American Views Abroad

James Carroll in Making Some Sense of $700 Billion:

Step back. All of last week's handwringing hoopla over the emergency bailout stands in stark contrast to utter indifference with which politicians approved an equivalent layout for the military --- an approval so routine that it was ignored in the press and by the public.

.....Here is a question that no one is asking about America's grave financial crisis: By fueling corporate profits, jobs, and private-sector growth for two generations with massive over-investment in the military, has the United States gutted the real worth of its economy? One needn't be an economist to know that spending money on war planes, missiles and exotic weapons systems, not to mention combat operations, creates far less social capital than spending on education, bridges, mass transit, new forms of energy --- even the arts. www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/06-5

The New Yorker's Choice for President:

At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned in the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader's name is Barack Obama.

www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors

Via Sudeutsche Zeitung under the headline Imperailer Blues is this commentary by John Gray, a professor at the London School of Economics, which appeared in The Guardian on Sunday:

....Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War is over.

....Despite incessantly urging other countries to adopt its way of doing business, America has always had one economic policy for itself and another for the rest of the world.

....Outside the U.S. most people have long accepted that the development of new economies that goes with globalization will undermine America's central position in the world. They imagined that there would be a change in America's comparative standing, taking place incrementally over several decades or generations. Today, this looks an increasingly unrealistic assumption.

Having created the conditions that produced history's biggest bubble, America's political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/28/usforeignpolicy.useconomicgrowth

The headlines today: Abroad, Bailout Is Seen as a Free Market Detour ; Supreme Court's Global Influence is Waning; and there's Timothy Egan's Moo at http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/moo/index.html:

....Crony capitalism is how things are done in Alaska. They reward failure in the Last Frontier state. In that sense, it's not unlike Wall Street's treatment of CEOs who run companies into the ground.....

Lest we forget the rest of the world: this morning's IHT had a front page article on 9 Million Afghans Facing Acute Food Shortage Soon which is sadly no longer on its website at www.iht.com.

The following might be useful as 'ears and eyes' for what is going on politically in the campaign in the US. At the very least these articles help sift through the spin and bring a bit of clarity:

www.anonymousliberal.com has interesting detailed reports and comments and has brought attention to www.politicshome.com which provides up to the minute coverage on the campaign.

Obama: The Price of Being Black by Andrew Hacker at www.nybooks.com/articles/21771:

Barack Obama can only become president by mustering a turnout that will surpass the votes he is not going to get. ..... What seems more needed , in my view, are two parallel campaigns: a quiet one to assure a maximum black turnout, and a more public one to make the most of the white backing the Obama-Biden ticket already has. His rallies, appearances, and advertisements would benefit from featuring white faces, and they should be accompanied by endorsements from white military veterans, union leaders, police chiefs, and firemen. His black supporters will know what is going on, and not take this as a rebuff.

Sad and troubling, but probably true.

As one friend wrote from the US, this had to be one of the weirdest weeks on record as far as politics is concerned. Stomach turning and nauseating are two words repeated over and over again.

Does anyone remember a scene that occurred in St Patrick's Cathedral when Robert Kennedy was lying in state in June 1968? The TV lights were constantly on as thousands of citizens came to pay their respect. At the end of the day his widow came to his casket and knelt there. One by one the TV lights were turned off to leave her alone in her prayers and thoughts. It was a stunning, moving tribute to common decency. These days as Judith Warner points out in her blog and as we have seen on front pages of newspapers around the world infants and children are used mercilessly in pursuit of personal ambition and fame.

Warner in The Mirrored Ceiling: Why does this woman (Palin) --- who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes --- deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so 'real'? Because Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they've cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs the Elite.

.....One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can 'relate' to. This need isn't limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/the-mirrored-ceiling/index.html

There is no way to comment on McCain's pick for vice president from here. However, it might be interesting to see how one US conservative from New York City and one who claims to have lived and worked in Alaska sees it:

http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com

President Palin?

What about personal -- professional background? Some perspectives: I've both lived and worked in Alaska and have been to Wasilla. .....Wasilla is a nice town in a great state. But there's Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya, Washington and the south side of Chicago. And there's Wasilla. There is absolutely no way you can stand in the middle of the small town and think that a 44 year-old whose formative personal and professional experience comes from there is ready to lead the free world.

James Carroll: Breaking the Cord with the Clintons:

Barack Obama defines himself by change. This week, he inherits a party that has made itself hostage to Clinton self-obsession. In fact, that defines his opportunity. If he can free himself and the Democrats from the shackles of such a past, changing a nation should be easy.

www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/08/25/breaking_the_cord_with_the_clintons/