Winning the Battle to Lose the War? The Democratic Nomination Process.

Having read with some interest the ongoing debate about whether the continuing heated contest for Presidential candidacy between Senator’s Clinton and Obama is helping or hurting the Democratic Party, my thought is that a major point is being missed. The only real damage or risk to the Democratic Party and to the eventual candidate is if the contest participants fail to remind and discipline their respective followers that uniting behind one candidate in the general election is the primary goal.

Strong emotional support for a candidate can be a useful tool in political campaigns to build a strong volunteer support base and to encourage word of mouth recruitment. Problems arise when emotion overtakes reason and emotional support turns to zealotry. We have all seem evidence of such lapses and excesses in the campaign recently. When objectives of candidate supporters and candidate handlers become destruction of the opponent rather than extolling the virtues of their own candidate, everyone loses [except perhaps the opposing GOP Party candidate]. There is a line between vetting and testing a candidate for an upcoming national election contest, on one hand, and debilitating a candidate through massive exhaustion of energy and resources in a nomination war of attrition.

One potential benefit, it is argued, of a continued nomination battle is that it keeps the candidates in the spotlight and increases general participation in the electoral process. The veracity of that argument is yet to be proven, but there is logic to support it. When people feel strongly about electoral politics they may be more motivated to go to the polls to express their views. The flip side of that issue may be that voters who are overly bound emotionally to a potential nominee may decide to sit out the national election if their candidate is not the eventual nominee. That is the potential disaster that the Democratic Party must go to great lengths to prevent. Unfortunately, the candidates do not seem to recognize this potential disaster. They should be preaching to the voters in the states that have already held primaries and caucuses to prepare to rally behind the nominee, no matter whether that candidate is Clinton or Obama. This would not detract from the parallel message of the candidates fighting for each additional delegate and vote in primaries yet to be held. Yet neither candidate seems to display the selflessness of leadership required to assure the ultimate objective, that of retaking the White House in the November election.

Recent polls indicate that a striking number of Clinton supporters say that they would not back the Democratic Presidential candidate unless it is Hillary Clinton. A substantially larger number of Obama supporters say that they will support the Democratic nominee, even if Obama is not the eventual candidate. Critics have chastised Clinton for her self-serving strategies that seem more focused upon personal power than policy advances. This attitudinal bent may be playing itself out or may be translated to her supporters. While Obama supporters do not seem to show the same level of self-centered ruthlessness, the candidate’s failure to address the issue publicly is a definite shortcoming in his campaign to demonstrate the kind of moral courage the nation truly needs so badly.

The Absurdity of the Bush Anti-Terrorism Foreign Policy

The United States treasury and the people of the country are currently staggering under the weight of a multi trillion dollar fiasco initiated by the Bush Administration with the invasion and destabilization of Iraq. That cost is further elevated by the increase in oil prices now pushing the cost of gasoline to $4 per gallon and threatening to deepen the current economic recession. Yet recent death tolls in Baghdad and in Iraq, the continuing lack of a stable government and continued lack of rebuilt infrastructure clearly demonstrate that the adventure was not only deceitful, but was ill conceived from the beginning. The mismanagement and incompetence that has followed, leading to thousands of lost US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of lost Iraqi people, only reinforces the conviction that the Bush Administration “Anti-Terrorism” foreign policy is both intellectually and morally bankrupt.

Switch focus to the Western Hemisphere where the Bush Administration payment of millions of dollars to Columbia for anti-drug programs and anti-terrorist interventions each year has sought to buy the friendship of countries in South America. The abject failure of the Bush policy and of Bush personally was demonstrated in the recent incident at the Ecuador border with Columbia. In a model of the Bush policy of arrogance, President Uribe of Columbia launched a unilateral and unauthorized attack on Ecuadorian soil to target a camp where leaders of the FARC rebel group were hiding. Instead of bilateral cooperation and traditional international diplomacy practices, Uribe decided to violate Ecuadorian sovereignty. The attack killed a FARC leader and a number of innocent women and children as well. Ecuador’s protest was joined by fellow South American leaders and was upheld by the Organization of American States. Not one leader was willing to support the actions by Uribe, who is viewed as a puppet or crony of Bush. The leaders did acknowledge that there was a problem of guerilla groups crossing borders, but stressed that intergovernmental cooperation is the proper way to deal with such problems, not unilateral violations of national sovereignty. Uribe was humiliated and promised never to do it again. Thus, the stature of Bush and his foreign policy has been exposed in another theater.

Switch focus to US border with Mexico where armed drug cartels have been murdering police officials with impunity in border towns. Groups such as the Loma Bonita Cartel, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel have weapons and munitions that exceed the resources of the local police and the state police. They use money from illegal drug trade to purchase weapons, influence [bribery] and manpower. This power is employed to secure cocaine trafficking routes into the US. The Mexican Government has sent troops to assist local authorities, but the corruption is so rampant that more than 15% of the local and state police are believed to be on the payroll of the cartels. The US has sent $500 million in aid, but that amount compares to the estimated $23 billion annual drug trade. So the local police either assist or look the other way as cartel assassins openly murder any police official that threatens the drug trade. US Border agents have been murdered as well. And the flow of cocaine into the US continues, with the resulting toll of death and destruction flowing from its distribution and use.

If one were a logical thinker, it might seem sensible to employ the “principles” of national security and anti-terrorism to the situation in Mexico to fight an evident danger, rather than sending troops to Iraq to fight a non-existent threat. Yet the Bush Administration has failed to do so. For a price tag of less than is spent in a month in Iraq, the US could form a joint mission with Mexico and sweep back the cartel stronghold in the space of a year. In fact, however, the US military currently lacks the resources to accomplish such a mission even though it is far more relevant to the actual responsibility of the US armed forces than the “Mission” in Iraq. But resources aside, the Bush administration is sounding a drumbeat for War with Iran, which demonstrates the wrongheaded logic of the White House. Even if resources were available, it is doubtful that Bush would employ them in a rational manner.

And we have heard nothing from the Presidential candidates about their thinking on foreign policy issues relating to actual safety and security of the US borders and against the terrorism and destruction relating to the cross border drug trade. We can only hope that Clinton, Obama or McCain can construct some policies that are more coherent and rational.

Free Market Theory and the Conservative Movement

The adherence to “free market” principles has some limits that the “Conservative” cult fails to heed. One of the drawbacks of political ideology is that extreme passion too often misses or ignores fine distinctions. As Emerson has been frequently quoted, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” A free market does not necessarily mean that no regulation is appropriate. Nor does it mean that everything is for sale at the “market rate.”

Recent economic turmoil has exposes the folly and the discrepancies, if not outright hypocrisy, of the Conservative ideology. A prime example is the whining and begging by the finance industry [the engine of the Conservative – free market economy] for government bailouts after staggering losses in equity because of rapacious and predatory lending programs that raked in billions of dollars in profits. Bear Stearns recently reported a loss of nearly half its market capitalization, largely because of losses on bad mortgage lending accounts. Private wealth has led to public risk and the entire economy is now in recession as a result of irresponsible lending practices in the housing market.

"If the Fed hadn’t acted this morning and Bear did default on its obligations, then that could have triggered a very widespread panic and potentially a collapse of the financial system."
JAMES L. MELCHER, president of Balestra Capital, a hedge fund based in New York.

Now that the bubble has burst, the tune being sung by the banking industry is quite different from the traditional anti-regulation anthem of the Conservative hymnbook. So what happens? The Federal Reserve dips into the public purse to bail out Bear Stearns. Those Bear Stearns executives that approved and personally profited by the faulty lending programs will not bear any burden other than the requirement of spending a few boring evenings at GOP fundraisers or the White House, and cutting a few checks in campaign contributions equaling a mere fraction of their personal profits. Conservative Movement Ideology redux: Regulation is bad unless it is used to bail me out of a significant loss from my own bad judgment.

Another folly being played out in the Bush Administration is the interpretation of governmental purpose. George W. Bush ran for election on a platform that government is bad for business and bad for the “American people.” He keeps claiming to know what “the American people” want. Just who these “people” are that he refers to is still not entirely clear. However, one thing that we have seen clearly and consistently, as the size of the Federal government has grown steadily under his watch, is that for the Bush Administration, government as inventory is apparently not seen quite so negatively. The examples of Bush Administration treating government largesse as a commodity to be sold on the open market are in the multitudes and more are surfacing daily. The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Bush Administration is under fire and pressure to resign after revelations of how he steered profitable government contracts on behalf of his personal cronies for projects in New Orleans [Katrina was not a “disaster,” it was an “opportunity”] and the Virgin Islands. Wolfowitz and the long list of Bush officials escorted out of office for self-dealing demonstrates the prevalent ideology and ethic of the Conservative Movement leaders chosen to manage the US government offices under Pres. Bush.

The transfer of billions of dollars in no-bid government contracts to Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR to provide nearly ¾ the entire supply of support services and material in Iraq is another example of the “government or public trust for sale.” Whatever one thinks about the engagement in the Iraq war, it is clear that the troops need to be adequately supplied and supported with food, clothing, medical supplies and other basic needs. Most of these things are not sophisticated goods that require any extraordinary expertise or that involve any proprietary trade secrets. These latter criteria are supposed to be the only times [other than extreme emergency based upon short term time constraints, a condition clearly not applicable on contracts running for years] that could justify not opening up such government contracts for public bid. Yet the Bush Administration has committed billions of dollars in public funds without competitive bidding to the company previously run by the Vice President, and continues to do so even after proof of multiple fraudulent billing incidents involving overcharges in the tens of millions of dollars. Conservative Movement Ideology redux: “Governmental power is bad, unless it can be sold or leveraged in the free market for personal gain or to steer large profits to one’s friends and associates for their personal gain at the expense of the public.”

Whether the public truly wants better government and what will be required to return to an ethic of true "public stewardship" and "public service" is a question that the electorate will have to face in the November elections. For the old maxim is still true: "The people will get as poor a government as they are willing to accept, and as good a government as they are willing to work for." The endemic corruption of the Conservative Movement will continue to provide extreme presure for the people to accept the worst and dissuade them from rising up to demand better.