THE PROGRESSIVE PUZZLE

Let's imagine that you're a progressive and you are asked to support a candidate who:

- Favors expanding the war in Afghanistan

- Leaving a sizable force in and near Iraq following what he calls a "withdrawal." A large mercenary force would probably also be left.

- Aggressively opposed the impeachment of Bush. This same advisor says he would "be stunned" if his candidate appointed a strong critic of corporations to the Supreme Court.

- Has offered no major new ideas for dealing with the nation's economic crisis.

- Supports Bill Clinton's assault on social welfare.

- Supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts

- Voted for a business-friendly tort bill

- Voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

- Had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

- Is even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

- Was most popular of the primary candidates with K Street lobbyists

- Has a top economic aide who has written enthusiastically about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures.

- Has no meaningful urban policy

- Supports the war on drugs

- Supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity

- Supports Real ID

- Supports the PATRIOT Act

- Supports the death penalty

- Has lent his support to the neo-liberal Hamilton Project, which was formed, as one journalist put it, "to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party."

- Has considered naming as vice president or cabinet members rightwing Republicans rated 0% by SANE, AFL-CIO, NARAL, Alliance for Retired Americans, Human Rights Coalition and the League of Conservation Voters, and who oppose abortion and favor privatizing Social Security

- Voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

- Supports federally funded ethanol and is unusually close to the ethanol industry.

- Supports the No Child Left Behind Act.

- Opposes reintroduction of the fairness doctrine for radio and television.

- Is using hawkish foreign policy advisors involved in past US misdeeds and failures.

- Strongly supports Israeli aggression and apartheid.

- Favors turning over Jerusalem to Israel

- Favored cluster bomb ban in civilian areas

- Opposes single payer healthcare

- Wouldn't have photo taken with San Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported gay marriage

- Favors a national service plan that appears to be in sync with one being promoted by a new coalition that would make national service mandatory by 2020, and which is in line with a bill for such mandatory national service introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel.

- Has dissed both Ralph Nader and Paul Wellstone

- Supports immunity from prosecution for both telecoms engaged in illegal wiretapping and the government officials that had them do it. You don't have to imagine. It's Barack Obama, whose nomination was assured thanks to a con game that even outdid the one that worked so well for Bill Clinton and which left America essentially without a liberal voice for eight years.

Admittedly, Obama is a far more honest and decent person that Clinton but that doesn't take away from the fact that progressive America has been hit hard once again and much of it doesn't even realize it.

One standard liberal response is denial. You just join the cult and forget about the facts. And to shore up this shoddy state, you excoriate any who remain skeptical, fearful, angry or uncertain.

If, on the other hand, you wish not to participate in the charade, there are no comfortable alternatives.

For example, one may choose to support Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney. Based simply on the issues, this is the most logical and moral route. The problem is that history suggests that it doesn't do much good. Not only is the electoral system hopelessly rigged against it, but even under the best of circumstances a presidential campaign depends not only on who is leading it but who is behind it. Neither candidate is backed by the sort of movement where even if you lose you still make an difference. This is not a criticism of either Nader or McKinney. After all, Jesus went to the cross with only 12 disciples. But it is a problem.

With the except of Eugene Debs, all the most successful third party presidential candidates over the past century have drawn primarily from disgruntled mainstream factions, not radical or progressive movements. Further each of the third parties had only one opportunity to make their point in a big way in a presidential race.

Here are the best numbers for various third party candidates since 1900:

Theodore Roosevelt 28%
Perot (1992): 19%
LaFolette: 17%
George Wallace: 14%
Debs (1912): 11%
Perot (1996): 9%
Anderson: 7%

All other third party candidates got 3% or less, including Debs in three additional runs and Thurmond and Henry Wallace in the hot 1948 race.

Obviously the numbers don't tell the whole story. For example, the New Deal drew, Progressive and Socialist ideas despite low turnouts for their candidates. The Populists, despite topping out a 9% in a presidential race, influenced the politics of two Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin.

Still, if you want to affect national politics with a national third party presidential run, history suggests that getting over 5% - preferably closer to 10% - is a good way to start. Otherwise, you can probably expect a less direct impact for your efforts, perhaps decades in the future. And, in any case, you can expect your swing at presidential politics to be fairly short-lived.

That does not mean, however, that third parties - like certain insects - are merely born, have sex, and then die. In fact, some of the third parties have had long, remarkably healthy lives, but in large part because they were as concerned with local as with national results. The Socialist Party is the most dramatic example, with a history dating back over 100 years. By World War I it had elected 70 mayors, two members of Congress, and numerous state and local officials. Milwaukee alone had three Socialist mayors in the last century, including Frank Zeidler who held office for 12 years ending as late as 1960. And let us not forget Bernie Sanders.

In fact, some highly successful third parties never ran anyone for president (except in fusion with one of the major parties). An example was the Liberal Party of New York, the longest lived third party next the to the Socialists.

As one of the founders of the national Green Party I have tried unsuccessfully to encourage a backyard Green approach, working from the bottom up and emphasizing local rather than national campaigns. But living in a time when it is assumed that all change ultimately emanates from the television screen, the White House or God, such a grassroots view is regarded as somewhat antiquated.

Nonetheless, I do not begrudge anyone's choice to go the Nader or McKinney route. Further, Democrats who treat such people as worthless scoundrels and scum need to remember that these are folks who in large part believe in the sort of things once promoted by the Democratic Party. And if Democrats accept the existence of Republicans as an inevitable part of political intelligent design, why not Greens and independents as well?

Another approach to the problem is apathy. I tend to be more tolerant of apathy than many of my ilk because I know precisely how hard it is to remain involved when on every day and at every turn one loses the battle. Besides, most who publicly decry apathy are not looking for independent action or rebellion but blind loyalty to whatever they are pushing at the moment. Further, while I might wish that more were politically engaged, I understand their reticence given the choices with which they are presented.

My only suggestion to the apathetic is to view it as a transitional state, a sort of nap before you discover what it is you might find worth pursuing. And it certainly doesn't have to be a candidate. The list that began this essay is also a directory of things that desperately need more attention.

There is then an approach I think of as grumpy uncertainty. In most any campaign, undecideds are a larger voting bloc than any third party and, since the candidates go to great lengths to reach them, one could argue the case for a well organized group of the blatantly befuddled. On a personal level, uncertainty is disturbing to the blindly committed and sometimes even causes them to think. On a group level, it can be quite powerful.

Another approach is what might be called the one minute endorsement, in which voters extend their support for Obama only as long as they are in the voting booth, following which they return home and immediately upon the closing of the polls aligned themselves with activist critics of the new administration.

(For those of blessed to live in states and colonies with sizable Democratic margins - like my hometown of DC - you can have it both ways: vote for Nader or McKinney and not have to worry about helping to elect McCain.)

Finally, there is what might be called the dental appointment approach. No rational person ever wants to go to the dentist and you rarely feel any better after it's over. But medicine assures us that by keeping these appointments we cut down on cavities and reduce the prospect of pain. And there is some evidence that this is true.

A similar argument could be made on Obama's behalf. For example, by supporting Obama we increase the likelihood that the number of high officials who support a fascistic approach to life will be substantially reduced. There is a high probability that the Supreme Court will not be as painful an experience as it is at present. Obama might even propose some good laws and a Democratic Congress might force others upon him. With sufficient pressure, his desire for post-partisanship might even include the presence of one or two progressives.

And while it is entirely possible that America will continue its move to the right under Obama, it is also possible that he will stabilize the patient. Rather than making us better or worse, he might be a transitional figure, both the last gasp of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush corporatism and the door opener to something better after he's gone.

Not least important is the fact that with a Democratic president, the environment in which progressives work will be substantially altered. We spend so much time discussing the faults and virtues of our candidates that we easily forget that one of their most important functions of a president is to establish an ecology for politics. This doesn't mean that it will be uniformly friendly, only that the options and the opportunities may increase.

Of course, progressives have to use them. They didn't during the Clinton years and we paid a huge price thanks to the Monica Lewinsky wing of the Democratic Party that was willing to do whatever the president wanted even as they still claimed to be liberals.

Being a cynical, amoral, weak-livered sort, I tend to favor the dental appointment approach. After all, politics was designed for people like me; saints and prophets were meant to stick to religion.

Admittedly, when the weather turns nasty, I drift towards grumpy uncertainty. It's especially appealing when some self-righteous Obamite appears on the scene; even a little agnosticism drives them batty.

But the point here is not to argue the proper course, but to point out that those on the left have been presented with one more miserable conundrum and, as should be expected, are finding a variety of ways to approach it.

There is a long tradition for the left to eat its own. Greens, for example, have been repeatedly cruelly attacked or ostracized for their efforts. Much progressive media has blacked out even mention of them. Those liberals or progressives supporting Obama, on the other hand, also come in for a lot of gratuitous criticism from the true believers in Nader or the Green Party.

There are, however, other models. For example, the Socialist Party describes its beginnings this way:

"From the beginning the Socialist Party was the ecumenical organization for American radicals. Its membership included Marxists of various kinds, Christian socialists, Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish socialists, foreign-language speaking sections, single-taxers and virtually every variety of American radical. On the divisive issue of 'reform vs. revolution,' the Socialist Party from the beginning adopted a compromise formula, producing platforms calling for revolutionary change but also making 'immediate demands' of a reformist nature. . . . The Socialist Party historically stressed cooperatives as much as labor unions, and included the concepts of revolution by education and of 'building the new society within the shell of the old.'"

You can't find a single movement on the left these days that could claim such eclecticism.

And we don't have all that much to play with. A Battleground Poll last May found only 34% of Americans listing themselves as liberal, with only 8% describing themselves as very liberal. Sixty two percent call themselves conservative, with 22% saying they are very conservative.

If we spent more time building coalitions around issues rather than candidates, we might have an easier time getting along with each other. It's been my experience that the most disruptive matters on the left have not been issues, but rather tactics and candidates.

For example, a poll taken at the recent Netroots conference found five key issues that at least 15% of the attendees agreed were first or second on their agenda: Iraq, energy and ecology, healthcare, the growing gap between rich and poor and the loss of constitution rights.

In each of these areas save the economic one, progressives have clear and easily understood positions. When such issues are on top, intramural problems decline. For example, the growing movement for single payer includes labor unions that are supporting Obama as well as Greens and Naderities.

Marc Weisbrodt, in Alternet, offers another example: a congressional bill calling for a boycott of Iran (which, is, in fact, an act of war):

"Groups opposed to military confrontation with Iran sprang into action, including Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, the National Iranian-American Council, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Code Pink, and Just Foreign Policy. They generated tens of thousands of emails, letters, phone calls, and other contacts with members of Congress and their staff. The first co-sponsor to change his position on the bill was Representative Barney Frank (D-MA. . . He apologized for 'not having read [the bill] more carefully,' and pledged that he would not support the bill with the blockade language.

"Then Robert Wexler, (D-FL), peeled off, also stating that he would not continue to support the bill if the blockade language were not changed. Most of the major media ignored the controversy, but two newspapers noticed it. The first was Seattle's Post-Intelligencer, whose editorial board denounced the resolution on June 24 and asked, 'are supporters of Res. 362 asleep at the wheel, or are they just anxious to drag us into another illegal war?'

"Then on June 27 the editorial board of Newsday published an editorial calling for a full debate on the bill. Newsday has a large circulation, and perhaps more importantly, it publishes in the New York district of Congressman Gary Ackerman - the lead author of the H. Con. Res. 362.

"Then, earlier this month, Congressman Mike Thompson (D- CA) wrote: '[Howard] Berman [Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs] has indicated that he has no intention of moving the bill through his committee unless the language is first altered to ensure that there is no possible way it could be construed as authorizing any type of military action against Iran. I will withdraw my support for the bill if this change is not made.'"

Should Obama be elected, there will be plenty of opportunities for similar actions as well as pressing for change we can believe in even if the new president thinks of it as a change he would just as soon forget about.

We need to think of ourselves as a progressive, sectarian equivalent of the religious right in the Republican Party: well organized, ubiquitous cells of carefully directed intent that the Democratic Party establishment wishes would disappear but knows won't and so has to placate it. In the end, Obama will not have given us leadership, but only a better battlefield.

In the meanwhile, however, be kind to your fellow progressives however they choose to deal with this illusionary distortion of democracy we still call an election. Electing a good president these days is the art of the impossible. But we can still choose issues wisely; we can still fight for, and define ourselves by, such issues rather than just obediently walking in the shadow of someone who is almost certain to disappoint us.

WHEN SCIENCE, POLITICS, RELIGION & JOURNALISM MEET

Several months ago, Suzan Mazur wrote of an important upcoming conference of scientists who did not reject Darwin's beliefs about evolution but who thought things that had been learned in the succeeding century and a half might expand or alter some of the underlying assumptions. 

A reasonable, unsurprising, yet important project, one that one naturally expects of scientists. And newsworthy. In fact, however, only the New Zealand online journal Scoop and the Progressive Review, so far as we can tell, told the story. 

Now another journal has finally published a report on the conference (for paid subscribers only): Science Magazine, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Admittedly, Science takes a number of slaps at what it considers Mazur's hyperbole, such as her calling the Altenberg Conference the "Woodstock" of evolution science that "promises to be far more transforming for the world" than was the 1969 music festival. But without Mazur's article, Science might have just let this important meeting remain in the obscurity it had been otherwise awarded.

The popular view of science - which the profession is careful not to discourage - is of brilliant, earnest and honest sorts plumbing the inner recesses of reality for new truths. In fact, scientists tend to be like other human beings, in that they can also be petty, jealous, cautious and suspicious (albeit expressing these ordinary foibles with particular erudition).

And, if they are on campus, they are also subject to that most pernicious of academic temptations: the desires and biases of their funders. Mazur believes this is a factor key to the way evolution has been handled of late. Certainly it would not be the first time in science, witness the distorting role of the Defense Department, agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations in supposedly objective science. 

At the very least, it can easily become a matter of what fiscally correct questions one feels comfortable asking and which are best left to someone else. And it may explain why the Altenberg 16 conference was not public. 

Evolutionary scientists are also particularly on guard these days because of the craziness of creationism. Mention the possibility that Darwin may not have told the whole story and the reaction in some quarters is to consider the mere question to be aid and comfort to the enemy. To understand how complicated this can get, consider on the other hand the born again corporate executive who simultaneously believes his salary and bonus to be the logical product of both intelligent design and the survival of the fittest. 

In any case, scientists, like the rest of us mortals, don't work in a vacuum. If there is anything we should have learned from Hiroshima and climate change it is that what goes on in the research lab doesn't necessarily stay in the research lab. 

This is where journalism can help. What Suzan Mazur did is what journalists find themselves doing from time to time: snooping around the lab before they're invited. It is an effort often unappreciated by scientists, who typically feel they should control the amount, character, timing and wording of the knowledge they possess. But the reporter's point is not to provide a final or complete explanation, or to overturn existing ones, but simply to shine some light in the dark, in this case without fear of either funders or fundamentalists.

THE BLACK IVIES

Sam Smith

Michael Niebauer of the DC Examiner called the other day with a question that had been wandering aimlessly around in my head for some time: what did Barack Obama and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty have in common?

I suggested that he expand the question to include Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, and Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, NJ.

They all share two big things. First, they are of the first generation of modern black leaders who have gotten where they were by passing exams rather than crossing police lines and, second, they are of the first generation of black leaders to have been both educated and vetted by the white establishment.

Or, to put it another way, they are the first generation of modern black leaders who are not agents of change, but primarily beneficiaries of change.

There are, to be sure, some major differences between them, such as the amount of dues paid by Cory Booker, son of civil rights activists, who makes Barack Obama's community organizing gig seem like that of a dilettante. True, Booker won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford and graduated from Yale Law School but for eight years, Booker lived in a public housing project and organized its tenants. In 2006, he moved on - to a rental on Newark's south side, which has been described as a "drug and gang-plagued neighborhood of boarded-up houses and empty lots." He went on to take over the city from the notorious Sharpe James, one of the last of the fulltime old style corrupt big town mayors.

That's a bit different from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who has been under the wing of the white elite throughout much of his life, including going to Milton Academy, majoring in English and American literature and joining the exclusive Fly Club at Harvard, followed by Harvard Law School (like his pal Obama, who even lifted some of his rhetoric). After a tour with the NAACP and a private law firm, Patrick ended up as an Assistant Attorney General in the Clinton administration.

DC mayor Fenty is the only one who didn't go to the Ivy League. Rather he attended a mini-mart version, Oberlin, and then went to Howard Law school. Fenty is the son of a small business couple who run a popular and respected sportswear and shoe store.

All four are young and have had a remarkably short drive to heaven. Three benefited directly from the decay of older black leadership but they also happened along at a time when even cynical white political operatives and godfathers of the white business community were out looking for black brands to put on their operations.

In one of the telling moments of his mayoral campaign, then councilmember Fenty - who had previously sided regularly with tenants - supported a rent-control bill favored by the Apartment and Office Building Association. As local journalist James Jones put it, "At some point, the word went out to the big landlord community that Fenty was OK, despite his tenant-advocate past." One apartment management outfit managed to round up $24,000 for his campaign.

Obama had the right sort of friends as well, evidenced by the fact that you don't make it from state senator to major presidential candidate in less than four years without some significant non-black participation in the discovery.

The politics of the Black Ivies reflects their mentors, contributors and passers of the good word. We are now familiar with Obama's sharp post-primary shift to the right, but it didn't really surprise me because I had already lived through it with Fenty, whom I supported - with perhaps the most rapid subsequent regret I have ever experienced with a politician.

I had fallen, I admit, for Fenty's Obama-like talk of hope and change and I figured the son of small business folk would be a welcome change in town where politicians traditionally serve the corporate Board of Trade first and the people as an after thought.

It was soon apparent that the change was designed to make someone else happy, namely those on the editorial board of the conservative Washington Post and the Federal City Council, an unelected shadow government that then publisher Phil Graham had established years ago. High on the council's agenda was a mayoral takeover in the public school system, including the hiring of a stunningly dictatorial superintendent, the evisceration of what remained of an elected board of education, and the closing (and possible sale for development) of numerous schools.

In Fenty's first year we also were greeted by a police chief who had been involved in the torture of demonstrators and was trained by the Israelis on how to handle such rabble; the fining of anti-war demonstrators for just putting up protest notices; the ending of a taxicab zone system which had given the city the largest per capita cab service in the country, not to mention thousands of jobs; a plan (later dropped) to destroy all official e-mails after six months; the denial of the right of car owners to make personal appearances on parking tickets; the tripling of the number of staffers earning over $175k a year; the firing of highly experienced librarians; and the illegal removal of city officials based on age discrimination.

More recently, the NAACP police review committee, on which I sit, found itself battling this hip, thirty something black mayor because he had established police checkpoints for entering one neighborhood cruelly reminiscent of the practices of South African apartheid. Fenty even personally fired a social worker, one of whose clients had died, on the grounds the child had not been visited. Which sounds reasonable until you learn that the social worker's client list had grown from four to 50 in recent weeks because of Fenty's previous grandstanding - the firing of workers for not adequately handling a case. The national standard for social workers is 12 clients, but after the first controversial case the numbers soared.

In sum, it sounds not unlike what you might expect if some older, white Republican had taken over the place. Worse, it has been carried out with remarkable and disturbing arrogance. One of Fenty's former deputy chiefs of staff told reporter Mark Segraves, "I think a lot of people are apprehensive and anxious -- you know, have a lot of anxiety about how their voice is being heard and incorporated in the changes that are happening. We do live in a democracy and it's not a dictatorship between the election and the next election.". . .

"I think as I listen to the folks in the neighborhoods and I talk to people in the Wilson Building and other government buildings, I think there is a growing frustration that there's one single voice making all the decisions in the city. I don't think that's what people had in mind when they elected Mayor Fenty.

"I think there were a lot of folks who were expecting this populist young mayor to work very closely with public to make decisions, very close with his former colleagues on the Council and closely with his senior staff, some of whom like myself who had served with him on the campaign. Unfortunately over time I saw less and less interest in hearing new ideas and different ideas."

When a local black radio host made similar criticisms of Fenty and asked for my response, I said that I didn't think Fenty saw himself as king so much as he perceived himself as CEO of Washington and that we were just his employees, not citizens. This narcissistic aura of entitlement and superiority has been noted of other Black Ivies, including Obama. Even Democrats on the Hill are starting to complain. Its roots are unclear but one senses that everyone - from parents to grade school teachers to employers to media - have blessed these politicians with a pride in their excellence and in their magnificence as ground breakers. They have been happy to accept the notion without further inquiry.

But beyond this has been a disappearance of successful non-business styles of leadership. It's not just George Bush who says "I'm the decider" these days; it has become a dominant philosophy of running things. Thus, when Nelson Mandela points out that you can't lead cattle from the front, it sounds quaint and archaic and even if, as with Obama, you have been trained in Alinsky style community organizing, it takes not much of a twist to turn those skills towards one personal purpose: getting yourself where you want to be.

Thus, if some find me unduly skeptical about Obama, it is in part because I have already seen his shadow in Adrian Fenty. And with Obama, as with Fenty, there is a sense of hubris not to mention the difficulties, as they say in elementary school, in learning to play well with others.

Thus it didn't surprise me to learn that Patrick early in his administration, spent almost $11,000 on drapery for his suite, moved up from a Crown Victoria to a Cadillac and hired a $75,000 personal aide for his wife. Nor that conservative aspects of Cory Booker's approach to some issues or the tale of him ordering his escort to pull over a car that had just jettisoned some trash out of a window. Said Booker later, "I told them that what they did was an act of violence."

Recently, there has been much talk about the generational clash between the new black leadership and the Jesse Jacksons of an earlier time. The underlying assumption on the part of many commentators is that the things that concerned the Jacksons and Sharpton have become irrelevant and that we in a new era. And since the young have been offered not Martin Luther King or Fannie Lou Hammer, but Jackson and Sharpton, it's not surprising they're seeking something different.

Unanswered in this argument, however, is what we are getting out of the shift. Yes, Booker, Fenty, Patrick and Obama are younger than Jackson, but aside from that what are we gaining? The record is mixed. Patrick has been more progressive on a number of issues than either Obama or Fenty. On the other hand his popularity has plummeted Booker is perhaps the most interesting and conflicted of the lot; Fenty the most boring. Obama the most successful.

But if there is one thing we can learn from the Black Ivies, it is that it's not the color of the politicians leading us that matters, but where they're going. It's not your roots but what you do with them.

For example, put the Black Ivies up against earlier urban ethnic politicians, such as the Irish, and what immediately jumps out is not their ethnicity but their lack of political empathy for those who share it. Try, for example, to imagine James Michael Curley lecturing the poor Irish on how to raise their kids or a Tammany Hall politics based on dismantling public schools, increasing police powers and taking away a taxi system that favors lower class strivers. As late as Marion Barry, blacks made such notable progress in DC that it became fondly known as Chocolate City. Under Fenty no one would even think of it.

Part of the pride some express for the new leaders is that it is a sign that we are moving beyond race. Perhaps, but race was always a convenient stereotype for something that we're not moving beyond nor even wishing to discuss: class. Even in the old South, segregation was a way for the white elite to keep poor whites and blacks from discovering what they had in common.

The rise of leaders like Fenty and Obama allow us to continue not to exclude class issues in our politics. The poor, as John Edwards discovered, can't make it far even on the white liberal agenda. Having a black or woman president provides comfort without the need to change things much.

This doesn't make the Black Ivies any worse than any other politicians; it just makes them decidedly typical in important ways. Which is why we have a black Democratic candidate for president to the right of the US Conference of Mayors on healthcare and whose major economic planks include telling young blacks to work harder. And a black mayor who doesn't want people entering their own neighborhood without police approval.

In the end, it may not be a national conversation about race we need so much as one about all the things we use talk of race to cover up.

A CAMPAIGN BECALMED

It is against the journalist's code of ethics to say so, but the presidential campaign has become incredibly dull. Over the past few weeks, the candidates have become becalmed, drifting in the electoral ocean, sails flapping lazily, awaiting for nature and history to cause something to happen.

Actually it has. We're on the verge of war with Iran and the banking system is collapsing, but neither candidate has much to say on these topics. Instead the hope huckster lectures the NAACP on how to raise their children and his opponent struggles to find some justification for his existence since he was a prisoner of war.

Part of this is just the shift from primaries to general election, the former being a sort of personnel interview while the latter usually demanding some attention to actual issues. Neither candidate, however, is inclined to take on the challenge. They see their role, after all, as being life's great commercial break.

The increasingly timid Barack Obama is still ahead in the polls and electoral vote count, and may benefit even further by the heightened turnout of several constituencies. But given the incompetence of his opponent and the disaster of his presumptive predecessor, he should be doing far better. Among his problems, he clearly prefers the pulpit and op ed page to the street corner and the union hall. Further, his rapid decline from patron saint of change to faint patron of the status quo does not bode well if he does get elected.

Obama not only offers little hope of restoring the Constitution, he is not even the anti-war candidate he pretends to be; he just wants to switch its primary locale from Iraq to Afghanistan. His hubristic, pompous approach to matters political are already becoming tiresome. Democrats, after all, are meant to put their views into legislation, it is traditionally the conservatives who prefer endless cliches. And, though he speaks of change, Obama has yet to come up with any really good examples and, though he is considered eloquent, his enthusiasts rarely offer a quotation in support of this contention.

Obama has already alienated some of his own constituency for his indefensible position on telecom immunity and electronic spying. But trouble is arising elsewhere as well, witness this from John Bresnahan of Politico:

"After a brief bout of Obamamania, some Capitol Hill Democrats have begun to complain privately that Barack Obama's presidential campaign is insular, uncooperative and inattentive to their hopes for a broad Democratic victory in November.

"'They think they know what's right and everyone else is wrong on everything,' groused one senior Senate Democratic aide. 'They are kind of insufferable at this point.'. . .

"One Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, compared the Obama campaign unfavorably to President Bush's administration.

"'At least Bush waited until he was in the White House before they started ignoring everybody,' the aide said."

So, once again we are forced to fall back on the wisdom of the father of famed Democratic operative Jim Farley who told his son, "Just remember, behind every Republican president, no matter how good, are other Republicans, while behind every Democratic president, no matter how bad, are other Democrats." Of course, Jim Farley's dad didn't have to put up with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Still, with the Senate Democrats possibly picking up as many as nine seats, it is at least possible that Obama's absurd notion of post-partisanship may be in for a justifiably bumpy ride.

And boring as the campaign has become, it may be better that way. The great danger in waiting is an attack on Iran before the election instituted by either Mad King George or the equally pathological Israeli government. We can not expect either Obama or the Democratic leadership to take steps to oppose or block such a move.

In the end, it is the strength of issues and not the candidates that will matter. Jacques LaRoche in the DMI Blog notes that, "After the Great Depression, Americans were fervently pushing for change. Socialist activist farmers in Kansas were fighting for workers rights, Alabama was rife with progressive communists, the general mood was progressive. Faced with such overwhelming popular support for social change, Roosevelt was forced to enact the New Deal to appease the masses and quash the rising power of rival political parties."

The uprising over Obama's betrayal of the Constitution in the FISA matter is a small example of how this can happen. The right - which has managed to infect a fear of gay marriage, abortion and peace into virtually every mainstream candidate of either party - has shown that you don't have to be elected to produce change. You do have to make it painfully obvious what it is you want.

It's not so much about satisfaction with your electoral choice, of which you really don't have much. If you're rational you will be unhappy but can always take a barf bag to the polls. It is about making the important issues unavoidable to those the system foists upon us and giving some positive direction to their endless capacity for political cowardice.

WHEN WILL THE MEDIA DITCH THE RIGHTWING ECONOMIC CULT?

Sam Smith

Even before the current mortgage crisis, evidence that rightwing economic policy since Reagan has been a failure was overwhelming. The problem was that nobody seemed to notice. In no small part, this was thanks to a media - heavily comprised of ex-political science, history and English majors - accepting without question propaganda from the right that, in many ways, was the same thing to economics as creationism is to evolution.

Even now, with news of collapse unavoidable, journalists try to sound intelligent by suggesting government involvement in the rescue from two and a half decades of corporatism might be a violation of the allegedly sacred principles of the free market. This is not an ideological matter on the media's part - after all, NPR has been a regular enabler - but rather reflects the journalists' willingness to rely on whatever "expert" happens to be in power at the moment.

Thus, the average reader or viewer may not realize that during the glory years of the second robber baron era, things like these have fallen significantly:

Minimum wage as percent of average wage

Real income

Real manufacturing wages

Percent of single women and mothers in the workforce

The bottom 40%'s share of national wealth

Older families with pensions.

Workers covered by defined benefit pensions.

The savings rate

US manufacturing jobs

And here are some of the things that have grown:

Top 1% share of total income

Income gap between rich and poor

Foreign debt as a percent of GDP

Age at which one can receive Social Security

Hunger

Consumer credit debt

Housing foreclosures

Severe poverty rate

With the media almost completely blacking out all but conservative economic viewpoints, the public has little idea of how well socialism often works or how a blend of capitalism and public involvement can solve many problems, or that we actually function on a principle Paul Soglin, the former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, labeled lemon socialism, of which the current bailout of the big housing insurers is a classic case and in which the capitalists both get to make money and then get bailed out by the government when they fail.

This has been one of the media's greatest sins, one that stems from ignorance, groveling to power and infatuation with the cliches of the moment.

Just as examples, why are we not allowed to debate regulations on credit care usury? Or an equity sharing program in which the government helps people buy homes rather than helping the banks when the loans go bad? Or letting the government as well as the banks print money - to be used for non-inflationary public works instead of putting generations in debt for stupid wars?

The Republicans lack the intelligence, the Democrats lack the courage. The media can continue to contribute to our downward economic slide or it can help introduce us the ideas, principles and approaches that will show the way out of a quarter century of greed and stupidity parading as economic theory.

THE AUDACITY OF IRONY

Sam Smith

A major cause of the decline of the left has been its drift from a populist to a puritanical approach towards life. Thus it is no surprise that a New Yorker cartoon ridiculing the attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate - with a drawing of what the Obamas would look like if what the right said about them was true -has come under fire from liberals.

Richard Prince reports in Journal-isms:

"Obama himself, informed of the cover by the news media, said he would have no comment. But Burton, his spokesman, said, 'The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.'. . .

Jake Tapper of ABC News wrote on his blog: "Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal - no matter how superior they feel their intellect is - should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing."

Rachel Sklar in the Huffington Post wrote: "Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it's going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right."

It is for such reasons that the liberal elite contains some of the most boring people on earth. If they can't even get the point of a New Yorker cover, how can they possibly deal with more complex matters?

In fact, irony has been in a tough state for some time. A couple of years ago I was talking with an author who was writing a book on 50 years of Harvard students. What's it like now, I asked. "There's not an ounce of irony on campus." Some years earlier I was tossed off a local public radio talk show and when I asked one of the station's other staffers why I had been expelled, he replied simply, "Excessive irony."

Even the late night humorists find it hard. While Jon Stewart oscillates between the ironic and the slap stick, the Stephen Colbert show that follows has all the subtlety of heavy vaudeville, not unlike news talk shows on which participants prove their point by out-shouting the other guests.

A good dictionary definition of irony is "the use of words [or, in the case of the New Yorker, drawings] to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning."

Why has it fallen on such hard times? I suspect it is in part because the people who run our country these days not only take themselves quite literally, but expect everyone else to do so as well. It may also have something to do with the population explosion, because pyramids of any size have the same amount of room at the very top. The larger the bottom of the pyramid, the most desperate the fight for space at the tip. For those engaged in such a struggle there is no room for ironic perspective.

There was a time when Americans didn't take their politicians so seriously, aided by the like of HL Mencken who wrote of Warren Harding's rhetorical style:

"It reminds me of a string of wet sponges. It reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup... It drags itself up out of a dark abyss of pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

Or with the help of Walt Whitman who wrote of Democratic convention:

"The members who comprised it were seven-eighths of them, ...the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth."

The very thought of a candidate's aide calling a New Yorker cover "tasteless and offensive" would once have been considered itself a joke, rather than something to discuss thoughtfully.

The only way to have reasonably decent politicians is to keep them humble, make constant fun of them and don't let them get away with anything. It is by ignoring such rules that we have ended up with the likes of George Bush and Bill Clinton.

Of course, the campaigns don't want this sort of discipline and - having conned Americans into treating them as intellects, prophets or living disciples of Jesus himself - they are going to do what they can to prevent the tone from slipping into skepticism and irony.

The Salvadorian poet Roque Dalton put it well: "You can judge the moral bearing of a political system, a political institution, a political man by the degree of danger they attach to the fact of being observed through the eyes of a satiric poet."

The New Yorker put the Obama crowd to this test, and they failed.

JESSE JACKSON'S NUTCRACKER BLEEP

Sam Smith

It's a sure sign of how American politics has disintegrated that one Chicago politician can't cuss out another without holding a news conference to apologize. This is the town where one candidate once ran on the slogan, "Vote for Fred and Nobody Gets Hurt." Now you can't even make nobody feel bad.

Worse, the thing that got Jesse Jackson riled up was Obama talking down to black people, particular his sanctimonious salvos on the failures of black males. Within hours, Jackson's own son had thrown him under the bus - admittedly a favorite repository for Obama campaigners who get off message, but hardly in keeping with Obama's expectations for black males, which presumably includes some respect for your own father.

The excruciating pomposity of such moments - by the offender, the offendee and the media egging them on - illustrates not only the collapse of our politics but of our language as well.

Jackson was the second Democratic pol to use salty language about Obama in recent weeks. Bill Clinton was reported to have said that Obama would have to "kiss my ass" to get his support. But it didn't get as much play as Jackson nut cutting remark because the media cares for Clinton far more than for Jackson and Clinton was smart enough not to talk his way out of it by holding a news conference.

One of the problems with such incidents is that everyone is striving too hard to be respectable. In a less pretentious time, Jackson would have responded with something like, "I agree with him on more issues than I do my wife, and I'm not even married to him." Or Obama might have said, "Well, the next time we meet to discuss the many issues on which we do agree, I will try to maintain a safe distance." Case closed.

But too few speak United States in American politics anymore. I miss it and appreciate Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson's efforts to revive it.

In fact, my only concern was that Jackson might try to sever Obama's gonads even as the latter was savoring Clinton's lower posterior orifice. Now that would have been going too far.

THE OBAMA EGO

Sam Smith

From the start one thing I couldn't figure out about Barack Obama was how come a guy with only about 140 days' experience in the US Senate decides to set himself up a presidential exploratory commission.

Nothing since then has been particularly reassuring, as I was reminded when Obama said that people who thought he was moving to the center "apparently haven't been listening to me."

Even if that were true, which it certainly isn't, there are a number of good and higher priority reasons they may not have been as attentive as the candidate would have liked, such as trying to hold on to a job in an economy for which Obama has no particularly good ideas, or fixing dinner, getting the kids to school or watching Jon Stewart.

Parents, teachers and spouses are entitled to complain about people not listening to them. Political candidates are not, because the relationship between the citizen and the politician is not that of a child, student or spouse but, in theory at least, that of a boss, or at least an equal. A candidate is supposed to listen to the people. If the people listen to him, it's because he has something useful to say, and sonorous, semantic slipping and sliding doesn't count.

Nobody talks about it, but Obama has a stunning ego and sense of personal entitlement, as Chancellor Merckel discovered as the candidate blithely planned to expand his campaign to German soil and the Brandenberg Gate. The whole campaign has a grandiosity and self-centered quality that makes it seem as though concocted by a Hollywood film producer rather than real politicians. Unfortunately, however, life isn't a film; it is still real.

There isn't much to do about it at this point given the politics of the situation and the dismal alternative. But it is a problem and we ought to at least not hide it under the Kool Aid.

MAKING A MUDDLE OF THE MIDDLE

Sam Smith

Few candidates have fallen so fast from sainthood to run of the mill unreliable and untrustworthy political hack as Barack Obama. The decanonization has only taken a few weeks and has been almost entirely due to what the media politely calls Obama's shift to the middle. In fact, as Jim Hightower has noted, the middle of the road is filled largely with yellow stripes and dead armadillos. But that's okay, because Obama isn't really moving to the middle but to the right, like some tail-wagging puppy dog trying to crawl under the conservative fence.

The results have been awkward and even embarrassing, as when Obama had to hold a second news conference on the same day in order to renuance his Iraq position he had initially nuanced only a few hours earlier.

What we are seeing is another example of the overwhelming desire of leading Democrats to be someone else, like a tone dead dude doing an air guitar imitation of Ronald Reagan, cheered by major campaign donors and others who run the game, but leaving the voters annoyed, apathetic, uncertain or cynical.

It's not a disaster, and Obama remains far better than McCain, but neither is it anything to applaud. In the trade it's considered clever, sophisticated and practical. Occasionally it even helps a candidate win. But any clever, sophisticated and practical technique that diminishes a candidate's image as rapidly as has occurred in Obama's case at least deserves reconsideration.

A good place to start would be for candidates to be themselves, exuding what the pros call authenticity. Obama is beginning to sound like a walking Gallup poll analysis. You can imagine him walking down a crowded street changing his verbal emphasis as the hand shaking demographic alters. It wasn't exactly the image he had at the start. From the audacity of hope to the timidity of focus groups in just a few days.

Besides, it creates an odd image of an Obama presidency - lines of pregnant women at the White House gates waiting for him to determine whether their pain is sufficiently physical for a late term abortion or asking NSA to black out pornographic remarks in the results of warrantless wiretaps it submits to him.

But what about the voters who aren't black, young and wowed, or old reliable liberals? Don't you have to prove you're tough on abortions, gays and terrorists (in no particular order) in order to win back America?

Not really. For one thing, if you play that game you're admitting defeat because there's no way you're going to outdo the pathological right on such matters. For another, as Obama has discovered, trying can get you into trouble.

The best approach is to show some enthusiasm for one's own major causes - broadly missing among national Democrats, perhaps because they haven't found them - and then looking for other issues that are not even necessarily on the media list of approved ways for liberals to cave in.

There's nothing wrong with thinking about the other guy's concerns. You just do it from a progressive perspective. I call it crossover politics, those issues where there is a constituency on both sides. One can push these issues with integrity and authenticity without seeming a liberal wannaplay wimp.

But here's the secret people like Obama won't tell you. Their campaign contributors won't like them if they take such positions. Besides some of these subjects are new and those in politics and the media don't like stuff that is new because it is not supported by sufficient cliches they can repeat about it. And some ideas are just too upsetting to core fans.

Notwithstanding all that, here is one list of crossover policies a progressive candidate could support without embarrassment and with good effect:

The Second Amendment: This is at the top only because it's at the top of the news at the moment. Support of the Supreme Court decision on gun control would be an easy way for a progressive to stir the political pot. Excessive gun control, as in DC, has been broadly ineffective and has become an easy symbol of liberal puritanism, not to mention the fact that it violates the Constitution. Liberals commonly become derisive at any suggestion that widespread gun ownership might be useful in restraining a growingly dictatorial government, but that's because they haven't learned much from Vietnam or Iraq, where America's massive military might proved stunningly ineffective against personal weaponry.

The Tenth Amendment: This is the amendment that gives to states and the people those rights not specified under the Constitution. No amendment has been so routinely ignored, often through the caprice of greenmail, i.e. giving away federal money with all sorts of stipulations that end local control. The heavy liberal bias against state and local decisions is unfounded. In 1992, for example, the one hundred largest localities in America pursued an estimated 1,700 environmental crime prosecutions, more than twice the number of such cases brought by the federal government in the previous decade. Similarly, as Washington was vainly struggling to get a handle on the tobacco industry, 750 communities passed indoor no-smoking laws. The 10th Amendment has strong supporters on both left and right.

Devolution - The devolutionary - or localized - principles of the Tenth Amendment also work as part of a general political philosophy, again one that liberals often denigrate for no good reason. For example, there are several federal agencies that work on such principles - the Coast Guard, National Park Service and US Attorneys. In each case the local representatives of the US government have broad discretion and in each case, we have a rare federal agency that is generally admired. Or consider how local schools are being eviscerated by both parties and the size of the constituency that doesn't like it. Again, there are devolutionists on both the left and the right.

Worker issues - Every issue that directly improves the lot of the ordinary worker cuts into power of rightwing scare tactics. Compared to New Deal and Great Society Democrats, present day members of the party are pathetic on such matters and are paying the electoral price.

Election reform - Real reforms like instant runoff voting are classic crossover issues. There is also no particular ideology involved in counting the votes right and honestly, but neither major party is dealing with the matter.

Civil liberties - While the test cases may vary with the ideology, both left and right have strong defenders of civil liberties who are among the most useful and honorable inhabitants of the political environment.

Corruption - Again, the sides pick their own examples, but the principle crosses over. From the Project on Government Oversight to Judicial Watch there's plenty for everyone. The exit polls, for example, suggest that Al Gore would have done significantly better if he had had the courage to publicly dump a corrupt Bill Clinton during the 2000 campaign.

The War on Drugs - The most costly and most disastrous domestic policy of recent decades. Again, neither major party takes it on, conventional liberals have been terrible on the issue, but there are certainly a large number waiting for it to come to the fore.

Usury - The incredible interest rates charged by credit cards would be one of the easiest issues for a progressive to adopt, providing banks weren't subsidizing the campaign.

Jury rights - The right of a jury to judge both the law and the fact is commonly ridiculed by liberals, but there is a strong two pole constituency for juries to be treated with more respect.

Housing - Simple programs such as a joint equity program in which the government became a partner with certain classes of home buyers (getting its share of the equity back upon sale) would be popular across the spectrum. Only the bankers wouldn't like it.

Reciprocal liberty - One of the reasons such issues as gay marriage are so important is because liberal puritans have pressed acceptance over tolerance. Human nature tells us that the latter comes first. The message should be you can't be free if I can't be free. You don't have to like what I do, but you do have to tolerate me doing it as long as it doesn't harm others. Reciprocal liberty is a principal all Americans should find to their liking because it is a very American idea.

If these were the issues in a Democratic presidential campaign, think how different the debates and the electoral count would be. And the funny thing is, by adopting such crossover issues, the Democratic candidate would not only be more successful, but considerably more progressive, than the one we've got now.

FREEING JULY 4TH

As I watched the July 4th parade in Freeport, Maine, it occurred to me that both left and right have got this holiday all wrong. They have nationalized it, politicized it, propagandized it and removed its soul. So we end up in a debate over patriotism symbolized by flag pins made by non-union workers in China. Or we read things like this from Matthew Rothschild of the Progressive Magazine: "It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out. Spare me the puerile parades. Don’t play that martial music, white boy. And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s. You see, I don’t believe in patriotism. It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic. Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game."

In fact, July 4 is the birthday of our country, and birthdays should be fun. Besides, as Mark Davis has noted, there's a big difference between "the state," and "our country" - the former a government and system that has done us great harm and the latter a place where our common story has unfolded. A place and a story we can love without having it inculcated or foisted upon us.

One reason we have such a hard time seeing this is because those at the top use the Fourth of July for their own purposes, leaving us with the choice of being either pompously nationalistic or perpetually grumpy.

You have to go to a place like Freeport to be reminded of this. Or to another town where I once lived - Bristol RI - which has the oldest continuous Independence Day celebration in the United States, starting in 1785 and including outdoor concerts, soap box races and a parade that has attracted over 200.000 people.

Bristol's nickname is "America's most patriotic town." That would undoubtedly sound awful to Matthew Rothschild, but here's something he needs to know. In the last election, the Democratic candidate for senator got 53% of the town's vote and Rep. Patrick Kennedy got 68%. Not exactly rightwing heaven. Nor is Freeport where 39% voted for the last Democrat for governor and only 23% for the Republican, with the remaining 38% split between the Green candidate and an independent.

How does it happen that such places can have July 4 celebrations that anyone, regardless of their politics, can enjoy?

In part because they are a celebration of a community within a land. On the fourth of July, in such places, all patriotism becomes local.

Here’s how the Providence Journal described the Bristol event:

"The Shriners were back in their funny cars and funnier costumes. There were not one, but two of the Red Sox’ World Series trophies. Polished marching bands strutted their stuff. And then there was Buddy.

In a parade with hundreds of participants that stretched over four hours, it was hard for anyone to steal the show. But former Providence Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. came close. Cianci had been a virtual fixture in the parade since 1974, when he was first elected mayor of the capital city, until he was convicted of federal racketeering conspiracy in 2002 and sentenced to a five-year prison term. This was his first time back, and his return whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

Kim Madden, of Bristol, gave Cianci a big hug. "I love his marinara sauce," Madden said. "I’d vote for him if he ran." John Hugo, of Bristol, pushed his cell phone to Cianci’s ear so he could say hello to Hugo’s wife, Margaret. . .

The Mt. Hope High School marching band warmed up with "Soul Man." Sgt. Daniel Clark, a former Massachusetts state policeman who now goes by the name "The Singing Trooper," went through his voice exercises. The "Patriotic Stilt Walker" stood by in his red sequined pants. . .

Twenty-four performing groups and 20 floats took part in the parade. They included a Johnny Depp look-alike dressed as the Pirates of the Caribbean star, marching bands from Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and a team of Clydesdales.

Corny perhaps, excessive loyalty perhaps to corrupt ex-mayors with their own marinara brand, but hardly what fascism is made of.

If you had gone to the Freeport parade not knowing what it was about, you could have reasonably concluded that it was in honor of the volunteer fire department, which clearly got better play than either the local police or the military. And when they ran out of Freeport fire trucks, there were ones from other towns and from other times. Yes, there was a police honor guard and a vehicle with flags celebrating veterans, but when Freeport looked for something to symbolize America within its borders, it gravitated naturally to a collection of volunteer citizens who had kept the place from burning down.

The other major symbol of America in the parade was simply the truck. Added to the numerous fire vehicles was a collection of impressive six wheelers provided by local contractors and other businesses, far more appealing reminders of the hard work and machinery that built this country than any number of political speeches on the National Mall or fly-overs by F-16s.

There was also a giant LL Bean boot on a trailer, a minibus filled with Freeport elders led by an aged gentleman on an electric cart and, reported the Portland Press Herald, "The award for best neighborhood float went to the East Freeport Oar House, an elaborately costumed, if somewhat unrefined drill team, armed with oars and salty spirit. The trophy seemed appropriate - a 1922 Bates Manufacturing bowling trophy, picked up for $8 at a yard sale."

This is what happened in two small towns this July 4. Just a few of the places that still remember what America is really about - beginning with their own communities, their own people and their own stories. From volunteer fire departments to a corrupt mayor that many still loved and still have the right to say so.

This is a story our national media and national politicians don't tell. The right is busy ripping off the story for its own cynical ends, while a mostly urban left at best treats it as quaint and silly, at worst dastardly mind manipulation. And the media, unable to handle something that happens in so many places on the same day, blends it into a nationalistic myth.

The answer may lie in turning off your television next July 4th, avoiding any speeches, and finding the nearest small town parade. You could find yourself feeling good about America again.

THE PATRIOTISM GAME. . . .

At a time when it looks like we're about to start a war with Iran, gas is over $4 a gallon and our economy is in trouble, the best it seems we can do is argue over whether Barack Obama is a patriot. In fact, Obama is a good American just like John McCain. The ones I worry about are those whose definition of patriotism is so narcissistic that they exclude from the category anyone who disagrees with them, because if there is any worthy definition of a bad American it is someone is unwilling to share the place with others.

The whole matter would not be so important if it weren't for the media force feeding it to the public as though it were something real rather than the cynical spin of conservative vote scroungers. Whenever a dumb issue becomes dominant in a campaign you can reasonably count on the media to embrace it, not out of ideology, but from the relief of discovering something easy enough for it to understand. You can have endless talk shows on the subject without the danger that facts might suddenly intrude. One could just as easily have a debate on which candidate is most likely to enter heaven or sleeps best on his side.

The matter is further intensified by a nonsensical conflating of patriotism and heroism. Heroism is considered in America a lifetime pass to patriotism even though, as Joseph Conrad noted, the hero and the coward are those who, for one brief moment, do something out of the ordinary. At least the ones we honor, that is. The career firefighter, the inner city grandmother raising six grandchildren whose father is in jail and mother has a lousy job, or the teacher year after year helping to save those who society has preemptively discarded are not treated as sacred, as heroes, or as worthy of special honor during political campaigns and or on the evening news. But killing some Iraqis of Vietnamese, or being killed by them, now that's the real thing

Our perversion of patriotism and courage is heightened by the fact that most of the modern media has had no personal involvement in the military. They frequently have a fairy tale notion of what it is all about, one that it happily passed on to citizens on the evening news. So deep is this bias that the media consistently treats those who follow the way of peace - even heroically or with consistent courage - as crazies not worth scheduling for comment.

The media's handling of the matter is so rotten that it even takes shots at a general who dares to criticized another military man whom the press had designated as a hero. Here's the exchange with CBS's Bob Schieffer:

GENERAL CLARK - I certainly honor [McCain's] service as a prisoner of war. . . But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded - that wasn't a wartime squadron. He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall.

BOB SCHIEFFER - Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down

GENERAL CLARK - Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

Is there any grounds to disagree with General Clark? Only cowardice, swiftly demonstrated by Barack Obama (whom Clark is pushing) who acted as though the general had committed some ghastly sin. Obama followed his timidity by a dreadfully pompous, self righteous speech on patriotism. Do we really have to go through all this, just to have a better president than John McCain? It really shouldn't have been this difficult.

When you add it up, there are really three offenders in these instances:

- Rovian right wingers who create the false issue in the first place

- A media that propels the fake issue into false prominence

- Democrats like Obama whose foolish efforts at exculpation are seen as a sign of weakness and encouragement by those who started the problem in the first place. And so the circle turns again.

McCain has one big advantage over Obama: he knows who he is. He doesn't know that he shouldn't be proud of who he is, and in fact should apologize for it, but he projects the sort of confidence of his role as an American to which other Americans respond positively. To often, Democrats like Obama behave is if these things were matters of intellectual consideration, or just commercial branding problems, rather than an expression of spirit and style. As Louis Armstrong once said of jazz, if you have to ask how act American you'll never know.

This, of course, doesn't mean you're not American; just that you're badly prepared to deal with the fools who suggest that you're not.

I learned this lesson when I was still a teen, living in Philadelphia during the mayoral campaign of Richardson Dilworth. Dilworth's mayoral race remains a classic. His most notable campaign technique was the street corner rally, which he developed to a degree probably unequalled since in American politics. Using the city's only Democratic string band as a warm-up act, Dilworth would mount a sound truck and tick off the sins of the Republican administration. . .

Dilworth on one occasion got into a fist fight with a member of his audience. His wife once knocked an aggressive heckler off the platform with her handbag and, in a later campaign, his daughter picketed the office of the GOP candidate with a sign reading, "Why won't you debate the issues with my father on TV?"

The Republicans responded with sneers, rumors and allegations about Dilworth's liberalism and, in particular, his association with Americans for Democratic Action. The GOP city chairman, William Meade, called ADA communist-infiltrated and 'inside pink' where "Philadelphia members of that radical and destructive [Democratic] party have gone underground and joined the Dilworth ranks."

Dilworth's initial reaction was to call Meade a "liar" and to challenge him to a debate. Said Dilworth: "The ADA acted and struck hard against communism while Mr. Meade and his gang created by their corruption the very conditions that breed communism."

But that wasn't enough for Dilworth. To make his point, he marched into the offices of the Republican City Committee and, with press in tow, brushed past the receptionist, and barged into Meade's private office where the chairman was conversing with two city officials. Dilworth challenged Meade to name one Communist in ADA. When Meade demurred, Dilworth said Meade had accused him of treason: "If you want to debate publicly, I'll go before any organization you name. I'll go before your ward leaders. I challenge you to produce evidence of a single Communist or Communist sympathizer in ADA. I say this as one who fought for his country in the Marine Corps. That's more than you did, Mr. Meade."

"Maybe I wasn't physically fit," replied Meade.

Dilworth continued the confrontation a few minutes longer and then stormed out. The red-baiting subsided and the central issue once more became corruption. Dilworth won.

It took courage, but more than that, it took self understanding and pride of a sort campaign consultants these days try to wean candidates from. No one again ever doubted who Dilworth was; with Obama they're still trying to find out.

WHOSE LAND IS IT ANYWAY?. . . .

SAM SMITH, 2004 - Before September 11, patriotism wasn't doing all that well. You might have noticed it at the ballpark, as the "Star Spangled Banner" was turned into a novelty number and the guy next to you continued munching on his hot dog as you stood at attention. Less obvious, however, was that in the media and the nation's talk it just didn't seem to matter that much.

One reason was that learning about the country and its values had been widely displaced in school by things like driver, drug and sex education. Social studies, history and civic education were in decline as we taught our kids how to behave as individuals rather than how to be part of a community.

Immigrants didn't get much help either, as neither of the two great acculturating institutions of the past - the church and the political machines - held the influence they once had.

Richard Croker, a tough 19th century county boss of Tammany Hall, had grown almost lyrical when he spoke of his party's duty to immigrants:

"They do not speak our language, they do not know our laws, they are the raw material with which we have to build up the state . . . There is no denying the service which Tammany has rendered to the republic. There is no such organization for taking hold of the untrained, friendless man and converting him into a citizen. Who else would do it if we did not? . . . [Tammany] looks after them for the sake of their vote, grafts them upon the Republic, makes citizens of them."

Alexander B. Callow Jr. of the University of California has written that Boston pol Martin Lomansey even met every new immigrant ship and "helped the newcomers find lodging or guided them to relatives. James Michael Curley set up nationalization classes to prepare newcomers for the citizenship examination . . . Friendly judges, anticipating election day, converted their courts into naturalization mills, grinding out a thousand new Americans a day. . . . Flags were waved, prose turned purple, celebrations were wild on national holidays. . . . Patriotism became a means for the newcomer to prove himself worthy."

But there was a darker side, one that often comes to the fore when patriotism is prominent: "Enemies of the organization and reformers in general were identified as opponents of true patriotism and American ideals."

Like other isms, patriotism is easily driven more by hatred of the Other than by positive love of one's own. This is why Osama bin Laden, the KKK, and various movements of American nationalism have typically recruited from among society's weakest and most insecure. . .

It is worth noting that those pols who "grafted immigrants upon the Republic" were all Democrats. They saw no conflict between their love of country and an economic populism so radical it would ban them from today's C-SPAN. To them, the palaces of the Morgans and Carneigies were not the same as the place called America. Americans had not yet been indoctrinated into the false notion that the revolution was fought to let corporations do whatever they want. And Democrats had not yet turned over bragging rights for faith, family, and home to the right wing.

Consider these words from a Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, speaking to a group of newly naturalized citizens: "You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God. Certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race."

By the end of the century, our presidents saw it differently. Bill Clinton told a 1995 Michigan State University commencement shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country." And in a few years, George Bush's attorney general would imply that even criticizing government policy was unpatriotic.

How had loyalty to government come to replace loyalty to ideals, place, and people in the pantheon of patriotism? In part because the American elite had decided that nations no longer mattered all that much. It was government we needed to honor lest our parochialism interfere with corporate multi-nationalism. In 1992, Strobe Talbott had written in Time Magazine, "Within the next hundred years . . . nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority . . . All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary."

Talbott was expressing a centrist consensus later confirmed by that Washington favorite, Francis Fukuyama: "Globalization will not be reversed." And by Vaclav Havel, approvingly quoted in the New York Review of Books referring to nations as "cultlike entities charged with emotion."

It was not just a matter of words. No assault on American sovereignty has been more successful than that carried out in recent years by the globalization movement, using such mechanisms as NAFTA and the WTO. That which, over the course of our history, the British, Mexicans, Confederates, Spanish, Germans and Japanese had been unable to do was now being accomplished by a handful of lawyers armed only with cell phones, fax machines and the support of politicians willing to trade their country's nationhood for another campaign contribution.

And it wasn't just happening to America. By the 1990s, about half the top economies of the world were not nations, but corporations. Trade had replaced ideology as the engine of foreign affairs. Politics, nationhood and the idea of place itself was being supplanted by a huge, amorphous international corporate culture that ruled not by force but by market share. This culture, in the words of French writer Jacques Attali, sought an "ideologically homogenous market where life will be organized around common consumer desires."

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Yet now, suddenly, we speak of patriotism again. Why did so many need the Viagra of violence to demonstrate love for their land? Where was this love when NAFTA and the World Trade Organization were being forced down our throats? Where was it as corporations raped our waters and forests and infected our crops? Where was it when the young took to the streets to defend old American values against a new world order? And where was this love of America during the long "war" on drugs as a growing number of politicians, police, and financial institutions served as allies to the drug lords?

It now feels odd to this Vietnam era vet, whose great-great-great fought with his four brothers in the Revolution and whose parents both lost brothers in World War I, to be lectured on patriotism by those who until the morning of September 11 had evinced so little interest in loyalty to any larger entity than themselves and their careers.

To be sure, the sudden rise in patriotic self-branding is not entirely a spontaneous reaction to the tragic events. It has also been the direct result of intense government and corporate propaganda capitalizing on these events and on a long-cultivated shift by which Americans have been reduced to being spectators and consumers, rather than actual citizens, of their government. We have been taught to cheer rather than act, to wear logos rather than think, and to purchase rather than control and influence. At a moment calling for the most rational vision and thought, our leaders - from the White House to CNN - have instead chosen to turn this tragedy into a Super Bowl of national affairs in which our only assignment as Americans is to choose the right team and cheer it on.

This is a dirty business that does a huge disservice to the country they purport to honor. Remember: these are the people who, in the months before September, not only were assuring us that our future lay in giving up our national independence for the greater good of a corporate-dominated global culture, but who arrested our young people who dared suggest this was not right, and who ridiculed anyone who spoke with feeling of the need to protect America's sovereignty on behalf of its workers, its environment, and its civil liberties.

These people have further failed us by creating a world so filled with hatred for our land. They have failed us by not protecting us against the consequences. They have failed us by selling out our interests to the highest multinational bidder. And now they fail us again, by presuming that they know how best to love this land and imputing disloyalty to those who doubt them. They are in no position to say who is a good American. While we pledge allegiance to the republic for which America stands, we do not have to pledge allegiance to the empire and its failed policies for which America is now suffering. There are few finer, albeit painful, expressions of loyalty than to tell a friend, a spouse, a child, or a parent that what they are doing may be dangerous or wrong. If our country is about to run into the street without looking, there is absolutely nothing disloyal about crying, "Stop!"

Besides, true patriotism is an act of love, not hate. It is service not revenge, contributions not cheers, participation not prohibition, and debate not salutes. . .

America is not the answer; it is only a good place to look for the answer. America has never been perfect; it's just been a place where it was easier to fix things that were broken. The ability to repair ourselves has long been one of our great characteristics as a people and a nation.

Each of us can express love for America in their own way. The Green may do so through care of our environment. The libertarian or anarchist may do so by preserving our faith in liberty. The progressive or socialist may do it by insisting that America's promise of social justice be fulfilled. The conservative may do it by preserving the good. The deeply religious may do it through personal witness. The oppressed may do it through protest and leading us towards our ideals. The cop may do it through upholding the laws of the land - including the most important one, the Constitution. The artist may paint it, the musician sing about it, the teacher teach it.

Most of all, being an American means nobody gets to tell you how best to be an American. As Woodie Guthrie pointed out, this land may be your land, but it is mine as well.