Some Thoughts For and About the Kerry Campaign, VI

Column No. 25 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - August 12, 2004

Note to the reader: This is now the last of the series of columns that I prepared before I left on a three-week vacation trip to Japan in July. The Democratic National Convention has now of course concluded, quite successfully by most accounts (except those of angry left-wingers who do not realize that the enemy now is Bush, not right-wing Democrats.  If we are going to have the luxury of engaging in policy debates at all, and have the privilege of being to wrest control of the Democratic Party once and for all from the Democratic rightists, first we have to make sure that open fascism, brought by the Georgites, does not devour the Constitution and make the whole subject moot.)

This column is thus the last in the series that has been devoted to what are primarily campaign matters, rather than the more historical and theoretical issues I usually deal with.  It is possible that some of what I have said here has been 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.

Bush's International “Achievement”

One of the amazing aspects of Bush policy and Bush himself is that they have achieved something that no previous American President has come close to: receiving almost universal condemnation from both governments (to a greater or lesser extent depending upon their state of dependency on the US) and people from around the world.

On Dealing With Terrorism and the Georgite Approach to It

I previously quoted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on "Terrorism," at some length.  Here is an excerpt from that quote: "Important and urgent questions are being asked about the collateral damage from the 'war on terrorism' -- damage to the presumption of innocence, to precious human rights, to the rule of law and to the very fabric of democratic governance.... There is a danger that, in pursuit of security, we end up sacrificing crucial liberties, thereby weakening our common security, not strengthening it, and thereby corroding the vessel of democratic government from within....”

What has happened to civil liberties, in Iraq itself since the first heady days following the ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime and in our country, of course, speaks volumes to the Secretary General’s concerns.

And then consider that: “The State Department’s top counter terrorism expert, J. Cofer Black, recently acknowledged that the [Iraq] war has created exactly that which it was launched to prevent [sic] – greater cooperation between Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups in the Middle East” (Ted Widmer, review of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, New York Times Book Review, May 9, 2004).

Further, Georgite policy has actually managed to create in Iraq a new, non-al Qaeda terrorist grouping that did not previously exist: the Taliban/Wahhabist organization bent on Jihad led by the newly emerged Abu Mousab a-Zarqawi (see Michael Ware, “Meet the New Jihad,” Time, July 5, 2004, p. 24).  Quite a Georgite achievement, at a cost of $200 billion, and counting, 928 American and countless Iraqi lives, and counting, and the long-term potential wrecking of the American economy, an event which, were it to occur, would not do much to help the world’s economy either, come to think of it.

On the Religion Issue

The Georgites and their journalistic allies like David Brooks of the New York Times are going about setting a "religion trap" for Kerry.  Let's hope that he doesn't fall into it.  The Georgites would like nothing better than to see him suddenly become "religious" in the way they prescribe (a way, by the way, that many of the Georgite leadership doesn't itself practice.  I wonder when Cheney or Rumsfeld last went to church, and I wonder if the totally amoral Wolfowitz even believes in God.)  The whole point about religion in the US, for most of us, believers or not, is that we observe in our own way, not some prescribed way as the Christian Right would have it.

Kerry happens to be a practicing Catholic who happens to take communion.  You can't be more of a believer than that, even if, like many, many Catholics in the US, he doesn't buy certain Church teachings on matters relating to sex and procreation.  I'm sure his approach will sit just fine with his voters and potential voters of a religious persuasion other than Christian Rightist.  Speaking as a secular humanistic Jew, I find Kerry's religiosity genuine and, therefore, not a turnoff in any way. To do something false would alienate many genuinely religious voters, to be sure, as well as turn off many other potential voters who don't worry about religion but would like a President whose principal foci are jobs, peace, and the preservation of Constitution Democracy (as well as the environment).

People like Brooks would have it that Kerry’s low-key approach (which happens to be honest, of course) turns off certain religious “moderates.”  I think that just by being who he is religiously, Kerry builds bridges to the religious.  Religious people who are truly moderate aren't going to vote for the Armageddonist in the White House anyway.

On the Stem Cell Issue: Tactics

For most readers of this column, I don’t have to discuss the substance of the stem cell research issue.  I here want to address briefly tactics in dealing with it.  What follows is a short report on the Senator’s first comment on the matter.  It followed “Reagan Week.”

“‘Kerry Calls on Bush to Reverse Stem Cell Policy’” by Patricia Wilson, Reuters, Pittsburgh (June 12): “After a week of political silence to honor Ronald Reagan, Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry called on Saturday for a White House policy change to allow more research into Alzheimer's, the brain-wasting disease that afflicted the former president. … The senator from Massachusetts joined a growing chorus, including the voice of Reagan's widow, Nancy, in urging President Bush to remove restrictions on embryonic stem cell research that could help combat Alzheimer's.”

Wrong Answer, or rather Wrong Statement.  Bush’s stem cell research policy reflects for sure a major demand of his very vocal, although relatively small minority base (small in terms of the actual percentage of eligible voters who adhere to it), the Christian Right.  It also may well reflect a strongly held personal belief of Bush himself.  Thus, the chance of getting him to reverse his position, for both political and personal ideological reasons, is slim.  But more important politically, taking the position of asking/demanding a change in his policy puts Kerry in the position of supplicant, not co-equal in an electoral battle.  Such a demand also makes Kerry look like he is just out to score political points.  Now that is fine, when the points mean something.  But since Bush would never change on this one, it just looks cheap and weak.

Better is the position that the Senator took 10 days later (AOL News: Elections 2004, Nedra Pickler, AP, Denver, June 21, “Kerry Urges Lifting Stem Cell Ban”): “Democrat John Kerry, backed by 48 Nobel Prize winners, on Monday criticized President Bush for allowing ideology rather than facts to determine science policies and repeated his pledge to overturn the ban on federal funding of research on new stem cell line.”

In this statement Sen. Kerry criticized Bush for making policy based on “ideology,” here a code word for “religious doctrine.”  He also criticizes the abandonment of science in general, with the backing of a large group of very prestigious scientists.  He is no longer asking Bush to change his policy, but telling the voters what he, Kerry, would do, as President.

Going one step further, Kerry could use the issue to illustrate how Bush makes many policy decisions, from supporting the denial of choice in the outcome of pregnancy to the proposal to make homosexuals second-class citizens through the “Same Sex Marriage” amendment.  One doesn’t have to support same-sex marriage to be opposed to ensconcing in the Constitution the policy of singling-out one particular group of people for discrimination by who they are, not anything they have done.

When the Kerry-is-Hitler Republican ad came out, once again the supplicant position was taken, this time by the DNC.  The demand was made to Bush to withdraw it.  Why, when he or his people approved it to begin with?  How much better to say something like, “This is what my opponent stands for.  Is this the kind of person, a person who would stoop to such depths of political despair even to think of making such a comparison, who the American people (to say nothing of the free world) should have as their leader in the White House?”

One Current Note

On the flap over the anti-Kerry Vietnam Vets and their charges that he didn’t deserve his medals.  The answer to this one should not be of the "oh yes he did deserve the medals" ilk.  The gets quickly into the totally distractive “yes he did/no he didn’t” kinds of arguments the Georgites just love, because it takes one’s attention away from what really counts.

In my view, the response should be along the following lines:

A)      Kerry didn't award himself the medals; the Navy did.  Why don't these guys take it up with the Navy?

B)      Whatever the merits of the medals argument, Kerry was in Vietnam, with his own life on the line, while the President first dodged the draft by getting into a closed National Guard unit, and then he was at least AWOL from part of his obligation to it (if not an actual deserter).

C)      Is this all the Georgites have?  Pretty weak stuff when the future of the Nation is on the line.  But then again it's typical of the Republicans, who will do just about anything to avoid the principal issue of this campaign: George Bush’s record in office.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR AND ABOUT THE KERRY CAMPAIGN, V

Column No. 24 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - August 5, 2004

Note to the reader (again): We are now past 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 generic campaign matters.  This is the last column this Series.  Next week, if all has gone and goes well with my schedule, I shall be back with you “live.”

To remind you once again, this set of columns has been prepared in advance.  It is possible that some of what I have to say here will have been overtaken by events.  But hopefully, whether or not that has happened, 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 “Tax and Spend” Issue

“Tax and spend" has been used as a Democrat-demolition slogan by the Republicans since it was first introduced in a major way politically with the Prop. 13 campaign (1978) in California.  They did this because, of course, they always lost when the battles were over what tax revenues bought, not the tax revenues themselves. Goldwater had complained long and loud about this problem, as he tried to figure out ways that he could get taxes for his rich supporters cut and “shrink government” for programs that he didn’t like, which nevertheless had strong appeal to at least some segments of the voting population.  It came into full bloom under “but wasn’t he such a nice guy” Reagan.

The “tax and spend” epithet has been now for years a very effective political tool for the Republicans as they continue to proceed along the pathway to the achievement of Grover Norquist’s chosen and oft-stated goal: “shrinking government to the size of a bathtub and then drowning it in the tub.”  Of course, by “government” these folks mean everything other than its most expensive bits: the military-industrial and the prison-industrial complexes and all of their accoutrement.

I have dealt in some detail with how to counter-attack this tactic in my book, The New Americanism (see the citation below), esp. Chaps. 4 and 16.  One major responsive tactic would be to develop what I call a “Local Problems Bank” approach to the issue.  In campaigns, from the national to the local, it would detail what Federal, and state, tax cuts for the rich have cost in terms of the reduction of specific services in specific communities, the loss of a specific road or rail construction/development project in a particular region, a specific facility that was either closed or made very costly, specific jobs lost because of government budget cuts. Republicans want to focus on the general: “tax cuts.”  We could very effectively, I believe, focus on the specifics of what those tax cuts cost us, in the reality of people’s daily lives (and not deficits down the road, an abstract concept) right here at home.

How to Deal with Red and Liberal Baiting

There will be an increasing amount of liberal – and then I believe red-baiting coming from the Republicans in this campaign, especially as they become more desperate, as I think they will.  In my view, in the case of red-baiting this should always be done by an immediate attack on the attacker for doing it.  That is, first resist the temptation to say, “What do you mean, I’m not a red.” Rather, immediately counter-attack by saying “this is what these people do; they cannot handle the issues, so they just get into their usual distractive, irrelevant, politics.  It is just so old. And now getting back to the issues. . . .” In the case of liberal-baiting, one can do the same thing, and one can also go to the formula that I spelled out in some detail in the first of this series (July 8): "if liberal means x, y, and z, then I am happily a liberal" (health care, environment, protection of the American way of civil life, etc.).

Developing a Strategy for Dealing with BushBadNews

What I like to call BushBadNews is coming across the wire every day, sometimes in torrents.  This is hard stuff, not speculation, on Iraq, on Georgite corruption, on secrecy in government, on attacking the Constitution, on "mis-statements" and outright lies, on disorganization and internal conflict in the Administration, on corruption, on the economy, on the environment, on personal stuff, and so on and so forth.  One doesn't have to dig for this stuff.  They just do their thing and provide us with it in regular doses.

It seems to me that a problem for our side is to come up with a way of organizing and prioritizing the BushBadNews.  There is so much of it, and such a steady stream of it, on so many issues, that it is very possible that the Georgites will stage-manage this thing to promote nothing but public boredom about it: "oh yeah, there those Democrat-traitors and those constant-Democrat-politicizers go again, but we just KNOW how GREAT George REALLY is."

Both to combat that kind of counter-attack and use the material to the best of the Kerry-Edwards Campaign’s advantage, I believe that there has to be a plan for doing so.  Just random shots/responses won’t do.  That would play right into their hands to create the “boredom” response.  To use conventional strategic planning language, the Vision of course is to achieve a Kerry Presidency. The Mission would be to have is to use the BushBadNews to the best advantage.  The Goal of the planning process is to establish a workable system for doing that.  The tasks that need to be accomplished (not necessarily in order of importance) are:

1. Listing criteria to establish the credibility of sources, on the web, in the print media (newspapers and magazines), and other electronic (radio and television) and then commit to use only those that meet the pre-established criteria.

2. Listing the sources to be consulted regularly.  I don't have to discuss the print/electronic media potential sources, starting with the major national dailies and such news programs as All things Considered here.  Just for starters, the list of websites that should be reviewed for usefulness includes: www.tompaine.com; www.misleader.org; http://democrats.com; www.centerforamericanprogress.org; http://www.moveon.org/.  And there are plenty more of them.  But one of the problems is going to be keeping the amount of potentially, possibly, usable material under control.  One way to do this is to spend some time looking at sites, deciding which ones to review on a regular basis and which ones not, and then sticking to that decision.

3. Next, a system for organizing the information has to be developed.  I suggest three major categories: process, substance, and personal.  Process has to do with such practices as lying, misrepresentation, concealment, ignoring the Courts, ignoring Congress.  Substance has to do with issues: the economy, Iraq, unilateralism in foreign policy, tax and fiscal policy, health care, Social Security, infrastructure, environment, you name it.  Personal has to do with such elements as appear in the personal "Bush Resume," everything from the AWOLty to the Saudi/bin Ladens connection. Establishing priorities for the process and substance material is a central part of the process.

4. Coming out of “3” should be a plan for integrating the BushBadNews with the overall plan and strategy for the Campaign.  What are the major themes of the Campaign?  How are they going to be cycled?  Should the Campaign be issuing periodic BushBadNews summaries of its own (drawn for the sources the Campaign decides to use)?  If so, when should they come out as separate items, when as part of the stump speech and various others that the Senators deliver?  Should there be a BushBadNews "Theme of the Week?”

5. Finally, there must be a plan for dealing with the inevitable Republican/Georgite responses.  As I have said many times in this space (the most recent being the mention just above) Republicans inherently never want to deal with issues if they can at all avoid doing so, because when they have to they almost invariably lose.  Thus they want to deal with process: "Democrats are politicizing; Democrats are traitors (courtesy of Ann Coulter); Democrats are personalizing; Democrats are leaking; Democrats are waging class-warfare; Democrats are playing the race card," and so on and so forth.

The way to do this, in brief? You’ve heard it all before:

“Always attack; never defend.”

“Stay in Control of the Agenda,” and make sure that the agenda is primarily George Bush and his record.  If we can do that, we are going to win, and win big.

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)