7 Days in America Blog

I was the split-screen bystander on Hardball last night when Chris Matthews exposed Kevin James as the quintessential right wing slandering bloviator.

James was of course pathetic but his -- and Bush's and McCain's -- strategies aren't so funny. Basically, when you've lost an argument because facts and history aren't on your side, resort to unprovable guilt-by-association or, as in appeasement, guilt-by-analogy.

It was bad enough when McCain tried to link Hamas and Obama because Hamas said it preferred Obama. And if the Klan endorsed McCain because he wasn't the black guy, would McCain have a problem if someone said that McCain and the Klan are one and the same?

Then Bush makes his instantly famous appeasement attack at the Knesset on Obama. We've seen this movie before. Whenever conservatives can't win an argument on the merits, they attack some real or perceived enemy as Hitler. So Ho Chi Mihn was Hitler. bin Ladin was Hitler. Ahmadinejad was Hitler. Of course Hussein was Hitler. And anyone who does something to try to resolve conflict short of more war is Neville Chamberlain.

Beyond the fact that Mr. President 28% has next-to-credibility on much of anything, least of all in the Middle East, the attack on Obama is ridiculous.

Air Americans, you'll be especially interested in our interview with
Bill Moyers, who, with Galbraith and Schlesinger, is one of the three
greatest progressive, public intellectuals of the modern era.

We talk about America's "story" of democracy, how Obama won't
be "Willie Horton-ized," how money in politics is the great issue not
part of the '08 campaign, and how he's only wanted to be a journalist
-- or, he'd rather write than be president.

This week three below-the-fold scandals threatened three politicians while Sen. Obama stayed “clean,” in the good meaning of Sen. Biden’s adjective of a year ago. Because Barack Houdini easily escaped the chains of Rev. Wright and because of “the math” after the North Carolina romp, it certainly looks like it’s too late for Clinton to stop him– just like when the Phillies couldn’t make up seven games with only 14 to play in the National League East race in 2007. Remember?

First came Vito Fossella, as of this writing a five-term congressman from Staten Island-Brooklyn. A good-looking, buff Republican with a reputation, said a colleague, of being “the Paris Hilton of Congressmen,” he lived down to his reputation when, driving drunk, he made the mistake of spilling the beans to cops at 3AM where his mistress and previously unknown love-child were sleeping. If you’re a public figure urging that the 10 Commandments be posted in public places, it’s probably a good idea to live to #4 about coveting other women. And “if you’re going to be in the party of family values,” said commentator Doug Muzzio, “you shouldn’t have more than one.”

Second was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who appears likely to soon join Fossella in the ex-category. It was widely reported this week that a Long Island businessman, Morris Talansky, personally gave Olmert hundreds of thousands of dollars while he was mayor of Jerusalem and running against Ariel Sharon for leadership of the Likud Party. Olmert, suffering his fifth financial investigation in recent years, denied the money was a bribe but said that he’d quit his position if indicted.

(And if he leaves office, it appears likely that he’d be succeeded by a former Labor PM, Ehud Barak, which would delight tabloid headline writers when the likely leaders of the U.S. and Israel meet in 2009.)

Each week the blogs, cable-fests and Sunday shows overanalyze a new mime…and post-Pennsylvania, it's the angst that Democrats will splinter and hand the election to McCain. Among other topics, this one came up on this week's 7 Days in America, with Headliner (and Clinton surrogate) Bob Kerrey arguing that his favorite was not being unusually negative for a trailing candidate and Arianna Huffington contending that she was a divisive fearmonger.

My view: worry of a self-immolating schism is apt if the general election were to be held May 4, not November 4. Let's stop exaggerating differences and universalizing this moment since it's nearly inevitable that the two Democratic contenders and their supporters will eventually unite given the stakes of a Bush III.

True, there's never been a contest quite this close and contested – and fraught with issues of race and gender. But it's instructive to remember how two other camps reconciled in 1960 and 1984.

Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller represented two different wings of that Republican Party. With Rockefeller itching to run, he and Nixon met at 810 Fifth Avenue to iron out differences – the result being "the Compact of Fifth Ave" with Nixon putting some civil rights planks in the party's platform and Rocky stepping aside.

Twenty-four years later and three blocks away, at Arthur and Mathilde's four story townhouse in the East 60s, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart met in June after Mondale had pulled away to a prohibitive lead (because of superdelegates!). As a Hart aide, I was downstairs with other staff while the two contenders met alone in an upstairs study. Here was the report by William Doerner from Time magazine that week:

7 Days: TEFLON-OBAMA? w/ Dorgan, Huffington, Green & Bender

                                                     Mark Green

What’s the matter with… Philadelphia?

There didn’t seem to be much “brotherly love” in either of the pivotal Democratic presidential debates held there – not in the Russert-Williams grilling of Hillary Clinton last October and not in the Gibson-Stephanopoulos cross-examination of Barack Obama last Wednesday.

Was the one thing each debate had in common that panelists went after the front-runner each time? I asked this of our headliner Senator Sen. Byron Dorgan and then panelists Arianna Huffington and David Bender. And the answer and conversation went off on…ABC News.

This past week saw General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker come back to Capital Hill for many more hours of grilling and stalling – for what’s now irrefutably clear is that “stay the course” really means not the mission in Iraq so much as the course until January 20, 2009 when Bush can leave the baby of Iraq on the doorstep of his successor.

Military men understand what a “front” is. Last September and now again in April, Petraeus served as a front man in Congress for a president who has run out of credibility and is now running out of time to be vindicated in Iraq. But if history is written the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, as Marx concluded, the sequel this past week was farcical. For it’s now clear that “surge,” which means a quick increase before a return to normalcy, is really an “escalation” since there’s no intention of returning back to lower troop numbers. So any media who now keeps using the word “surge” are in effect an extension of the White House press office.