Senator Obama acuses President Bush of making a "false political attack" in his speech earlier today at the Israeli Knesset. What is false, exactly, about the President's statement. Bush said:"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

Hasn't Barack Obama specifically suggested face-to-face negotiations with iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? And isn't Ahmadine-wack job a "terrorist and radical?" If Iran is the world's leading supporter of terrorism (and it proudly is) doesn't that make the president a terrorist?

And even if you resist the idea of classifying the President of Iran as a "terrorist," surely he counts as a radical, doesn't he?

In what sense, then is, the controverisal passage a "false attack."?

Obama, of course, welcomes a confrontation with the President of the United States -- it enhances his own stature, and President Bush is considerably less popular right now than Barry's real oponent, John McCain.

But concerned citizens ought to look behind the posing and think about the substance of these words -- and how well they really do apply to Senator Obama (even thought Mr. Bush was gracious enough never to mention him by name).

Many observers expected the collapse of the two-party system in 2008. Lou Dobbs of CNN wrote a bestseller called “Independents Day,” predicting an “independent populist” would win the presidency.  

There’s scant prospect of any viable third party, however, when potential fringe contenders have an air of “round-up-the-usual suspects”—Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Mike Gravel, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin. Soaring turnout in primaries shows no mass desertion from the two-party system, and the Gallup Poll of under-30 voters notes a scant 8%—unchanged from four years ago—who consider themselves “independents.”  

The predicted “independents day” never materialized because likely nominees McCain and Obama, both of them once considered underdogs, give a fresh flavor to each party and show  the best way to work for change is within—not outside—the system that served us reasonably well for the last 150 years.

In every presidential campaign, a candidate’s character plays a crucial role. We can't predict the challenges and issues a new president may face (who would have suggested George W. Bush would become a war time president?) but considering questions of temperament and competence and decency allows voters to predict how well a potential president might respond. Unfortunately for Senator Obama, his performance in the Jeremiah Wright controversy shows weak leadership and deeply flawed integrity.

His startling inability to work with his own former pastor to prevent serious damage to his campaign hardly inspires confidence in his capacity to unite Democrats, deal with a fractious Congress, or cope with foreign powers. If he can't manage to coordinate a message with his friend and mentor of twenty years, or else separate himself from that association before launching his campaign, then he'll find it even more difficult to work together with hostile strangers. Meanwhile, he offers no credible explanation for his abrupt change in attitude toward Rev. Wright. Six weeks ago he said “I can no more disown him that I can disown the black community.” Obama now denounces Wright and cites “anger” at statements at the National Press Club. But none of Wright's positions there departs from radical attitudes he’s expressed consistently for twenty years.

If Obama now says he's shocked to discover that Wright is, indeed, a crackpot who poisons the discourse, and not just a lovable and eccentric "old uncle," then the Senator is either distorting the truth or admitting incompetence. A president will need to evaluate complicated intelligence reports to determine the situation with foreign powers and terrorist threats. If Obama remained blithely oblivious to his own pastor's anti-American radicalism for twenty years, if he new less about his friend than did most members of press and public, his judgment and ability look deeply questionable. This is not a matter of "guilt by association"  (as so many Obama defenders insist) but an issue of capability and reliability and honesty that goes to the very core of the candidate's suitability as President of the United States. The whole sad affair highlights the weakness, poor judgment and waffling of an increasingly desparate presidential contender. 

Now that Barack Obama has finally and unequivocally denounced Jeremiah Wright, the next move is up the rantin' Rev himself.

How is he likely to respond?

It seems obvious that the Obama camp would greatly prefer an angry attack-- featuring insults like "Judas" and "Uncle Tom" and "Zionist Tool." If anything, Obama's comments today seemed designed to provoke Rev. Wright and to produce the kind of bitter (to use one of Barack's favorite words) reaction that would do more than anything else to separate the pastor from his former protege', once and for all.

If Al Sharpton and other race-baiting radicals and extremists joined in with their own condemnations of Senator Obama, it would be all the better for his campaign and his candidacy.

Then, and only then, would Obama be able to get back on track as the "post racial unifier" who stood up to hate-mongers on all sides and spoke directly to the broad American middle.

If Pastor Wright remains uncharacteristically silent -- with no angry words about the "anger" which Barack explicitly aimed at him -- then it's a sure sign that he's so deeply enraged by his former friend's betrayal that he wants, above all, to damage the Obama campaign.

Ironically, if he maintains any remaining affection for the Junior Senator from Illinois, he'll speak up within the next few days and attack him as a sell out.

It's precisely the sort of verbal assault that will help assure primary victories in both North Carolina and Indiana on May 6th.
 
Every Hollywood producer knows that the best way to build up a hero is to provide him with a compelling, charismatic villain as his chief enemy. At the moment, in political terms, Jeremiah Wright qualifies as the most useful enemy in the world.

The Ranting Rev is back, trailing malodorous clouds of sulfurous new controversy, imperiling the Obama campaign at its very core. The Obama promise of “a more perfect union” directly contradicts the Jeremiah Wright insistence on unbridgeable racial difference and distinction. 

Nothing makes this pastor-protege? conflict more obvious or more significant than Wright’s crackpot theories on education, and his fiery insistence that the different “brains” of black kids and white kids require totally different educational approaches. 

In his Detroit NAACP speech on Sunday night, Dr. Wright cited (and somewhat distorted) the controversial work of a professor at Wayne State University named Janice Hale, suggesting that “in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.” 

And which group of kids, according to Reverend Wright, count as “rocks” – not shiny, juicy fruit capable of providing nourishment, but inorganic pieces of dead matter notable mostly for their threat of smashing school windows? If he thinks of black kids as “rocks” (on which teachers might break their teeth) he’s recycling hateful white supremacist ideology. If it’s white kids who are only rocks, he’s a black racist. Either way, he’s an idiot. 

But there’s more from this “mighty man of God,” as he hails Dr. Hale for research that “led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered the two different worlds have two different ways of learning.” 

In other words, Wright suggests that race differences are so profound, so overwhelming that African-American kids whose ancestors left “the Motherland” more than 300 years ago have more in common with children in Senegal or Sierra Leone than they do with the white kids who grew up down the block and whose families have functioned in the same American society for generations. If this absurd notion that race trumps every other historical and psychological and cultural factor isn’t racism, then what, exactly, is racism? 

Dr. Wright continued in his Detroit dementia: “European and European-American children have a left-brained cognitive object oriented learning style…Left brain is logical and analytical… African and African-American children have a different way of learning. They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style.  Right brain that means creative and intuitive.” 

In other words, Dr. Wright makes the same sick and silly claims about fundamental, genetically determined, unbridgeable difference between “left-brained” whites and “right-brained” blacks that white racists have advanced for years.  

To him, it’s wrong to compare “African-American” and “European-American” kids with one another because they are virtually different species. 

His claims raise a hugely uncomfortable question that Senator Obama must now confront.  

If it’s in any sense true that black kids and white kids possess “from the cradle” a “different way of learning,” and if this difference is indeed based on inherited distinctions in brain structure, shouldn’t they then be placed in separate classrooms? 

Let me make my own position clear: I believe that the idea of racial segregation in the classroom is evil, outrageous, un-American, un-Constitutional and in every way unacceptable. Of course, the epic Supreme Court Case of Brown-vs.-School Board was rightly decided --- declaring that separate-but-equal is not equal. The government cannot force kids into separate schools or separate classrooms based on race. 

But if Wright is right (and like all fair-minded or decent people I know he is completely wrong) then isn’t separate-but-equal exactly what we need in our schools? If blacks and whites really do possess such vastly different styles of learning (according to Wright, “logical and analytical” vs. “creative and intuitive”) then wouldn’t they actually benefit from the segregation that the NAACP itself so conspicuously (and nobly) worked to end? 

In other words, this great Civil Rights organization seems to have come full-circle—from supporting Thurgood Marshall and other lions of justice in demanding that black kids can- and must- learn and compete directly with white kids, to now cheering the lunatic Dr. Wright who says it’s wrong to even compare achievements of black children with the performance of white children because the two races are so completely different. 

While Obama tries to rally his followers with the chant of “Yes We Can,” Dr. Wright shrieks at African-American children, “No You Can’t” --- you can’t compete with white or Asian kids because your lack of “logical and analytical” and “left-brained” wiring makes it impossible for you even to engage your white neighbors on the same playing field.  

Wright says to black children that it’s better, more appropriate, to liken you to deprived youngsters in dusty, destitute townships in sub-Saharan Africa, where previous generations suffered from colonialism and starvation and, yes, dysfunctional, pre-literate tribal cultures, than it is to group you with American children from families that have lived for generations in the same city.  

In other words, Jeremiah Wright’s appalling educational theories in no way comport with Senator Obama’s celebrated claim that we should have no “red states” or “blue states” but just “the United States of America.”  

The questions for the Presidential candidate are urgent and overwhelmingly important: 

--Do you agree with Dr. Wright that in shaping education for our African-American young people, we should look to African rather than American models?  

--Do you share his belief that black children must remain so incurably different from their “European-American” counterparts that it’s wrong even to compare them to their white classmates? 

--If these differences really are as huge, as fundamental (“comparing apples and rocks”) as Pastor Wright contends, would you support a new educational approach that separates our children at school? 

-- Given the fact that Jeremiah Wright has been talking and writing about such offensive and inane educational theory for at least two decades, when did you first realize that your Pastor and “spiritual guide” was actually a raving racist with more in common with Dr. David Duke than Dr. Martin Luther King? 

Of course, the mainstream media won’t pose such questions for Senator Obama. 

But they should—because any continued effort to justify or excuse the appalling idiocy of Jeremiah Wright undermines the very essence of the Illinois Senator’s “more perfect union” campaign. It’s now blindingly obvious that it’s not just a few “out of context” statements by Dr. Wright that count as offensive and illogical, but his entire race-based world-view and philosophy.  

Senator Obama should reject that “Afro-Centric” world-view and admit that he was wrong in ever treating it with honor and respect. If he continues in his refusal to do so, then he admits that his much-heralded role as a “unifier” is nothing more than a convenient political pose.

The other cartoon figure cheerfully responds: “Beer Drinking and Bowling Scores.”

The punch-line is intended to highlight the stupidity and vapidity and shallowness of voters --- influenced by nonsense when our nation faces grave challenges.

The problem with this entire argument is that when it comes to “Major Issues” there are simply no differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

What’s the “right” or appropriate answer to the query in the cartoon? Were voters supposed to be influenced by their miniscule differences on government health insurance? On raising taxes? On surrender in Iraq regardless of the advice of our generals?

What are the “major issues” where these two candidates disagree?

Since they’ve both signed on to a virtually identical “progressive” agenda, of course it all comes down to personality --- which candidate inspires more “hope” based on vague promises, or which one is better equipped to answer late night phone calls based on vague experience. Obama says he can bring “change” and unite the country, without fully explaining how; Clinton claims she’s proven her ability to handle emergencies, without showing where (other than the devastating sniper fire in Bosnia).

When policies are interchangeable and indistinguishable, personality inevitably becomes the focus of the campaign.

And in this regard, voters have discovered that neither “Wonder Boy” (Barack O) or “The Energizer Bunny” (Hillary C) is especially likable.

The controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s recent speech at a San Francisco fundraiser highlights his most glaring weaknesses as a presidential candidate. To the well-heeled and sophisticated audience, Obama spoke about working class Americans and their hardships under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He then commented, “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Under criticism from both Senators Clinton and McCain, Obama responded by defending his conclusion that voters are, indeed, bitter. “No, I’m in touch,” he commented. “I know exactly what’s going on…. People are fed up, they’re angry, they’re frustrated, they’re bitter and they want to see a change in Washington.” 

Of course, this line ignores the most serious questions about his previous statement. 

The right way to pose a challenge to Obama would be to ask: 

“Senator, do you really believe that religion is something people ‘cling to’ in bitterness, or is it something they embrace in joy? 

“Senator, do people cling to guns out of bitterness, or own them proudly as a means to protect their families, in celebration of a Constitutional right? 

“Senator, is ‘anti-trade sentiment’ merely a product of bitterness for struggling blue collar Americans or is it, I’ve you’ve suggested elsewhere, a sentiment you actually share?” 

The truth is, there’s no good way to answer these questions for Obama. He ought to admit he misspoke and expressed himself poorly. His unwillingness to do so—and insistence on defending indefensible remarks-- demonstrates one of his obvious weaknesses as a candidate.  

The fact that Obama delivered his original remarks at a San Francisco fundraising makes them all the more damning and damaging. 

The episode also demonstrates that for all his polish and charm and self-assurance when reading a carefully scripted speech, Obama simply isn’t that great when speaking off the cuff. In debates, Hillary Clinton frequently outperformed him. In interviews he can sound awkward and stilted – if never quite inarticulate. 

Aside from revealing his condescending attitude toward working class voters, Obama’s words in “Bitter-Gate” reveal a candidate whose political skills may not prove as formidable as his adoring minions in mainstream media would have us believe.  

The three candidates for president provided an illuminating contrast with their very different observance of the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on Friday. Barack Obama addressed a campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offering a vague, detail-free but soaring promise to complete King’s dream by addressing persistent poverty and economic inequality. Hillary Clinton summoned tears to recall her personal reaction as a college junior forty years ago – throwing her book bag across her dorm room and feeling her whole world was shattered. John McCain went to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the civil rights museum on the site where King was actually shot, and expressed his regret for voting against the national King holiday when Congress first considered it in the ‘80’s. He received a smattering of boos and catcalls from the all-black crowd, but also audible shouts of “we forgive you” and “everybody makes mistakes.” After his remarks, Senator McCain – who refuses Secret Service protection – plunged into the once hostile crowd, in the rain, and spent considerable time hugging and greeting its members. In short, Obama provided a stage-managed, effective, but meaningless media event, Clinton embarrassed herself with a narcissistic and oddly self-pitying recollection, and McCain showed why some of us believe that he is a most unusual and intriguing candidate. He knew he wasn’t going to get any votes from a talk to an African-American crowd in Memphis. Of course, most of those who heard him – however moved they seemed to be – will vote for Obama, McCain’s likely rival, in the fall. Nor does John McCain need extra votes in Memphis to carry Tennessee, which looks like  reliably Republican state in November. Nonetheless, McCain made himself look presidential – delivering bracing straight talk about an unhealed national wound in a high risk and low benefit insertion in his schedule. Typically, disappointingly, the media only featured the headline that he acknowledged his mistake in first opposing the holiday, but gave little attention to the substance of the fine speech about the meaning of Dr. King’s work. Aside from the falling barriers of race and gender on the Democratic side, Senator McCain is making his own efforts to make this campaign different, and better, than our other recent electoral contests.

Defenders of Rev. Jeremiah Wright suggest that those of us who have criticized the man should look deeper into his past and his character, to reach the conclusion that he’s not at all the hate-filled fringe figure portrayed by hysterical excerpts from two dozen different sermons and columns.

   With that investigation in mind, I’ve come across a letter from a year ago (March 11, 2007) that shows precisely the sort of raging, out-of-control, demagogic creep that’s appalled the whole world with the deranged rantings featured on U-tube.

  Last month, Dr. Wright wrote to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times to protest an article she had written on the Obama campaign based in part on an interview with the pastor. In the course of that letter, Wright never claimed he had been misquoted or that the Times had misled its readers about his sentiments. He objected, rather, that Ms. Kantor had used only a brief segment of a two-hour interview – a common journalistic practice, obviously.

  Nevertheless, he began the letter with the following declaration (underlining in the original):

Dear Jodi:

Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years .

   He went on to ramble about the lavish praise for Obama that he had conveyed during a lengthy interview but which Ms, Kantor failed to report, and then to denounce her for selecting only one portion of their conversation:

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people and deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

  Surely, even Rev. Wright’s apologists must find this hyperbole a bit troubling. The man has been a controversial public figure for years, for decades. Is it really possible that he has “never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before”? If so, then Reverend Wright has led a charmed life indeed.

  Even more worrisome, is his summary of Obama as “this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.”

   To Pastor Wright, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t honest (sorry, Honest Abe)?

   George Washington, not honest (a slave-owner, yes, but one who made arrangements to free all his slaves in his will)?. John Adams (the HBO mini-series accurately shows a fearlessly honest leader)? Theodore Roosevelt? Harry Truman? Dwight Eisenhower? Ronald Reagan?

  Or what about all the defeated candidates – none of them honest? Not William Jennings Bryan, or George McGovern, or Barry Goldwater, or Jesse Jackson, or Norman Thomas, or Barack’s fellow Illinoisan, Adlai Stevenson.

    It’s only natural for Obama enthusiasts to describe their golden boy as the best candidate ever to “offer himself” but it’s something else again to describe him as “the first (and maybe even only) honest candidate.”

   It’s precisely the sort of fringe perspective, the wacky, feverish, apocalyptic derangement that comes across in Pastor Wright’s sermons as so disturbing and unwholesome.

   For most Americans who have so far resisted the Obama kool-aid, there’s something unavoidably creepy in a “movement” that swings wildly between the twin polarities of ruthless political operation and glassy-eyed, messianic cult.

While John McCain tours the Middle East and European capitals, then comes home to give a serious, sober speech on the housing crisis, his Democratic rivals seem lost in their own battle of “gotcha” sound-bites. Obama scores against Hillary when she conjures up a silly fantasy of dodging sniper fire in Bosnia; she hits back by making clear she would never have chosen Jeremiah Wright as her preacher or teacher.

While this duel seems to substitute trivial one-ups-manship for serious discussion of issues, both of these embarrassments profoundly undermine the two campaigns.

For Hillary, her ludicrous misrepresentation of her trip to the Bosnian war zone exposes the fundamental lie of her campaign: she toured as a typical First Lady, kissing children and smiling at local dignitaries, not – as she pretended – as a battle-ready commander-in-chief. Her exaggerations about this visit parallel her overall exaggeration of her background in making “policy”: other than the health care debacle, she served only as an informal advisor to her husband and as a “good will ambassador” in the tradition of other presidential wives. Her claims to superior experience for the White House rest only on her four more years of Senate service than Obama –but still twenty years less experience in Congress than McCain.

As to Obama, the ongoing Jeremiah Wright embarrassment also reveals the underlying deception in his campaign: he initially ran for president as a “post racial” candidate with a rich, complex background in all ethnic communities, but he’s increasingly exposed as a radical black nationalist in the tired and discredited tradition of Al Sharpton. His much-heralded speech on race relations couldn’t obscure the fact that he’s chosen for twenty years to worship and to raise his two children at a black supremacist church that views white society as incurably racist and forever guilty. He says he decries statements that the government deliberately infects African-Americans with AIDS, or hooks them on drugs in order to keep them suppressed, but then his tax returns (published today) reveal that he donated more than $27,000 to this same church (while his overall contributions remained below 1% until his election to the U.S. Senate, but that’s another story). How could any serious individual claim to give the lion’s share of his charity to a cause and an ideology which he now says he disapproves?

For both Obama and Clinton, the current imbroglios amount to more than distractions. The “side issues” now tying up the two campaigns each contradict the chief pitch of the candidates, exposing Hillary as no war-weary veteran of foreign policy decision-making, and Barack as no healing, multi-ethnic figure who’ll bring America out of its race-obsessed past.

They’re both much more conventional – and deeply flawed – political figures than they pretend to be.  

In the Jeremiah Wright affair, Barack Obama is most certainly lying about something. 

He now insists that he is “shocked, shocked” (in the style of Claude Raines in “Casablanca”) to hear that anti-Americanism had anything at all to do with Wright’s ministry. 

He has also claimed to be a “devout Christian” who attends church every week and is deeply involved in the life of Wright’s congregation (where he’s been a member for twenty years). 

It’s simply not possible that he could be an active member in the church without hearing something about sermons in which the pastor blamed 9/11 on America’s past sins, or called down curses repeatedly (“God D---n America!”) on his own nation. I’ve been involved in synagogue life for more than thirty years, in three different congregations in two different communities. If any of the rabbis who served those congregations ever delivered sermons that were even vaguely controversial, I would have heard about it without question (even on those occasions where I wasn’t present to hear the talk myself). Given the number and intensity of wildly offensive Wright sermons, it’s ridiculous to argue that the first Obama learned of the anti-American bent of his self-described “mentor” was last week in news reports. 

And if we assume for the sake of argument that it’s true that he had no idea how Wright really felt about crucial questions like the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, then how can we accept Obama’s insistence on his devout faithfulness and active church membership.  

Hey, Barack—it’s either one or the other: either you were lying when you talked about your deep, soul-changing involvement in Trinity United Church of Christ, or else you’re lying when you say you never had any idea (until last week) about the crazy and offensive and sickening contents of the pastor’s diatribes from the pulpit.  

My guess is that Obama is actually telling the truth about his deep involvement in the church, but lying (very badly) about knowing nothing about its pastor’s excesses.

The idea that he didn’t realize until a few days ago that mainstream America would view Wright’s remarks (which even Barack himself now describes as “appalling”) as explosive and unacceptable is a troubling indication of Obama’s enclosure in a politically correct bubble, and his profound estrangement from the faith and patriotism commitments of ordinary Americans.  

The Democratic Party crisis over 366 disputed delegates from Florida and Michigan provides a powerful argument for keeping this bickering, disorganized party out of the White House.  

The Obama campaign wants to keep the dubious Dem delegates elected in the two states from participating in the national convention, because the party announced in advance that they wouldn’t be recognized. The Clinton campaign, which won most of these delegates, wants them all seated, arguing that nearly two million voters cast Democratic ballots in the two states, and blocking the delegates would make those votes meaningless. “Howlin’ Howie” Dean, Democratic national chair, wants a revote in the two states but won’t let the national party pay for it, since that national party (namely, Chairman Dean himself) warned Florida and Michigan that if they cut-in-line on the primary calendar, they’d be punished. Obviously, Republicans in both states don’t want to use taxpayer money to pay for a second Democratic primary necessitated solely by that party’s divisions and incompetence. 

 Lost in all the arguments is the fact that Republicans faced a similar dilemma, but handled it much, much better. The national party also sought to penalize Michigan and Florida for breaking rules by moving their primaries ahead of schedule, and the GOP therefore decided that both states would lose half the delegates to which they were otherwise entitled, but allowed the primaries to go forward with the lessened impact of shrunken delegations. Romney won Michigan, then McCain won Florida – and with it the nomination. In any event, a reasonable compromise avoided the idiotic and embarrassing train-wreck faced by the other party. 

Given the Democrats’ shocking inability to straighten out their own nomination process (unlike the GOP, which features no “super delegates” at all, they’re highly dependent on these undemocratically chosen insiders ), anyone concerned with efficiency, competence, organizational ability, should shun both the Democratic candidates and especially reject their useless and bumbling national chairman.  

Doesn’t it undermine Obama’s promise to bring Americans together in a festival of kum-ba-ya unity, to see him utterly unable to unify even his own party on the relatively simple issue of primary and nomination procedures? 

If this is the way they handle the selection of a nominee, just imagine how they’d organize health care, social security reform, the war on terror, tax simplification, repairing infrastructure or other challenges facing the nation at large.   

The American people are watching the laughable spectacle of the ego-driven battle royal within the Democratic Party— confirming the image of clumsiness and fumbling already well-established by the perpetually confused Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. One can only hope that the silly struggle to solve the twin problems of the Wolverine and Sunshine states will convince wavering voters to turn away from the party with the chaotic, slapstick propensities of the Keystone Kops, but none of the good humor and charm.

Neither high-octane campaigns nor charisma-laden politicians (see JFK, Reagan and Clinton) have been able to break the deadlock of presidential politics over the past 50 years. So will this November be any different? 

As the 2008 electoral calendar moves inexorably from primary season to the climactic partisan battle of the fall, both parties prefer to ignore the painful reality of a narrowly divided electorate and to consider their candidates in the light of false nostalgia. 

Democrats view Barack Obama as a youthful savior in the mode of John F. Kennedy or the Bill Clinton of 16 years ago — a handsome political magician who will electrify the country and sweep to overwhelming victory. 

Republicans look at John McCain and sigh, worried that he can't measure up to the idolized Reagan — who came riding out of the West with a rock-solid record, united all conservatives, and instantly established a durable right-wing majority. 

Such "recollections" amount to a sad example of political veterans rhapsodizing over their youthful adventures while embellishing, or misremembering, the truth about the past. 

The 43-year-old Kennedy fell far short of soaring victory in 1960 — beating the charismatically challenged Richard Nixon by the narrowest of margins (49.7% of the popular vote to 49.5%). Clinton also failed to win a majority of his fellow citizens, not once but twice: Thanks to Ross Perot's third-party ego trips, he won the White House with only 43% of the vote in 1992 and 49.2% in 1996.  

As for Reagan, he similarly benefited from a third-party candidacy (by the now-forgotten John Anderson) and won his famous landslide victory over the deeply unpopular Jimmy Carter with only 51% of the vote (the same percentage earned by the controversial George W. Bush in 2004). Moreover, Reagan bore far more resemblance to McCain than today's purist conservatives want to acknowledge: as one of the oldest newly elected presidents (only two years younger than McCain's would-be inauguration age of 72) and a pragmatist whose gubernatorial record in California (signing a bill to legalize abortion, raising taxes to cover deficits) offended right-wing ideologues. 

An enduring deadlock  

The fact that even political heroes such as Reagan, Kennedy and Clinton failed to win resounding majorities shouldn't undermine their reputations as supremely gifted campaigners. Yet even these vote-getting superstars couldn't shatter the deadlock that has afflicted presidential politics for nearly a half-century. 

Going all the way back to Kennedy's race in 1960, eight of the 12 presidential contests have yielded a winner who won less than 51% of the popular vote. The only exceptions, in which a candidate assembled a substantial majority, involved three popular incumbents (Lyndon Johnson in '64, Nixon in '72 and Reagan in '84) running for re-election against feeble opponents, and one sitting vice president (George H.W. Bush) who ran as the candidate for "Reagan's third term" and managed to gather 54%.  

All other presidential victories produced either minority presidents (Kennedy in '60, Nixon in '68, Clinton in both his races, Bush in 2000) or barely cleared the bar of 50% (Carter in '76, Reagan in '80, Bush in 2004).  

These results should stand as definitive rebuttal to cherished myths that continue to bedevil both conservatives and liberals. For decades, right-leaning activists have cherished the notion of a "silent majority," a long-suffering mass of quiet but committed traditionalists who wait only for a "true conservative" Prince Charming to awaken the sleeping giant with a kiss. Some true believers maintain stubborn faith in this much-loved legend of a right-wing consensus ready for arousal by a leader whose voice speaks forcefully enough — a phantom majority that never instantly materialized for Reagan himself let alone Reagan-wannabes such as Pat Buchanan or Mitt Romney. 

On the left, ideologues and activists nurture a mirror-image faith in the "idealism" and "radicalism" of the American people, if only the right messianic figure managed to mobilize our long-buried lust for change. This notion of a blocked and sublimated passion for "systemic change" helps explain the huge emotional investment in the three Kennedy brothers to whom their followers imputed near superhuman powers: Despite the fact that Jack was actually a moderate-to-conservative president, Bobby was facing an uphill battle for the Democratic nomination when he was assassinated in '68; Teddy, in his one bid for the White House in 1980, mobilized almost no one and made scant progress even against the hapless Carter. The "movement for change" of Democratic dreams failed to materialize not because of personal deficiencies in any Kennedy or Clinton (or McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis or Gore), but because liberal ideology has never attracted anything near a majority of the populace. 

Another nail-biter?  

These failures and frustrations on both sides suggest that we most likely will witness another breathlessly close race in 2008 — especially with no sitting president or vice president in the race and scant prospect of a major third-party spoiler. Regardless of Democratic enchantment with Obama, history indicates that even the most electrifying and barrier-busting campaigners will still hover around 50% of the popular vote of a durably divided electorate. 

The record also suggests that whatever the Republican criticisms of McCain, he won't fall far below 50% of the public that reliably leans toward his party. In other words, as present polls predict, we'll get another seesaw battle, in which either candidate can tip the result with minor mistakes or unexpected cunning, as they struggle through one more ferocious fight within the narrow confines of this half-century-old presidential deadlock.

  For more than a hundred years, nomination struggles in presidential campaigns have followed a familiar pattern. Bitter rivals engage in ferocious competition, generally slamming and sliming their opponents wherever possible, then come together for the sake of “party unity,” praising the ultimate victor as a choice for leadership who was obvious and inevitable all along. In 2004, for instance, Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich eagerly rallied around John Kerry; John Edwards even joined the ticket as his running mate. This year, Republicans provide another typical example of party divisions healing more quickly than many skeptics expected: Rudy, Fred, Mitt and lesser candidates have all gotten on board the “Straight Talk Express” and Huckabee will follow their example within a few weeks or even days. After a frontrunner captures the nomination, his opponents and some grassroots activists may nurse lingering resentments but those wounds rarely handicap a campaign in November.

 

  The current battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may, however, prove one of those exceptions in which a donnybrook in primary season does permanent damage to a candidate’s chances. This happened in the recent past for Democrats, when ideological divisions became so intense and so obvious that pretenses of party unity looked hollow and phony: in 1968, much of the left refused to rally to Hubert Humphrey, and in 1972 the party’s center never fully embraced George McGovern. Among Republicans, Pat Buchanan’s primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush fell far short of winning the nomination for the insurgent, but badly dented the incumbent’s stature and aura of competence, setting him up for defeat in November.

 

   The Hillary-Barack spat (reaching ferocious intensity just a week away from decisive primaries in Ohio and Texas) may well resemble the Bush-Buchanan tiff more than the ideological struggles of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. As both candidates have noted, they harbor few substantive differences on issues, and the real fight between them involves personality and interest group politics rather than contrasting world views.

 

   Nevertheless, Hillary’s angry assaults on her rival (expected to reach a climax in their televised Ohio debate on Tuesday night) may harm Obama seriously for November even thought their rivalry involves a classic “personality primary” rather than the more serious “issues primary.”

 

   Barack Obama’s charismatic appeal depends on the image of a fresh face who’s above “politics as usual.” His messianic image suggests a healer and uniter who’s almost too good for the grubby realities of daily politics. His supporters, led by his wife Michelle, suggest that the Illinois Senator will not only reform our government, but repair the “hole in our souls.”

 

   In that context, the snarling back-and-forth with Hillary could damage the atmosphere of saintliness and uplift and pie-in-the-sky redemption on which Obamamania depends. The candidate is eminently defeatable in the fall if voters see him as a tarnished, manipulative, posing, Chicago political operator, impatiently ambitious and seizing his big chance with a minimum of preparation or programmatic commitment.

 

  If, on the other hand, his promoters continue to sell Barack as a cause rather than a candidate, a representative of idealism rather than ambition, he presents a tougher target for Republicans.

 

  For this reason, the GOP maintains a strong interest in seeing Hillary Clinton prevail in both the Ohio and Texas primaries, with the campaign rivalry continuing with its current heat. Every charge she’s making against St. Barack makes it easier to Republicans to level similar assaults in September and October. The next week will play an important part in this process, and further weeks of competition will help even more. With Hillary sounding increasingly exasperated (“Shame on you, Barack Obama!” declared the angry school marm) it will prove more difficult to blame Republicans for bursting the feel- good, flimsy, can’t-we-all-get-together-and-sing-Kum-Ba-Ya hot-air balloon of Obama-as-savior when the campaign gets serious in the fall.

 

  It looks all but certain that the Illinois Senator will nail down the Democratic nomination at some point, but conservatives have a real stake in encouraging Hillary to keep the battle going for a few weeks more.  

 

The best comment on Senator McCain and the New York Times actually came from uber pundit Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) who famously observed:

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."

The lesson applies to politics, as well as the rest of life.