After watching the last round of Democratic debates which fittingly took place in Las Vegas, the capital of intrigue, excess and illusion, I round myself wanting to waterboard Wolf Blitzer.

Whether I talk with Democrats or Republicans neither of them has anything nice to say about the debates, which they view as not merely a farce but a rigged one at that. The media have always found themselves accused of turning elections into a horse race, but this year members of both parties are wondering if the race isn’t a crooked one.

In both parties, the major complaint seems to be that the so-called debates virtually ignore people that the aforementioned media have designated as minor candidates while favoring the ones they have picked as front runners. One the Democratic side that means most of the camera time goes to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with an occasional nod to John Edwards, while on the Republican side it has meant we see a lot of Mitt Romney and Rudolf Giuliani with an occasional nod to John McCain.

That media decide how much “head time” to give each candidate is unprecedented in American politics. But if you want to really understand the bias, watch the next debate with sound turned off–I’m serious. After all, by now if you don’t know what questions are going to be asked and what each candidate is going to say, you’ve been watching too many football games or too many old movies.

When you turn the sound off, you really see how the media favor the front runners by choosing to show them nine times out of ten in what are known as the “reaction shots.” Have you ever seen the camera focus on, say, Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul when they are not directly answering a question? But we see more than our share of reaction shots of Hillary and Rudy, both of whom have perfected a look that would get them to the finals of the World Series of Poker.

The media control of the debates even extends to the questions themselves, which have to be screened by the broadcasters. So when it looks like Mrs. Grant wants to ask a spontaneous question about whether the candidates are willing to take an anti-tax pledge, the person shoving the microphone in her face already knows the question that is going to be asked and who is going to ask it. This led to some embarrassing moments in the Democrat’s Las Vegas debate when at least more than one questioner had trouble remembering exactly the question they were supposed to ask, like a bad actor flubbing their lines.

I predict it will not be long before the questioners are chosen just like the contestants on Jeopardy, who have to go through a rigid screen test as demanding as that of any Hollywood casting call before they are allowed on the air, a process that focuses as much on their looks and personalities as it does on their intelligence. In a sense, the debates are already doing that.

Watching with the sound off, you begin to note how the questioners are beginning to fit into a casting script written by CNN. There will be at least one Iraq vet or better yet as in Las Vegas an Iraq vet and his mother. There will be a Latino who is vexed about immigration. There will be at least one African American to ask a question about health care or some other social policy. There will be a matronly questioner to ask about abortion.

Even the Price is Right does a better job and frankly, before his retirement, Bob Barker was a much better host than the Beast of Bombast, Tim Russert, or the Earl of Earnestness, Blitzer. Unlike Barker, who always knew the focus should be on the guests and never was above making himself the punch line of his own joke; these debate hosts exude their self-declared role as President-makers.

THEY are going to serve as the voice of the American people, as the ultimate arbiter of political justice. In 2000 Americans of all political stripes were none to happy that the election was decided by the Supreme Court. But little did we know that eight years’ later the election would be decided by those who bring you The People’s Court and Judge Judy. But that is what we have come to.

The media have become a self-declared Presidential Screening Committee without the public having any say in the matter. Of course, these days we don’t seem to have much of a say in anything, but even more inexplicable is that both the Republican and Democratic Parties seem to have allowed this to happen with scarcely a word of objection. The two national party offices have been noticeably quiet and Congress which wants to investigate everything from bridges to nowhere in Alaska to the besmirching of General Petraeus’ good name, has shown little inclination to delve into the travesty of the debates.

As my son pointed out to me, a major travesty lies in the fact that the debates appear only on cable or satellite television. This essentially shuts out of the political process those who either do not have access, cannot afford or simply choose not to subscribe to cable television. According to a November 14th report issued by the Federal Communications Commission, only 56% of Americans have cable television, which means almost half the country is missing the debates, hearing about them only through the soundbites that appear on the networks or in the newspapers.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism describes the typical audience member for cable television news:

The regular cable news viewer can be personified as a married, middle-aged man who has at least 14 years of education. He earns well, with a median income of $62,000, and tends to live in the suburbs.

According to the Census Bureau, median income for 2006 was $49, 100. In other words, those who are able to watch the debates are more educated, make more money and live in the suburbs. Maybe that audience has something to do with why there are so few questions about equity and poverty.

The control of the media over the Presidential selection process goes beyond even scripting the questions and the questioners, beyond their obvious favoritism for certain candidates over others, it goes to the very substance of the questions they ask. I say, “They ask,” because, as we have seen, they screen the questions.

Besides being as predictable as Gilligan screwing up another scheme to escape the island, the questions largely focus around what-ifs, fluffy personal inquiries or crude attempts to play “gotcha!” What would you do if Borat managed to paint the White House green in the middle of the night? Would you bomb Kazakhstan? What is your favorite Bible verse? Please explain how America can possibly trust having your finger on the nuclear trigger, when you got into a fight on the school playground when you were twelve years old?

There have been very few questions about principles or values. So the candidates who tend to be leading in both parties– surprise, surprise–tend to be those who are good at giving seemingly detailed answers that when you play them back amount to nothing. The two front runners, Clinton and Giuliani, are masters at this (is there something about New York politics that breeds this ability) and God help us if the media get the contest they seem to be doing their best to rig between the two of them. They will have to provide us with interpreters to explain what they said.
Actually, it would not be a bad idea to take the microphones away from Bitzer, Russert and their colleagues and give them to those who know how to call a sports contest like Al Michaels. Give John Madden his telestrator to show us the intricacies of Hillary’s nonanswers. Add a few of Keith Jackson’s country witticisms liven up the occasion. Let Suzy Kolber roam the audience like she roams the sidelines.

Everyone remembers the immortal line from the movie Network where the half-crazed anchor tells everyone to throw open their windows and shout, “We’re not going to take it anymore.” Maybe it’s time America did that with the debates.

Tagged with: Al_Michaels • Barack_Obama • Bob_Barker • debate_format • debate_questions • Democratic_presidential_campaign • Democratic_Presidential_candidates • Democrats • Democrats_and_Republicans • Dennis_Kucinich • Hillary_Clinton • John_Edwards • John_Madden • John_McCain • judge_judy • las_vegas_debate • media_control • Mitt_Romney • monday_night_football • political_justice • presidential_debates • Republicans • Republican_candidate • Republican_hopefuls • Republican_nominee • Rudy_Giuliani • scripting_questions • suzy_kolber • the_price_is_right • Tim_Russert • White_House • Wolf_Blitzer

FDR Signs the Glass-Steagall Act (Carter Glass on left)

Many Democrats wish Bill Clinton still occupied the White House. However, before you put him in Mt. Rushmore, you might want to investigate his role in the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

The chief aim of what I have termed the Republican Counterrevolution has always been to roll back the New Deal. Anti-gov’ment rhetoric hides this as surely as states’ rights hid racist segregation. Of all the New Deal legislation the GOP has sought to overturn, one that has always been at or near the top of the list is the Glass-Steagall Act. Ironically, a Democratic president repealed this for them.

Glass-Steagall

An unreconstructed Southerner from Virginia, Carter Glass shepherded the creation of the Federal Reserve System through Congress, which has caused some to call him the “founding father of the Federal Reserve System.” Later Glass would serve as Wilson’s Treasury Secretary, recommending aid to Europe after World War I. Just before leaving Treasury to become senator, Glass warned about banks getting involved in stocks.

In his economic history of the Great Depression, John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out one of the causes was:

The large-scale corporate thimblerigging that was going on. This took a variety of forms, of which by far the most common was the organization of corporations to hold stock in yet other corporations, which in turn held stock in yet other corporations.

Galbraith would note:

During 1929 one investment house, Goldman, Sachs & Company, organized and sold nearly a billion dollars’ worth of securities in three interconnected investment trusts—Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation; Shenandoah Corporation; and Blue Ridge Corporation. All eventually depreciated virtually to nothing.

It is hard to imagine today what it felt like to walk through the door of a bank in those days and learn that the dollars you had earned had vanished. Every day spent working and saving had been for nothing. A great many farmers, brick layers, carpenters, factory workers believed the bankers had stolen their lives.

When Franklin Roosevelt took office, both the President and Congress knew the banking crisis demanded immediate action. The result was one of the crown jewels of the New Deal: the Glass-Steagall Act, officially known as the Banking Act of 1933. Glass made sure the bill forbid banks from getting into the investment business. In addition, the bill established the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, which protects our bank deposits.

In 1971, in Investment Company Institute v. Camp, no less than the United States Supreme Court would write what stands as the most cogent summary of the reasons for Glass-Steagall:

Congress was concerned that commercial banks in general and member banks of the Federal Reserve System in particular had both aggravated and been damaged by stock market decline partly because of their direct and indirect involvement in the trading and ownership of speculative securities.

The legislative history of the Glass-Steagall Act shows that Congress also had in mind and repeatedly focused on the more subtle hazards that arise when a commercial bank goes beyond the business of acting as fiduciary or managing agent and enters the investment banking business either directly or by establishing an affiliate to hold and sell particular investments.

Many arguments the Supreme Court advanced in support of Glass-Steagall, would prove prophetic three decades later.

Bill Clinton and the Wall of Me

Billionaire Sanford I. Weill, who according to Louis Uchitelle made “Citigroup into the most powerful financial institution since the House of Morgan a century ago,” has what I call the Wall of Me leading to his office, which he has decorated with tributes to him, including a dozen framed magazine covers. A major trophy is the pen Bill Clinton used to sign the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a move which allowed Weill to create Citigroup. Fittingly, Citigroup is a major contributor to guess which current Democratic Presidential candidate?

A Frontline report on the repeal of Glass-Steagall shows how those with money end up with pens from the President of the United States on their walls.

Sandy Weill calls President Clinton in the evening to try to break the deadlock after Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, warned Citigroup lobbyist Roger Levy that Weill has to get White House moving on the bill or he would shut down the House-Senate conference. Serious negotiations resume, and a deal is announced at 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 22. Whether Weill made any difference in precipitating a deal is unclear.

Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill’s chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, “You’re buying the government?”

When Bill Clinton gave that pen to Sanford Weill, it symbolized the ending of the twentieth century Democratic Party that had created the New Deal. Although the 1999 law did not repeal all of the banking Act of 1933, retaining the FDIC, it did once again allow banks to enter the securities business, becoming what some term “whole banks.”

The repeal of one of the most important pieces of legislation in this nation’s history came about as a result of another Clinton “triangulation,” the wobbling attempt to find the middle of the road that has somehow managed to pass for a philosophy with many Democrats for over two decades. As former Clinton campaign advisor Richard Morris once described it, you move a little to the left, a little to the right. I’d love to hear Clinton give that explanation to a foreclosed home owner today.

With the stroke of a pen, Bill Clinton ended an era that stretched back to William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson and reached fruition with FDR and Harry Truman. As he signed his name, in the whorls and dots of his pen strokes William Jefferson Clinton was also symbolically signing the death warrant of Liberal America and its core belief in the level playing field that had guided the Democratic Party. But it was the gift of the pen to Sanford Weill and its assuming an honored place on the Wall of Me that rubbed salt in the wound.In his famous First Inaugural Roosevelt pointedly asserted:

Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

Now Clinton had not only repealed the act Roosevelt had put in place to curb those practices, but presented one of the pens used to sign it to one of those “money changers.”

What Hath Clinton Wrought?

What can be said in Clinton’s favor is that no one in 1999 anticipated the huge growth of the hedge fund industry and the subprime mortgage market. The New York Times described the new financial world created by the repeal of Glass-Steagall in a June 2007 profile of Goldman Sachs:

While Wall Street still mints money advising companies on mergers and taking them public, real money — staggering money — is made trading and investing capital through a global array of mind-bending products and strategies unimaginable a decade ago.

Curiously, Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein paints the perfect big picture of what has happened:

We’ve come full circle, because this is exactly what the Rothschilds or J. P. Morgan, the banker were doing in their heyday. What caused an aberration was the Glass Steagall Act.

Blankfein testifies to the full impact of Bill Clinton’s actions, for like many members of the Counterrevolution he sees the New Deal as an aberration and longs for a return to the days J. P. Morgan and other tycoons gave the Gilded Age its nickname. His “aberration” was eliminated not because of the actions of some radical Republican, but because of Bill Clinton. No wonder Goldman Sachs is also a prime contributor to you-know-who.

As is often the case, the story of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the growth of the subprime mortgage market that is now crumbling around us like a financial house of cards can be best be told by a graph:

If you think of this graph as the level playing field, notice how flat it was before Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall, then notice how steep it has become. Those subprime loans amount to nothing more than an organized ripoff of millions of innocent Americans, with the steepness of the graph illustrating the how far the playing field has tilted.

The result is that all of a sudden people are thinking Glass-Steagall wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Robert Kuttner testified before Barney Frank’s Committee on Banking and Financial Services in October, evoking the dreaded specter of the Great Depression:

Since repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999, after more than a decade of de facto inroads, super-banks have been able to re-enact the same kinds of structural conflicts of interest that were endemic in the 1920s – lending to speculators, packaging and securitizing credits and then selling them off, wholesale or retail, and extracting fees at every step along the way. And, much of this paper is even more opaque to bank examiners than its counterparts were in the 1920s. Much of it isn’t paper at all, and the whole process is supercharged by computers and automated formulas.

Then there is Dow Jones MarketWatch’s Thomas Kostigen :

I’m not saying that Glass-Steagall would have made a difference to the evolution of the collateralized debt obligations. But it might have helped identify and isolated the damage.

As Congress continues to investigate the mortgage crisis, more people are wondering whether the repeal of Glass-Steagall was a mistake.

The Future of Your Mortgage

In testimony before Congress on November 8, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke painted a grim picture of the current crisis and even grimmer picture of the future:

On average from now until the end of next year, nearly 450,000 subprime mortgages per quarter are scheduled to undergo their first interest rate reset. [My emphasis]

According to a December 2006 study by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research and policy organization:

More than 2 million people with subprime loans are facing foreclosure this year and nearly 20 percent of subprime mortgages issued between 2005 and 2006 are projected to fail.

But numbers and testimony and even history mean little to those who suddenly find themselves up against the wall. In every city and town across this country “For Sale” signs are popping up on lawns. Behind each of those signs lies a personal story, a family tragedy, which like the tragedies of the Great Depression, tells of innocent Americans felled by an affliction they never saw coming. Walk any street in this country today–even in affluent neighborhoods–and each time you see one of those signs the hairs on the back of your own neck stand up, because those signs instill the same fear people felt when they walked into a bank in 1932 and found their money gone.

Two million people have found themselves one step away from figuratively being tossed out onto the street, the way millions were in the 1930s. Meanwhile, there are young people starting new lives for whom home ownership is rapidly receding, middle-aged people who finally had scraped together enough for a down payment only to find they can’t get a mortgage and older people for whom their home was their retirement and now find its value dropping like George Bush’s poll numbers. Finally there are even millions more for whom the collateral damage from the crises promises to cast its shadow over their American Dream.

The International Monetary Fund recently drew the following lessons from various financial crisis:

It is difficult to tell at the time whether a financial crisis will have broader economic consequences. Regulators often cannot keep up with the pace of financial innovation that may trigger a crisis.

Both have characterized what happened after the repeal of Glass-Steagall. It’s too bad Bill Clinton did not have their wisdom when he made his decision, but then when you make decisions by triangulating, how much weight do you give such studies?

And the current crop of politicians? Look again at the donor lists detailed in this site’s “Follow the Money” series. Then wonder why no moderator or other candidate has asked Hillary Clinton if she supports her husband’s repeal of Glass-Steagall? Ask the other candidates if they support Bill Clinton’s move.

Meanwhile the signs keep sprouting and the playing field keeps tilting and soon the snow will start to fall, drifting against the signs. How many more people will have lost their homes when the snow melts?

Tagged with: American_dream • American_families • anguish • apprehension • bad_news • banking_regulation • Baron_Rothschild • Bill_Clinton • Bush_tax_cuts • campaign_contributors • Carter_Glass • Democratic_candidates • Democratic_Party • Democratic_Presidential_candidates • economic_crisis • equity • FDR • federal_reserve_system • foreclosures • Franklin_Roosevelt • Frontline • future_of_the_Democratic_Party • Glass_Steagall_Act • Goldman_Sachs • GOP_Counterrevolution • Great_Depression • hedge_funds • Hillary_Clinton • Hillary_Rodham_Clinton • Iowa_caucuses • mortgage_defaults • mortgage_foreclosure • New_Deal • No_Child_Left_Behind_Act • presidential_debates • Republican_Counterrevolution • Sanford_Weill • state_supreme_court • suburban_homeowner • tax_cuts • triangulation • welfare_reform • Woodrow_Wilson

They sit there dutifully on the stage during the debates, largely ignored by the moderators and the cameras. The polls show they trail the two leaders, Clinton and Obama, by huge margins. So why are people hoping one of them will pull an upset?

Curiously the answer lies in the very phrase that has served as the title of this series, “Follow the money.” A perusal of the finances of these candidates provides a sharp contrast to those of the front runners. Maybe it is why they are behind. Maybe it is also why they just might pull off that upset.

John Edwards

The surprising thing about John Edwards is that for a former vice-presidential candidate he trails a distant third in the money race. Edwards’ anti-corporate, two Americas message propelled him onto the national stage in 2004, only to find himself co-opted by a Kerry campaign that neutralized him the way John Kennedy neutralized Lyndon Johnson.

Edwards could have been–and maybe still could be–the Howard Dean of 2008, but his staff and the candidate himself seem to have little understanding of how to run a Dean-like campaign. With Dean neutralized at the Democratic National Committee, there will be little chance of direct help from the Dean camp. Meanwhile Dennis Kucinich’s overwhelming victory with Dean’s Democrats for America, means Edwards will get little help there.

The key to understanding Edwards’ fate lies in the blogosphere which enthusiastically supported Dean. In 2004, the blogs were upstarts that gave voice to millions of people who felt marginalized by the likes of the folks who live in their Eagle’s Lairs and by the triangulators who dominated the Democratic Party machinery. But now these upstarts have become media moneymakers who like the mainstream media aim for the mediocre middle, mouthing phrases like “electability.”

As for liberals and progressives, true to form they have spent more time finding compelling reasons not to like any of the candidates to the point of where some of them inexplicably want to draft Al Gore, the candidate who has no one but himself to blame for 2000 despite the prevalent myth of the stolen campaign. Liberals and progressives also are caught up again in single issue crusades and a lack of defining common principles. George Lakoff’s framing solution seems like a distant dream.

A reason Edwards has not caught on with liberals is that his once powerful “two Americas” message has become muted and replaced by a campaign that has trotted out a phone-book thick list of programs and proposals. What Edwards stands for has been buried under mountains of paper. So Edwards remains in third place because he has neither money nor grassroots support. He is rapidly on his way to becoming a text book example of how not to run a campaign.

Edwards’ donor list as posted in opensecrets.org reflects his campaign’s lack of a center.

Despite this, Edwards remains locked in a virtual dead heat with Clinton and Obama in Iowa. Since the Iowa caucuses require that after the first round those supporting candidates with less than 15% of those attending must drop out, those voters will hold the balance of power. Given that supporters of Kucinich and Richardson are no lovers of Hillary Clinton, and Chris Dodd and Gravel are nonfactors in Iowa, the speculation is whether these voters will go to Edwards or Obama.

Edwards may be the one candidate for whom Iowa is a make-or-break state. Should he come in third, the anti-Hillary vote will go to Obama and the media will get the race they have been trying shove down our throats during the debates.

Bill Richardson

If Obama is the Hamlet candidate, Bill Richardson is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Democratic field. For whatever the reason, he just doesn’t get any respect. Where the press gushes over Hillary Clinton as possibly the first woman president and Barack Obama as the first African American to occupy the White House, there has been little hype about Richardson as the first potential Latino chief executive.

Where Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have earned credits for their experience, the press has given little attention to Richardson’s impressive resume. Where Kucinich and Obama are portrayed as outsiders, Richardson is the only outside-the-beltway alternative. This prompted Richardson to respond to a Kucinich attempt to tar the entire field as casting the wrong votes about Iraq and the Patriot Act with a comment that Richardson was a governor and had no part in any of those decisions. On stage Richardson has been both articulate (he always seems to have an answer with built-in bullet points) and one of the few to have a sense of humor.

What Bill Richardson lacks is money and a message. Whether due to a simple fact that he has not attracted the big donors or his own self-professed commitment to remain above the money game, Richardson’s donor list–along with that of Dennis Kucinich–represents probably the one least likely to scare off those of us who worry about the impact of people like Sumner Redstone.

Where Hillary Clinton looks out calculatingly from the Eagle’s Lair of her Cash machine benefactors and Obama can’t make up his mind whether to press the elevator button and join her and John Edwards is wandering around outside with his team of lawyers, Richardson’s donor list has the feel of a genuine alternative candidate.

When you peruse his list, you do not have the fear that America’s largest lobbying firm or biggest law firm will elbow their way into decisions nor do you see hedge fund and nuclear power companies. If that Iowa voter I ran into worries about whose pockets each candidate is in, Richardson does not seem in anyone’s pocket.

That is his strength, but he has been unable to leverage it into a higher percentage in the polls. With Hillary Clinton now opening as many headquarters in Iowa as there are McDonalds, Richardson could turn this to his advantage, but seems unwilling to pull the trigger.

On stage Richardson can have thoughtful answers, but what do they add up to? I quizzed a few people in Iowa about Richardson and they agreed they had been impressed with him in the debates, but when I asked for specifics they could not give any. Even more telling, when I asked what Richardson stood for, none of them could tell me. I put readers of this post to the same test.

Dennis Kucinch

Dennis Kucinch is the candidate who refuses to go away and by refusing to go away, he may just hang in there until the end. Kucinich’s Energizer Bunny quality–he can’t even seem to sit still in the debates–comes from an important characteristic–he seems to be the only one in the field with a palpable sense of purpose. You can quarrel with his sometimes self-righteous attitude, but no one will ever accuse him of triangulating or mincing his words. A typical Kucinich response was his answer to the Las Vegas debate question about why he was the only Congressional candidate to vote against the Patriot Act. “I read it,” he said.

Where Hillary Clinton projects an almost aristocratic air, with a not too hidden chip on her shoulder, Obama plays Hamlet, and Edwards and Richardson have no message, Kucinich leaves little doubt about his positions. My son who has spent some time inside the Beltway, draws an interesting analogy: Kucinch is the Ralph Nader of 2008. Both share a similar earnestness, are decidedly anti-establishment, and have a certain “I am right” attitude.

Kucinch’s earnestness has attracted many former Deaniacs who might have gone to Edwards or Richardson. That accounts for his showing in the Democrats for America poll where he walloped the field.

The Kucinich donor list may well be the purist off all the candidates. Next to Mike Gravel’s, it is also the smallest. No need to worry some law firm or lobbyist or Wall Street corporation will call the shots, because you won’t find anyone like that on the Kucinich donor list.

Kucinich shares another characteristic with Dean–his large percentage of small donors. Depending on which estimate you use, Kucinich’s percentage of small donors ranges from USA Today’s estimate of 68% to 70% by votegopher.com. This is easily the highest figure for any Democratic Presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, unlike Dean, he has not been able to enlist large numbers of these small donors. In fact, his fundraising trails where he was in 2004. I have a theory on this–he does not have the techies to support such an effort. His web site is probably the worst of the major candidates and even contains some embarrassing coding errors, one of which I uncovered while trying to download a photo of the candidate. The filename extension was .jpg.jpg.

Kucinich also faces the same online problems that plague John Edwards and Bill Richardson. With the blogging world changed and now under control of blogs that are but extensions of big media (the biggest so-called progressive blogger even writes for Newsweek, the second biggest probably spends more money per week on her blog than Kucinich does on his campaign), the likelihood of a repeat of the Dean miracle is highly unlikely.

There seems little doubt that Kucinich will stay in the race until the end, just as he did in 2004. If the networks don’t kick him off the stage as they did Mike Gravel, he should make things interesting.

The Bottom Line

Kucinich, Edwards and even Obama raise fundamental questions about the future of American democracy. Money has always played a major role in campaigns, but to quote a remark Bill Moyers made almost two decades ago, today “it doesn’t just talk, it roars.” With money now the major determinant of winners and losers, it raises the serious question of whether any candidate with liberal egalitarian principles can win.

Since writing The Strange Death of Liberal America, I have become more aware that I perhaps underplayed the importance of money in putting Liberal America in intensive care. The voter in Iowa did have it right when she said we need to know who is bankrolling the candidates so we know who will really be pulling the strings.

I ran into Jeff Blodgett, who once served as Paul Wellstone’s chief of staff, at a function not long ago. We talked about Wellstone’s famous triangle of politics, policy and grassroots organizing. We seem to have forgotten the last one. If we look back on elections in the last decade or so, the real upsets have occurred because of grass roots organizing. There is Dean, of course, and Wellstone himself.

Dean showed that the Internet can greatly enhance grassroots organizing, so now each candidate has a Dean-like area on their web site to link supporters. But this is only part of what Paul Wellstone meant, for true grassroots organizing comes from the bottom up.

When I wrote my series on the great speeches of William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman the phrase that popped up again and again–almost as if these men were channeling one another–is “bottom up.” As I thought about this, it occurred to me that is what is missing from this crop of Democratic candidates. Hillary Clinton’s “experience” is nothing but a code word for top down. None of the others seem to get it.

The important thing is that there is still time. Millions of what I have termed “Principles Voters” are waiting to hear words like these:

In January 1946 I repeated what I thought the Government should do, and I have repeated it time and again since that time-and I haven’t changed a bit. I am still the Democrat you nominated in Chicago on the Democratic platform of 1944, and I am still for Roosevelt’s New Deal.

I have told the people that there is just one big issue in this campaign and that’s the people against the special interests.

The Republicans stand for special interests, and they always have.

The Democratic Party, which I now head, stands for the people–and always has stood for the people.

Tagged with: 1948_campaign • Barack_Obama • Bill_Richardson • bloggers • bloggers_in_political_campaigns • campaign_contributions • campaign_contributors • Democratic_Party • Democratic_presidential_campaign • Democratic_Presidential_candidates • democratic_principles • Dennis_Kucinich • Hamlet • Harry_Truman • Hillary_Clinton • Iowa_voters • John_Edwards • principles • principles_voter

Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day

October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

A. Lincoln

Tagged with: Abraham_Lincoln • almighty_god • armies • civil_war • gracious_gifts • military_conflict • national_defense • navies • precious_metals • Thanksgiving_Day

Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention

Four years can be a long time. For Barack Obama it must seem a lifetime. Then he was the fresh new face of the Democratic Party. Now he is fighting for his political future. The question is, can he recover?

The answer to that question is still in doubt, for it depends on whether he decides to follow the money or recover the words and principles that brought him his first touch of fame. To understand how Obama finds himself in this position, you first need to look at his donors.

The Donors

Obama has run a surprisingly strong second to Hillary Clinton in the fundraising race, distancing himself from the rest of the field that is struggling to overcome the Clinton Cash Machine. A profile of Obama in the new December Atlantic reveals that when he first entered the Senate, Obama sought out none other than Hillary Clinton. Clinton soon became a mentor to the young senator, advising him on everything from decorum to how to deal with being a high-profile figure sitting on the back bench.

Apparently, Obama learned his lessons well, because his fundraising list closely resembles Clinton’s. In fact, it seems clear that several prominent donors from Sumner Redstone to Goldman Sachs have deliberately split their donations between the two. Where there are differences in donors, they mostly involve similar firms. For example, America’s largest law firm DLA Piper heads Clinton’s list, while Obama has enlisted Sidley Austin, which is almost as big.

One reason for Obama’s total is that early in his campaign several high-visibility Clinton donors broke with Clinton and endorsed Obama. This defection lies at the heart of the palpable bad blood between the two candidates.

Two Questionable Donors

However, two donors stand out on Obama’s list that are not Clinton’s and they do little to assuage the uneasiness created by the Obama version of the Clinton Cash Machine. One is the Citadel Investment Group, one of America’s largest hedge funds. Headed by billionaire trader Kenneth C. Griffin, Citadel has earned less negative publicity than Chris Dodd’s sugar daddy Steven Cohen, but as a hedge fund in today’s deregulated financial world, it still has drawn scrutiny. Citadel earned the dubious honor of being duped by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who talked the fund into putting up cash for a shady offshore gambling scheme that existed only in the lobbyist’s fertile imagination.

The second firm really should send shudders down the spines of Democrats, for it is the Chicago-based utility firm Exelon. According to its web site:

Exelon Corporation is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities with more than $15 billion in annual revenues. It distributes electricity to approximately 5.2 million customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and gas to 480,000 customers in the Philadelphia area. In addition, for energy delivery Exelon’s operations include energy generation and power marketing.

It has one of the industry’s largest portfolios of electricity generation capacity, with a nationwide reach and strong positions in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. Exelon operates the largest nuclear fleet in the United States, the third largest commercial nuclear fleet in the world, and is generating nuclear energy more efficiently than ever.

What Exelon’s web site does not reveal, is that Obama’s home state of Illinois receives 40% of its power from nuclear cources. The coincidence between Exelon’s nuclear ambitions and Obama’s answers to questions about the Yucca Mountain disposal site that surfaced during the Las Vegas debate are too close for comfort. Among the major Democratic Party candidates, only Obama and Hillary Clinton have embraced nuclear as a solution to the energy crisis. His answer to all the objections that have piled up over the years since Three-Mile Island is the one he gave at the debate: we have the expertise to solve this problem. That people have devoted considerable brain power to this problem over four decades seems to have been forgotten.

He’s No Howard Dean–But He Could Be

The only aspect of their finances that appears to differentiate Obama and Clinton is their relative reliance on big donors. Obama has made much of the fact that his campaign base consists of those who have contributed less than $1,000, as if he were trying to assume the mantle of Howard Dean, but as a Chicago Tribune article pointed out this is misleading:

Even as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has promoted a large following of small-dollar contributors representing ordinary Americans, his campaign has built an old-school political fundraising machine that relies heavily on the wealthy and the powerful, including a Chicago-based hedge fund manager who earned $1.4 billion last year.

The Obama fundraising operation provides a contrast to an image that the campaign has ceaselessly cultivated as a movement powered by everyday Americans.

While The Tribune has never been a friend to Democrats, it does have its numbers right went on to point out that sixty percent of Obama’s money comes from large donors.

What the Tribune does not do is the math–which, of course, reveals that 40% of Obama’s funding comes from small donors. The small donor percentages of some past presidential candidates include 37% for John Kerry and 20% for Al Gore. Howard Dean, in contrast, raised 61% percent of his funding from small donors in 2004. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has been fairly secretive about her percentages of small donors. A USA Today article estimated it as a miniscule 9%.

Clearly, it is Obama’s percentage of small donors that has enabled him to stay relatively even with Clinton in the fundraising race. We will examine the totals for Edwards, Richardson, and Kucinich in the next post.

He’s No John Kennedy Either–At Least Not Yet

Barack Obama entered the 2008 campaign labeled as a wunderkind not unlike John Kennedy, an articulate young spokesman for a “new generation” who would bring a new vision to a nation that badly needed innovative ideas. What has clearly emerged is that Obama is no John Kennedy. The articulate speaker has seemed at time tongue-tied, where Kennedy always seemed to have the right words.

Even more telling is that Kennedy justly earned fame–and won the 1964 election–for his refreshing, self-deprecating wit. Kennedy’s sense of humor especially helped defray the idea that he was an overly-ambitious young man who had the gall to not “wait his turn” by deferring to older, more experienced candidates who had waited through two Stevenson campaigns.

Hillary Clinton has capitalized on this by making sure the press has heard that she, too, had thought about running early in her Senate career, but had decided against it even though the polls showed she could win. She says she felt that she just did not have the experience to assume the nation’s highest office.

Playing the experience card has allowed Hillary Clinton to be the master of the answer that seems full of wisdom, yet when you actually think about what she said you find yourself trying to grasp the equivalent of a whiff of smoke. While Hillary blows perfect smoke rings, captivating her audience, Obama seems to choke on them.

Instead of deflecting the notion that he is not ready, Obama has seemed overly-defensive even aggressive about it. He seems to feel that in answering every question he has to show he knows more than Clinton, as if being able to spout off more numbers and facts shows he can handle any crisis. There are times his replies sound painfully like John Kerry’s failed 2004 debate strategy against George Bush, a strategy that had Kerry trying to cram as many facts into as little time as possible with the idea of demonstrating Bush’s stupidity. Bush stumbled at first until he learned to play the values card.

In trying to imitate Kerry, Obama has fallen into the trap set by Hillary Clinton, reminding me of the famous scene in Shane where a cold-blooded, black-gloved gunman played by Jack Palance goads an inexperienced homesteader played by Elisha Cook into drawing on him. If Obama keeps letting Clinton goad him into being defensive about his experience, he will be as outgunned as Cook.

Yet it surprises me that neither Obama nor any other candidate has sought to exploit the inherent contradiction in Clinton’s experience line. Someone should just ask her what is her experience? In answering she is caught in a trap of her own making (which believe me the Republicans will exploit) which is that if she says too much about her years as First Lady, it will open all kinds of wounds.

Elisha Cook ended up face down in the mud against Jack Palance because he made the mistake of choosing the wrong weapon. A shotgun or Winchester might have evened the odds. Obama needs to remember that lesson. In addition to studying Kennedy’s responses to Nixon’s playing the experience card, Obama might also replay Ronald Reagan’s debates with Jimmy Carter.

The Hamlet Candidate

If Dennis Kucinich has become the Candidate Who Won’t Go Away (more on that in the next part), Barack Obama has become the Hamlet Candidate, a would-be president whose donor list reflects a self-contradictory enigma. On the one hand, he seems to want to project an image of a Howard Dean-like people’s candidate, while on the other hand his donor list mirrors Hillary Clinton’s.

The donor lists asks if Obama is a Clinton knock-off or a genuine alternative to triangulation and the Clinton Cash Machine. That this far into the campaign we still do not have an answer explains why Obama can raise almost as much money as Clinton and yet trail her by a large margin in the polls.

Obama seems a personification of the speech in Hamlet, the one generations of school children used to have to memorize, “To be or not to be, that is the question?”

His performance in the debates also nurtures this impression. His answers often seem wonkish, rambling and sometimes downright uncertain. Even when he does give an articulate reply he often finds that the morning papers and the evening news give more attention to one of Hillary Clinton’s soundbites than his own answer.

Can He Still Win?

People I talk with in Iowa say that in person Obama can be articulate, personable and even humorous. Part of the difference in his national standing and his standing is Iowa may be that Iowans have listened to him in person rather than merely seen him in the debates. Some of those who have heard him even profess to have been moved by a kind of charisma that turns them into instant Obama supporters.

In a previous essay, I predicted that Obama could win Iowa, but he could also become the Howard Dean of 2008. If he continues to let Hillary Clinton draw him into the experience trap, he could find himself well back in the field.

Iowa voters are notoriously volatile. They have had a long habit of initially propelling some new face into contention only to change their minds. They respond one way to pollsters who call on the phone and then when it comes caucus time when they have to face their neighbors and declare which candidate they support, they suddenly go with the more mainstream choice.

Obama’s finances and his performance in the debates make him seem both a Hillary clone as well as less experienced. It is clear that Iowa and the nomination will come down to a race between Hillary Clinton and the candidate who can best capture the anti-Hillary vote. If the choice for the anti-Hillary camp is but another Hillary with less experience Barack Obama could well end up a footnote to history.

I have written also of what I term Principles Voters, using the term to differentiate them from the so-called Republican “values voters” who were the media heroes of 2004. Principles Voters long for someone who will return to the fundamental principles of the Democratic Party, principles that guided Democrats from William Jennings Bryan to Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

So far only Dennis Kucinich seems to have given Principles Voters much attention, but if mobilized they could not only help someone pull off an upset in Iowa, but provide the balance of power the rest of the way. The press seems to feel that after four years of Bush Administration incompetence that all Americans want is someone who can get through a speech without some embarrassing gaffe and get the government to run efficiently once again.

Yet the one question that stuck out in the Las Vegas debate was asked by a student who wondered if after so many years of what I term the Era of Bad Feelings, someone could again bring us together. What he seemed to be asking for was someone with principles.

If He Remembers The Speech

There have only been three candidates in American history who have risen to consideration for the Presidency based on a single speech: Ronald Reagan, William Jennings Bryan and Barack Obama. The words of both Bryan and Reagan not only remade their political parties but they remade America. In both cases they were able to do this because not only did they repeat those words over and over, but they became the guiding principles for their political careers.

Reagan’s address is still known today as simply The Speech. Obama’s address also has taken on the same name. Supporters of both Reagan and Bryan could recite whole sections of their speeches–and many Americans remember them even today. Yet four years’ after Obama’s speech, few Americans remember what was in it.

That is too bad, because Obama’s words deserve to be remembered. In a previous series on the Democratic Legacy, I highlighted the key speeches that served to define the core principle of not only Democrats but American democracy. I termed that principle a belief in the level playing field, but I could have just as easily said equity or justice. That principle echoes again and again in the speeches of Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. In the famous Kiel Auditorium speech of the 1948 campaign Harry Truman said, “The welfare of the whole people should come first.” Franklin Roosevelt’s “Forgotten Man” speech said solutions must come “from bottom to top not from top to bottom.”

People resonated with Obama’s speech because it articulated the principle of the level playing field and promised to make it relevant for this new millennium. His words are worth recalling not just for us but for him and his campaign staff. If he were to return to a campaign based on principle he could become a pivotal figure like Bryan and Reagan.

He begins his speech by telling his own story and that of his family, deftly turning it into a fable of the American dream in which every American can see something of their own stories and families. From this he draws these themes:

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation.

They imagined — They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.

From this he moves on to a section that frankly is an impressive rhetorical achievement, for he dares to evoke America’s very foundation, the Declaration of Independence and then give himself the daunting task of making these familiar words take on new meaning. It is a tactic that many politicians and public speakers have tried and fallen flat on their faces. In fact, as Garry Wills has pointed out only one man has really succeeded and to do so he had to give the greatest speech in American history, The Gettysburg Address.

Resting on the foundation that Obama has built with his personal story, he may not ascend to Lincoln’s level, but he is able to make the words of the Declaration relevant for our times:

That is the true genius of America, a faith — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted — at least most of the time.

This is the level playing field, the belief in equity and justice that runs through America’s democratic tradition and which seems to have been lost during the Bush years and arguably during the Clinton years (more on that in a future essay). Obama makes sure we do not lose sight of this idea coming back to it again and again in his speech:

People don’t expect — People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.

It is that fundamental belief — It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.

Somehow Obama even manages to tie these principles to John Kerry. Hearing the speech again after all these years, it makes you wish John Kerry had listened to his own keynoter instead of the triangulators.

Obama ends the speech with the phrase that became attached to him and one that he would do well to revive again. Why he and his campaign have forgotten it remains one of the great questions of this election:

In the end — In the end — In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

It is these words that helped to make Obama’s first book a best seller and one that still has people talking. Obama supporters cling to it as if it were a Bible and bring him copies to autograph. Yet somewhere along the way this Obama was lost, as if his soul had been captured by another being.

I believe that John Lewis sensed this and that was one reason for his endorsement of Hillary Clinton. That Lewis and the Clintons have a long relationship is part of it, but the Lion King withheld his endorsement longer than many thought he would. It makes me wonder if he wasn’t waiting to see if Obama recovered his voice.

Instead we have Hamlet. The end of the “To be or not to be” speech is something Obama should ponder:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Tagged with: abduct • Abraham_Lincoln • Abramoff • Barack_Obama • Bill_Clinton • Bush_tax_cuts • campaign_contributions • campaign_contributors • Dean • Declaration_of_Independence • Democratic_Party • Democratic_presidential_campaign • Democratic_Presidential_candidates • Democratic_presidential_candidate_rankings • democratic_principles • equity • era_of_bad_feelings • FDR • forgotten_man • Franklin_Roosevelt • future_of_the_Democratic_Party • Garry_Wills • Hamlet • Harry_Truman • hedge_funds • Hillary_Clinton • Hillary_Rodham_Clinton • Howard_Dean • Iowa • Iowa_caucuses • Iowa_voters • John_Kennedy • John_Lewis • justice • Latino_voters • level_playing_field • No_Child_Left_Behind_Act • nuclear_power • principles • principles_voter • Ronald_Reagan • Saddam_Hussein • Shakespeare • Sumner_Redstone • United_States_Supreme_Court • William_Jennings_Bryan • wiretapping • Woodrow_Wilson

Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat

A flower pot and a hellish garage. The flower pot signals a desire to talk, the garage the location for their dangerous conversations. Hal Holbrook’s voice half-whispers like a wraith: “Follow the money.” He might have been referring to Hillary Clinton not Watergate.

I remember listening to Sidney Pollack talk about filming that scene, which he described as an attempt to capture the hellish corruption of money along with the very real danger that those who supply the money play for keeps. He particularly worried whether the lighting would convey this notion of Holbrook’s Deep Throat as a Fallen Angel.

In Pollack’s hands, the evils of campaign finance became a scene from a modern Dante’s Inferno, which, after all is appropriate since Dante used the Inferno to consign some of the most evil characters of the late Middle Ages to horrific fates with a palpable feeling of revenge. This was a final judgment in which the scales meted out their savage sentences based on justice and equity.

Hillary’s Donors

When you locate Hillary Clinton’s donors list, you find no Stevie Cohens, but instead names familiar to any American who reads the financial pages. Here is the list courtesy of opensecrets.org:

At first glance, this list seems like a veritable Gordian knot of entanglements. Unlike Chris Dodd and Stevie Cohen or Joe Biden’s team of longtime supporters, this list does not on the surface appear to add up to anything but a tangle of some of America’s richest and most powerful. DLA Piper is America’s largest law firm, with offices all over the world, over 3,000 attorneys and a client list it would take six posts like this to detail. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, J.P Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers together represent the major players in the banking and investment world. Patton Boggs is the country’s largest lobbying firm. National Amusements (Sumner Redstone’s media empire), Time Warner and Cablevision are some of the country’s major media conglomerates.

DLA Piper’s officers include two former House majority leaders, Dick Armey, senior policy advisor for DLA Piper, and Dick Gephardt, senior counsel at the firm as well as former Senator George Mitchell. When Piper held a panel on the 2008 election, guess whom they predicted would be the Democratic nominee? According to the web site of the Armenian National Committee of America, DLA Piper has a $1.2 million dollar lobbying contract with the government of Turkey:

Including a controversial - although not entirely surprising - provision that seeks to prevent even “debate” in the United States on legislation “that harms Turkey’s interests or image.”

It also has contracts with the governments of Afghanistan and Ethiopia and the Prime Minister of the UAE, plus lobbyists in place at the European Union.

Of more concern should be the political hot-buttons of these donors. Both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been major proponents of privatizing Social Security. If you watched the Las Vegas debate, you may have noticed how Hillary Clinton waffled noticeably on what she would do about Social Security. Along with most firms, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also have strongly urged further deregulation of the securities industry.

The number one lobbying firm Patton Boggs also has some interesting major clients. They include the drug companies Bristol Myers and Hoffman LaRoche, Kidney Care Partners (a dialysis conglomerate), and the Long Term Pharmacy Alliance. Given these clients, you can bet Patton Boggs will not sit still when a Hillary Clinton administration drafts a health care bill.

This leads to an interesting question about the names on the list: who else do they support? Checking their donations, you see some familiar names: George Bush, John Kerry, and Charles Schumer. On the other hand, they don’t support liberals, progressives, and long shots.

The sword that cuts this Gordian knot of impressive donors is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of what has been termed Clintonism. Most of the analysis of Clintonism has focused on the much-discussed concept of triangulation, a term coined by former Clinton campa