Monday, October 27, 2008

Flirting her way to victory
Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both
female candidates and US political discourse
The Guardian - Michelle Goldberg, Friday October 3 2008 guardian.co.uk

At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous
vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate
with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt
to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have
universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly
so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political
discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full
sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.

By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential
candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing
announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries
put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you
want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let
them know my track record also," she said.

And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she
was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack
lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own
pseudo-folksy authenticity.

It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as
such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth,
wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to
pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a
mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.

In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a
candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she
is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the
financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The criteria
are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid
utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators
would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant
and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.

There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming
and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality
managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last
night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes
clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she
responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been
short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue
Bush's policies:

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You
preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now
doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do
for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I
know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for
30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother,
who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to
all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra
credit for watching the debate.

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a
fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard
questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy
filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness,
which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her
achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to
ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection
to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in
the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how
are we going to pay those tuition bills?"

None of Palin's children, it should be noted, are heading off to college.
Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is
engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin'
redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most
quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of
major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow,
mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on
what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a
farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Encountering Peace: Between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur
Oct. 6, 2008

Gershon Baskin , THE JERUSALEM POST

Why did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suddenly now realize that the price of peace with the Palestinians is giving back almost all of the West Bank, dividing Jerusalem and even acknowledging Israel's part in the suffering caused to Palestinians as a result of the establishment of Israel? Why do Israeli leaders and Israeli generals come to these same political insights only when they no longer have any real power to do anything about it?
At the time of coming to the decision to disengage from Gaza, prime minister Ariel Sharon said that the weight of responsibility changes your vantage point. Perhaps that is true when you are a leader with a strong coalition government behind you, or when there is no real opposition working against you, as Sharon had during those days. Olmert had a strong coalition, but only on paper and only if he didn't make any controversial decisions.
After muddling the war in Lebanon, he lost his "moral majority" in the Knesset and even within his own party, and along with all of the corruption investigations, he was not given a free day to really focus on his main and most important mission - peace with the Palestinians. Domestic politics have always clouded the vision of Israeli leaders and have always prevented them from fulfilling their political agenda.
Olmert has been liberated from domestic politics - he doesn't care about his coalition or his popularity rating any more. He can now say what he really believes. It is, on the one hand, refreshing to hear such honesty from a political leader, but; on the other, extremely frustrating to hear it when it is too late to impact any political change.
Olmert has faced the reality that we may have missed the opportunity to create the Palestinian state next to Israel. Ironically, for most of his political life he was opposed to this idea and now he has come to realize that the survival of the State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise is based on it.
I HAVE spent a lot of time recently traveling around the West Bank and seeing the reality of the settlement entrenchment that makes it almost impossible to separate Israel from Palestine. Larry Derfner, a Jerusalem Post columnist, wrote last week that we must come to realization that as much as Tel Aviv is Israel, so is Nablus. More and more Palestinians are coming to this conclusion as well. Palestinian newspapers as well as debates in the Palestinian universities and among political activists throughout Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora are coming out in support of the one-state solution.
Objectively speaking, in light of the continued settlement building and the failure of the negotiators to produce an acceptable agreement, it seems like a logical conclusion. The main problem is that there is no such thing as a "one-state solution."
The Palestinian national movement has traveled long distances since its institutionalization with the founding of the PLO in 1964. For 24 years it held steadfast to the idea of a "secular democratic state" in all of Palestine, from the river to the sea. According to the PLO Charter, Jews that came to Palestine after the beginning of the Zionist movement's "colonialization" would have to go back to where they came from. We correctly understood the PLO Charter as a call for the destruction of the State of Israel.
In 1988, after the outbreak of the first intifada, the local Palestinian leadership in the refugee camps and in east Jerusalem, living under Israeli occupation for 20 years, succeeded in imposing a different agenda on the Palestinian leadership in exile. In November 1988 the PLO adopted the two-state solution which implicitly recognized the State of Israel. That recognition became explicit in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Agreement.
Now after 20 years of failing to convince Israeli governments to accept the two-state solution, the Palestinian national movement is in the process of reviewing and renewing its political agenda. A significant number of Palestinian intellectuals and political thinkers, some of the very same people who helped to shape the position in support of the two-state solution, are now saying it's too late. There is currently a new search for ideas and political concepts aimed at reshaping the vision of the Palestinian national movement.
The more simplistic version or "sound bite" of the new vision is "the one-state solution." The more sophisticated renditions reflect an enhanced and keen political awareness of international politics and national liberation struggles and call for democracy - one person, one vote. They are not presenting their position as "anti-Israeli," in fact they are saying: Give me Israeli citizenship and Israeli freedom. They are aware that using the term "bi-national state" would not be popular because they also cannot find examples of successful and peaceful bi-national states.
But democracy is a different ball game. Who can oppose democracy? The people who support this program have already adopted and promulgated the term "apartheid wall." They are very well aware of the connotation that it is meant to arouse in the minds of the listeners. Israel, they say, is the new apartheid South Africa and it must be brought to accept democracy in the same way that the apartheid regime of South Africa was brought down.
WHAT THE supporters of this plan fail to understand is that the only hope for peace in this land has always been based on the concept of partition. This is the only way to move beyond an existential conflict of either "us or them." Partition allows for the conflict to be focused on issues: borders, sovereignty, Jerusalem, economics, water, etc. The demise of partition as an option brings us back into an existential conflict - a zero sum game where the focus of the conflict is "identity" and not borders.
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict moves back into existential terms, then Israel/Palestine turns into Bosnia of the 1990s. In that Balkan conflict about 150,000 people were killed in 10 years. That is what will happen here if the conflict is about identity, because then it is a conflict of everyone against everyone. There is no escaping the conflict - it becomes all encompassing and completely intractable. Israelis and Palestinians are not ready now or at any time in the foreseeable future to share the same national home. We both need a physical territory in which we can claim sovereignty and express our own national identity.
Olmert's soul searching of the new year should be a collective soul searching in which we all reach the same conclusions. If we will not find the way to allow the Palestinians to gain their freedom and to end our occupation over them, in the not too distant future, we will be atoning for our loss of our own freedom in our own state and wondering how we missed the opportunity for peace.

The writer is the co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.

www.ipcri.org

My vision towards a viable solution is based on the creation of one secular democratic country for all Jews and Palestinians to live as equal citizens. No ‘Jewish’ state, no ‘Muslim ‘state and no ‘Christian’ state. Such a solution can gradually take care of the whole problem of religious fanaticism, Jewish or Muslim. It guarantees refugees the right to return (there are five million Palestinian refugees all over the world), ends occupation and colonialism, and eliminates racism against Palestinian citizens of Israel. This solution also guarantees a democratic entity for Jews of different ethnic backgrounds.

(Elena Ortiz;1986)

Comment

The Choice

October 13, 2008

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

At the same time, a hundred and fifty thousand American troops are in Iraq and thirty-three thousand are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush Administration manipulated, bullied, and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than six hundred billion dollars, have included the loss of more than four thousand Americans, the wounding of thirty thousand, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of four and a half million men, women, and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.

The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the Administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorized at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public-diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy, and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush Administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the “end of the American era.”

The election of 2008 is the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent President or Vice-President is on the ballot. There is, however, an incumbent party, and that party has been lucky enough to find itself, apparently against the wishes of its “base,” with a nominee who evidently disliked George W. Bush before it became fashionable to do so. In South Carolina in 2000, Bush crushed John McCain with a sub-rosa primary campaign of such viciousness that McCain lashed out memorably against Bush’s Christian-right allies. So profound was McCain’s anger that in 2004 he flirted with the possibility of joining the Democratic ticket under John Kerry. Bush, who took office as a “compassionate conservative,” governed immediately as a rightist ideologue. During that first term, McCain bolstered his reputation, sometimes deserved, as a “maverick” willing to work with Democrats on such issues as normalizing relations with Vietnam, campaign-finance reform, and immigration reform. He co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Edward Kennedy, a patients’ bill of rights. In 2001 and 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts. With John Kerry, he co-sponsored a bill raising auto-fuel efficiency standards and, with Joseph Lieberman, a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was one of a minority of Republicans opposed to unlimited drilling for oil and gas off America’s shores.

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”

The contrast between the candidates is even sharper with respect to the third branch of government. A tense equipoise currently prevails among the Justices of the Supreme Court, where four hard-core conservatives face off against four moderate liberals. Anthony M. Kennedy is the swing vote, determining the outcome of case after case.

McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999, he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006, he was saying that its demise “wouldn’t bother me any”; by 2008, he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.

But scrapping Roe—which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalize it—would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain Court. Efforts to expand executive power, which, in recent years, certain Justices have nobly tried to resist, would likely increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither—all with just one new conservative nominee on the Court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organizations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas-corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush Administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all U.S.-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.

In the shorthand of political commentary, the Iraq war seems to leave McCain and Obama roughly even. Opposing it before the invasion, Obama had the prescience to warn of a costly and indefinite occupation and rising anti-American radicalism around the world; supporting it, McCain foresaw none of this. More recently, in early 2007 McCain risked his Presidential prospects on the proposition that five additional combat brigades could salvage a war that by then appeared hopeless. Obama, along with most of the country, had decided that it was time to cut American losses. Neither candidate’s calculations on Iraq have been as cheaply political as McCain’s repeated assertion that Obama values his career over his country; both men based their positions, right or wrong, on judgment and principle.

President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will, and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks “victory”—a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first Presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption, and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.

Unimaginably painful personal experience taught McCain that war is above all a test of honor: maintain the will to fight on, be prepared to risk everything, and you will prevail. Asked during the first debate to outline “the lessons of Iraq,” McCain said, “I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” A soldier’s answer––but a statesman must have a broader view of war and peace. The years ahead will demand not only determination but also diplomacy, flexibility, patience, judiciousness, and intellectual engagement. These are no more McCain’s strong suit than the current President’s. Obama, for his part, seems to know that more will be required than willpower and force to extract some advantage from the wreckage of the Bush years.

Obama is also better suited for the task of renewing the bedrock foundations of American influence. An American restoration in foreign affairs will require a commitment not only to international coöperation but also to international institutions that can address global warming, the dislocations of what will likely be a deepening global economic crisis, disease epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and other, more traditional security challenges. Many of the Cold War-era vehicles for engagement and negotiation—the United Nations, the World Bank, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—are moribund, tattered, or outdated. Obama has the generational outlook that will be required to revive or reinvent these compacts. He would be the first postwar American President unencumbered by the legacies of either Munich or Vietnam.

The next President must also restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantánamo, banning all torture, and ending the Iraq war as responsibly as possible will provide a start, but only that. The modern Presidency is as much a vehicle for communication as for decision-making, and the relevant audiences are global. Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism. His election would do no less—and likely more—overseas.

What most distinguishes the candidates, however, is character—and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity, and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said––but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nowadays, almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate. Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.

A Presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. “Dreams from My Father” is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests—personal, spiritual, racial, political—that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.

It is perfectly legitimate to call attention, as McCain has done, to Obama’s lack of conventional national and international policymaking experience. We, too, wish he had more of it. But office-holding is not the only kind of experience relevant to the task of leading a wildly variegated nation. Obama’s immersion in diverse human environments (Hawaii’s racial rainbow, Chicago’s racial cauldron, countercultural New York, middle-class Kansas, predominantly Muslim Indonesia), his years of organizing among the poor, his taste of corporate law and his grounding in public-interest and constitutional law—these, too, are experiences. And his books show that he has wrung from them every drop of insight and breadth of perspective they contained.

The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama’s intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer’s craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain’s imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organization, technological proficiency, and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable-news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate. Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

—The Editors

Saturday, October 4, 2008

White Privilege

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
9/13/08

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives close to Russia--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and then Harvard Business school, and yet, still be seen as just an average guy (George W. Bush) while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law, makes you "uppity," and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.) and that's OK, and you're cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you "dangerously naive and immature."

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Renowned Women Speak Out on Palin and the Election

Featuring exclusive remarks from Isabel Allende, Joan Blades, Eve Ensler, Melissa Etheridge, Gloria Feldt, Kim Gandy, Elizabeth Lesser, Courtney Martin, Kathy Najimy, Amy Richards, Deborah Siegel, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem, Loung Ung, Alice Walker, Jody Williams, Marie Wilson

Everyone is talking about women and the upcoming election.

As a woman, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed and shaken by this election season, the highs and lows of it all. On the one hand, I have been feeling powerful -- everyone is talking about women and our decisive influence in this election. Even the cover of the September 22nd issue of Newsweek is asking, "What do women want?" It's a good question. So many important themes and dialogues have been raised during this election season -- about identity politics, what we expect from a woman leader, sexism in the media, diversity in the feminist movement, what masculine and feminine values are, and about Sarah Palin and the "Palin effect." It all made me want to talk to other women, to get clarity, to gain insight. I tried to think about what I, personally, could do to contribute to this dialogue.

I realized that, through my many years as a writer and as founder of the women's website and non-profit organization, Feminist.com, I possessed extensive contacts with a diverse cross-section of well-known and respected women. So, I decided to pose identical questions by e-mail to some of these dynamic women and just see what came in. Some of the responses I got were by e-mail, some by impromptu phone interviews, but, it was clear that people felt the urge to talk and vent their thoughts.

I believe that there is a cathartic benefit to all these complex issues and themes rising to the surface, as the world is being transformed, and that the transformation will continue -- no matter who ultimately winds up in office after November 4th. I join Melissa Etheridge in her optimistic attitude as she reflects:

"We, as a people, are rising up and saying, to hell with fear. To hell with the fear that an African American could never by elected President. To hell with the fear that someone who is a mixed race is somehow inferior to anybody else. To hell with the thought that a woman can't lead just as well as a man. That all of those differences that we've been circling around and finding ourselves in the middle of, are gone! They're gone. This is the future that we are all dreaming of. We're here. Here it is. Welcome to it."

So I offer the thoughts of these women and hope you benefit from reading them as much as I did.

In alphabetical order: Isabel Allende, Joan Blades, Eve Ensler, Melissa Etheridge, Gloria Feldt, Kim Gandy, Elizabeth Lesser, Courtney Martin, Kathy Najimy, Amy Richards, Deborah Siegel, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem, Loung Ung, Alice Walker, Jody Williams, Marie Wilson

Isabel Allende, author and activist whose books include Paula and The House of the Spirits, founder of the Isabel Allende Foundation.

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
IA: Sarah Palin does not represent the interests of women in this place and time. Do we want to go back to the 19th century? Or maybe medieval times? I hope that no thinking woman, young or old, will fall in the gender trap. Palin may be a woman but she certainly acts like Rambo and thinks like Cheney. As a woman I demand the right to control my body, my income, and my beliefs. As a mother I want to protect my family from poverty, inequality, ignorance, racism, bigotry, fear, violence and patriotism (an excuse for war). As a citizen I support freedom of the mind, curiosity, knowledge, technology, information. As an American I embrace the world and want our country to recover the international respect and admiration that the Bush administration has squandered. McCain and Palin do not represent me and never will.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
IA: Sisters, look at the issues, not color, gender or age of the candidates. Obama represents hope and change, he has ideals, he brings light and intelligence to a stagnant political situation that has lasted too long and has left the country economically bankrupt, trapped in a never ending war and divided. Sisters, be informed, work for the best candidate, vote and make sure that everybody around you votes too. Show up or we will all regret it. Obama is the girls in the race.

Any other comments or insights?
IA: McCain is old and sick. Can you imagine if he dies and Sarah Palin becomes the president of the United States, and the most powerful political figure in the world? If you thought Bush was bad, you haven't seen Palin in action yet.

***
Joan Blades, co-author of The Motherhood Manifesto and co-founder of MoveOn.Org and MomsRising.org

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
JB: Vote! Get your friends to vote. Talk about the issues. MomsRising.org has a MomsVote08 program complete with free bumper clingers.

Any other comments or insights?
JB: Sarah Palin is Governor in part because she has the advantages that mothers need to succeed. She has paid sick days, health care for her kids, flexible work and good child care -- her husband participates in the child rearing. We need to make sure that all families have the support they need to prosper.

***

Eve Ensler, playwright, performer and activist, author of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day , a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

Eve Ensler is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo working with women on behalf of V-Day (which she described in her e-mail to me as "so very intense") and answered my query by selecting the following excerpts from Drill, Drill, Drill, her Huffington Post piece on Sarah Palin.

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
EE: I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
EE: I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

***

Melissa Etheridge, Recording artist, human rights activist, www.melissaetheridge.com

The following interview was conducted by phone.

MS: Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
ME: Well, if we stop and think about it, then we will realize that it is not about electing a woman. It's about understanding the feminine principles, the feminine energy. And it doesn't necessarily have to come in a woman. There is a difference between the feminine and masculine energies, and the feminine and masculine body. Every human being has a different measure of each in themselves. And we're all searching for balance. So, because we're so caught up in this material world, we think that all males are male and all females are female, and the energy does not apply so. And especially if you are a homosexual, it's easier to comprehend this, because you don't fall into those male and female categories.

So it's easy for me to look at Sarah Palin and say: oh, she is only representing the masculine energy, the masculine interests. Now I'm not saying "men's" interest, I'm saying the masculine side of this energy that comes from left brain thinking - "we have to create fear, and dominate and this is the only way we can do this, and big business is what it's all about, and we have to drill for oil, and we have to go take over a country" [laughs] - those are the masculine, darker side of energy way of thinking. And she represents that. And Obama is representing the more feminine, balanced side.

If we are going to survive, we have to have peace, we have to have an Earth that will be there for our children and our children's children - which is a very feminine way of looking at this reality, at looking at life, at what we're doing, what we're creating right now. So, if you just take a step further back and go, OK, it's not about a male or female, it's about the masculine and feminine. It's not about just about getting a woman in the White House. Any old woman [laughs] is not necessarily going to make the right choices.

MS: What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
ME: I would want to say, are you starting to get it just how important we are? We have the power. I sort of thought all along that we did, and this whole election cycle I was starting to go, wow - women, they have a lot of power here! And then when I went to the Democratic convention, and I saw a majority of women, and you saw that woman saying, "representative from California tell us your..." and she's up there, and Nancy Pelosi's up there - we're not on the side, we're not the minority, we were the majority! And we were making this happen!

And then when I heard that they had picked Sarah Palin, I thought, oh, my gosh, they know that the most important thing is the women vote. And if they can confuse us, then they will keep us from coming together on this. If they can divide us, with fear, and give us this image of a woman in office and feed her the lines to say and the things to do and give her a few good jokes, and make her a celebrity that can be on the magazines and newspapers and that stuff. She's almost like from casting central, it's almost like they cast her in a movie about the first woman from Anchorage, Alaska that got to be in the White House, played by Tina Fey [laughs]. It's like, no, no! But we have the power. It is all about us right now. And whatever we do is what happens. And if we react from fear, we are going to get four more years of fear. But if we stand here and go, wait a minute, it's all about me! What do I want? I want peace, I want a healthy Earth for my kids, and myself. And it's just real simple - we have the power. No matter how they try to make it look, in the magazines and on the television, we have the power. And I can tell it! I think in ten, twenty years we are going to look back and go - wow, that is really when the feminine started to balance out.

MS: I was just reading a speech by Elizabeth Lesser, founder of Omega Institute, who observed that it feels like we are birthing a new world, and that we are going through the painful contractions, and that we should all just relax and breathe and have the courage to allow it to be born.
ME: I just had this very conversation yesterday with some mothers at the school my kids go to. And they asked me, "Tell me what it was like at the convention?" And I tell them, I say -- it was filled with hope. It was filled with a knowing that we are headed in the right direction. And they say, "Oh, but I am so afraid when I hear all the things that they say and the way that the news makes it look." And I tell them, no, no, no -- turn off the TV. And then feel it -- feel what's going on. Because it's huge and it's beautiful and it's amazing - we are right in the middle of history right now. We are the ones. We are going to be telling the story for ages to come of what happened in 2008. And enjoy it, and breathe and believe it - yeah, exactly what she said. I try to tell them because the more everyone can start stating that, the more everyone will see it.

MS: So you are hopeful.
ME: Totally. Oh, I know. Yes, I think it will be a resounding answer on November 4th. We are going to send a message out to the world that, yeah, we got really messed up, but we're on the right path now. And we can all join together. Yeah.

MS: What do you think we can take away from this whole election experience, no matter who wins? We have our first African American nominee for President...
ME: Yeah -- hello? Yeah! That we are our government. And our government is for us. And we control it. And we are actually wrestling right now, not between Republican and Democrat or conservative or liberal, not between any of those dualities - we are wrestling for our democracy right now. For it to be about the people, and not about big business and the direction that it wants to take this whole world. And that's the struggle right now at the core of all of this. And we, as a people, are rising up and saying, to hell with the fear. To hell with the fear that an African American could never be elected President. To hell with the fear that someone who is a mixed race is somehow inferior to anybody else. To hell with the thought that a woman can't lead just as well as a man. That all of those differences that we've been circling around and finding ourselves in the middle of, are gone! They're gone. This is the future that we are all dreaming of. We're here. Here it is. Welcome to it.

MS: You attended and performed at the Democratic convention -- anything in particular strike you from that experience? Did you get to meet Obama?
ME: I didn't get to meet him at the convention -- I had met him before, but I didn't get to meet him there. He was like the cherry on top of the whole thing. And it wasn't so much about a man, it was about a movement. It was about the people. I sat there with tears in my eyes when they did the roll call from state to state. And the diversity -- from women, to people of color, to different ethnic origins... As I watched the tape of me singing "Born in the USA," they flashed to all these people in the audience, and there were Hasidic Jews, and there's a guy in a turban [laughs] and it was like -- this is what we are, man! We represent everybody, we really do. Because the dream is what it's all about. It's not about the skin color or a certain religious dogma or anything -- it's about an idea. And that's what our country is. And I think that's what I think was the biggest change that I saw. It wasn't about Obama -- it was about all of us.

MS: What do you think of the achievement of Hillary Clinton's "18 million cracks in the ceiling" -- the overall significance of her run?
ME: I think it's brilliant! I think it's wonderful, that we had a choice between a woman and a black man. That we had that choice! And that we as women thought about it, and didn't just automatically go one way, but thought about the choice! And haven't we been fighting for choice for 30, 40 years? And now we know we can never go back. It is like she said, 18 million cracks in the ceiling. We're not going back. There will be a woman President and she will be the one who speaks truthfully and honestly and brings amazing balance to the world.

****
Gloria Feldt, author of The War on Choice, Heartfeldt Politics blog, and former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
GF: There's no conflict in voting against a ticket that includes Sarah Palin. While it makes my feminist heart sing that even the Republican right knows women are the key to the 2008 elections, Sarah Palin is to women's rights what Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly are to civil rights: the antithesis of the struggle for social justice and equality. Palin's selection would be a giant leap backward from real hope and true change for women and the most important issues facing our country.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
GF: If you want better health care access, if you value your human right to reproductive justice, if you want a stronger economy and a safer nation, you'll vote for Obama. If you prefer going back to the days when women were barefoot and pregnant, you'll vote for McCain. Simple as that.

Any other comments or insights?
GF: I was and remain a Hillary Clinton supporter. Obama-Biden isn't a perfect ticket, but there is no question it's the better ticket for women. Let's get them elected and then get more feminist women running for office at every level of government. That's the best way to honor and continue Hillary Clinton's legacy.

***

Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
KG: McCain's choice of Palin was a cynical effort to appeal simultaneously to disappointed Hillary Clinton voters and his party's right wing base. Fortunately, only the latter seems to be working.

What he does not understand is that women supported Hillary Clinton not just because she was a woman, but because she was a champion on their issues. They will not find Sarah Palin to be an advocate for women.

There's no question that a lot of women think it's a great thing for a woman to be running for vice president, but they are completely dismayed when they find out her positions. The idea that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest -- that as mayor of Wasilla she made rape survivors pay for processing the police evidence in order to obtain justice -- positions like that are completely out of step with American women and once they find out about those positions, they get a little less excited about a woman running for vice president.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
KG: For more than a decade, Barack Obama has said 'yes' to women's rights, while John McCain has consistently said 'no' -- NO to pay equity, NO to contraceptive access and reproductive rights, NO to appointing Supreme Court judges who will uphold women's rights and civil rights, NO to funding shelters and other anti-violence programs, and NO to supporting working moms and dads with policies that support work/life balance.

Any other comments or insights?
KG: NOW supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary, and now we join with her in saying "NO" -- No Way, No How, No McCain! And we proudly stand arm-in-arm with her in putting our hopes and our dreams, our hard work and our hard-earned money, behind the next President of the United States -- Barack Obama, and his running mate, longtime friend and ally of women, Sen. Joe Biden.

***
Elizabeth Lesser, author of The Seeker's Guide and Broken Open co-founder Omega Institute.

Elizabeth Lesser was in Vienna speaking at a conference, so she e-mailed me this customized excerpt from her recent speech at Omega's Women & Courage conference.

EL: I started the year excited that a woman was running for president. Now I am terrified that a woman might BE president. As George Carlin said, "Just when I found out the meaning of life, they changed it." Just when I got all excited about a woman becoming president of the United States, enter Sarah Palin. But this confusion was setting in for me even before Sarah Palin entered the scene. I became disillusioned with Hillary Clinton's campaign when its tactics mutated in order to function within the dominant power structure. Early on I started to work for Obama. It hurt to do this. I had dreams where Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth and Betty Friedan and my dearly deceased mother were coming after me. But I had to follow my inner compass.

I'm looking for new language now to describe what I mean about women and power. I don't want the woman I saw on the cover of Time Magazine shouldering a semi-automatic rifle to lead my country. I don't want a woman in power who has not done the research about Iraq, global warming, Russian foreign policy, or sex education. I don't want a woman in power who cherishes the life of a human baby, but seems not to understand that the very web supporting all life is in grave danger. I guess what I want in a leader is a woman (or a man) who values the feminine values of tenderness, cooperation, courage, and wisdom. I want someone in power who will stand for, elevate, and dignify love as the guiding principle for human society. I don't want words like share and care to stay stuck in kindergarten. I want leaders who wear their woman's heart and soul on their sleeves, with pride and power.

***

Courtney Martin, writer, blogger and author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, www.courtneyemartin.com

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
CM: Many women identify with Palin's fierceness, her sense of humor, her multitasking life, but this is not a personality contest. It is a presidential election. We have to think about the ways in which Palin's policy positions will affect our lives.

***

Kathy Najimy, actress, human rights activist, www.kathynajimy.com

Kathy Najimy simply e-mailed me the following concise response:

KN: I would love a woman in the White House. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sarah Palin is dangerous and not meant for any public position.

***
Amy Richards, author of Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism, Manifesta: Young Women Feminism and the Future , and Opting In: Having A Child Without Losing Yourself. She is also the co-founder of Third Wave Foundation and Feminist.com.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
AR: You are voting for McCain or Obama; not Palin or Obama -- and while I recognize that neither candidate is without their flaws, each voter has to decide who will best represent their issues. I am confident that most women will conclude that is Obama because his priority seems to be making the government work for the majority of Americans, not making it work a few and against the majority. And more than focusing on the presidential election, I really urge voters to consider the issues at stake in their own states -- what ballot initiatives, what local candidates -- these local issues are always more compelling reasons to vote than the presidency.

Any other comments or insights?
AR: I have an instinct to defend Palin -- mostly because she is a mother of young children and some people are questioning her ability to do the job based on that. I am also charmed by Palin -- she's funny, human, personable. And I also think her vagueness makes her relatable -- in all honesty most of us can find faults between our "beliefs" and our "actions." I note this because even with all that I can't even bring myself to consider her as a candidate because it's not her that's running it's McCain and he is the one signing legislation not her.

***
Deborah Siegel, writer and author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, creator of Girl With Pen blog.

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
DS: I firmly believe that Palin is unprepared and find McCain's choice, and logic, insulting to any Clinton supporter worth her salt. That said, I'm having a hard time reconciling my antipathy to the "Women Against Palin" rhetoric with my antipathy toward Palin. Now, Polar Bear Moms against Palin, that's something I can get behind.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the
upcoming election?
DS: A woman candidate is not the same as a woman's candidate, to quote a feministing t-shirt. Don't be duped. Look at Palin's position on issues, look past the lipstick, see the woman who opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence only," a woman who runs alongside a man who opposes the Fair Pay Act. To any Clinton supporters even thinking about it, Gloria Steinem said it best: "To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.'"

Other comments or insights:
DS: As a Hillary-supporter turned Obamanista, Palin's initial popularity terrified me. But on the issues, she's all hat and no cattle, and in the end, I think American women are far smarter than that. May history prove me right.

***

Eleanor Smeal, President, Feminist Majority Foundation

The following interview was conducted by phone.

But it goes beyond that -- because she's on a ticket that is opposed to pay equity legislation for women, paid family leave, paid sick leave, funding violence against women, even funding breast cancer research! All these things. McCain, who is the head of that ticket, has a 26 year record of voting against women's rights. So it would be a staggering loss. Not to mention the stacking of the court with anti-women's rights jurists. Not just the Supreme Court, but the entire bench! I mean, we would go backwards on Title 9, Title 7, Violence Against Women -- you name it!

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
ES: We can't afford the election of McCain! It would cost women their rights, economic opportunities, and the ability to make a decision about their very lives, in the area of reproductive rights. And not to mention the war. I mean, there's so much! We have gone through a huge amount of information in his voting record. It's staggering his negative votes. This man even voted against funding for breast cancer research! It's subject upon subject he is a zero. He was the worst Senator on voting for child programs in 2007 according to the Children's Defense Fund. It just blows you away! He voted against S-CHIP -- how can you vote against insurance for poor kids? It's everything.

We have to create awareness for the depth and breadth of the negative votes and negative positions he has on women. On women's economic opportunities, on women's reproductive rights, on educational opportunities.

Any other comments or insights:
ES: I have spent 40 years fighting for women's rights. This man spent 26 years in the Senate blocking women's rights and women's programs. He wasn't a leader for women in the 20th century, let alone the 21st. And I just feel that if American women understood that for us to go forward, for us to close the wage gap, we need an even playing field. He wants to keep the playing field uneven.

The stakes are devastatingly high. And you've got an economic crisis and you have a war without end. You know, they call themselves mavericks and reformers. These are not mavericks, and they're not reformers, they're straight right wing votes.

I mean, the thing that just gets me is -- not only is Palin against reproductive rights, no abortion, not even rape or incest -- she's charging for the rape kit!. Who's for that? [laughs] What kind of reform is that? There's no reform record here. And I don't know how we get that out. I mean, we all are saying it, but he keeps calling himself a maverick - not on anything I see. He's a straight Bush vote! Has been -- for the last 8 years and then before that he had 26 years of voting no against women's rights.

We're going to do a site called Feminists for Obama, and we just know that we want our conscience clear that everybody knows the difference in these tickets. I have been working on party platforms since '76, trying to get more progressive platforms for women. This is the best platform of a major party in history. And it isn't that it just happened because women are finally strong in the democratic party, it's also -- I don't think people know this, or feminists know this -- but Obama has amazingly strong women in his team, feminists on his team. He has a really strong, informed team of women in his core.

We all feel so strongly -- they have depth inside. And there's no question where they stand. And the stark differences in their positions are startling. Not imperfect, but it's so strong in comparison to anything in the past, and it's really like setting a higher bar in the 21st century. And instead of setting a higher bar in the 21st century, the other ticket is representing pre-1960's positions on women -- I mean think about that. Isn't that ridiculous?

****

Gloria Steinem, feminist activist and writer, author of
Revolution From Within,Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words and co-founder of Ms. Magazine and the Women's Media Center.

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
GS: The more women learn about her, the less there is any conflict. Palin is more popular with men than with women. She is the candidate of Rush Limbaugh, who started promoting her last February, and she was chosen by McCain to please the extreme religious right-wing that shares her belief in Creationism, disbelief in the human causes of global warming, and opposition to pretty much everything that the majority of women say they want and need, from the Equal Pay Act and the Violence Against Women Act that McCain opposes to sex education in the schools and reproductive freedom as a human right.

For example, Palin's state has a rate of sexual assault, child sexual abuse and women murdered by men that is far above the national average, yet she tried to make rape survivors pay the cost of their own of rape kits, and to replace a conscientious public safety commissioner with one who was himself facing charges of sexually harassing a female employee. She also tried to fire or harass out of their jobs a disproportionate number of women, from the librarian in Wasilla who wouldn't censor the library to Lyda Green, a conservative Republican herself and the president of the Alaska state Senate, who says about Palin, "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Even for extreme right-wing women who share Palin's views that sex discrimination doesn't exist or isn't important -- that every woman can be Superwoman -- there is her character problem. Palin has misrepresented everything from her sale of the state plane on eBay and her record on the Bridge to Nowhere to the fact that she left her small town in first-ever debt with a major law suit and a polluted lake. If elected governor, she promised her husband would leave his $100,000 a year job with an oil company -- but he still has it -- and she has misused her expense account to pay her for staying at home. Indeed, she is so absentee from the governor's office that state legislators have taken to wearing buttons that say, "Where's Sarah?"

As social justice movements have learned the hard way, having someone who looks like you and behaves like them -- who looks like a friend but behaves like an adversary -- is worse than having no one. It's parallel to the anti-semitic Jewish person, or the African American who acts against civil rights. I have friends who supported Clarence Thomas in order to have an African Amercan on the Supreme Court -- and he was more qualified than Palin -- but every one of them is now sorry. It seems that Sarah Palin is the classic Mean Girl -- the unqualified woman the sexist boss hires to put down other women -- and that's the last thing we need in the White House.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
GS: The fault for selecting Palin lies with John McCain. Given the choice between a vice president who actually could be President and one who might help him get elected by pleasing religious extremists, he took the selfish and unpatriotic path. This alone should disqualify him for the Presidency, especially in this life-and-death election. This is the most crucial in my lifetime for every reason from the purity of food and water to the cost in lives of armed conflict and irreversible damage to the environment. The life and health of men and women -- disproportionately the female half of the world -- literally depend on electing Obama and Biden.

By lowering qualifications for vice president for his own selfish reasons, and giving us a woman who would set back women by her policies, and embarrass us by being obviously out of her depth, McCain has practiced a classic form of sexism. His campaign has kept her from the usual press questioning and lowered the standards of the vice presidential debate in order to protect the unqualified Palin. More and more women are feeling embarrassed and angered by McCain's cynical and self-interested effort to confuse and pander by selecting the wrong woman.

Any other comments or insights?
GS: The country's economic meltdown is due to the de-regulation policy of McCain and Bush. Obama and Biden understand that Wall Street needs law and order just as much as Main Street. However, Palin knows so little about economics that she failed to get title to the land on which she built a sports stadium in Wasila, thus leaving law suits and a continuing source of big debts behind. If there were a contest for the politician least qualified to lead this country -- male or female -- it might be the one thing that Sarah Palin should win.

****

Loung Ung, author of First They Killed My Father and Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites With the Sister She Left Behind, human rights activist, www.loungung.com.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
LU: When I was watching Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the RNC convention, my prevalent thought was, "what do our global friends and foreign leaders think?" We are living in the age of the global world, where for a few dollars we can cross boundaries, cultures, and countries; with the click of a mouse, we can connect with friends, allies, and supporters in the four corners of the earth. What happens in the global world effects us here at home, and vice versa. This is our time to be inclusive, to elect leaders who understand, celebrate, and are genuinely, passionately, aggressively interested with their hearts and minds about foreign policies and the global world. We need leaders who can work with foreign leaders and who foreign leaders respect and want to work with. We need leaders who not only move the hearts and minds of American women, but women all over the world, who make up over 50% of the world's population, and have enormous power to create true change.

Any other comments or insights?
LU: In his 1961 Inaugural Address; President F. Kennedy urged Americans everywhere to get involved and be of service to our country; "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." That speech was made many years before I was born but I heard the call and followed. Together, we make up over 1,000,000 registered charitable organizations in the U.S. today, and do the daily work of changing and altering lives through grassroots community activism. I stand proudly with many others who believe that together, through grass root activism, we can create change and make a difference in our world.

***
Alice Walker, author of many books including The Color Purple and We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness.

Alice Walker submitted the following response adapted from her recent piece in The Guardian:

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
AW: When we are offered a John McCain, who is too old for the job (and I cherish old age and old men but not to lead the world when it is ailing) or a George Bush, or a Sarah Palin, how unloved we are as Americans becomes painfully plain. McCain talks of war with the nostalgia and forgetfulness of the very elderly; Palin talks of forcing the young to have offspring they neither want nor can sustain; both of them feel at ease, apparently, with the game in which their candidacy becomes more of a topic of discussion than whether the planet has a future under their leadership.

Where does this leave us, average Americans who feel the chill of Global warming, the devastation of war, the terror of the food crisis, the horror of advancing diseases? Hopefully with a sense of awakening: that we have had few opportunities to be led by those who have the capacity to care for us, to love us, and that we, in our lack of love for ourselves, have, too often, not chosen them. Perhaps with the certainty that though we are as we are and sorely imperfect, we still deserve someone in leadership who "gets" us, and that this self-defeating habit of accepting our leaders' contempt is one we need not continue. Maybe with the realization that we, the people, are truly the leaders, and that we are the ones we have been waiting for.

***

Jody Williams, Nobel Laureate (honored in 1997 with the Nobel Peace Prize for her work against anti-personnel mines), co-founder Nobel Women's Initiative.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
JW: Personally, I think the choice is simple -- do you want four more years (at
least) of Bush-Cheney governance, this time in the guise of McCain-Palin or do you want the possibility of real change in a country desperate for change. Vote for what course you want our country to take. Weigh the candidates' ideology, not anatomy.

Any other comments or insights?
JW: I do not believe that this country can stand four more years of the disastrous policies of Bush-Cheney: They have brought low American leadership and esteem in the world. They have brought down the economy and supported and promoted rapacious greed in the "great free market economy" (not!). They have shattered the hopes and dreams of middle-class Americans. They have left the nation impoverished with debt so huge I cannot really contemplate the figure. As long as they and their cronies are enriched, they do not give a damn about the fate of Americans, our environment, our world. How anyone can seriously consider a vote for more of this is beyond my comprehension.

****

Marie Wilson, author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Add Women, Change Everything and president of The White House Project .

Many women today are experiencing a conflict between wanting to see a woman in the White House and the fact that Sarah Palin's views are in complete opposition to the progressive agenda that many feminists tend to advocate. What is your reaction to this?
MW: Our work at The White House Project has always been about getting enough women into the political pipeline, at all levels, so that choices made about candidates are based on agenda, not gender. In his book Megatrends, John Naisbitt observed that the railroads in America failed because they thought they were still in the railroad business; what they didn't understand was that they were now in the transportation business. It's an apt metaphor for the work we do. We are not in the "gender" business, but in the transformation business. We want women in power who are agents of transformation -- the kind of transformations that benefit women and our democracy.

What message would you most want to get out to women about the upcoming election?
MW: In regard to the upcoming election, we need to realize that the future is really hinging on the women's vote. It has for years, but now both the parties and the press are finally, finally talking about women -- and both Clinton and Palin share credit for this. But since the country is paying attention now and can see that more women vote than men and that what women do will determine the outcome of this election, we had better vote in great numbers and vote well. At this time of domestic and international crisis, it's likely that women will be held responsible for not just the outcome of this election, but also the actions of the administration that ensue.

Any other comments or insights?
MW: We are at our new "Seneca Falls" -- a time where women gathered and expressed their intention to be full citizens of this country by demanding the right to vote. Women now have to step up and take on the full responsibility that was engendered in suffrage: women's active participation in democracy was fomented by suffragettes with the anticipation that women would use their citizenship not just to vote but also to run and lead. Now is the moment that women must commit to voting, running and leading in greater numbers than ever before. It's a tough time to be stepping up -- but women stepping up and bringing new solutions to the table is the only intervention our country has not tried.

Blood and blood, blood in your country,
in my name and in yours,
in the almond flower, in the banana skin,
in the baby's milk, in light and shadow,
in the grain of wheat, in salt
Adept snipers, hitting their target with maximum proficiency.

Blood and blood and blood.
This land is smaller than the blood of its children
standing on the threshold of doomsday like
sacrificial offerings.
Is this land truly blessed, or is it baptised
in blood and blood and blood
which neither prayer, nor sand can dry.
There is not enough justice in the Sacred Book
to make martyrs rejoice in their freedom
to walk on cloud.

Blood in daylight, blood in darkness. Blood in speech.
He says: The poem could host loss, a thread of light shining
at the heart of a guitar;
or a Christ on a horse pierced through with beautiful metaphors.
For the aesthetic is but the presence of the real in form

In a world without a sky, the earth
becomes an abyss.
The poem, a consolation, an attribute
of the wind, southern or northern.

Do not describe what the camera can see
of your wounds.
And scream that you may hear yourself,
and scream that you may know you're still alive,
and alive, and that life on this earth is possible.
Invent a hope for speech,
invent a direction, a mirage to extend hope.

And sing, for the aesthetic is freedom

I say: The life which cannot be defined except by death is not a life.

I Come From There... (by Mahmoud Darwish)

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave snatched by seagulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of words,
And the bounty of birds
And the immortal olive tree.

I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known,
To a returning cloud.
I learned all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learned all the words and broke them up
To make a single word...

Homeland