Campaign 2008

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Courtesy of Marc Ambinder

Kenya: The Fragile Right to Protest

It is truly disturbing how police continue to brutally crackdown on peaceful political protest. I applaud Muthoni Wanyeki and strongly support her comments here.

Where is the People's Prime Minister? Can he not restore a basic tenant of democracy that he once championed?

Think Orange Juice

Wow. I guess Obama does have an elitist problem. The McCain family is remarkably down to earth!

Was Clark's Simple Argument Too Complex?

General Wesley Clark was the center of media attention this past week when his comments about John McCain's wartime experience generated a media firestorm.

There has been a lot of outrage from the media and, especially, John McCain. The consensus is that Clark has effectively ruined his chances of becoming Obama's VP.

Lost in all the outrage and media hype was a willingness to deal with the argument that Clark was making. It was not so complex that it was beyond the comprehension of the average person. His argument was as follows:

John McCain is a war hero. He should be respected for that and our nation owes him a debt of gratitude for his service.

His experience as a war hero demonstrated character and courage. His military experience is a valid credential for demonstrating character and courage--at any level, including the presidential one.

Military experience, in and of itself, however, does not mean that you have the knowledge, judgment, and skill needed to be a commander-in-chief. Privates serve honorably and admirably in their service. They demonstrate heroism, courage, and bravery in their service to America.

But spending two years as a private does not automatically qualify you to become a lieutenant. It does not automatically qualify you to become a general. It does not automatically qualify you to become the commander-in-chief.

In order to move up the rankings, you have demonstrate the appropriate knowledge, skill, and, yes, judgment required of the position.

This is not difficult to understand. It is simply common sense. The logic of experience and qualification is the same as the following analogy: Flipping burgers at Mickey D's does not make you qualified to become the CEO of McDonald's. Does someone with experience working at the bottom of a corporation bring unique, useful insight to the role of CEO? Perhaps, but not necessarily. It is perfectly logical to assume that the skills, knowledge, and qualifications to serve in one position do not necessarily transfer to another position.

I do not know enough about John McCain's military record to determine how much we ought to value his military service as a credential for his capability to serve as a commander-in-chief. Clark was simply making the argument that John McCain and the media were wrong to automatically grant him enoromous credibility on national security issues on the basis of his military service.

While that military service certainly does generate respect for McCain's character and courage, it does not necessarily follow that he would make better strategic decisions because of it.

I know none of this is difficult to understand. I know it is not really that complicated, nor is it really even all that nuanced. I also know that when it is boiled down into its simplest form (McCain's military service does not qualify him to be commander-in-chief), the media goes into hyper overdrive fueling a controversy that isn't really all that much to begin with.

Thoughts on the Democratic Primary, Part Three

 

The Calendar

There's a lot to think about for those who want to remake the Democratic Primary to balance all the different interests of the party. Not least of which was the calendar.

Yes, there was the problem of Michigan and Florida. And yes, there was the excessive front-loading on Super Tuesday.  But just think about how the role of placement impacted our perspective on the race.

Imagine the first races (IA, NH, NV, SC) finished exactly the way they did. The candidates split the races evenly and seemed evenly matched at the end of January.

Then Super Tuesday, where Obama finished roughly even with Hillary. Take Georgia, Minnesota, and Colorado out and replace them with Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio.

Follow that up, not with the Potomac Primary, but states like West Virginia, Texas, Indiana, and the territory of Puerto Rico, and suddenly, by the end of February, it's hard to imagine Obama being able to justify staying in the race. Given his underdog status and his near burial in delegates at this point, he'd probably have been forced to call it quits before March even rolls around.

But this calendar, by accident, was custom-made for Obama. He took advantage and won.

A different calendar? Very easily a different result.

Thoughts on the Democratic Primary, Part Two

Identity Politics

Much has been made of race, gender, and age in this primary. More than in most.

One of the most controversial statements uttered by a Clinton supporter was the following by Geraldine Ferraro:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

She may have received a lot of flak for that statement, but she was actually right. Barack Obama would not be the next Democratic Presidential Nominee if he was not black.

He would not be there if he was not a good speaker, she also could have added.

But why stop there?

He would also not be there if he was not straight. He would not be there if he was not college educated. He would also not be there if he was 20 years older than he is. He would also not be there if he was not a Christian. He would also not be there if he was transgendered. He would also not be there if he was deaf. He would not be there if he didn't have all of his teeth.

It's actually kind of a fun game to play. What characteristics are mandatory for the job of the presidency and which ones are (currently) forbidden?

The point of all of this is that this is really a stupid thing to say. Barack Obama is lucky to be who he is not only because of the color of his skin, but also because of his intelligence, political aptitude, speaking ability, strategic planning, good advisers, and everything else that it takes to get to where he is.

Nature, nurture, and a fair share of luck or chance or whatever you want to call it.

I don't really think it's fair to call Ferraro's statement "racist", which is a very loaded term. Why she's wrong, and why it's a stupid statement is because  it implies that Obama is nothing more than the color of his skin and his supporters nothing more than guilty whites and proud blacks.

No black person has ever been a nominee for the American presidency and not just any black person could pull it off. Love or hate Obama, you have to give him this: He put together the right biography with the right message at the right time with the right strategy with the right voice.  That's foresight, hard work, and more than a little bit of luck. It is not skin color.

Thoughts on the Democratic Primary, One

I just wanted to lay out some thoughts of my own about this Democratic primary. I have always favored Barack Obama, but I want to document some of my own impressions about the underlying issues surrounding the primary process.

Part One:

What does it mean to win the popular vote?

Hillary Clinton frequently claimed that she won the most popular votes. Barack Obama doesn't make the claim so often, but he has from time to time. The media has repeated Hillary's talking points, but downplayed the math that underlies those calculations.

So today I stumbled across this web site that lets you figure out how you want to add up the popular vote. You can take a look at all the different possibilities that the author considers and play with the math to come up with your version of the top vote-getter.

The catch? In his math, there are 972 ways to count the "popular vote".

Read enough of the comments and you begin to see arguments as to why, really, that number of 972 still leaves a number of interesting possibilities out (count the Texas primary for 2/3's vote and its caucus for 1/3, for example).

The point of all of this is that there is NO standard way of counting the popular vote. This primary has not been one person, one vote (neither is the general election, but I digress).

Why was there no standard way? Because the system is set up so that each state has its own rules and regulations for how it allocates delegates.

1. Some states had caucuses instead of primaries.

2. Some states do not report caucus turnout.

3. Other states had both primaries and caucuses, though voters were told one of them didn't matter.

4. Texas had both and both of them mattered.

5. Michigan and Florida broke the rules and voters were repeatedly told not to go to the polls because the votes would not be counted.

6. Obama and other candidates took their name off the ballot in Michigan. (They weren't allowed to do it in Florida.)

And the kicker? Superdelegates can choose anyone they want, regardless of the tallies.

If the Democratic party wants to make this a popular vote, they need to change the system. I think there are good reasons to maintain the delegate system and even to keep its proportional allocation. Having said that, the current system will have to undergo reform.

At the end of the day, the only metric that you could fairly measure was pledged delegates. Hillary was not wrong to argue that she had a very strong base of support. Mess around with the calculations enough and you come to the conclusion that for all intents and purposes, the popular vote was a tie.

In baseball, the tie goes to the runner. In the Democratic primary of 2008, it goes to the person who comes out in comfortable financial standing, with a strong appeal to the youth, and the potential to turn Republican states into Democratic ones not just in this election, but also in future elections.

U.S. Dem Primary: A Numbers Experiment

Readers of this blog know that I favor Obama in the U.S. primaries. And while I can't really fault Clinton for staying in the race, I'm concerned that the next three months are not a great way to build party unity and develop a good strategy against John McCain in the fall.

Having said that, I ran the numbers last night. If Democrats counted up their delegates the same way Republicans do (giving the winner of the state all the delegates, not a proportion of them), Clinton would be the frontrunner right now.

It'd be close, but for Barack to win, he'd have to win 6 competitions (where he's currently favored) and then pick up at least one of the following states/territories: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, or Kentucky. Clinton is favored to win all of those.

In other words, if it weren't for this switch, made 20 years ago after a push by Jesse Jackson, Barack would be having this major uphill fight. And people would be calling on him to step down.........

Here's the math: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pLzwxoRcCDWckDVZDoUpiKw

Brain Scientist, Meet Stroke

A pretty great lecture by Brain Scientist Jill Taylor. She gets so into the retelling of her story, that you can hear just how emotional of an experience it was for her.

She's on the fringe when she starts talking of using her experience to transcend the global political landscape, but it is an extremely thought-provoking, emotional, and spiritually touching experience.

I'm having embedding problems. Find the video here: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

(Also, a transcript!)

Kenya: The Medium Term, Part One

The other big story from yesterday is that Kenya's rival parties have, finally, officially approved the constitutional changes to put in place the National Accord.

Reading the news reports of this from The Nation and The Standard, there is an overwhelming sense of optimism and excitement in how the two warring sides have now come together.

Both the President and the future Prime Minister made very clear signals about their willingness to cooperate as equals in the enormous task that awaits them. That is great, amazing news.

The President's hard-line followers had, in recent weeks, made comments that seem to undermine the entire basis of the power-sharing agreement. It is very reassuring to see the President, at least symbolically, suggest he supports deeper power sharing than his supporters.

It's difficult to project out into the Medium Term, as I am hoping to do in this post. Kenyan politics has been, for the past 20 years, enormously volatile. During this time, Kenyan politicians have demonstrated a remarkable ability to abandon principle and dignity in the name of political expediency.

What is being suggested in all of the news reports that are coming out now is that the political class has a sense that its time to move above the nasty, hate-tinged disagreements of the past toward a better future.

Given Kenya's previous attempts to do this, we should not be so naive as to think that this will all go off without a hitch. The biggest question, the one that is the hardest answer is the following:

How will the new drive for transparency, accountability, and meaningful change confront the leaders of Kenya's ugly past?

What we need to be honest about is that Kenya has an ugly past. There are many powerful, influential individuals who have gotten very rich off of state-sanctioned corruption.

A couple of those individuals are Kenya's first and second president, who have been accused of some involvement in not only corruption, but also torture and political murder. (I'm not saying they're guilty, just that everyone knows that a serious investigation means their roles need to be investigated.)

It seems extremely unlikely to me that former President Moi, or President Kenyatta's offspring are at all willing to open this can of worms. Any reasonable effort to do this would be extremely painful for them, their families, and, on a psychological level, the nation.

Kenya may need a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission, as is about to be formed. I'm just not sure that the wounds of the past few months are deep enough to convince Moi he should hand back hundreds of millions of shillings, or for the Kenyattas to agree that they should hand over their land to the state so it can be divvied up among squatters and the local community.

I'm not sure it's enough to make each of these men's inner circles admit to their corrupt actions. Or even their involvement in political murder.

While the Moi and Kenyatta families and their respective cronies may realize that they can't stop the Commission from being formed, it seems extremely likely that they will do everything in their power (and they do still have a lot of power in Kenya) to prevent this from hurting their interests.

Finally, I'm not really sure that this is where Kenya wants to go now. Going through this--expurgating a sad, vicious, hate-mongering past--is not necessarily a way to create peace among Kenya's various ethnic groups. It needs to be handled very, very carefully.

Leaders from all levels need to prevent people from interpreting whatever Truth or Justice comes out of the Commission as supporting one ethnic group's claims over another. The Commission needs to have individuals from all over the country come forward with meaningful and sincere admissions of guilt and complicity.

With Kenyan politics where it is now, it's hardly clear that that is the most likely outcome.

A More Perfect Union

 

Obama's speech this morning was, for a political speech, incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and moving. It is clearly the most significant speech of this presidential campaign, and perhaps of the past 20, 30, or 40 years.

It was extraordinarily bold in its scope and intent. While I think the delivery was mediocre at the start, once he got into his groove, he was powerful.

He displayed humility, understanding, and, above all, hope. I can't imagine listening to a better political speech in the next 20 years.

Unfortunately, as I watch CNN and I read the New York Times, I'm struck at how the whole speech, so sweeping, so remarkable, is being boiled down into comparing and contrasting Wright's comments to Obama's.

Obama's speech attempted to transcend this debate, to look at the larger picture in which all of this took place. It looks like the political analysts aren't ready or willing to do that.

A final thought: I can't understand why it was given on a weekday morning instead of primetime. Why give the speech when everyone's at work? The speech was so long (more than a half hour), that I think it's unlikely many people are going to watch it.

Despite all of this, it's interesting to see that, in the immediate aftermath of this, Obama still leads Clinton among registered Democrats, and still is ahead of John McCain in national polls. That's a bit surprising for me, especially since John McCain is essentially getting a free pass from all the political in-fighting among Democrats.

For what it's worth, it's reaffirmed to me that I was right to believe in Obama so strongly. I'm less than enthusiastic about his heavy-handed rhetoric on protectionism, but this speech, more than any other, makes clear why he would be a great president: an ability to transcend politics and identify the issues that unites us all.

In fact, his speech was more than presidential. While history will be the ultimate judge, sitting here, six hours after watching the speech, I believe it was transformational. I certainly hope so.

Update/Correction/Clarification: Originally I wrote that "he said things that no American politician has ever dared to say". I'm obviously wrong on that front. What I mean to say is that his speech tried to do more than just use race as a political tool.

He tried to make the argument that race still matters in our society, but it doesn't have to be something that divides us. What underlies America's racial tension are the greater values that each of us, individually, fundamentally hold.

Those values bind us together. While they may occasionally clash on the surface, we can't allow ourselves to be divided by them. We need to go beyond the petty clashes and look at the deeper issues. Solving the deeper issues does not mean favoring the arguments of one ethnic group over another.  It's about solving issues in a fair way that will benefit us all.

Kenya: The Short Term

Kenya's political leaders have reached a peace agreement of sorts. I'll address the short, medium, and long-term effects of all of this in different posts. 

In the short term (think the next three months), these are the reasons for optimism:

1. Both parties have reached a political agreement that can be seen as fair to everybody. The creation of the prime minister position allows everybody to claim some kind of victory.

Kibaki keeps his claim on the presidency. Raila can claim enough power to keep his followers relieved that he will matter.

2. The economy has been leveled by the recent violence and the enduring political stagnation.

Both Raila and Kibaki are wealthy businessmen, as are virtually all their friends. When the economy suffers, so do they. They, in fact, are among the first to be hit. Certainly gives them an incentive to reach some kind of settlement.

3. The international pressure up to this point has been immense, and there are reasons to think that the international community will remain focused on stability in Kenya for the near future.

4. A lot of the work that now confronts Parliament and the President (and now the Prime Minister) is just trying to clean up the mess that the past couple months has created.

(Locally, it's known as machafuko, which translates to "crisis" or "disorder", though the root of the word is -chafua, which means "to dirty".)

In other words, the very immediate work isn't really controversial. There are other proposals that have already been agreed to, though they may still prove rather difficult to implement without some fisticuffs.

Here, I'm particularly thinking of a  as a Truth and Reconciliation Committee. There's a lot of people who do not want truth to come out and will do whatever they can to make sure that they and their actions do not come under any scrutiny. Probably plenty of people on both political sides.  There's a real danger of a whitewash here, which would please the politicians, but not really meet the societal cleansing goal that seems to underlay any such effort.

More on the medium and long term later...

A "National Accord"

Great news out of Kenya today. Kibaki and Raila sat down and signed a peace agreement.

This is a absolutely huge deal in the short-term. Both sides have accepted major compromises to get here.

Am I surprised? Not really. There have been good signs of progress over the course of the past month.  The fact that the discussions have covered as much ground as they have is a strong indication that both sides realized that they needed to compromise.

There were signs in the past few days that the talks were about to collapse. The U.S. sent out a very strong statement a couple days ago about taking serious action against whoever was seen to be dragging their feet on the talks. (Widely seen as the government.)

For all the hatred against the Bush Administration's policies and politics, they've done a pretty good job on Kenya. They've been effectively pushing both sides to compromise.

They've successfully portrayed themselves as in league with the Kenyan people and relatively independent toward both the government and the opposition.

But they shouldn't think the hard work is over. In fact, it's just begun.

Veepstakes

If Obama pulls off this Democratic nomination, he's gotta go with Bill Richardson as VP, right? He's a Latino and he's from the strategically important southwest, and as far as foreign policy cred goes, he's among the best out there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjOuL5qwNIc&feature=related

Interesting Hillary Interview

Just stumbled on this interview of Hillary Clinton. Starting at the two-minute mark, there's a fascinating conversation about what if she's not the democratic nominee. Her answer? "I will be."




(Referenced by a scathing attack on the Clinton campaign from Frank Rich.)

Updates Since December

Wow. Things have changed so much since I last posted. Kenyan politics, American politics. Personally, professionally.

I'll talk about all of these things eventually. I am now back in America. We are working on Halako's visa. There are some positive signs there, but it's a long process. We're waiting for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to act on our application. I'm guessing anytime between March and August, it'll all be settled. (That's how unclear we are about the timeline we're working with.)

I'm transitioning back to America a bit more slowly now than I did the first time back.

I am now working on two blog posts, one about the Kenyan Election that took place in December and another about the ongoing American Primary.