"Guess Who's in the White House"

On April 1, a USA Today/Gallup Poll indicated that President Barack Obama had a job approval rating of 44%, while 50% of those polled said he should not be re-elected as President. The poll also indicated that 26% said that he deserved "a great deal" of the blame for the state of the economy, while 42% said President Bush did.

About two months before the USA Today/Gallup Poll, President Bush had given a speech before a Republican gathering and had said with an air of confidence: "I left office with my values in tact," which drew a round of applause. His statement was incomplete. It should have concluded with the words, "and with the country in a big mess."

That mess included an annual federal budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, a projected federal deficit of $8 trillion over the next ten years, owing to tax cuts, mainly to the wealthy that the Bush administration did not pay for, a nearly trillion dollar prescription drug bill for the pharmaceutical industry not paid for, and the loss of $3 trillion in federal revenue owing to the recession.

The recession was also part of the mess, as was a huge fall in stock market shares, a loss of 750,000 jobs a month, and over 8,000,000 jobs lost, a collapsing corporate financial system, two major automobile manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler, on the verge of going under, and America's image in the world at low ebb.

President Bush walked away from the audience he spoke to clutching a fantasy. And President Obama stepped into office with an overload of huge problems. He also quickly learned that the Republicans in Congress had decided, under their House and Senate leadership, to do whatever they could to make him fail as President.

That included vigorously opposing his legislative agenda; in the Senate, holding up scores of his appointments to cripple the functioning of his administration, and using the filibuster an unprecedented number of times- - to date, 113 times- - to delay, thwart, and to suppress legislation that the House sent to the Senate that would advance the President and the Democratic Party's agenda.

Republicans in the Congress decided not to be the party of "loyal opposition", but the "party of no," the "party of extreme partisanship," and the "party of obstruction." Republicans in the Senate are presently holding up 293 bills that the House has passed and sent to their chamber.

All that has been described has been placed heavily upon the shoulders of President Obama. It should be taken into account when considering how to rate his job performance. The other matters to take into account are the things he achieved during the sixteen months he has been in office.

But before revealing that, I want to preface that discussion by recalling the plot to the movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" directed by Stanley Kramer which starred Spencer Tracey, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Hepburn's niece.

The plot was the following. The parents, played by Tracey and Hepburn, were to be confronted with the fact that their daughter, played by Hepburn's niece, was going to marry a Black man, played by Sidney Poitier. The plot called for the parents to reject the marriage simply because the fiance was a Black man.

This could be the only reason, because the fiance was tall and handsome, had stellar personal qualities, was well educated, well spoken, and was an internationally famous medical doctor and author. In the end, the parents transcended their racial biases and were able to accept the marriage.

Now back to the political situation at hand, that of President Obama's low job rating and a wish that he not be re-elected. Given what he has achieved over a period of sixteen months, these negative views seem clearly to be related to the phrase: "Guess Who's in the White House."

The following are some of the things that President Obama has achieved sixteen months into his administration:

Within 3 1/2 weeks of it and aided by the Democratic Party in Congress, he got a $780billion Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed to deal with the recession and massive unemployment. The Act included giving 95% of working families a tax cut.

After 16 months, and also aided by the Federal Reserve, the President has halted the recession, gotten the American economy back into growth, has elevated the stock market from 6500 points to over 11,000, that has helped to recover and protect 401ks, and retirement and pension funds. Unemployment has been stabilized at 9.7%, and in March of this year, 162,000 new jobs were created.

The President and his economic team were put in charge of managing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan (or TARP) to bail out or to salvage 18 of the largest banks in the country, to keep the corporate financial system from collapsing. This was done successfully, which included spending only half the TARP funds, getting the banks to pay back most of what had been borrowed, and with the government and taxpayers making a profit. The President also:

Saved both General Motors and Chrysler, holding out a future of millions of jobs that are related to auto manufacturing.

Signed the ESCHIP legislation that extended health care to 11 million children.

Signed a bill that outlawed cigarette advertising targeting children.

Signed a bill to guarantee women equal pay for equal work.

Put a Supreme Court Justice on the high bench.

Signed a bill to give educational benefits to veterans.

Passed and signed comprehensive health care reform legislation that seven previous Presidents had failed to pass. According to the Congressional Budget Office this health care reform legislation will reduce the Federal deficit by $138 billion over ten years and $1.2 trillion over two decades, which will represent the largest deficit reduction legislation ever passed in the country.

Passed and signed an education reform bill that will save $68 billion over ten years by having the government issue student loans and not the banks, and that will allow the government to invest more money directly into American education.

Lowered 25 different taxes for Americans.

Invested $3.4 billion in developing the electric smart grid to expand this form of energy in the country's future.

Proposed a comprehensive climate change and energy independence bill that was passed by the House, and that Republicans are stalling in the Senate.

Proposed comprehensive corporate financial reform legislation that was passed by the House, that Republicans in the Senate initially sought to kill, but which they now, under Presidential and public pressure, seem willing to join Democrats in that body in passing.

Received the Nobel Prize for Peace on the assumption made by the judges that he would make the world safer and more peaceful. The President is earning that prize. He got the Russian President Dimitry Medvedev to sign a START agreement to reduce each country's nuclear stockpiles.

Since the USA Today/Gallup Poll, the President assembled 46 world leaders in Washington, D.C., who all signed a pledge to secure lose nuclear material within four years. Russia agreed to destroy 34 tons of plutonium, which could help to make 17,000 nuclear weapons.

Ordered hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments to grant hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners, and to allow gay men and lesbians to make decisions regarding the medical treatment of their partners.

As can be seen, President Obama has done a number of important things during his sixteen months in office (some of which are also achievements of the Democratic Party). One can see how his approval rating could and should be much higher than 44%, and it is mysterious to say the least that 50% in the USA Today/Gallup Poll would not want him to be re-elected.

Are we witnessing responses that could be related to a distressing thought for many Americans, and that would help to explain why President Obama has not been given proper credit for what he has achieved, and why many insist that he has not served the country well? These peculiar reactions seem clearly to be related to the phrase: "Guess who's in the White House?"

The Political Lynching of President Obama

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 has sent the Republican Party into a hysterical tailspin. This party has been considerably anti Black since the early 1980s and has its base among Whites in the eleven states of the former Southern Confederacy, who are the Republicans primarily in this tailspin.

The cry that shoots up from this element, and from other Republicans, found in the Mid-West and West, is that Obama has to fail as President! These elements are relying upon the Republicans in Congress to do whatever they can to make him fail. Feeling charged with this task, they have formed themselves into a political lynch mob in this body and have been engaging in actions to try to achieve this objective that amount to a political lynching of the President.

The Republicans in Congress have been against virtually everything that the President has proposed and sent to Congress for discussion and legislation. They have engaged in the tactics of saying "no" of "no show" for legislative committee meetings, of being obstructionists (rather than the party of the loyal opposition), and of being against bi-partisan political action.

In the U.S. Senate, Republicans have used the rules of that body to delay, thwart, or prevent legislation from being discussed or passed, or as a means to try to kill legislation, or to block Administration appointments. They have used the filibuster to date 112 times, something wholly unprecedented in American political history, to try to do all of the things mentioned.

The filibuster has always been an undemocratic political device, and is not to be found in the discussion of the Senate in the Constitution. It permits a single Senator, or an elected numerical minority of Senators, to dominate, thwart, or prevent an elected majority of Senators from passing policies or laws. It also allows less populated states to have a greater voice in the chamber than large populated states.

Why is this anti-democratic, dictatorial political device permitted to continue?

And yet the present situation in Washington, D.C. where the Republican Party in Congress is pitted against the President in such a confrontational manner is not wholly unprecedented. It is to be recalled what occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Walter White, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, went to the White House to ask President Roosevelt to get Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill.

Roosevelt told him that that was not something he would try to do even if he wanted to. He was concerned about the reaction of the southern white Democrats who controlled most of the important committees in the House and Senate. He said to White, as revealed in the latter's autobiography, A Man Called White: If I come out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can't take that risk.

In other words, as Roosevelt saw it, southern Whites in Congress and in southern states, would rather see the country collapse than have their ability--which they regarded as their inherent right--to dominate and control Blacks, and to be able to do with them or to them whatever they wished.

But even this kind of extreme behavior from southern Whites was not unprecedented and had a horrendous antecedent.

The eleven southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861 were willing to break up the Union, rather than see the U.S. government engage in action to end slavery in the region and the White domination, control, and gross economic exploitation of Blacks. This is another meaning to be assigned to the Confederate flag.

In 2009, it is Deja Vu once again. President Obama has proposed a major overhaul of the American health care system, climate change and energy independence policies and legislation, major educational reform, and effective regulation of the corporate financial sector that had recklessly plunged the country into a financial and economic mess. All of these things are important for the American people, the country, and the country's future.

But the Republicans in Congress are seeking to prevent this kind of legislative agenda from being passed and signed into law. They exhibit a lack of hesitation, conscience, and moral distress about inflicting possible catastrophic harm upon millions of Americans and the country, as long as they can prevent Obama from succeeding as President. This assertion cannot be put down to wild talk or baseless accusation. There are, as seen, historical precedents.

Including the recent instance of Deja Vu whereby southerners especially in the House and Senate were against Obama using federal funds to try to save Chrysler and General Motors, which are both important to the economy of the Mid-West. They permitted themselves to countenance the failure of these auto-makers and the hardships this would present to the people and economy of the region, if it meant that Obama would not have a political success.

So what is the primary motivation for trying to make Obama fail as President? Some pundits have said that the Republicans in Congress are seeking to weaken Democrats for the 2010 elections, and President Obama and the Democrats in the 2012 elections.

This view seems plausible, but it has little merit as Republican behavior in Congress results in the public giving the Republican Party low ratings in the polls.

Former President Jimmy Carter was closer in pinpointing the primary motivation for this incredibly extreme and reckless political behavior demonstrated by Republicans in Congress and without the government. He said it could be traced to the racist belief found among these hostile elements that a Black man should not be President of the United States.

This is a good answer, but it is one that has to be taken further to gain the full meaning of it.

The Presidency has become the last stronghold of white male dominance and exclusivity in American life, which has seen both features severely eclipsed over the past several decades.

The following used to be positions held exclusively by white men in the country, but are no longer: U.S. Senator and Representatives, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, U.S. Attorney General, governor, Lt. governor, state attorney general, mayor, police commissioner, fire commissioner, Fortune 500 corporate president or CEO, major college or university president, major foundation head, astronaut, NFL head coach, Major League baseball manager, NBA head coach, NFL quarterback, and other flight positions in the country.

But there was the office of President. That office was still held by a white man. It was still in the hands of the "proper" one to lead the country, who could establish and implement policies, legislative programs, and laws, and who could also build constituencies and galvanize people, institutions, and regions of the country to keep America the way it was "supposed" to be.

But the white male dominance and exclusivity in the White House, and the hoped for future this might provide, was taken away when Obama, a Black man, became President.

This loss and racist fear of the future has plunged many Republicans and the Republican Party itself into depths of irrational political thinking and political behavior.

For instance, electing a Black man, Michael Steele, to head up a political party that has been considerably anti-Black since the early 1980s. And thinking that this could be interpreted as something other than racist "tokenism".

Trying to convince themselves and trying to prove by forgeries that President Obama was not born in the United States and was not a citizen of the country.

Showing utter disdain for Obama as a human being, which is so telling.

Calling Obama, alternatively, fascist, Nazi, communist, marxist, socialist, terrorist, or jihadist, which are all euphemisms for what they would really like to call him publicly, but can't get away with doing so.

Endeavoring to silence or censor moderates or kick them out of the Party, fearing that they would be supportive of the President and his legislative agenda.

Believing that the minority Republican Party in Congress should be regarded, even by the Democrats, as the majority party in that body.

Seeking to build a party of ideological purity, that succeeds in alienating political independents and dividing the Republican Party and moving it to the edge of splitting into two parties: the Republican Party and the Southern White Party.

Virtually making bi-partisanship un-American and a form of political evil, while endeavoring at the same time, to make extreme partisanship American and a form of political good.

Wanting Republicans in Congress who do not seek to govern, to legislate, or to do the country's business. But to be "nay-sayers" to policies, programs, and laws, and who seek in any way possible to obstruct or sabotage the legislative process and paralyze the functioning of the Senate, and thus, of the U.S. government--to try to make Obama fail as President.

Believing that putting this kind of political face before the American electorate--as the "do-nothing" and "obstructionist" party--is the way to gain voters and donors for the Republican Party, and give it a viable future.

Politically lynching President Obama is the means that the anti-Obama Republicans in the Congress and without are using to try to win back the White House for a white male occupant, to get "their country" back, and as the means to "prove" that a Black person does not have the inherent capacity to be President of the United States.

We are told that they are honorable and fair-minded Republicans in the Senate, but they are all involved in this political lynching of the President. So what does this say? What would be the response of the Republican women in the Senate if the political lynching was of a female President? Would they participate in the lynching or be supportive of it?

Now that Democrats have lost their 60 votes in the Senate, it is to be expected that the Republicans will seek to step up their lynching of President Obama. They will not only require 60 votes for all significant policies and laws in the Senate, they will also reject or suppress policies, programs, or laws that the Democrats in the House send to the Senate. To date they have suppressed over 290 bills.

This is the political future that Republicans in Congress and without offer the American people, beginning with the Congressional elections of 2010. They envision this as assuring Obama's failure as President, and it also has them saying to the national government, the American people, America's relationship to the world, and the country's future: "You can all be damned!"

Disneyland Republicans (Disneyland Democrats)

It should be stated once again because, apparently, some people seem not to know that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and that the Democratic Party won the House of Representatives to give it a clear majority, and enough seats in the Senate to be one vote shy of being able to prevent a filibuster.

Those who seem not to know of these election outcomes are not foreigners living in other countries, but rather the Republicans in the House and Senate of the U.S. Congress. Just recently, all the Republicans in the House voted against President Obama's "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act," popularly known as the "stimulus bill," and all but three Republicans voted against it in the Senate.

The Republicans are obsessed with having "talking points," so that members of the Party, such as talk show hosts, or political analysts, or media political commentators, can all be on the same page in their political discourse, and be able to exhibit a collective voice.

A slate of talking points were rolled out in response to the "stimulus bill" and why Republicans in Congress had overwhelmingly voted against it. And the talking points showed the Republicans in Congress functioning on the basis of fanciful thinking, or fantasies, which makes it possible to describe them as "Disneyland Republicans," a term which can also be applied to other Republicans.

The leaders of the Republicans in the House John Boehner and Eric Cantor, and the Party's leaders in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, with other members of the Party echoing them, argued as a talking point, that the reason they did not vote for the bill was that it was not "genuinely bipartisan."

What did they mean by genuine bipartisanship? Nothing less than--as this and other talking points showed--the Democratic Party and the Republican Party functioning as equals to construct and pass laws, policies, and programs, and specifically, the "stimulus bill". This was clear, fanciful Disneyland thinking.

The reality of political party relationships in the Congress, or in state governments, or city governments, is that one party has won the election and is the majority party, and the other party has lost the election and is the minority party. The minority party is not equal to the majority party in these situations. And this is so obvious.

But it is not obvious to the Disneyland Republicans in the Congress, as reflected by other of their talking points: that the stimulus bill should have mainly been about tax cuts, or at least half of it should have been tax cuts, and the other half spending. This was the loser of the elections, the minority in the Congress, trying to determine how the stimulus bill was to be constructed.

President Obama had to remind Eric Cantor, when he had Republican Congressional leaders at the White House, that he had won the election, and that he, as well as the Democrats, had some prerogatives, even a mandate from the American people, to determine the legislative means to deal with the economic crisis.

The Republicans in Congress responded by coming forth with more talking points. They said that in saying that he had won the election, President Obama was showing that he was not interested in a genuine bipartisanship, that his talk of bipartisanship was only show, that his Party had the majority in Congress, and that he and the Democrats were going to do as they pleased regardless of what Republicans in Congress said.

These were talking points that pointed to the Republicans seeming not to know that they had lost the election, that they were the minority party in Congress and that they were not the equal of the majority party and did not have an equal voice in this bill construction, and were not entitled to it. To think otherwise was strictly fanciful, Disneyland thinking.

Senator John McCain weighed in on the situation, and he showed that it had not yet sunken in with him that he had lost the election to Obama. He argued that the stimulus bill should have been half spending and half tax cuts. This was coming from someone who had been the losing Presidential candidate, but who apparently thought he was equal to the winner, and even a "co-President." This was fanciful, Disneyland thinking.

But then again, Senator McCain also seemed to be operating from another political stance that seemed to feed into his fanciful thinking. He had always conceived bipartisanship as occurring on an individual basis: an individual from one party crossing the aisle to work with an individual from the other party to fashion a bill. This was what Senator McCain did with Senator Russ Feingold to produce a bill on public financing for Presidential elections.

But for McCain to conceive of himself and President Obama as being two individuals who were politically equal and who would work together to pass pieces of legislation, had to be predicated on fanciful thinking.

President Obama was not just an individual, he was the elected leader of the country. John McCain was a Senator representing a single state, Arizona, and its population. This was not an equal or co-equal situation, and with McCain assuming or believing that it was, showed him to be in the throes of fantasy.

Another talking point that the Disneyland Republicans in Congress came up with, and that was echoed by other Republicans, and especially their talk show supporters, was that the "stimulus bill" was not a jobs creating bill, and they matched that point by saying that government did not and could not create jobs.

The Disneyland character of this kind of talk was that the Republicans, as well as the Democrats in Congress, were in government-created jobs. And this would also be true of governors or mayors, Democrat or Republican.

As to the "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act" not creating jobs. The first thing to be said, which the Disneyland Republicans and their following seem unable to say, is that this bill was constructed to SAVE as well as create jobs.

Saving jobs did not seem to be that important to them, but this, of course, would be important to people who were being threatened with the loss of their jobs.

But to argue that the government could not create jobs, that spending billions of dollars on infrastructure would not create jobs, and that in engaging in this kind of spending the government would not be creating jobs, was ludicrous on the face of it, and bespoke of a fanciful, Disneyland undergirding of thought.

What the Disneyland Republicans in the Congress were unable to perceive, since their thinking was so fanciful and unrelated to reality, was that they were now in the role of PARTICIPANT/CONTRIBUTOR in the Congress, and not in the role of being the DETERMINANT FACTOR, which belonged to the Democrats, the winning, majority party.

When President Obama sought to reach out to the Republicans, he did so on what should have been an understood assumption by the Republicans, and that should not have had to be spelled out to them: that they would be included as participant/contributors, and that this would be the basis of bipartisanship between the two parties.

The President believed and still does, that this could be the basis for significant bipartisanship in the government. But the Republicans in their fanciful, even delusional thinking, would not accept this conception of bipartisanship, as reflected in the demand that the "stimulus bill" be half theirs.

What would be the point of winning elections if the losing party was made equal to the winner, which would make it the winner, too? Now, that is so absurd it isn't funny, but the Disneyland Republicans were operating on the basis of this absurdity seeking to be determinant on legislation, rather than participant/contributors.

President Obama does not like the idea that the losing party cannot participate significantly in government as the losing minority party. If it is not able to, then it would also not be able to represent its large constituency, which has its legitimate concerns and needs, too; who are Americans after all, and who have a right to have some kind of representation and voice in their own government.

The President had the experience in the Illinois state legislature of being a member of a party that was frozen out by the majority party, making it impossible for his party to represent its large constituency in the state. He came to the U.S. Senate and found the Democrats excluded by the Republicans.

This President understands democracy to mean inclusion and not exclusion, so that the losing minority party has a functioning place in the government and the legislature process, but it has to be on the basis of the minority party accepting its role as a participant and contributor, and the President would say, as he has said, as a constructive contributor.

The Disneyland Republicans in the Congress are taking great pride in being defiant toward the President, and even OBSTRUCTIONISTS. This shows that they do not want to promote bipartisanship on any basis, except as equals, as determinants, and this is delusional and Disneyland.

It is also being dishonest and deceitful. And they exhibited this kind of behavior in another way, as revealed in one of their sanguine talking points. That talking point argued that tax cuts should have gone to small businesses, and even said that this should have comprised ninety percent of the tax cuts, because small businesses create most of the jobs in the country.

But this is Disneyland Republicans and other Republicans being dishonest and deceitful. This tax proposal is what they always come out with when they cannot promote their favorite tax program of giving big tax cuts to the rich and the economic corporations that they own or manage, as they did under George Bush, and Ronald Reagan before him - which, in the case of both Presidents, led to huge federal defecits and unbalanced budgets.

Another of the chief talking points of the Disneyland Republicans in Congress, as well as many other Republicans and their media supporters, was their argument that they functioned from conservative values and conservative principles. Thus, they were proud of being rigidly ideological. President Obama detests ideological politics, seeing them as narrow, promoting partisanship, exclusion, and also producing gridlock do-nothing politics, and do-nothing government.

For the President, ideology and ideological politics cannot and will not, be the basis for trying to build bipartisanship in Washington. One of the primary ideological tenets of the Disneyland Republicans, and which is one of their talking points, which they actually took from Ronald Reagan, was that "government was the problem, not the solution" to national issues.

President Obama rejected this view. The American voters rejected this view. Government can be helpful, or hurtful, which requires trying to use it in an intelligent manner. The Disneyland Republicans wanting the "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act" to be all about, or mainly about cutting taxes, indicated that they had Reagan's view of government, and wanted the President and Democratic Party to accept it. It would have involved Disneyland thinking for them to do so.

President Obama turns to Abraham Lincoln for his views on government. Lincoln believed that it should be limited in ways it related to the economy, or the larger society, but it might be called upon to play an extensive role in relation to each.

With respect to the latter, Lincoln used the U.S. government to create a national banking system, to finish building a continental railroad, to subsidize war industries, to give land away in the West for settlers to take ownership of it and to farm it, and to establish land grant colleges to promote scientific farming and technical training.

It is not by coincidence that the Disneyland Republicans in Congress and other Republicans--as did the Republican Party Presidential candidates in their string of Presidential debates--associate the Republican Party with Ronald Reagan and not Abraham Lincoln. Who invokes the name of Lincoln? The Democrat Barack Obama!

There is one thing that really galls the Disneyland Republicans in Congress, and other Republicans, and that makes them feel disoriented or lost, and that makes them susceptible to fanciful thinking, and a Disneyland approach to politics. They had their conservatism stolen from them by Barack Obama during the Presidential campaign, and who still steals it from them as President.

The Republicans were totally caught off guard to hear a Democratic Presidential candidate stress American themes, talk strongly about patriotism, show strong religious beliefs, talk about religion having a relationship to politics, who favored faith-based initiatives, who stressed the family and family values, and who even talked favorably about the market economy, and who advocated strengthening the military.

What was left for the Republican Party after it lost the elections, and had so many of their conservative tenets taken from them? During the Presidential campaign Reublicans tried to combat Obama's usurpation by calling him an extreme liberal--"the most liberal politician in the Congress"--as it was phrased.

Obama definitely has liberal ideas. But he also has, as seen, conservative ideas, and he also, at times, thinks like a moderate. Obama is not an ABSOLUTIST EITHER-OR thinker, which says a person can hold only one set of political beliefs, political values, and engage in only one form of political behavior, either liberal, conservative, or moderate.

The Disneyland Republicans in Congress are absolutist either-or thinkers, and this is also true of many Democrats in Congress. The Disneyland Republicans are narrow conservatives, and many Democrats in the body are narrow liberals who do not want to work with or work significantly with Republicans. That makes them Disneyland Democrats.

President Obama has difficulty with both kinds of Disneyland politicians, because he is a HOLISTIC thinker, one who can hold multiple sets of political ideals, political values, and engage in multiple forms of political behavior: liberal, conservative, and moderate.

There has never been a President in the White House who thinks like this. Obama wants Representatives and Senators in Washington to think like he does, in a holistic manner, and not in an either-or manner, because it results in partisanship and gridlock in government.

When he ran for the White House Obama said he wanted to change the mind-set and the political culture of Washington. The mind-set is rigid either-or thinking that promotes narrow ideological thinking, and that in turn promotes partisan politics and its consequences. The political culture is rooted in this mind-set, which sustains it, and which militates against changing it.

The absolutist either-or mind-set is also found among political analysts and media political commentators, who, therefore, help to maintain the political culture in Washington, of which they are often too critical. Invariably, individuals in these two groups of analysts, view a politician as a liberal, or moderate, or conservative. It does not occur to them that a politician could or should hold multiple political views, and function from multiple political stances.

This is what they are still unable to understand about Barack Obama. Invariably, they refer to him as a liberal, and evaluate him from that perspective, and when he does not conform to what their analysis from that limited perspective says about him, or what he should be doing, they refer to him as "deviating," being "ambiguous," being "inconsistent," not being "truthful," or "forthcoming;"while ignoring other thoughts expressed in his views.

Even Obama's massive numbers of followers do not know that he is a holistic thinker and that he holds or is capable of holding multiple political ideals or beliefs, simultaneously, and is able to act on them all. Most of his followers can be described as liberal, and they regard Obama as a liberal. But he is not, although he does and can have liberal political beliefs and engage in liberal political behavior.

Obama wants to change the political mind-set in Washington from either-or, to holistic thinking. He wants politicians in government, whether it is Republicans or Democrats, to be able to hold multiple political beliefs or values, and be able to function in multiple political ways, as a matter of course. And he would like to see both do so at all levels of government.

This mind-set would automatically be oriented to bipartisan thinking and bipartisan politics, which would still have to occur within the framework of a winning political party, the majority party in government, and the losing minority party; and bipartisanship based on a majority as a determinant factor and a minority as a participant/contributor, preferably constructively.

This change would involve getting rid of the notion of the losing party as the "loyal opposition." It is loyal only to it's own ideals. Thus, this concept is based on either-or thinking and partisan politics and can promote obstruction, gridlock politics, and gridlock government.

Either-or political thinking and either-or partisan politics are the "Old Political Thinking" and the "Old Politics." President Obama wants New Political Thinking, which is Holistic Political Thinking, and a New Politics, which is Holistic Bipartisan Politics, based on a Majority-Determinant and Minority Participant/Contributor model.

President Obama cannot bring about the change he wants in the political mind-set, the politics, and the political culture in Washington D.C. alone, and still less alone at the state and local level. He needs help. And he has the basis for it.

This basis is his large political following, who he said he would call on for help once in office. What this constituency would have to do is to work themselves out of their own absolutist either-or method of thinking, and develop a holistic manner of thinking, and become convinced of the need for this country to produce politicians who can think and act this way.

The next thing for them to do would be the following: 1) Over the next four years to use their cell phones, the internet, and other communication devices to organize themselves nationally, statewide, and locally to be activists on this matter; 2) to establish the means -- lectures, op-ed columns, public forums, college or university teach-ins, radio or television talk show discussions, etc. - to draw the population of the country into a discussion about absolutist either-or and holistic thinking, and about the need to produce politicians who can think this way to be able to hold multiple political ideals or beliefs and engage in multiple forms of political behavior; 3) who could think of bipartisan politics in a holistic manner as a matter of course; 4) who would have a full understanding that bipartisanship politics takes place in government in the context of a winning party that is the majority party, and the determinant factor, and of a losing party that is the minority party and a participant/contributor, and preferably constructively; 5) that believes that democracy is about inclusion and not exclusion; 6) that a minority should have a significant voice in government and it's legislative processes, to be able to represent its constituency in a significant manner within the limited political framework.

If Democrats, Republicans, or Independents were sent to Washington with holistic mind-sets, this would establish this mind-set in Washington D.C., that would produce a political culture of the desired New Political Thinking and the New Politics, which would nourish and perpetuate both.

And all of this could also happen at the state and local level of government to make it national political thinking and politics and a national political culture. Political analysts and media political commentators have a role to play in these developments, and the President's national constituency should draw them into it them.

Obama: Substance Aplenty

The Republican Party and its various kinds of supporters are attempting to portray Senator Barack Obama as someone who is flashy, charismatic, an eloquent speaker, even a rock star, but who has no substance.

George Will has likened Senator Obama to the famous dancer Fred Astaire, who was flashy and elegant as a dancer. But in the case of Obama, he lacks substance.

George Will is regarded as an astute political analyst. He recently had an interview with Wolfe Blitzer on CNN to advertise his latest book. Blitzer made the observation that this Presidential election was a real exception, because it was possible that a Black man might become President.

George Will's response to this observation was that he did not think that this would be unusual. Wolfe Blitzer had a look on his face, as if he was not hearing what he was hearing. There have been 43 Presidents in American history, and all of them have been white men. George Will did not think it would be unusual to have a Black man in the White House!

What he thought was unusual about the upcoming Presidential election, was that it would provide an opportunity for a classic contest between a conservative and a liberal running for the high office.

George Will's first response to Wolfe Blitzer was so bizarre that one can only conclude that he does not want a Black man to be President. It is not something he would say in public directly, but he nevertheless said it publicly and clearly by implication; and also said publicly by implication, that being President of the United States was "a white man's job."

This is still what a lot of white people feel in this country, and what is meant by those who publicly and directly say that they will not vote for Senator Obama because he is Black.

But other white people, like George Will, express their racism more subtly. Some Republicans express racism against Senator Obama by saying that he is too young to be President. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became President. John Kennedy was 43, and his brother, Robert Kennedy, would have been 44 had he been elected in 1968.

Senator Obama is 47, a relatively young man, too. But while relatively young white men can be President, a relatively young Black man--who is even older than the white men mentioned--cannot be President. This is almost like saying 47 is too old to be President. If so, then what about John McCain who is or will be 72?

Clearly, saying that Senator Obama is too young to be President is subtle racism at work, and is also saying that "being President is a white man's job".

The Republican Party's general attack against Senator Obama at the moment is that he lacks experience, is not ready to govern, lacks substance, and would be risky and a liability in the White House. This line of attack exhibits subtle racist undertones, as will be shown.

Senator Obama himself believes that one of his strengths as a Presidential candidate is that he did not spend years or decades in Washington D.C., and become drenched in and handicapped by the old political thinking and old politics in the city.

He believes that his life experiences, combined with the political experience he has had, which includes being a state senator and a U.S. Senator, and being able to understand and evaluate how executive and legislative branches function and interact with each other, has given him some preparation to be President, and also insights into how to govern.

The strongest part of the Republican attack line is that Senator Obama lacks substance or personal substantive qualities, and that this is the main reason why he would be risky or a liability as President. When someone like Obama who is drenched with such qualities is accused of not having them, one sees the subtle racist undertone of the argument, and how it points to the sign that reads "being President is a white man's job."

Let's review some of the things that Senator Obama has done and accomplished that speaks to the question of whether or not he has substance, and that would also speak to the caliber of his experiences that has given him some preparation to be President.

Senator Obama is very intelligent, which is an achievement. Having intellectual ability is not the same as being intelligent. George Will, for instance, has intellectual ability, but he certainly was not exhibiting intelligence, when he said that having a Black man in the White House would not be an unusual thing in American history and life.

Senator Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, the most prestigious law school in the country. He became editor of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious position that a law school student can attain in this country. Being the editor of the Harvard Law Review opens an unfettered path to the nation's biggest law firms, or a position as a legal assistant to a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Instead of letting these opportunities open up doors for him, Senator Obama decided to dedicate his education, intelligence, and knowledge of the law to serving people on the lower end of the social scale. He became a community organizer in Chicago to help such people, namely, Blacks and Hispanics, became a civil rights lawyer for them, and subsequently taught the American Constitution and Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

Senator Obama was elected to the Illinois state legislature, as a state senator. He served in that capacity for eight years. Tucker Carlson, who used to have an hour's long program on MSNBC to analyze politics, and who boasted constantly about being a conservative, used to say of Senator Obama's experience as a state legislator, that it amounted to nothing, and also added his few years in the U.S. Senate to that castigation.

How can being a state senator and a U.S. Senator totaling up to 12 years amount to nothing, and not involve important political and legislative experience? One can see what is agonizing Tucker Carlson at the gut level: a Black man possibly becoming President.

Senator Obama was able to pass some significant legislation in the Illinois state Senate. He got an ethics bill passed, the first one in twenty five years in Illinois. He joined with conservative Republican Kirk Dillard to pass a law requiring police in Illinois to videotape interrogations in capital cases, which could be used in court. He helped to get health insurance for 150,000 children in Illinois, and also a tax cut for low income families. His last year in the Illinois state legislature when Democrats were in the majority, he, remarkably, was able to get 26 bills passed.

The Republicans usually refrain from talking about what Barack Obama actually did in the Illinois state legislature. They usually only like to mention that he voted "pass" on 125 bills. This was out of over 4,000 votes that he cast.

The Republicans will use the 125 "pass" votes against Senator Obama in the general election. What they will not tell voters is that Senator John McCain did not vote 235 times between 1999 and 2008 for measures that were voted on in the U.S. Senate. He just refused to show up.

What the Republicans also will not say is that Sentor McCain has a dismal voting record with respect to American troops and veterans, while Senator Obama has a good record with respect to both. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran Group gave McCain a "D" for his voting, and Senator Obama a "B+." Disabled Veterans gave Senator MCain an unfavorable 20% rating, while giving Senator Obama a favorable 80% rating.

In 2002, the Illinois Senator publicly denounced the war against Iraq, and indicated the negative consequences that would result from it, which came to pass. This showed great insight and judgment, i.e., substantive intellectual and perceptive qualities.

In 2004 Obama gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that catapulted him into the political limelight. In that speech, he exhibited a plethora of subsantive personal qualities: visionary thinking, holistic, rather than narrow either-or thinking, great oratory, charisma, an ability to excite, enthuse, and inspire people, and showed that he had a high capability for leadership.

How impressive Senator Obama's substantive personal qualities are can be compared to the personal qualities of Senator John McCain. The Arizona Senator has demonstrated over and over again, that he is not a good speaker, is not visionary or inspirational, cannot excite or invest people with enthusiasm, totally lacks charisma, and is stiff and dull.

Senator McCain is also not a leader, and he has never been one. For many years, he considered himself a "maverick," and some politicians, political analysts, and some voters thought that was what made him attractive as a politician. The Republican Party is presently running an ad that says Senator McCain is "the original maverick."

This ad is running, because McCain's campaign and the Republican Party are trying to combat the charge of the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party that John McCain is so closely allied with George Bush, that he would provide a third term of Bush's domestic and foreign policies. He would keep Bush (and Cheney people) on the domestic and foreign policy side of his administration to do so.

The ad also seeks to combat the opposition's charge that John McCain is no longer a maverick, but is now a Presidential candidate who will say and do anything to get elected. It is also out there to try to attract Independents to McCain.

Senator John McCain's definition of maverick would correspond to that found in Webster's Dictionary: "An independently minded person who refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adhering to a particular group." A maverick defies and eschews leadership and seeks to circumvent it.

It is one thing to be a maverick as a member of the House of Representives or the U.S. Senate (and it is not being a maverick just crossing the political aisle). But what is true about a maverick is that such a person cannot lead a national political institution, as some Republicans are saying about John McCain, with respect to him trying to lead their national Party, and who are angry about the new ad.

And it does not take a rocket scientist to know that a maverick cannot be President of the United States and lead the national government or the country. Mavericks are extemporaneous, careless, and unpredictable. John McCain, thinking and acting like a maverick in the White House, would not only be an enormous risk and liability, but would have the country potentially courting disaster, and could plunge America's international relations into chaos.

To believe that the first of these dire things is a possiblity with maverick John McCain in the White House reflect on the comments he made on a campaign stop on 8/8/08.

The comments were prepared remarks: "When I am President, I will call the Congress back into session. They left for a five week vacation. They should return and return immediately. I will be glad to go back to Washington to vote to solve this energy crisis. And Americans want action. They don't want Congress to take vacations."

These remarks are illogical and wholly incoherent. If elected, Senator McCain would not be President until January 2009, when he would have no need to call Congress back from the vacation they had taken months earlier. He apparently was also thinking he would be President sometime in August, or in early September, to call Congress back into session. But then, abruptly, he ceased to think of being President, and switched to being a Senator, so he could go back to Congress to vote. And when did the American people say that they did not want Congress to take vacations?

As to the second possibility with a maverick McCain in the White House, reflect on what he said on Youtube a year earlier at a townhall meeting in Des Moines, Iowa: "I was in a conference in Germany over the weekend, and President (Vladimir) Putin of Germany gave one of the old cold war style speeches, as he adressed the conference there."

This comment coming from someone whose experience and strength is supposed to be in foreign affairs is so mindless, so egregious, it is stupefying. Indeed, both comments are stupefying.

Thus, need more be said bout maverick John McCain in the White House, except perhaps that these comments and the times that one has seen him show forgetfulness, ignorance of facts, ignore facts, misstate something said, or bungle attempts to explain things, might be suggesting that, if not senility, enfeebleness, is settling in.

It is a disservice to the American people that so many people in the media do not draw attention to, and evaluate the portent of, these shortcomings of someone who is seeking to be President, a patent pressure cooker job.

Senator Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. Junior Senators usually do not get much legislation passed. But the Senator managed to get some notable measures passed. He teamed up with conservative Republican Tom Coburn to create a public internet that enables taxpayers to track how the government spends their money.

He teamed up with conservative Republican Richard Lugar to pass a meaure to facilitate the US. working with its allies to detect and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He joined up again with Tom Coburn to stop the Bush administration from handing out no-bid contracts to companies to reconstruct the Gulf coast.

Senator Obama also introduced the resolution that got the Senate talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq. He also got the Senate talking about fuel efficient cars, which had not been discussed seriously in that body for decades.

In 2007, Senator Obama decided to run for the White House. This was to be the greatest achievement of his life, and it showed just how much substance he had, and how valuable his own life experiences had been. Using his education, intelligence, communicaions skills, his community organizing skills, and an ability to draw talented people to his side, as advisors, campaign managers and operators, he built a national political organization from scratch to participate in the Democratic Party Presidential nomination contest.

With the same people, he was also able to build a national coalition, and a national political movement, to use the internet like noone before him to finance a nomination campaign, and also a Presidential election campaign. He got more youth involved in politics and voting than would have been thought possible, and also gained their help in building his national coalition and national movement.

In addition, he had to take on Senator Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, the Clinton political machine and the institutional Democratic Party, that supported Hillary Clinton during the nomination campaign. Senator Obama evidenced extraordinary perception and judgment mapping out how he could win the nomination contest, and he did so, and became the presumptive nominee of the Party.

Recently, Senator Obama returned from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East, and also Germany, France, and England. In Iraq, he stood eye-ball to eye-ball with General David Petraeus, and made it clear that if he were President, he would be commander-in-chief, and would set the mission in Iraq.

He also said to the General, who he said disagreed with him, that as President, he would drawdown American roops in Iraq on a 16 month time table (while paying attention to conditions on the ground) and that he would redeploy troops to fight the war in Afghanistan. The Senator also was able to get Nouri al Maliki and the Iraqi government to endorse his withdrawal plan.

That was not all that Senator Obama accomplished in Iraq. He changed the nature of the debate about the country, that Senator McCain had dominated: the discussion from Iraq to Afghanistan, from the surge to redeployment of troops to Afghanistan and fighting the war there, and from long term occupation of Iraq, to maintaining only a minimal military force to protect American personnel and facilities, continue training Iraqi security forces, and to root out remnants of Al Qaeda.

Senator Obama was greeted as if he were a head of state, rather than a Presidential candidate, in Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, in Israel, and also in Germany, France, and England.

He gave a speech in Berlin to over 200,000 people in which he said, as Pesident, America would form a strong partnership with Europe, and would listen attentively to European concerns, and that America would seek to achieve a favorable image in the world again with a new approach to regional and global diplomacy and policies.

This speech was received with enthusiasm throughout Europe. It was consistent with the speech he gave on foreign policy before the Chicago Council on Foreign Policy in February, 2004, and with the foreign policy views he expressed in Foreign Affairs (July/August, 2007).

If a white man of 47 years of age exhibited the kind of substantive personal qualities that Senator Obama does, and had achieved what he had achieved, as just outlined--and had done this coming out of virtually nowhere, and having to go up against formidable opposition to do so--there is no question that he would be lauded and lionized in the media, with little to no effort to detract from his attainments.

There would, instead, be endless talk about the superb personal qualities that he possessed, and that he would be bringing to the White House, and also endless talk about how this would be a blessing to the country and to the American people.

There are many Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Whites, with Whites being the largest among these groups, who helped Senator Obama become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party,and who believe he would bring superb personal qualities to the White House, and who will be seeking to put him there in November.

On the other hand, there are many Whites, especially, who do not want to see Senator Obama as President, and for many of this number, it is because of their racist hostility, that sometimes takes the form of openly saying, "I will not vote for a Black man," or something worse; which conveys the additional racist thought, even if not conveyed verbally: that "being Pesident is a white man's job."

There is a long standing racist discrediting technique that Republicans are presently using against Senator Obama, particularly in their ads. That technique involves denying or lying about the personal attributes of a Black person, or ridiculing, mocking, distorting, demeaning, defaming, caricaturing, belittling, or being dismissive of the attributes or achievements, to convey the impression that the Black person in question is nobody, and has done nothing and can do nothing of significance.

In short, a method to assault and diminish the character, intellect, stature, and humanity of a Black person, which is the wont of racists, that gives them the sense of being superior, powerful, and omnipotent.

Thomas Jefferson used the racist discrediting technique against the nonslave Black Benjamin Benneker, who was an astronomer, mathematician, and producer of almanacs, whose intellect, mathematical skills, and achievements he mocked and belittled. He did the same to Phillis Wheatley who, as a slave, published a book of poetry that gained her some international acclaim. Jefferson said her poetry "was below the dignity of criticism."

White racists have always been most afraid of the Black person with substantive personal qualities, because such people contradict the racist stereotypes--that allege who Black people are, what they are capable or not capable of doing--and who point to the immorality and injustice, and the violation of America's ideals and values, denying Blacks opportunities.

Frederick Douglass used to argue that it was not the color of the Black man that agonized Whites, because they had no trouble relating to a Black field hand, servant, or coachman, who they knew would stay in their place, or whom they could easily keep there.

As Douglass remarked: "The evil lies deeper than the prejudice against color. It is, as we have said, an intense hatred of the colored man when he is distinguished for any ennobling qualities of head and heart."

For years white boxing promoters would not let Black boxers have title shots, not because they were convinced they could not win them, but because they were afraid that they would win them and hold them. They justified their exclusion practice by demeaning the character, the skills, and the morality of Black boxers.

When Branch Rickey decided to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues to play for his Brooklyn Dodgers, he was sure Robinson could make the grade. There were major league players who thought so as well, and for this reason, they made extensive use of the racist descrediting technique on the field during games, and drew fans in on what they were doing, to try to make him fail, but, instead, they and the fans failed.

During the Second World War the Army Air Force did not want to train Black fighter pilots, because of their fear that they might be successful pilots, and the Air Force's racist practices against Blacks, which centered in denying or disparaging their intellect, courage, and morality to be pilots, would be seriously challenged.

Under pressure from the Roosevelt White House some Black pilots were trained, and finally sent to the war theater in Europe. One group of these pilots trained at Tuskegee Institute, which became the 332 Fighter Group. It had the distinction among fighter escort squadrons of not losing a single bomber to German fighter planes, during their escort of numerous bombing missions over Gemany.

Today, there is Barack Obama, a Black person who has substantive personal qualities aplenty, and who has tremendous political skills; and there are white Republicans (with Black Republican strategists, and John McCain surrogates, acquiescing) trying to make white people afraid of him, by using the long standing racist discrediting technique that many of us Black people easily recognize.

But there are many Americans who recognize the substantive personal attributes of Senator Obama, and who believe he has had the kind of experience in his life, and has the leadership capability and the political skills, to be President of the United States, and who think that he will be a good President.

America should be proud that it has produced a person such as this, and almost as if it knew instinctively what it needed in these very trying times at home and abroad to provide itself with vision, vitality, and leadership.

McCain: Playing The Surge Card

Over the past two weeks, Senator John McCain and the Republican Party have been hammering away at Senator Barack Obama for not admitting that the surge in Iraq has been a success. A number of politicians, political pundits, media political analysts, and others, have been doing the same, and have also said that Sentor Obama ought to congratulate Senator McCain for having been a forceful advocate of this strategy.

This collective chastisement of Senator Obama is occurring within what I call a "soundbite context." Politicians, political analysts, and journalists, as well as American voters, are conditioned by the soundbite. It is the be-all end-all of American politics for them.

What is the soundbite? The soundbite flows from either-or thinking. It is a terse, singular, simplistic comment or phrase that appears to convey truth, knowledge, understanding, and to reflect reality, when in fact, it does none of these things. A soundbite is employed when one wants to obscure or ignore, or distort all of these things.

To make this point, take the phrase: "taken out of context." This is a reference to the construction of a soundbite. Taking a comment or phrase out of context means isolating it from other phrases and comments in the context and focusing on it as if it were the only thing said, and thus, indicating where the discussion and analysis should begin.

An isolated comment or phrase becomes the soundbite, and since it is taken from the context that would invest sense, truth, or meaning in it, the comment as a soundbite, represents not only a distortion, or misrepresentation of facts, or a reality, but also represents a conscious effort to tell a lie.

Senator Obama loathes the soundbite. He thinks in holistic, rather than either or, singular terms. His preference is to provide knowledge and explanations, and to try to help people understand things, and that usually involves, as he sees it, providing them with more than one factor to consider and digest, to accomplish this objective.

Senator Obama regards the soundbite feature of American politics, as a manifestation of old political thinking and old politics, which then becomes one of the things that induces him to try to change political thinking and politics in the country.

Senator John McCain is a long time practitioner of the soundbite. He seeks to explain the surge on this basis, because he takes one aspect of the surge--the military/security aspect-- and makes it appear that this is what the whole surge was about. Thus, he is engaged in conscious deception and falsification. This is John McCain playing the surge card.

The surge as launched in 2007 and made very public involved three broad component parts: 1) a large increase in American troops in Iraq (30 or 40,000) that would train Iraqi military and security forces, and that would seek to reduce or suppress the daily violence in the country. 2) the use of the military/security part of the surge to provide some political space to develop the new Iraqi government and to promote political reconciliation between the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, and between the central and outlying governments of the country and 3) to rebuild the economy and the country, and work out a method to redistribute the oil revenues of Iraq.

John McCain signed off on and encouraged this surge in Iraq. But over the past two weeks, following Senator Obama's successful trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, and other places in the Middle East and Europe, where he substantially showed his Presidential, foreign policy, commander-in-chief, and world leader credentials, McCain has turned desperately to playing the surge-card to try to lessen the domestic impact of Senator Obama's great triumph, and to try to salvage his own image of having the same credentials.

If Senator McCain argued that the military and security dimension of the surge was successful, Senator Obama would readily agree with that. He saw that success in Iraq, and while there, and since being back in the country, he has praised the American troops for their courage, dedication, and magnificent performance in achieving this result.

But Senator Obama also expanded his view. He said in Iraq and back in the country, that the Anbar Awakening and the cessation of the hostilities between the Shiites and Sunnis, i.e., the present halting of the civil war, also contributed to the reduction of daily violence, deaths, and casualties in the country.

There were McCain surrogates and political analysts who pounced on this comment, saying that it undercut credit for the troops, and also that his answer was not "straightforward," that it was "mixed", or "ambiguous", and seemed like an effort to try to "avert" dealing with and crediting the surge. In short, Senator Obama did not honor the soundbite and its deception.

Senator Obama praised the part of the surge that succeeded, but he could not praise the surge itself, because as a full scale reality, it had not been successful. He refused to be drawn into promoting a lie despite some political pressure to do so.

But in playing the surge card, Senator McCain was contradicting General David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. When they reported to the House and Senate hearings on the war in Iraq in 2007, they acknowledged that the surge had three broad parts. The military/security part had significant success, but political gains, as both men said many times at the hearings, were "fragile and reversible," thus, clearly not successful; and that the economic recovery, rebuilding of the country, and the equitable distribution of oil revenues was proceeding frustratingly slowly.

In Iraq, Senator Obama learned that military and security successes had increased since the earlier report, but that the other features of the surge still lagged frustratingly behind. General Petraeus wanted more time to work on these matters with massive U.S. troops in Iraq, and indicated to Senator Obama, as the latter himself reported, that he was not in favor of a time table drawdown of troops in the country, and that he wanted more time and flexibility to deal with the situation.

As another part of his comments, Senator Obama said that if he were in General Petraeus's shoes, he would espouse the same values. But he also said that as President of the United States, he would have more concerns to deal with than the General, on the homefront and in regard to America's strategic interests, that went beyond Iraq and even Afghanistan.

Senator Obama said directly to General Petraeus that as President he would be commander-in-chief, and that he would set the mission in Iraq. He said this many times during his Presidential nomination campaign, and he conveyed that understanding to General Petraeus when he talked to him.

What has continued to go unnoticed by politicians and political analysts is that President Bush has abandoned his commander-in-chief role to General Petraeus to let him set the American mission in Iraq. Senator McCain shows deference to General Petraeus and satisfaction with this submission, implying that if he were President, he, like Bush, would let General Petraeus, or someone else dealing with events on the ground, be commander-in-chief.

This is not Senator Obama's attitude. He showed great respect for General Petraeus, but not deference, and indicated to him that he would still work from a 16 month time table drawdown of troops in Iraq, and would redeploy troops, about two brigades, to Afghanistan.

In August of 2007, he had said that 7000 troops should be sent to Afghanistan. In early 2008, the commanders in that country, fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, called for 7000 troops, echoing the Senator. Now the call is for about 10,000 troops.

But Senator Obama had shown Presidential and commander-in-chief metal, asserting both with General Petraeus. He held his ground about the 16 month strategic withdrawal, and more than that he got Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and his government to endorse the plan.

Senator Obama had bested John McCain. He had taken some of the shine off of his credentials as military expert and commander-in-chief. Senator Obama had also succeeded in changing the debate that McCain had once dominated: from Iraq to Afghanistan, from the surge to the withdrawl and redeployment of troops, and from the long term occupation of Iraq, which Senator John McCain had said on a number of occasions, could be from 50 to 100 years, to a protective and tactical U.S. force in the country.

Senator McCain sought salvation and redemption in playing the surge card, and on a basis of trying to demean Senator Obama. He and his surrogates have argued that the Senator was showing a lack of character and being dishonest, and unprincipled, because he still would not admit that he had made a mistake opposing the surge, and because he still would not apologize for having done so.

There are politicians and political analysts playing the surge card along with John McCain and his surrogates, as this is also their talking point with Senator Obama and his surrogates.

The behavior on the part of Senator McCain and his spokespeople is so disingenuous and dishonest that political observes should have taken them to task for it, which they have not done, and presently show no willingness to do.

The political observers insisting that Senator Obama should admit his mistake and apologize do not place the same demands on John McCain.

Senator McCain has never admitted, nor apologized, for the mistake he made encouraging and being in full support of the Bush administration taking the United States into a needless war with Iraq; and, therefore, a war of needless deaths and needless casualties, a needless massive expenditure of American taxpayer dollars, and a needless drain on the country's military preparedness and capabilities.

Senator McCain has never admitted that he made mistakes supporting the Bush administration's strategic blunder of waging war against Iraq and not encouraging or insisting that it pursue Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in their haven and training ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, nor has he ever apologized for this mistake.

He has never admitted that the war in Iraq has not made America safer or more secure, which it has not, because it has allowed Al Qaeda to re-group and to re-strengthen itself, and to ready itself to renew its attacks on the U.S. at home and abroad.

These are all instances of poor judgment and miscalculation on Senator McCain's part. And his refusal to at least admit his mistakes, which were so collosal and so obvious, says something poignantly about his character and temperament, and how he seems to think that he stands above criticism.

It also points to how much of a risk and liability he might be in the White House, because he really does not seem to see that he made collosal mistakes and grievous miscalculations. As President he might engage in the same kind of myopic thinking and behavior with respect to Iran.

There is a very egregious way that Senator McCain also plays the surge card, and that also reflects his character and temperament. He says that when Senator Obama stands against the surge and its successes, he is saying that American troops have been fighting and making sacrifices in vein in Iraq.

He charges that Senator Obama would rather have the U.S. surrender and lose a war in Iraq, and leave the country with dishonor, in exchange for achieving a political objective, namely, to become President.

Senator McCain has said that he would rather lose a Presidential election than lose a war, while Senator Obama would take the opposite road. These words and sentiments not only called into question Senator Obama's loyalty, but also implied that he was a traitor.

This is the pugnacious and cruel streak that dwells in John McCain, that is often hidden by a sudden smile that follows a remark, and by attempts to cover up the traits with humor. Political observers should have laced into the Senator for making these outrageous and contemptible charges--a Presidential candidate virtually accusing another Presidential candidate of being a traitor!

But, instead, they have given him another one of their many passes to help him escape criticism, and enabling him to feel that he does not have to be held accountable for what he says or does.

The same people also permit Senator McCain to keep saying, unchallenged, what he said repeatedly over the past two weeks: that he always puts his country first, and also saying that Senator Obama doesn't.

But McCain did not put America first when he supported the United States engaging in an unprovoked and needless war with Iraq. He did not put the country first when he was adamant in supporting the Bush administration to step up that war while letting Al Qaeda reconstitute itself and become an ever stronger threat to the United States. And he did not put America first when he was in favor of the country spending huge amounts of money on a needless war, that could have been spent on rebuilding the infrastructure in the country, and augmenting the lives of the American people.

In all of these instances, Senator McCain put a neocon ideology, a military mentality, and a military based foreign policy first. This was also the same mind-set that prompted him to advocate and support the surge, and that keeps him welded to his deceitful position regarding it.

False Knock On Michelle Obama: Her Embrace of Change Does Not Equal A Lack Of Loyalty or Patriotism

False Knock On Michelle Obama: Her Embrace of Change Does Not Equal A Lack Of Loyalty or Patriotism.

Earlier this year, Michelle Obama, Senator Barack Obama's wife, made the comment that "for the first time in my adult lifetime I am proud of my country, because it is ready to embrace change."

In front of a white Republican audience the day after those remarks, Senator John McCain and his wife Cindy weighed in on them. Cindy McCain said to the audience "I have always been proud of my country." Her husband said the same, with both receiving applause and cheers.

People in the McCain campaign, a number of strident talk show hosts, Republican politicians, journalists, political pundits, and media political analysts became a large chorus denouncing Michelle Obama for what its collective voice said was her lack of loyalty and patriotism to the United States.

This response was clearly predictable. It came overwhelmingly from White people, and reflected the understanding that so many Black people have, that too many white people still have great difficulty distinguishing between White hegemony and the United States, White domination of the American government and the American government itself, and White interpretation of American ideals and values, and the ideals and values themselves.

This difficulty stems from the longstanding and continuing practice of too many White people equating this country and this society with White people; that both belong to them and no one else, or to no one else like they both belong to them. This is clearly not Michelle Obama’s view.

There used to be phrases in American history that reflected this kind of thinking that lasted up to about the 1960’s and 1970’s, such as a “White man’s country,” or “White society.”

In one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Abraham Lincoln described the Declaration of Independence as “ the white man’s charter of liberty.” Stephen Douglas said in that same debate “ this government of ours is founded on a white basis. It was made by the white man for the benefit of the white man.”

Historically and generally, the White argument has been that the United States belonged to White people and was to benefit them, and that it did not belong to Black people, that they were not able to claim it as their own or benefit from it, and certainly not the way that Whites benefited.

Blacks were to be dominated, confined, and excluded in their own country. Whites endeavored to do this by enslaving Blacks, denying them human, political and civil rights, subjecting them to racist laws and racist segregation, by public denigration, by denying or diminishing their education, by denying them employment opportunities, access to health and medical care, forcing them to live in poor neighborhoods, and by subjecting them to various forms of violence.

Senator John McCain and his wife Cindy were adults when much of this gross mistreatment of Black people was occurring. They said that they had always been proud of their country, without any qualifying language. That means, then, on the basis of their own words, they were proud of this country when it was treating Black people the way it was doing.

But why would Black people be proud of it? Why would Black people be loyal to this? Patriotic about this? This would be tantamount to being imbecilic or masochistic.

The national/social context in which White and Black people lived in this country, from its founding up to about the 1960’s and 1970’s, with White people dominating, segregating and excluding Blacks, led to the two groups of people looking at many things in the country in very different ways, including the matter of loyalty and patriotism.

There is the old Machiavellian phrase “my country right or wrong.” This is something that Black and White people would likely agree upon. But Black people would be a lot quicker than White people to say, that the country should be right, and not wrong, and that being proud of the country should be based on it being right and moral.

In the late 1960’s, as will be remembered, Martin Luther King, Jr. opposed the Vietnam War, calling it an immoral war, and one that the country should not be fighting. He was roundly condemned by many White people, including many White liberals, with the stated or implied racist argument: that he should confine his political role to Black issues, and let White men deal with foreign affairs, and with matters of war.

But King was not deterred, because he contended, contrary to his White critics, that the Black struggle and the Vietnam War were linked together. King’s view about the immoral character of the war, and the great mistake in engaging in it, eventually became the national sentiment.

Michelle Obama, who was born in 1962, emerged into adulthood in the early 1980’s and full adulthood over the next twenty years. These were years that saw the effective ending of blatant White racism and when Blacks made significant political, economic, educational, and other gains, and when Michelle Obama herself achieved stunning personal and individual successes.

But the years between the 1980’s and 2000 were also years when the White backlash that had begun in the late 1960’s attained its full force in the country. It was brought to this level primarily by the Republican Party. Whites in that party sought to take back or diminish the gains that Blacks had made, showing that many Whites were strongly against changing the United States away from its racist past.

Michelle Obama knew, like a lot of Black people knew, and that a number of White people knew as well, that between the 1960’s and 2000, the national/social context of the country had been significantly altered. It was being put in line more significantly with its ideals and morality, despite the backlash resistance to his new construction.

The America that was now being built, that was endeavoring to promote a racist free national/social context, and which was occurring during Michelle Obama’s full adulthood, was the emerging America that she was very proud of, that she was very loyal to, and strongly patriotic about.

She was also proud of White people, and other people, who could embrace this change, and who were committing themselves to keeping it going, and joining with her husband to do so, which he wanted to help promote as President of the United States.

Those who cry that Michelle Obama is not loyal to or patriotic about the United States are showing that they do not have these feelings about the country she wants to see fully established.

The White Republicans who denounce her are showing their rejection of this America, and also their anger that she will not be loyal to and patriotic about their version of the country, where White people are dominant and in the ascendancy, and Blacks are subordinated, confined, and excluded as much as possible.

When one considers that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly White in composition, speaks for and represents this large White population in the country- which centers in White people in the South- it is not a mystery why members of it would label Michelle Obama disloyal and unpatriotic.

But she is not daunted, because she has too much intelligence, integrity, and common sense to be loyal to and patriotic about the kind of America that so many White Republicans want.

Biting The Hand That Feeds?

There is a history of white men in this country allowing their racism to be manipulated by other white men, to the extent of voting against theirs and their families's political, economic, and social interests; thus, contributing to their subordinate position in society.

For instance, in the first half of the nineteenth century (indeed, throughout the century), white men were told and believed that they were superior to white women and all other women. This racist thinking and belief was manipulated by white politicians who convinced other white men to oppose women having the right to vote.

In a family where there was a father and two sons, and a mother and three daughters, that family in this racist context had only three votes. But if the women had been able to vote the family would have had seven votes. This additional political power would have made it possible for this family and others similarly situated to have augmented their political power against society's dominant elements, and to advance their lives in the country.

In the South, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the racism of middle and lower class white men was manipulated effectively, preventing them from joining with Black slaves and nonslave Blacks to end slavery, and thus, an institution that slaveholders used not only to enslave Blaks but to suppress many Whites.

But the slaveholders convinced middle and lower class white men that being white and feeling superior to Blacks was more important than anything else, and also held out to them the possibility that they might become slaveholders, too, and their wives mistresses of slave plantations. One of the baleful things this pernicious behavior produced in the South in the course of its history was generations of poor and uneducated Black and white people, with the latter being called by upper class and better off middle class white people, "poor Whites, or much more scathingly, "white trash."

In more recent times, Ronald Reagan and other Republicans manipulated the racism of middle and lower class white men to gain their vote, and then promoted fiscal and economic policies in Washington that increased the wealth of the richest people in the country, and widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

This was also done by the President and Republicans in Congress (aided by southern white Democrats) cutting social programs, which benefitted middle and lower class white people (as well as Blacks and others in the country and, indeed, with the cutting being aimed at hurting Blacks the most, as a way of accomodating the interests of southern white allies who did not want government aid for Blacks).

But cutting social programs does not mean cutting government spending. The programs are cut, and the funds that would have gone to them, are shifted upwards, to the rich, to big business and industrial corporations, to military spending, and to other "worthy" projects.

Ronald Reagan and other Republicans also showed that they were no friends of labor unions and the labor movement. Indeed, Reagan himself was very anti-labor and unions, and he and his administrations did their best fully to suppress and discredit unions in the country--the economic and political weapons of white and other hard working people. But such people were placed in jeopardy and hardship owing to so many among them voting for people who moved against their unions, themselves, and their families.

Will this kind of contradictory and self-suppressive history continue, or will there be a break with it? There are those Whites today who are Republicans and Democrats who say they will not vote for Senator Barack Obama as President because he's Black. That, of course, is not the reason.

To put it this way is to make the Senator's race the problem, and not the racism of the white people holding this view. This is blaming the victim and not the racist believer, and letting the latter off the hook and escaping critique.

Racists are not born, they are made. There is nothing in the genetic or biological make-up of white people (or any people) to make them racists. Those who are have been taught, one way or another, to be racists. What they have learned can be unlearned, as difficult as it might be.

It is clearly absurd to believe that Senator Obama's skin color, hair texture, lip or leg construction--some of his racial features--determine his ability to think, what his values are, the quality of his political skills, or his leadership capabilities. But this is what people are absurdly saying when they say that the Senator's race is the problem.

Many among them are saying that Senator Obama does not share their values. But he believes in and advocates American values. Are these not their values, also? They would readily say they are, and thus, when they say that Senator Obama does not share their values, they are really saying, prompted by their racism, that he should not think of himself as an American and hold American values, and that he should be penalyzed for seeking to do these things.

This is the kind of fanciful and irrational thinking that the Republican Party, and its 527 cohorts, are counting on millions of white people doing, that will make them amenable to their racist manipulation and fear tactics, and also their ability to make them sacrificial lambs.

But will such white men and women allow themselves to be manipulated and used as in the past, or will they resist and reject the efforts, and decide to align themselves with the non-racist future in which the country is heading?

If they choose not to resist or reject, and to be willing political tools again, here are some questions for them to consider:

1) If President Obama's health insurance program gets passed into law will they reject its benefits, because a Black President provided them?

2) Will they say to their children that they can't accept the $4,000 a year subsidy that a Black President offers them for their college education?

3) Will they reject an annual increase in the minimum wage, adjusted to the inflation rate, because a Black President provided the increase? Would this be true particularly of blue collar women who would greatly benefit from an annually higher minimum wage?

4) Will those seniors making less than $50,000 a year reject not having to pay an income tax on that money, because a Black President offered them that opportunity?

5) Will those on the verge of losing their homes reject a Black President's program to help finance their mortgages so they can keep their homes?

6) Will they reject the middle class tax cut that a Black President has provided them, or a stimulus check to aid them, as well as the economy?

7) Will those who want the protection and preservation of Roe v. Wade object to a Black President putting someone on the high judicial bench to do these things?

8) Will they say to their sons and daughters who have returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that they should not accept the health care benefits and medical treatments, or other kinds of veteran benefits that a Black President has provided them?

9) Will they reject a new green job or an infrastructure construction or repair job, or technical training for new kinds of jobs, that a Black President has provided?

10) Will they reject benefits from the social security system that a Black President has kept solvent and responsive to their needs, and has kept from being privatized that would put their retirement and old age security at great risk?

11) Will those workers who want to unionize refuse the help of a President who would enable them to do so?

12) Will those in small towns and rural areas in great need of medical care refuse services from doctors, nurses, and medical facilities that a Black President made available to them?

This kind of questioning could go on and on. And beyond it there are two additional questions to be asked. If people can accept government financial and social program aid from a Black President, couldn't they have also voted for him to put him in office, so he could do the things that benefitted them?

Or would they feel that it was just and proper not to vote for a Black President, accept the benefits he offered, and also just and proper to bite his hand as he extended it to them to help them?

Can this kind of thinking, and this kind of behavior, be done in good conscience and with a feeling of living up to the ideals and sense of right and fairness in America? Can it be done by saying that Senator Obama does not share their values or their hopes and aspirations?