RJ Matson, Roll Call

T.E. Lawrence and John McCain are bona fide war heroes, but when it comes to Iraq, that’s where any similarity between the two men ends.

Lawrence (top photo), one of the most astute observers of Iraq and the Middle East of any generation, knew impending disaster when he saw it and warned three years after the British occupation of Iraq commenced in 1917 (bottom photo) that it:

“Is a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. The [British people] have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told . . . It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.”

McCain, devoid of Lawrence’s nuanced insight and lacking his first-hand experience, offered a warning of another kind in a major policy speech last week:

“It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our national character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.”

The British occupation of Iraq, which when adjusted for population then and now involved about 10 times the number of troops the U.S. deployed for the Surge, ended with a whimper after four decades.

This is because the Brits didn’t belong there in the first place and never were able to understand the Arab mindset and historic sectarian enmities. The Americans also don’t belong in Iraq, and McCain, acting for all the world like an imperialist poobah, has famously remarked that it would be fine with him if America troops stayed in Iraq for 100 years.

This despite the reality that presence would be a fraction of the troops that Britain deployed and the opposition today is far better organized – and armed — and it is long past time for the Iraqis to pick up the pieces from a disastrous American occupation and cobble together some sort of confederation.

McCain may have trouble telling Shiites from Sunnis, but he does know one thing that Lawrence didn’t and it is an important but largely unspoken element of why the presumptive Republican nominee has made staying in Iraq indefinitely the centerpiece of his presidential campaign: Oil.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

How can one account for Barack Obama’s truly astonishing success in reaching for the American presidency?

It isn’t his speechifying. He’s an excellent speaker, but Jesse Jackson in his time was better. It’s not his personal story, which though in many ways inspiring, can’t match the heroic realism of John McCain’s. It’s not his stands on issues that are not noticeably different from Hillary’s. Nor is it the populist edge that has creeped into his campaign in recent months. John Edwards was way out front in this respect.

No, it all comes down to that one word that appears in bold letters on all his literature and just over his left shoulder at every speaking engagement. Change. And the change hinted at here is not the kind of change this country has seen several times in recent decades. Not like, for example, the change when Republicans took control of Congress after 40 years of Democratic majorities, or when an undistinguished actor cemented the union of media and politics when Ronald Reagan won the White House.

This change is something far more basic, far more fundamental, than a mere shift in political sentiment. It represents the full fruition of what was predicted in the movie “Network.” The arrival of the time when not just a few Americans, nor even one or two large groups of Americans are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. But a time when the majority of the country is that mad, that determined not to take it for one more election cycle, that it is willing to reach for a very visible symbol of its frustrations and anger.

€ Americans are mad as hell about health care they are straining to afford.

€ Mad as hell about inflation that is only under control when government officials don’t bother counting the costs of basics whose price is rising at an unseemly rate.

€ Mad as hell about a foreign policy concocted by think-tank ideologues, for-profit contractors, and Washington special-interest groups.

€ Mad as hell about financial markets now so flagrantly-rigged that even the overwhelmed wizard behind the curtain who is doing the rigging no longer bothers to hide his shaky hand.

€ Mad as hell about working longer and harder than anyone else on the planet and still seeing their standard of living slide while Wall Street bunglers walk away from their failures with astronomical rewards.

€ Mad as hell that their religions, their core faiths, have been hijacked and manipulated by Beltway hucksters to retain their own political power.

€ Mad as hell that the infrastructure they depend on in their daily lives is slowly rotting away while huge sums are wasted trying to nation-build a country with which we have no historical or kinship relationship.

€ Mad as hell about spending on a vastly-overblown military that seems unable to put down gangs of fanatical yahoos.

€ Mad as hell that the guy who killed 3,000 of our people on 9/11 is still tweaking us on TV seven years after the crime.

€ Mad as hell that our natural environment is being trashed in frightening ways we have trouble even understanding but know in our gut are horrible.

€ Mad as hell that we have to borrow from foreigners to keep our government financially afloat and give them control of large pieces of our economy in payment.

So along comes a guy who not only talks change, but is so different from our usual leadership stereotypes that we think, maybe, just maybe, he will actually do something radically different when it comes to the things that are making us mad as hell.

You would have to have one very angry, one very ticked-off electorate, to even consider giving someone like this a shot at the Oval Office. Obama isn’t just a sop to unity or an instrument to narrow this country’s racial divide. He’s a cry from the nation’s heart for something dramatically new, fairer, more sane and sensible.

If he loses the nomination or the November election the winner had better understand this cry and its implications. Or things in these climes are going to get a lot more nasty in the very near future.

Now there’s yet another indication that the Democratic convention this summer is shaping up to be a powder keg battle over the seating of delegates that’s likely to end with deep party rifts: the idea for a redo Michigan primary is now dead:

Ignoring entreaties from state party leaders and an in-person plea from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday, state lawmakers adjourned Thursday without acting on a bill to authorize a do-over of the disqualified Democratic presidential primary held in January, effectively killing any new vote.

Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat who supports Mrs. Clinton, said in a statement that she was “deeply disappointed” that Michigan Democrats would not get another crack at a primary ballot. The Michigan contest was voided by the national Democratic Party because it was held earlier than party rules allowed.

That means Florida and Michigan will be front-and-center at the convention in August and could basically be locked out unless they find a way to comply with party delegate-selection regulations. In Michigan, some wealthy Clinton donors offered to bankroll a mail-in primary but the Obama camp rejected it for several reasons.

And Clinton and Obama? Both took potshots at each other over the news from Michigan:

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to reporters on Thursday at a campaign stop in Terre Haute, Ind., said that selecting a Democratic presidential candidate without the votes of delegates from Michigan and Florida would call into question the legitimacy of the nominee.

She blamed Mr. Obama for the collapse of the Michigan revote and said it would cripple the party in the general election. “I do not understand what Senator Obama is afraid of,” she said, “but it is going to hurt our party and our chances in November.”

…..“Truth is,” Mr. Obama said, “doing a redo vote is really complicated. For example, you got a bunch of people who didn’t think they could vote in the Democratic primary so they voted in the Republican primary.”

The Obama campaign suggests the fairest resolution would be to split the delegates evenly with Clinton — an idea the Clinton camp rejects.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, an Obama supporter and former presidential candidate, promoted the idea of evenly splitting the delegates between Obama and Clinton. “The best outcome is to come to an arrangement where the delegates are apportioned fairly between Senators Obama and Clinton, so the Michigan delegation can participate fully in the Denver convention,” he said in a statement.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Dodd spoke to campaign leaders about the idea, and they agreed it would be an equitable way of handling Michigan. “Senator Obama looks forward to building a winning campaign in Michigan in the fall as our Democratic nominee,” Burton said.

But Clinton told reporters while campaigning in Terre Haute, Ind., that Obama’s nomination could be tainted if he achieves it without a second Michigan contest.

“I do not see how two of our largest and most significant states can be disenfranchised and left out of the process of picking our nominee without raising serious questions about the legitimacy of that nominee,” Clinton told reporters, referring to Michigan and Florida.

So unless there’s a breakthrough, it looks like the whole mess will be placed in the hands of the national Democratic party.

Net result so far: bad news for the Clinton campaign since the re votes would have been high profile and Clinton could have possibly won them.

So was it a home run or not? Was Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s historical racial division speech — delivered due to the continuing political firestorm over his relationship with his controversial family pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr but containing one of the most thoughtful discussions of the racial issue ever uttered by a modern politician — a success or a flop?

Much of it is in the eye of the beholder. (You can watch the whole speech here.)

The reason: although generally acknowledged to be a historical speech in terms of content and importance, in hard-nosed political terms its success will eventually be judged by whether he reached his target audience. So watch the polls…and the primaries.

His target audience would NOT be:
–Conservative talk show hosts. On the radio yesterday Bill O’Reilly told listeners Obama could NOT really be a uniter — because he had dared to boycott the Fox Presidential debates. (Ohhhkayy…..). Meanwhile, on his Fox News evening show, Sean Hannity was again raising the name of Louis Farrakhan and seemingly trying to link Obama with him — as he has done before.

–Republican activists on and off the web who area looking for vulnerabilities — any vulnerabilities — to use against him in the general election if he gets the nomination. It’s like the old Groucho Marx song lyric: “Whatever it is, I’m against it…”

His target audience WOULD BE (and these are just a few):
–Independent voters who are truly swing voters and showed great interest in Obama in the past. The Pastor’s comments have already had a bad impact on Obama, a CBS poll finds:

Sixty-one percent of independent voters say they are unaffected, but 36 percent said it made their view less favorable. Two percent of independents said it made them more favorable view.

Overall, unfavorable views of Obama are up somewhat from February. His favorable ratings remain largely unchanged at 44 percent, but there has been some movement from undecided views to unfavorable views, from 23 percent in February to 30 percent now.

–Superdelegates. Too early to tell. They’ll be watching the remaining primaries and polls to see if Obama self-destructs. They’ll also likely watch to see how he handles himself under intense fire…that is sure to come in coming weeks.
–White working class Americans. The impact here is problematical. Most working class Americans didn’t see the speech live, and it’s unlikely a larger number of them turned to C-SPAN or the web to see it in its entirety. As many analysts noted, the speech was “nuanced” and highly thoughtful. In fact, his passages about the way America politics operates in attack mode echoed what many independent voters have said for years. Most working Americans will get their take on what he said via TV sound bites — which are usually the most dramatic. In a “nuanced” speech, that could prove perilous.

The likely impact? It’s too early to tell — but it’s likely more footage of Wright will be shown and hammered via clips by Obama’s foes, particularly Republican. (Why should Hillary Clinton intervene at all when Obama is now being lambasted by GOPers and press coverage?).

But it’s clear the issue won’t go away, that Republicans were smiling yesterday, Newsday notes:

Barack Obama’s first major speech on race drew praise for its eloquence Tuesday — but Republicans think he handed them a major weapon by refusing to disown family pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is known for racially inflammatory remarks.

“This is far and away the most damaging issue of the campaign for him, and his wonderful speech did nothing to make it go away,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.

In the middle of a recession an economic slowdown (we’ll use White House terminology here), the war in Iraq and various other problems, it’s clear Republicans see an issue they can hammer home. The election could be about Obama and his pastor and his refusal to totally disown him:

“I think it’s an obligation of any opponent to use this issue, to make Reverend Wright a centerpiece of the campaign,” said Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford).

“His speech was disappointing and shameful,” King added. ” … This goes to the heart of who Barack Obama is. He’s trying to say he represents the 21st-century view on race and here he’s sticking up for this guy.”

Added pollster Ayres: “The problem is the contradiction between the fundamental message of the Obama campaign about bringing America together and Wright’s hate-filled, divisive message.”

So the most likely conclusions could be this:
(1) The speech will go down in history as one of the most nuanced and thoughtful discussions by a politician about race in decades.
(2) Future polls will prove hard evidence of what the impact is on the groups Obama needs to reach.
(3) Conservative talk radio, Fox News, and many weblogs that already vehemently oppose Obama were never in the target audience but can be expected to return to this issue repeatedly (as new clips will inevitably arise).
(4) If this issue starts to hurt Obama, Clinton will use this to argue that it’s too huge a risk to give him the nomination and that for the good of the party Superdelegates should vote for someone else (her).

The Washington Post:

Obama needed to address several audiences with the speech: undecided white voters in Pennsylvania, whose Rust Belt cousins Obama struggled to win over in Ohio even before the Wright controversy; African Americans aggrieved by the opprobrium being heaped on Wright; and staunch supporters such as Farley who needed reassurance about their candidate.

And the likely impact?

The speech drew praise across the political spectrum, though some on the right questioned Obama’s assertion that his liberal agenda could unite different races. But many who heard the speech wondered whether it would be enough to calm the anger generated by the Wright videos. Gerald Shuster, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, found the speech “stylistically persuasive” but thought Obama should have moved aggressively to distance himself from Wright months ago, when reports of his harsher sermons first surfaced. “The rhetoric is convincing, but it’s just coming too late,” he said.

Martin Medhurst, an expert in rhetoric at Baylor University, was struck by the religious intonations as well as the echoes of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on his Catholicism, particularly the summons to overcome divisions to confront common threats.

Will yesterday’s speech be remembered along with Kennedy’s? “If Obama goes on to win the presidency, it will,” Medhurst said. “If he wins the presidency, this will be seen as a very important speech.”

The question is whether the bulk of voters will be able to find the entire speech or watch significant parts of it and listen to his discussion on race, its role, how it impacts perceptions, how existing politics always works and his call for a newer style. Or, whether the focus will remain on Wright as a hot-button issue — that eventually could sink him.

Here’s a prediction:

Parts of the speech may be read to students in future generations.

And parts of the speech will be read and used by Republican operatives.

Looking at it in purely political terms, is the Obama campaign ready for what is most assuredly going to come?

HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION OF VIEWPOINTS FROM MANY DIFFERENT WEBLOGS ON THIS HISTORICAL SPEECH

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The war is raging in Texas between Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential nomination primary (and caucuses) — and a key battleground is the all-important TV airwaves. And here are two current warring ads.

First, Clinton’s “red telephone” ad:

There have been a few comments to this being Hillary Clinton’s nuclear cloud ad, similar to LBJ’s during the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater campaign for the Presidency. But this doesn’t come close. It’s a basic pitch, again, making the argument that Americans would be safer with Hillary Clinton’s experience.

And, First Read reports, the Obama campaign has fired back:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, “She had her red-phone moment; she had it in 2002,” when she and President Bush voted for the war.

The red phone reference is to an ad run by Walter Mondale in the Democratic primary against Gary Hart.

“We don’t think the ad’s going to be effective at all,” Plouffe also said, continuing, “she’s already had her red-phone moment… she answered affirmatively” on her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. “She did not read the NIE, so she did not do her homework either.”

When asked repeatedly about the ad on the call, Plouffe focused on “judgment.”

“Sen. Clinton’s red-phone moment in her career was in 2002,” he said again. “And she supported the Iraq war, supported president Bush. … Ultimately an ad like this is going to make people focus on judgment.”

So, the Obama campaign has now responded to the Clinton “red telephone” ad with its own ad that frames the race in terms of experience versus sound judgment:

UPDATE: The Clinton ad is sparking lots of comment:
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Today’s Republican Party (as opposed to the Big Tent GOP of the Goldwater-Rockefeller era) has welcomed blacks with open arms — as long as they use the back door on their way to the kitchen or maid’s quarters — and has been only somewhat less unfriendly to women.

So the possibility that John McCain will be facing an African-American or a woman in the November election is scaring the bejeebers out of party bigs, who have launched a secret operation to try to determine how far they can go in attacking either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Before I go any further, please note that this is not a satire like my Saga of the Cedars. And pause to consider the extraordinary fact that one of the two major political parties in America has become so extreme that it has to take steps to try to immunize itself against what it sees as inevitable charges of racism or sexism.

And marvel that the secret operation is not meant to sensitize the party faithful, let alone draw in black and woman voters, but to gauge how to best attack Obama or Clinton.

Jack Kemp, the 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee, is one of the few prominent Republicans to speak out about the GOP’s raving intolerance.

Kemp tells The Politico that:

“You can’t run against Barack Obama the way you could run against Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry.

“Being an African American at the top of the ticket, if he makes it, is such a great statement about the country. Obviously you have to be sensitive to issues that affect urban America. . . . You have to be careful.”

More here. And here for a sneak peek at what the Republican attacks might be like if it’s Obama.

I’ll be discussing this post with Jazz Shaw and the Lady Logician on Midstream Radio this afternoon from 1:30-2 p.m. Eastern Time. Click here to listen and participate.

Political Wire has this item about comments by Clinton supporter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — and Townsend’s analysis makes us wonder if she reads The Moderate Voice. Most of this analysis is what we’ve been saying on this site:

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, spoke at St. Mary’s college in Maryland last week and offered a very frank assessment of the state of the Clinton campaign. A Political Wire reader emails a summary:

“Townsend said she expects Sen. Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination and that Clinton is finished. She believed that the Wisconsin results demonstrated that Clinton’s coalition (voters over the age of 50 and those earning less than $50,000) had fallen apart. When asked why the Clinton campaign had failed, Ms. Townsend had plenty of opinions and she placed significant blame on Bill Clinton and his racially tinged statements in South Carolina. She also felt that Clinton made a tactical error in making “experience and inevitability” her central campaign themes. Townsend argued that Clinton had little more experience than Obama and far less than candidates such as Senators Dodd and Biden. Additionally, making the inevitability claim hurt her when she lost Iowa… Townsend then lamented Clinton’s decision to go negative and question Obama’s readiness. She said that she called the Clinton campaign and advised that they ‘go out on a high note’ but her advice was politely dismissed.”

It sounds like a campaign that still intends to do what it wants to do, despite advice it may receive from those who disagree with its course of action.

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

CNN and MSNBC have both called the Republican primary for Arizona Senator John McCain but are holding off projecting a winner in the Democratic primary — but both organizations say Senator Barack Obama is ahead of Senator Hillary Clinton.

CNN reports:

Sen. John McCain will win Wisconsin’s Republican primary, CNN projects.

As polls closed, it was too early to call the Democratic race between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Exit polls show Obama ahead.

McCain is the presumptive nominee for his party, but he must pick up 1,191 delegates to seal the nomination.
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For someone whose handlers said they didn’t expect to win any more February primaries, Hillary Clinton is campaigning in Wisconsin like her life depends on it. Which politically speaking, it does.

Despite numerous promises to take the high road after his mudslinging backfired in South Carolina, Bill Clinton is at it again, assailing Barack Obama because he wasn’t a part of “any of the good things” that happened in the 1990s. Being a civil rights attorney, community organizer and Illinois state senator apparently are bad things.

Having dissed him in the past for not being conservative enough, Senator James Inhofe, R-Stone Age, and former Representative Tom DeLay, R-Disgraced, are now endorsing John McCain’s candidacy and DeLay is even stumping for him.

Another Texas Republican, Representative Ted Poe, full of himself after House Democrats refused to pass the FISA bill before the Protect America Act expired, overlooked the fact that he and his fellow GOPers could have extended the PAA before rushing home for a 12-day recess in hyperbolically noting that “there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells throughout the world that the United States Congress did not do its duty today.”

After backing Senator Larry “Toe Tap” Craig and then not backing him and then backing him, the Idaho Republican Party has been struck deaf and dumb in the wake of a Senate Ethics Committee rebuke of Craig for his behavior after he was caught in an airport bathroom sex sting.

Speaking of deaf and dumb, Representative John Lewis and his staff aren’t returning calls following a bombshell report that the civil rights pioneer planned to dump Mrs. Clinton and cast his precious superdelegate vote for Obama.

Senator Joseph Lieberman yet again revealed himself to be a closet fascist in explaining why his fellow Democrats are a bunch of mewling sheep and he is a self-righteous pimp for George Bush in voting against a measure to ban torture: “We have to allow the president to allow the toughest measures to be used when there is an imminent threat to our country. . . . It’s not like we’re burning people with hot coals.”

After trying to pin all kinds of dirt on Obama without much success, his detractors have