer, Strong and wrong