SOME THOUGHTS FOR AND ABOUT THE KERRY CAMPAIGN, IV

Column No. 23 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - JULY 29, 2004

Note to the reader (again): We are now at the apex of the Democratic National Convention, and in a series of columns written before I left on summer vacation, I continue to devote myself to what are primarily campaign matters.  To remind you, this set of columns has been prepared in advance.  It is possible that some of what I will have to say here will be overtaken by events (and in the first item below I comment on one comment of mine from the first column in this series that has been).  But hopefully, whether or not that happens, you will find these thoughts to be of use as our attention turns to the principal challenge facing the pro-democracy forces, not in Iraq, but here at home: how to defeat George Bush and assure the election of John Kerry.

On the Choice for Vice-President

In the first one of this “written before I went away” series, I wrote a bit on my number one choice for the position of Vice-President on the ticket, a really wild, far-out one, Al Gore.  Well, it is obviously not he.  I must say that until the moment on the morning of July 6 that I heard that Sen. Kerry’s choice was Sen. John Edwards; he was about my last choice among those being “mentioned.”  But as soon as I heard that indeed it was he, and thinking about the other finalists, Rep. Gephardt, Gov. Vilsack, and Sen. Graham, I have to say that I saw the logic and the advisability in the selection.

Yes, Sen. Edwards was the first candidate for the nomination who was put forth by the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (who followed him in their “entry” [to borrow a term from the world of standard bred racing] with Sen. Lieberman and Gen. Clark).  (Since he has moved to the left since the time when he was a DLC founder, I didn’t count Rep. Gephardt as one of theirs.)  But just as Sen. Kerry, not one of their choices has (unfortunately) picked up some of their policies and people, so has Sen. Edwards moved somewhat away from them, especially in his attacks on “globalization” (otherwise know as the uncontrolled, unregulated, actually encouraged by right-wing policy, export of capital).

So what does Sen. Edwards bring to the ticket?  Most importantly to my mind, the ability to focus on two large groups of potential voters who ordinarily don’t vote, because they see, often quite correctly, not too many differences between the two parties: the workers and the young.  Yes, he is now wealthy and does not have a wealth of government experience, but he comes from a poor background and in the primary campaign did focus on issues of major concern to working-class people.  Beyond his stand on the issues, his youth (and I do have to say it, good looks) will be a big advantage for our side in appealing to those young people who we will need to get to the polls in large numbers.  He is a fine orator, much better than Kerry (although the latter does not set a very high standard in that regard!)  And finally, his experience as a plaintiff’s attorney against corporations and insurance companies A) will give him resonance among many potential voters who have been hard done by, by one or both, and B) has the potential for bringing in lots of money from his trial lawyers compatriots, still very much in the sights of the Georgites.

On Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11

Although I (and Michael Moore as well, I’m sure) hope that it is not the case, by the time you read this the movie may be running only in “selected” theatres and may be attracting little if any additional attention from its critics, both right and left. Nevertheless, I would like to make a couple of comments on it and the reaction to it that carry important lessons for the Campaign.

First, what the Right was able to achieve what exactly what their goal always is when the record of the Bush Administration is on the table: get the focus off it, at all costs.  They did this, most unfortunately, with the help of a host of nit-picking liberal/left nay-sayers who in their rush to be “balanced” and show just how erudite they were as movie critics forgot their politics and the desperate need this country has to defeat the Georgites in November.  And so, the attention was spun (literally and figuratively) away from what the movie has to tell us about the Bush family, the Georgites, and their combined records, both in and out of the White House, and onto Michael Moore and the movie as a movie.

Moore, who stated that he had documentary proof for every factual claim made in the movie (and likely has a book with that proof in the works, or should have), had his credibility become a central issue, when the real issue, which the movie illustrates so well, is and should be Bush’s credibility.  Moore had his ability as a film-maker questioned, by critics who said that “Roger and Me” or “Bowling for Columbine” were better, or worse, as films, when the real issue was the ongoing propaganda film of the war on Iraq that the Georgites were able to create with the freely offered help of a very compliant (may we say round-heeled) media.

Yes, it was a job well-done by the Republicans and their allies on the Right, like “Move America Forward” (they mean backward, of course, but honesty is not a long suit on the Right) and “Citizens United” (they mean “Rich Citizens,” of course), with a good deal of help from a wide range of liberals.  They followed the Lee Atwater script, “Always Attack; Never Defend.”  It needs to be both used and countered by our side.  It is actually not hard to do; let’s hope that the Campaign learns quickly on this one.

Second, I did not see any comments (although there may well have been one or more) on the allusion contained in the title of the movie.  For readers who might know of it, there was a marvelous book by the great science fiction writer of two generations ago, Ray Bradbury, entitled Fahrenheit 451.  Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns.  The story, the details of which I will not go into here, is about a time in the future when our country is governed by a regime that has banned reading.  Fireproofing of all natural and man-made material has been perfected, but there are ubiquitous fire companies.  Their task is to locate all hidden printed matter and then burn it.  The owners of such matter are then imprisoned.  It is an upside-down world, something like one in which “freedom and democracy” means that political opposition to the Regime equals treason, torture is OK if approved by the “right” people, and the major media willingly become the propaganda arm of the Regime in power.  It is hard for me to believe that Michael Moore did not have the book in mind when he chose the title for his movie.

On the Choice Issue

Finally for this week, I should like to say that for some years now I have felt that two essential elements have been missing from the armamentarium of those of us who fight to protect freedom of choice (with certain limited limits) in the outcome of pregnancy.  First, and most important, I am convinced that over the long term, against a very determined enemy, to effectively defend choice politically, and win with it politically, we must broaden the issue from one of concern only to women of child-bearing age to being the concern of all of us.  And so it is.  What the Republican Religious Right and their allies in the Catholic Church (who, it happens are at odds with them on many other issues of social justice like the death penalty and policy towards the poor) wants to do is, through the use of the criminal law; force each and every person in the US, regardless of sex or age, to adopt a single belief on the religious question of when life begins.

They want to force upon all of us a particular religious dogma on this matter.  However, once having done that, what would there be to prevent them from using the criminal law to govern personal belief on any related matter, such as, for example, is there a God; if so, which or who is it; is homosexuality a matter of biology or choice; and so on and so forth? In my view, it is time to take the choice issue beyond its feminist roots (very important at the beginning of the struggle, to be sure) so that every voter can come to understand that it is a much larger issue that affects every one of us, as indeed it does.

Second, also going beyond the position of certain feminists on this one, I think that it is essential for its protection that the pro-choice forces make primary the policy that what we want is for abortion to be treated as a public health issue, with the objective of making it not only legal, but also safe and rare.  Planned Parenthood does offer this argument from time-to-time, but in a rather muted way.  Although I may have missed something, I don’t recall ever hearing it from NARAL. The point is that the number of abortions that have occurred per year since the adoption of Roe v. Wade has remained just about the same as it was before that time.

Since they have no program to deal with abortion as the health concern that it is, the anti-choicers are not in fact against abortion; they are just against legal abortion.  They are not against abortion; they just want to use the criminal law to punish doctors who provide them and women who have them.  Of course, the problem for the anti-choicers is that they are also dead set against using those methods which in those European countries which use them have proven to be so effective not only in reducing the abortion rate, but also in advancing the age at which teen-agers start experimenting with sex: early, comprehensive sex education in the schools and the widespread, low-cost availability of contraceptives on demand.

To adopt this approach to the issue would be a major change in strategy for the pro-choice forces.  Who better to undertake it than a Roman Catholic pro-choicer, who could then run on the slogan: “Abortion: Keep it safe; keep it legal; and make it rare.”

SOME THOUGHTS FOR AND ABOUT THE KERRY CAMPAIGN, IV

Column No. 23 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - JULY 29, 2004

Note to the reader (again): We are now at the apex of the Democratic National Convention, and in a series of columns written before I left on summer vacation, I continue to devote myself to what are primarily campaign matters.  To remind you, this set of columns has been prepared in advance.  It is possible that some of what I will have to say here will be overtaken by events (and in the first item below I comment on one comment of mine from the first column in this series that has been).  But hopefully, whether or not that happens, you will find these thoughts to be of use as our attention turns to the principal challenge facing the pro-democracy forces, not in Iraq, but here at home: how to defeat George Bush and assure the election of John Kerry.

On the Choice for Vice-President

In the first one of this “written before I went away” series, I wrote a bit on my number one choice for the position of Vice-President on the ticket, a really wild, far-out one, Al Gore.  Well, it is obviously not he.  I must say that until the moment on the morning of July 6 that I heard that Sen. Kerry’s choice was Sen. John Edwards; he was about my last choice among those being “mentioned.”  But as soon as I heard that indeed it was he, and thinking about the other finalists, Rep. Gephardt, Gov. Vilsack, and Sen. Graham, I have to say that I saw the logic and the advisability in the selection.

Yes, Sen. Edwards was the first candidate for the nomination who was put forth by the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council (who followed him in their “entry” [to borrow a term from the world of standard bred racing] with Sen. Lieberman and Gen. Clark).  (Since he has moved to the left since the time when he was a DLC founder, I didn’t count Rep. Gephardt as one of theirs.)  But just as Sen. Kerry, not one of their choices has (unfortunately) picked up some of their policies and people, so has Sen. Edwards moved somewhat away from them, especially in his attacks on “globalization” (otherwise know as the uncontrolled, unregulated, actually encouraged by right-wing policy, export of capital).

So what does Sen. Edwards bring to the ticket?  Most importantly to my mind, the ability to focus on two large groups of potential voters who ordinarily don’t vote, because they see, often quite correctly, not too many differences between the two parties: the workers and the young.  Yes, he is now wealthy and does not have a wealth of government experience, but he comes from a poor background and in the primary campaign did focus on issues of major concern to working-class people.  Beyond his stand on the issues, his youth (and I do have to say it, good looks) will be a big advantage for our side in appealing to those young people who we will need to get to the polls in large numbers.  He is a fine orator, much better than Kerry (although the latter does not set a very high standard in that regard!)  And finally, his experience as a plaintiff’s attorney against corporations and insurance companies A) will give him resonance among many potential voters who have been hard done by, by one or both, and B) has the potential for bringing in lots of money from his trial lawyers compatriots, still very much in the sights of the Georgites.

On Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11

Although I (and Michael Moore as well, I’m sure) hope that it is not the case, by the time you read this the movie may be running only in “selected” theatres and may be attracting little if any additional attention from its critics, both right and left. Nevertheless, I would like to make a couple of comments on it and the reaction to it that carry important lessons for the Campaign.

First, what the Right was able to achieve what exactly what their goal always is when the record of the Bush Administration is on the table: get the focus off it, at all costs.  They did this, most unfortunately, with the help of a host of nit-picking liberal/left nay-sayers who in their rush to be “balanced” and show just how erudite they were as movie critics forgot their politics and the desperate need this country has to defeat the Georgites in November.  And so, the attention was spun (literally and figuratively) away from what the movie has to tell us about the Bush family, the Georgites, and their combined records, both in and out of the White House, and onto Michael Moore and the movie as a movie.

Moore, who stated that he had documentary proof for every factual claim made in the movie (and likely has a book with that proof in the works, or should have), had his credibility become a central issue, when the real issue, which the movie illustrates so well, is and should be Bush’s credibility.  Moore had his ability as a film-maker questioned, by critics who said that “Roger and Me” or “Bowling for Columbine” were better, or worse, as films, when the real issue was the ongoing propaganda film of the war on Iraq that the Georgites were able to create with the freely offered help of a very compliant (may we say round-heeled) media.

Yes, it was a job well-done by the Republicans and their allies on the Right, like “Move America Forward” (they mean backward, of course, but honesty is not a long suit on the Right) and “Citizens United” (they mean “Rich Citizens,” of course), with a good deal of help from a wide range of liberals.  They followed the Lee Atwater script, “Always Attack; Never Defend.”  It needs to be both used and countered by our side.  It is actually not hard to do; let’s hope that the Campaign learns quickly on this one.

Second, I did not see any comments (although there may well have been one or more) on the allusion contained in the title of the movie.  For readers who might know of it, there was a marvelous book by the great science fiction writer of two generations ago, Ray Bradbury, entitled Fahrenheit 451.  Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns.  The story, the details of which I will not go into here, is about a time in the future when our country is governed by a regime that has banned reading.  Fireproofing of all natural and man-made material has been perfected, but there are ubiquitous fire companies.  Their task is to locate all hidden printed matter and then burn it.  The owners of such matter are then imprisoned.  It is an upside-down world, something like one in which “freedom and democracy” means that political opposition to the Regime equals treason, torture is OK if approved by the “right” people, and the major media willingly become the propaganda arm of the Regime in power.  It is hard for me to believe that Michael Moore did not have the book in mind when he chose the title for his movie.

On the Choice Issue

Finally for this week, I should like to say that for some years now I have felt that two essential elements have been missing from the armamentarium of those of us who fight to protect freedom of choice (with certain limited limits) in the outcome of pregnancy.  First, and most important, I am convinced that over the long term, against a very determined enemy, to effectively defend choice politically, and win with it politically, we must broaden the issue from one of concern only to women of child-bearing age to being the concern of all of us.  And so it is.  What the Republican Religious Right and their allies in the Catholic Church (who, it happens are at odds with them on many other issues of social justice like the death penalty and policy towards the poor) wants to do is, through the use of the criminal law; force each and every person in the US, regardless of sex or age, to adopt a single belief on the religious question of when life begins.

They want to force upon all of us a particular religious dogma on this matter.  However, once having done that, what would there be to prevent them from using the criminal law to govern personal belief on any related matter, such as, for example, is there a God; if so, which or who is it; is homosexuality a matter of biology or choice; and so on and so forth? In my view, it is time to take the choice issue beyond its feminist roots (very important at the beginning of the struggle, to be sure) so that every voter can come to understand that it is a much larger issue that affects every one of us, as indeed it does.

Second, also going beyond the position of certain feminists on this one, I think that it is essential for its protection that the pro-choice forces make primary the policy that what we want is for abortion to be treated as a public health issue, with the objective of making it not only legal, but also safe and rare.  Planned Parenthood does offer this argument from time-to-time, but in a rather muted way.  Although I may have missed something, I don’t recall ever hearing it from NARAL. The point is that the number of abortions that have occurred per year since the adoption of Roe v. Wade has remained just about the same as it was before that time.

Since they have no program to deal with abortion as the health concern that it is, the anti-choicers are not in fact against abortion; they are just against legal abortion.  They are not against abortion; they just want to use the criminal law to punish doctors who provide them and women who have them.  Of course, the problem for the anti-choicers is that they are also dead set against using those methods which in those European countries which use them have proven to be so effective not only in reducing the abortion rate, but also in advancing the age at which teen-agers start experimenting with sex: early, comprehensive sex education in the schools and the widespread, low-cost availability of contraceptives on demand.

To adopt this approach to the issue would be a major change in strategy for the pro-choice forces.  Who better to undertake it than a Roman Catholic pro-choicer, who could then run on the slogan: “Abortion: Keep it safe; keep it legal; and make it rare.”

SOME THOUGHTS FOR AND ABOUT THE KERRY CAMPAIGN, III

Column No. 22 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 22, 2004

Note to the reader (again): As we now approach the Democratic National Convention itself, I am devoting a series of columns to what are primarily campaign matters, rather than the more historical and theoretical issues I usually deal with.  It happens that I have been away during most of this period.  Thus, not only this set of five columns (running through August 5), but also the one for August 12, has been prepared in advance.  It is possible that some of what I will have to say here will be overtaken by events.  But hopefully, whether or not that happens, you will find these thoughts to be of use as our attention turns to the principal challenge facing the pro-democracy forces, not in Iraq, but here at home: how to defeat George Bush and assure the election of John Kerry.

I should note that some of these thoughts have appeared in one form or another in past columns.  If that be the case, obviously I like them a lot.  So please bear with me.

Constitutional Issues (again)

Consider the following:

Memo on Interrogation Tactics Is Disavowed: Justice Document Had Said Torture May Be Defensible by Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writers, Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A01:

President Bush's aides yesterday disavowed an internal Justice Department opinion that torturing terrorism suspects might be legally defensible, saying it had created the false impression that the government was claiming authority to use interrogation techniques barred by international law.  . . .

A Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by Bush said that he believed he had “the authority under the Constitution” to deny protections of the Geneva Conventions to combatants picked up during the war in Afghanistan but that he would “decline to exercise that authority at this time.”

And then:

Will The Commissioners Cave? by Ray McGovern, Tompaine, June 21, 2004:

That Troublesome Constitution Again.

Most observers are familiar with the rhetorical landscape with which Bush and Cheney persuaded a large majority of Americans that Iraq played a role in the attacks of 9/11, and many shrug this off as familiar spin by politicians inclined to take liberties with the facts.  So far little attention has been given to the fact that a constitutional issue is involved.

On March 19, 2002, the day the war began, President Bush sent a letter to Congress in which he said that the war was permitted under legislation authorizing force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” If the staff’s finding that there is “no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States” is allowed to stand, the Bush administration will be shown to have gone afoul of the Constitution yet again.

And then, what powers were the Georgites looking for in the cases in which the Supreme Court decided that, yes indeed; even persons deemed “enemy combatants” by the President have some rights to due process under the law?  Among powers earlier claimed by the Regime are that the Administration can simply declare anyone it wants to be labeled an “enemy combatant” as one.  It can then, they have claimed, deprive such a person of any legal rights whatsoever and detain such a person indefinitely. Further, the Administration argued that, even if there were to be some kind of habeas corpus hearing, the “some evidence” standard, ordinarily used only in administrative, not judicial procedures; would, nonetheless be applied.  Finally, they claim the power to ablate all provisions of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a jury trial in criminal cases, for such “enemy combatants.”

That’s what the Georgites want, and all that is standing between us and them (polarization, anyone?) right now is a slim majority of the Supreme Court.  In a future column I will return to this issue to speculate on just why they want these powers.  Hint: it ain’t to fight terrorism.

Issues that Could be Brought Into the Campaign

Here are some thoughts devoted to dealing with issues vital for the future of our country that do not usually get addressed by Democratic candidates.  Democrats are used to setting up laundry lists of programs, to solve this problem or that.  Such lists are important.  But to win the election (both by showing how truly different in kind, not just in degree, the Senator Kerry is from Bush), perhaps some of the items on this list do need be dealt with.

1. The role of the Christian Right in the Bush Administration, and its influence on policy.  In this regard, of course, the whole issue of separation of church and state and why it is absolutely essential to insure freedom of religion and to insure that religion, real religion, will remain central in our highly diverse culture, must be dealt with.  An important twist in this is how, in public, the Administration appears to keep Christian rightists at arm’s length.  The Georgites even have a special person, one Timothy Geoglein (D.D. Kirkpatrick, White House Aide Takes on Role as Bush’s Eyes and Ears on the Right, New York Times, June 28, 2004, p. 1, assigned as a go-between to the Religious Right for Rove and Bush.  Isn’t that odd, for an Administration so openly pro-Christian Rightist in its policies?  Could they be ashamed of something?  And why, do you think, have Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, (Gary) Bauer, et al., been so quiet during the Georgite Reign?  Do they know something that we don’t know, perhaps about the private commitments that the Georgites have made to them?  I think they do, and I think that it would do the Kerry Campaign well to get the whole matter of the possible secret deals and commitments out on the table and challenge the Georgites with it.

2.  Further on he issue of Georgite secrecy.  Much documentation is available to show that this Administration is the most highly secretive in American history, from the famous Cheney energy meeting records to Ashcroft's policy of actively challenging any FOIA request, to cite only two of many examples – much of the data of this type being very familiar to readers of TPJ.  But consider this, what about the national agendas of political parties?  Should such agendas be kept secret? In the 2000 Presidential campaign, Bush gave one secret speech.  No tape or transcript has ever come to light (and the Bush campaign adamantly refused to make either available to inquiring reporters) of the speech he made to an organization called the Conference on National Policy.  The CNP, at last look (and it is difficult to find out about it – only the barest essentials are available the web through Google, and they are rather dated), is the organization of all the Right, Far-Right and Religious Right organizations in the US, to my knowledge excluding only the openly racist and anti-Semitic ones for cosmetic reasons.  At last look, its President was Ed Meese (remember him?)  How about a challenge to the Georgites to reveal, this time around, what they are promising to the organizations of the CNP?

3.  There is the whole question of "big government."  Republicans are no more against it than are Democrats.  The two parties just have different views as to in which arenas government should be big and which small.  The Republicans, especially the Georgite wing, love big government: in dealing with personal belief on religious matters, such as when life begins; on the issue of sexual identity and rights; the denial of civil rights and liberties to certain persons; the use of the criminal justice system to deal with certain segments of the population in matters of recreational drug use; and the use of the military.

We know what Democrats are for, or should be for, big government to deal with big problems of an economic and social nature.  That famous Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt, ran as a third-party candidate in the 1912 Presidential election. In it, TR (who would now be considered a left-wing Democrat) among other things proposed a national health insurance plan that was well to the left of anything presently even being considered by Sen. Kerry. On the issue of “big government,” TR had this to say (R. Brookhiser, The Making of the President, 1912, New York Times Book Review, May 9, 2004, p. 10, not available online): Big Business requires Big Government.  Perhaps it is time to get this one out in the open.

4.  On regulation.  In this country, people are all in favor of environmental/physical regulation when it is presented in local terms: the latest preventable fire disaster, toxic waste leak, construction site collapse.  They are all in favor of economic regulation when it is presented in personal terms: what happened to the 401k’s at Enron.  Regulation is primarily responsive, not proactive – responsive to real or potential violations that can result in major economic or personal damage.  The development of what in The New Americanism I called "the local problems bank" could be very helpful in this regard.

And Once again, So Plato said it before Burke Did

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."  -Edmund Burke

"The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves." -- Plato (with thanks to Murray Jason)

SOME THOUGHTS FOR AND ABOUT THE KERRY CAMPAIGN, II

Column No. 21 By Steven Jonas - July 15, 2004

Note to the reader (repeated): As we now approach the run-up to the Democratic National Convention and the Convention itself, I am devoting a series of columns to what are primarily campaign matters, rather than the more historical and theoretical issues I usually deal with.  It happens that I am going to be away during most of this period.  Thus, not only these columns but also the first two for August will have been prepared in advance.  It is possible that some of what I will have to say here will be overtaken by events.  But hopefully, whether or not that happens, you will find these thoughts to be of use as our attention turns to the principal challenge facing the pro-democracy forces, not in Iraq, but here at home: how to defeat George Bush and assure the election of John Kerry.

I should note that some of these thoughts have appeared in one form or another in past columns.  If that be the case, obviously I like them a lot.  So please bear with me.

Constitutional Democracy at Risk

At some point, I think that Sen. Kerry is going to have to confront the danger to the continuation of Constitutional Democracy in the United States as we know it – a danger presented by the Georgites.  It’s a tough subject to simplify, but for one, Al Gore is doing that.  The problem is real, reflected both in Georgite actions and the positions taken by the Georgites’ many open supporters in the media.  The Georgites are brazenly arrogating more and more power to the Executive Branch, on their own authority.  Right-wing media types like Ann Coulter labels all liberals as traitors.  The penalty for treason happens to be death.  Back in May, the Limbaugh clone Sean Hannity said that Spain had "one terrorist event" and then "capitulated," and those U.S. liberals would do the same thing if such an event were to happen here.  If there were an attack and the liberals were to capitulate, Hannity said, the elections would need to be suspended:  "In fact, the elections need to be suspended before it happens because this is too serious to play around with."  If you recall, Bush’s favorite General, Tommy Franks, also talked about the possibility of suspending the Constitution.  I am not making this up.

Now here is what Al Gore, not previously known as a politician for whom the preservation of US Constitutional Democracy was at the top of the list of issues, had to say on the subject in a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center on June 24, 2004 (in part) – Tom Paine

“I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. . . .

“If the congress becomes an enfeebled enabler to the executive, and the courts become known for political calculations in their decisions, then the country suffers. The kinds of unnatural, undemocratic activities in which this administration has engaged, in order to aggrandize power, have included censorship of scientific reports, manipulation of budgetary statistics, silencing dissent, and ignoring intelligence. Although there have been other efforts by other presidents to encroach on the legitimate prerogatives of congress and courts, there has never been this kind of systematic abuse of the truth and institutionalization of dishonesty as a routine part of the policy process.

“Two hundred and twenty years ago, John Adams wrote, in describing one of America’s most basic founding principles, ‘The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them…to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.’ ”

On this, I need not comment further.

“What’s Wrong with Kerry?”  “Is anything wrong with Kerry?”

Many liberals and leftists both have been saying for quite some time “Where’s Kerry?”  The fact is that he has been going around the country being the John Kerry the voters in the Democratic primaries voted for: reasonably liberal in the current political context; having a thoroughly “electable” persona; a decent although not overwhelming speaker unless he gets really wound up; very experienced in national government, in fact a truly “Presidential” candidate in terms of his knowledge of the Federal government and how it works and doesn’t work from the inside, one better than either party has offered in many a moon; at least a seemingly moral and principled man, who, by the way, happens to know the English language; and, having the “gravitas” factor, one about whom David Letterman said (AOL Broadcast, June 30, 2004): “I caught John Kerry in a lie.  He actually said ‘I can be as footloose and fancy free as the next guy as go out as have a good time.’ “

I believe that going into the Convention the Senator has run a very smart campaign.  He has been solid and policy-oriented, while gradually ratcheting up the pressure and the rhetoric on Bush.  He has clear plans for instituting a completely different approach to government and governing, suited to the needs of the American people as a whole, not just the ideologues and the major campaign contributors of the Georgites.  What seems very clear is that the last thing he has wanted to do is peak too early.  Standing aside and letting Bush, “F word” Cheney, et al., machine-gun themselves in their feet, has a lot to say for the way he is doing things. Right now (that is, at the end of June), in my view, he is doin’ what he should be doin’.

Controlling the Agenda

Continuing on the Agenda theme, as is the case with virtually every one of them (see my book, The New Americanism, chap. 16, esp. pp. 287-289), this election will go to the candidate who controls the agenda.  If the agenda is Kerry and what he did and did not do in Vietnam and whether he threw his medals or someone else's or ribbons over the White House fence, and how he voted one way on a bill and then another after it was amended, Bush wins.  If the agenda is George W.M.D. (War/ More Deficits) Bush and what he has done with the presidency and the nation, Kerry wins.  As Lee Atwater preached, always attack; never defend, just as the Georgites are doing now.  If anybody needs defending, it's Bush, but you will hardly ever hear any of that from the Georgite camp, unless and until they are really cornered.

The Georgites realize this very well. Notice that there are very few elements of defense of the Bush record (indefensible of course) in their current campaign-initiating broadsides.  That says a whole lot.  They know very well that if they can manage to make Kerry the agenda, they win. (To date, they have tried very hard to do this, but have failed miserably as their Administration teeter/totters from one policy failure to the next.)  There is only one man who can beat George Bush in this election, and it's not John Kerry; it's George Bush. The whole Georgite campaign strategy is designed around that knowledge. In the campaign against the last Bush, the motto was "It's the economy, stupid."  Therefore, this time around it must be, "It's Bush, stupid!" For if it isn't, that's really stupid.

There is no 'Middle Ground’

A further comment on this theme: one of the liberals' main faults has been that they think continually there is some "middle ground" that can be reached if only reasonable people would get together. That position was well expressed by the DLCers Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden, who actually came to Bush’s defense over the charges by former Bush advisor Richard Clarke that the Georgites totally ignored the very clear warnings on the dangers presented by al-Qaeda.

Sorry, but there is no "middle ground" as to whether the rich should pay less and less their deserved share of taxes, or whether we should have gone to war on Iraq unilaterally with lies as the rationale, or whether the health care delivery system should first and foremost be a profit center for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or whether Social Security, as we have known it since the New Deal, should survive or become a profit center for the securities industry, or whether energy policy should be designed first and foremost for immediate profit of the oil companies, or whether global warming is real, and so on and so forth.  These are all questions that have two distinct sides, and all the talk from people like the DLCers – who "deplore the present situation" and ask people to “reason together” and find that "middle ground" – will not change that reality.

Some bemoan the polarization of the American body politic.  Did polarization take place these past two and a half decades under Democratic governance, or with the Republicans mainly in control?  Who did the majority of the polarizing? Hasn't it been by the phony 'Compassionate Conservatives;" The Clinton haters; Gingrich with “the Democrats are responsible for the country’s moral decline” (that is before he was forced out of office for immorality; the DeLay and the totally “us/them” way he runs the House; the Sanctimonious Senator, Hatch; F-Word Duke Cheney; the “anyone who challenges the President after 9/11 is a traitor” Ashcroft; those who orally flayed as unpatriotic Sen. Max Cleland because he thought that the Stars and Bars should come out of the Georgia state flag?

Some consider that Michael Moore with F/911 further "polarizes the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly difficult to govern."  Well, those who believe in Constitutional government are not going to defeat those who don't by being "nice," because you can bet your bottom dollar that the Far Right isn't 'nice' and isn't interested in being so.  Just see Dick Cheney's performance on the floor of the Senate. Polarization is here, and democrats (small “d”) of both parties should accept that, and get on with protecting our democracy.

On John McCain

Sen. Kerry was obviously not of the above mind when he tried to persuade Sen. John McCain to be his running mate.  What a disaster that would have been.  The move would have attracted few more Republicans than are already AnyBodyButBush-ers and it would have turned off both the liberal and left wings of the Democratic Party, which would have had to do the “hold-your-nose-and-pull-the-lever” thing.  More critically, it would have driven off from Kerry numerous potential Nader voters.  McCain sounds nice from time-to-time, but is actually a reactionary on many issues that are at the core of the Democratic agenda, from choice to the environment (except for, very recently, global warming) to national domestic spending.  There are only a few "moderate" Republicans left, and McCain ain't, nor had he ever been, one of them.

Some anti-Georgites are projecting the dropping of Cheney by Bush and the substitution of McCain.  Doubtful.  Don't think that Cheney and the interests he works for would let go that easily.  Since Cheney wouldn’t be there, and no true Georgite would ever trust McCain since he is a reactionary but not one of theirs, who would run Bush for them?  So why is McCain suddenly appearing at Bush’s side?  Here are few possible reasons: McCain is showing his true Right-wing colors; the Georgites have got something on him; he is being threatened with a well-funded primary next time around for his own senate seat.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR AND ABOUT THE KERRY CAMPAIGN, I

Column No. 20 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 8, 2010

Note to readers:

As we are now approaching the run-up to the Democratic National Convention and the Convention itself, I am devoting a series of columns to what are primarily campaign matters, rather than the more historical and theoretical issues I usually deal with.  It happens that I am going to be away during most of this period.  Thus, not only these columns but also the first two for August are being prepared in advance.  It is possible that some of what I will have to say here will be overtaken by events.  Hopefully, whether or not that happens, you will find these thoughts of use as our attention turns to the principal problem facing the pro-democracy forces, not in Iraq, but here at home: how to defeat George Bush and assure the election of John Kerry.

I should note that some of these reflections have appeared in one form or another in one or more of my previous columns.  If that is the case, obviously I believe they have merit.  So please bear with me.

Dealing With The “Liberal Label” Issue

The Georgites will be using the “liberal as a dirty word” strategy with increasing intensity.  This is because they have little else to run on and little other than invective and phraseology designed to distract the electorate from the real issues: the record of George Bush and how John Kerry would re-direct the course of our ship of state back onto that determined by our Constitution.  To do this, the Senator might use something like the following recipe:

"If 'liberal' means . . .

protecting the Social Security System;

providing health care security for everyone;

creating a Homeland Security system that is more than a name and a vehicle for ending the security of our Constitutional rights;

creating environmental security and preservation for the benefit of all the people, not just the special interests;

maintaining the strong defense of our national security by ensuring that our military resources are not wasted on unnecessary foreign adventures, nor on unnecessary, unproven hardware;

restoring the security of a balanced budget and halting ever-upward spiraling Federal deficits;

reversing the addition of large amounts of extra pocket money for Bush's rich friends and contributors;

“If this is what ‘being a liberal’ means, then I am a liberal.”

Getting 20% of the 50%

I continue to believe that the primary electoral key to victory in November is held by the 50% of eligible voters who don’t ordinarily vote in Presidential elections.  Over many years polls have shown that the number one reason for not voting is that eligible voters perceive no differences between the candidates to make getting out to vote worth the effort.  If Kerry can get 20% of this 50%, he will win in a true landslide.

The lesson from the data on why eligible non-voters don’t vote makes it quite obvious what Kerry must do:  clearly distinguish himself from Bush, by taking what are mainstream American positions (see the list above) that the Georgites try so hard to define as “left.” Distinguishing himself in this way will also draw that ever-increasing segment of “Anybody But Bush” customarily Republican voters to him.

As to those poll numbers that so many people are worried about, the ones that as of late June did not show Kerry pulling into a commanding lead over a Bush who is suffering one policy reverse after another, I have to say that I am not upset.  The fact is that most polls simply do not reach the many non-voters who are hopefully going to come out and vote for Kerry.  Further, even that being said, I think, given Bush's enormous build-up over his (false) "strength" in the face of 9/11 and the natural national rallying round at the beginning of the Iraq disaster, it is not surprising that the polls, such as they are, don't fully show the extent to which Bush support has dropped and will not likely recover, just as long as Kerry can manage to keep the focus on Bush and make the primary agenda for the election reversing the Bush Record.

On Iraq

The Bush “turnover” policy is obviously being driven by domestic politics.  Wolfowitz and Negroponte had already (end of June) said that the US will be in Iraq indefinitely, apparently regardless of what form the Iraqi government might eventually take (and as of the end of June, its leaders were talking about a military dictatorship [!]) and what power it might have. We all know what happened to the WMD and Saddam/al-Qaeda links reasons for the War.

Now the “bringing democracy and freedom” argument is begin to ring quite hollow.  Little noticed was the following statement by the inimitable Paul Wolfowitz: “The purpose of this war wasn’t to remake Iraq any more than the purpose of World War II was to remake Germany and Japan” (Tierney, John, “The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts,” New York Times News of the Week in Review, May 16, 2004, p. 5).  What was that?  Next, will Wolfie be telling us that the primary reasons for the War were: 1. Iraqi oil, 2. permanent bases in the region, 3. American “hegemony,” just as his Project for a New American Century associates were openly saying in the 1990s?

Indeed, I believe that the primary goal of the Iraq invasion was No. 1, getting the hands of the US oil companies on Iraqi oil, but not all of it.  (Warning: those anti-conspiracy theory readers are not going to like this paragraph much at all.)  Southern Iraq is much too unstable and much too contested.  No, I believe that the US oilmen have been focusing on Kurdish oil, ever since the American virtual protectorate for that region was set up following the end of the Gulf War in 1991.  Thus, I think that all along the underlying Georgite goal for Iraq has been to have it end up as a "federated" nation in which Iraqi Kurdistan, and its potential enormous oil reserves, would be come a permanent US protectorate.  A deal would be worked out with the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds to make sure that this would not make more than minor trouble for Turkey.  (At the NATO Summit at the end of June, Bush was already trying to make nice with the Turks.  Wonder what that was all about?) Further, as for the concerns of Iran about its own Kurds, could this become an excuse for a future invasion of Iran?

Now, whether the last paragraph represents reality or not, how could Kerry’s policy differ from Bush’s?  Bush has attempted to appropriate both the UN and NATO for maintaining the military option.  As of the end of June, neither organization was biting with anything like “boots on the ground.”  But he did get a UN resolution and he did get the appearance of “turnover.”  Under such circumstances:

First, Kerry could renounce any US interest in owning or controlling any fraction of the Iraqi oil reserves, regardless of what part of the country they lie in.  Second he could announce that all construction on permanent US military bases would be stopped and the bases dismantled or turned over to the UN on an interim bases, for future transfer to the Iraqi government from the UN.  Third, he could announce that, to the extent possible, given contractual obligations, reconstruction projects would be turned over to Iraqi companies.  Fourth, he would renounce the infamous “Bearing Point Plan,” promulgated by the Bremer Regime in one of its first acts (see Antonia Juhasz, LeftTurn Magazine, No. 12, Feb/Mar, 2004, www.leftturn.org; Naomi Klein, The Guardian (UK), 6/26/04).  It ‘privatized’ the whole Iraqi economy for pillage by foreign (mainly US) companies.  Fifth, he could propose a realistic Federal structure for a future permanent Iraqi government.  The country we know as Iraq was an artificial British construct dating from the 1920s.  Realism could countenance going back to some form of the provincial arrangement, as it existed under the Ottoman Empire.

On the Choice for VP

Please note that this comment could well have been pre-empted by the time you read this column.  BUT, if Kerry wants as his Vice-Presidential running-mate a person who: brings geographical balance; considerable experience in both the Executive and Legislative branches of government at the highest level; is, like himself, a Vietnam vet (although he didn’t see combat); has an extensive background in both domestic and foreign policy and brings a special expertise on the crucial issue for the survival of the species -- that is the environment and its protection/preservation -- and has made Bush and the Georgites a clear target and regards them as clearly different from any true Democrat; can be a terrific speaker; knows that the true primary issue in this election is the preservation of Constitutional Democracy as we have known it for 200 years, and who is proclaiming this loudly, clearly and with increasing fervor in his public appearances; the choice is clear.  It is: Al Gore.  Would he accept the offer?  He just might, given the peril the Nation is in under the Georgites. Yes, extraordinary times do demand extraordinary choices and extraordinary sacrifices.  Just recall that after his defeat by Andrew Jackson in 1828, John Quincy Adams went back to the House of Representatives, where he throughout the 1830s he was virtually the only voice protesting the existence of slavery and calling for its abolition.

COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT

Column No. 19 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – July 1, 2004

On Jan. 25, 2002, the Counsel to the President, Alberto Gonzales, sent President George Bush a memo in which he warned the President about a United States law, the War Crimes Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. 2441).  That law prohibits the commission of “war crimes” by any U.S. officials or other personnel.  Included in the definition are any violations of the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war.  Gonzales told the President that the Justice Department had concluded that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to any apprehended members of al Qaeda.  He also advised the President that the State Dept. did not agree with Justice.  He proposed to the President that he make a determination that the Conventions did not apply to the Taliban or members of al Qaeda.

In Gonzales’ view, the “war on terror” had rendered certain sections of the Conventions obsolete; “quaint” was a descriptor he used.  One John Yoo, a University of California law professor on leave with the Justice Department, had begun working on ways and means for the US to avoid being charged with war crimes in reference to how certain prisoners taken in Afghanistan were treated in the fall of 2001, as the invasion of Afghanistan was getting under way.  Why might he need to have done this?  Because, according to The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh’s sources at least, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had authorized an approach to prisoner treatment that included physical coercion and sexual humiliation.  The Pentagon denied these charges, of course.  But if such a plan did not exist, why on earth would they have had a legal defense for its implementation prepared?

We now know that the plan was instituted in Afghanistan and then transferred via Guantanamo to Iraq.  That transfer lead inexorably to the Abu Ghraib outrage.  We thus also know that what we saw in those first horrifying photos was not the work of a “few bad apples” among enlisted personnel, carrying out these atrocities on their own initiative, but rather the product of more than a few bad apples fairly high up in the Bush Administration.  The primary question from the beginning has been; how high up the chain of command do knowledge and responsibility go?

The Pentagon, and the CIA, asked for legal rulings justifying the use of what most observers, as well as the usual interpretations of the Geneva Conventions, would term torture. Rumsfeld himself was involved.  That put the chain of command knowledge level pretty high.  If it did not go so very high, why was the Counsel to the President briefing Bush on the legal issues involved?  These are matters that have been and are being dealt with in great detail elsewhere.  In this column, I take a brief look at certain Constitutional issues raised by the whole sordid mess.

Article VI of the Constitution says, among other things, that: “This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the Untied States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Sect. 2, Article II, empowers the President “. . . by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur. . . .” The clause from Article VI quoted above has always been interpreted to mean that treaties are part of the Constitution.

The oath of office for the President is found in the Constitution, at the end of Article II, Sect 1.  It says: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  The impeachment provision is found in Section 4 of the same article: “The President, Vice-President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”  One would think that violation of one’s oath, as found in the Constitution itself, would constitute a high crime or at least a misdemeanor.

Yoo was working on ways to have US personnel avoid charges of committing war crimes.  Jay Bybee, now a Federal Appeals Court judge, of the Office of Legal Council of the Justice Department, the federal government’s ultimate legal advisor, wrote the principal memo that Gonzales used in advising the President.  He decided that certain provisions of the Conventions were “outdated” and “quaint.” Further, he told the President that with a simple re-labeling of persons captured in Afghanistan from “prisoners of war” to something else and a redefinition of “torture,” provisions of US law (passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President, by the way) concerning the commission of war crimes could be by-passed.

In addition, a group of Pentagon lawyers told Rumsfeld that “inherent” in the President’s power as Commander-in-Chief, in war-time, was the authority to authorize essentially anything he wanted to, regardless of US law or treaties.  In this case too, even if such power could be found anywhere in the Constitution (and I looked hard in Article I, Sect. 2 that defines those powers -- and couldn’t find it) it happens that the only US government entity empowered to declare war is the Congress.  Although the President and Fox News say over and over again that “we’re at war,” we are not, at least in Constitutional terms.

In the eyes of most of the rest of the world, what Gonzales, Woo, Bybee, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld’s lawyers did was unilaterally to amend a series of treaties.  And they did this without bothering even to inform, much less negotiate with, our treaty partners (most of the countries in the world).  Since treaties are part of the Constitution, they were thus also unilaterally amending the Constitution without bothering to go through the amendment process.  To this was added the interesting “inherent powers” doctrine that does the same thing.  But the Bush folks are not strangers to amending the Constitution at the stroke of a pen.  The USA Patriot Act does the same to Constitutional rights at home.  I have previously pointed out in this space that the Act voids rights under the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, thus amending the Constitution by de facto repealing of those amendments.  It also amends the last clause of Article III, Sect. 2, in the body, to wit “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury . . . . “

It is breathtaking that, with reference to torture, all of these lawyers were looking for ways around treaty obligations and US law that they recognized existed.  (It should be noted that other government lawyers, for example from the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Office and from the State Department, were horrified by all of this.)  But the most disturbing aspect of this is that, according to Ashcroft’s Justice Department, all of these actions, from the endorsement of the use of torture in the face of our treaty obligations, to the suspension of Constitutional rights under the USA Patriot Act, allegedly are and can be done on Presidential authority alone.

There are two major issues here.  One is that, if Bush, on Gonzales’ advice, authorized the breaking of the Geneva Conventions, since they are part of the Constitution, that is an impeachable offense.  The other, even more important in my view, is that what is going on here is the substitution of the Rule of Man for the Rule of Law.  This is a very serious threat to every US citizen, and other persons for that matter residing in the United States, as well as to US captives abroad.

Under this doctrine, the President, on his own authority, labels you or re-labels you something in a new category and then all of a sudden you live outside of the protections of the US Constitution, whether those protections are to be found in its body or in treaties that become part of it, as determined by the President under something called “inherent powers.”  Since the President would have leave to define those powers in any manner he would see fit, to come up with such a concept is to endorse explicitly the substitution of the Rule of Man for the Rule of Law.  In so doing, the process also explicitly endorses the eventual end to American Constitutional Democracy, which rests on the bedrock of the Rule of Law, as we have known it.

This, in my view, is the most important single issue facing the American electorate in the upcoming election.  The Georgites have rewritten the Constitution on their own authority.  “We’ll tell you what rights you have and what rights you don’t have, and once we tell you that you don’t have any, we can do whatever we want to with you, whether it’s torture by another name or indefinite imprisonment without charges and without recourse.”  It seems to me that an Executive undertaking to act in just this manner was a major factor in a Revolution that began around 1776.

I do hope very much that Senator Kerry wakes up to what is truly at stake here, soon, and then makes it a central issue of his campaign.