Hope, exceeded

Barack Obama is not going negative.  He put the nail in that coffin with comments over the weekend.  The incredulity of McCain over Obama's "backing out" of an agreement to stick with public funding.  The paraplectic response of the Clintonites to the idea that mountains of favors earned are not destiny.  These stem from a fundamental truth:  The Obama campaign has won already.  Not the Presidency, that is yet to come.  But the battle to change how voters think about campaigns, and how politicians run them.

It is true that in Obama agreed early on (with some important nuance and limitations that, of course, never get reported) that if the Republican in the general election accepted public financing, so would he.  It is also true that he seems reluctant to stick with that agreement.  I hope his reluctance sticks, because that agreement came from a fundamental error:  Obama may have had the audacity of hope, but when he agreed to public financing, that audacity was not coupled with a belief he could pull it off quickly enough.  Somewhere deep inside he was still playing on the old playboard.  One where nobody believed the public at large, by the millions, would reach into their pockets to take command of their own destiny.  He has, apparently, exceeded his expectations.  And when presented with this new information, he must do what any true leader does:  Change his actions to conform to the new reality.

The same is true of negative campaigning -- although on this count, he exceeded the fears of the Clintons and the Republican machine, but not his own expectations.  From the outset his campaign was about speaking truth and addressing issues.  Yes, he is a wonderful speaker.  Yes, he is as smart and reliable in his judgment as Bush 43 is not.  But few outside the Obama team thought that voters would respond to truth, honesty, and a focus not on the flaws of others but on the failures of their policy.  Indeed, he has approached this campaign much as Roger Fisher (a Harvard Law professor during Barack Obama's tenure at Harvard) suggests in Getting to Yes:  Be hard on the problem, but soft on the person.

Getting to Yes stresses the importance of examples, and in a strange fit of timing, I have one. I am having work done on my kitchen, and the work started while I was in Pennsylvania for the campaign.  Upon my return -- from working on a campaign where the Clintons were using a "throw the kitchen sink" strategy -- my kitchen sink had in fact been removed.  In what is a Democratic family dispute about which family member gets the nomination, one of the family members has decided to destroy the family house in the process. I can tell you from personal experience, no matter what benefit you get from removing the kitchen sink, it is messy and very expensive to replace -- and nobody in the family is happy while the sink is gone.  The family home becomes non-functional.  This is, of course, an object lesson on why we must be hard on the issues without engaging in the kind of fratricidal attacks that injure us all.

In my view, the Obama candidacy is about two very important goals:  Helping move America forward from within the White House, and rewriting the rules of how we pick our leaders.  While the former goal is ahead of us, we are well on our way to achieving the latter.  Already Obama has proven that a campaign can be flush with cash without being flush in political debt owed to lobbyists and special interests.  Obama has proven that people will participate in the process -- by the millions -- when that participation is driven from the grassroots.  Obama has proven that people can rise about cynicism.

Obama may yet have the nomination stolen from him by superdelegates driven away by a campaign that is hard on the person while ignoring the issues.  He may yet lose the general election to the old politics of destruction and distraction. But he has fatally wounded that old system.  That system may take a few cycles to die from the wound, but die it will.  And the millions of Americans who worked hard to remake America through the Obama campaign can take credit for the inevitable rebirth of American democracy that will follow.

 

The Obama Troop Surge (its not what you think)

USA Today reported that "the percentage of recruits requiring a waiver to join the Army because of a criminal record or other past misconduct has more than doubled since 2004 to one for every eight new soldiers. The increase reflects the difficulties the Army faces in attracting young men and women into the military at a time of war. 'Each month is a struggle, for the Army in particular,' said Bill Carr, a top military personnel official."

The press and the public have assumed as a fact that need not be proven that it is tough to recruit in a time of war. They have it wrong. It is not tough to recruit because the nation is at war. Recruiting stations were mobbed right after September 11, 2001, and it was clear then that we were going to send troops abroad to fight. There was a "wave of interest immediately after" the attacks, and recruiting was "going well" even a year later.

It was not until the Iraq war became clear for what it was -- a war that should never have been waged -- that recruiting tanked.

The official press line, that recruiting is hard during war, implies that the United States is a nation of cowards afraid to fight at a time of war. Such a claim is not just wrong, but it flies in the face of history. This nation has had no shortage of volunteers willing to fight the good fight. But the United States of a nation of reason, a nation of laws. We are a country not afraid to fight an unjust war, but a country unwilling to fight an unjust war.

The next President will inherit a military that has been decimated by poor recruiting, overextended tours, "stop loss" provisions being used in a manner that keeps families split far beyond their expectations, inexplicable resistance to body armor and up-armored vehicles, poor veterans programs upon troops' return.... The list is long. But the list also exudes a theme: At every turn, the Bush administration has taken what it wanted from our troops and given them less than they expected and deserved in return. Soldiers who volunteer to fight expect and deserve to be treated with respect by their commander in chief.

In order to repair this damage, and bring the military back to where it must be, the next President must be trusted by potential recruits to treat them right. To not start wars without purpose.

John McCain clearly cannot make this promise. A war without end in Iraq, new preemptive wars against Iran and others, represent an emboldening of the Bush policy on troops.

But neither can Hillary Clinton make this promise. She authorized Bush not only to invade Iraq, but also to take military action against Iran. Preemptive wars both. She has closed the door on diplomacy, saying in essence that once somebody is our enemy, it would unjustly reward them to negotiate with them. This policy, unfortunately, may leave war -- even though otherwise avoidable -- as the inevitable outcome. With Hillary Clinton in office, potential soldiers -- soldiers who hope to bravely go to battle in a just war -- will still ask "can I trust you to treat me right?" "Can I trust that this war was truly necessary?"

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has made clear that war is not his first option. He is not afraid to talk to enemies. He knows, and says, as Kennedy did, that we must never negotiate from fear, but we must never fear to negotiate. And ultimately, he is the only candidate to have voted against authorizing Bush's war in Iraq and against authorizing preemptive action against Iran.

We need a recruitment surge to fill the ranks and, more importantly, to relieve the overextended national guard and other troops who are even today fighting well beyond their original terms of service. But we cannot achieve that surge unless the troops know that they are there to heroically fight wars that are unavoidable, just, and necessary. In short, if they fear the next President will send them to the next Iraq, they will stay home.

Only Barack Obama can make the promises our recruits need to hear. And for this reason, only Barack Obama can ensure a strong military emerges from the wake of Bush's folly.

Why I am not running for delegate in my California Congressional District

I ran across a post that bemoaned the Obama campaign's decision to eliminate some people from the list of potential delegates to Denver. As the AP reports it, "Barack Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns are purging potential California delegates to ensure that only their loyalists vote at the national convention that will crown one of them as the Democratic presidential nominee. Locked in a race with an uncertain outcome, representatives for both camps this week directed the California Democratic Party to remove dozens of names from the lists of more than 2,000 potential delegates. Party caucuses scheduled for Sunday will elect a slate of delegates for each candidate."

The poster complained that "The ostensible rationale for the cutting of delegate candidates is to prevent "Trojan horse" delegates from making their way to the Convention floor and then switching allegiances. The vetting and removal of delegate candidates is expressly allowed by party rules. But could the 30th District really have had 73 such turncoats, and was I really one of them? I was a Precinct Captain for the Obama campaign for the California primary; I've donated several hundred dollars to Senator Obama's campaign (the first politician I've ever supported financially); and I've boosted the campaign in numerous posts on this website." (I've included his links in the quote).

I tried to post my response in the comments section, but apparently I wrote too much (a common problem for me). Here is the full response, as I would like to have posted it:

Like you, I would love to be a delegate in Denver. I maxed out my campaign contribution to Obama. I flew across the country to volunteer on his behalf. Under the old school rules -- say if I did the same for Clinton -- I would have "earned" my space on the delegate list. Yet when the opportunity to run for Obama delegate arose in my California congressional district, I did what best serves the campaign: I volunteered to run ("convene") the caucus in my district where the delegates were chosen. In so doing, I made myself ineligible to run for delegate during that caucus. Why? Because this election is more important than my personal vanity or ambition. Because this is not some fun and games election, but rather one where we choose between war and peace; between misplaced priorities and prosperity; between a government that runs right, and one that doesn't run at all.

But to get there, we have to navigate the old system. A system where "superdelegates" cast votes worth more than entire states; where a nominee is selected not on the basis of popular vote, but on the basis of the few who convene in Denver; a system, in short, that is as tenuously tied to the will of the people as the electoral college. But we cannot change that system from the outside. So yes, the Obama campaign may have cut out many diehard supporters. But his supporters will come to understand his true message: This campaign isn't about any one person or group of people, but rather it is about all of the people.

They don't need me in Denver. They need me on the ground, here in my Congressional District, making sure that the delegates are selected according to the rules, and that the Clinton campaign cannot make good on its threat to subvert our democracy by poaching delegates. My only role at the convention would be to vote Obama. Others can do that role as well as I can.

I would urge you to find a way that you can make a unique contribution. Whether by convincing your friends to become active; by putting some unique skills to use; or by simply being part of the team that makes up the campaign. Corporate America did not buy this campaign. The Democratic Machine politics of the past do not fuel this campaign. And our individual egos must not derail this campaign.

You have a unique skill: You are a compelling and interesting writer. Recognize that you do more for the Obama campaign with a single blog comment than you would ever accomplish as a delegate in Denver.

I would close by quoting Barack Obama from one of the debates. This is the language that inspired me to put my skills to their best use not for my own vanity, but so that my children will enjoy the prosperity that an Obama presidency will leave in its wake:

"You know, there is a vanity aspect and ambition aspect to politics. But when you spend as much time as Senator Clinton and I have spent around the country, and you hear heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story, and you realize that people's expectations are so modest.

You know, they're not looking for government to solve all of their problems. They just want a little bit of a hand-up to keep them in their homes if they're about to be foreclosed upon, or to make sure their kids can go to college to live out the American dream.

You know, it is absolutely critical that we change how business is done in Washington and we remind ourselves of what government is supposed to be about."

Now of course, if I can run for delegate some other way, I will. I'd love to do it. I an unshakable supporter. But nobody is owed this. And certainly, anybody with the skills to help the campaign in another way should choose to help the campaign first, and let the delegate seat take a, well, back seat.

So you're off the candidate list. You should still go to the caucus. You should still bring your friends and family into the picture. You should help organize it if you can.

Its not about me. Its not about you. It is about all of us.