Posted on 02/23/2004 9:33:32 AM PST by MegaSilver
A few days ago, a Respected Party Elder advised me to stop dissing John Kerry on account of, ''He will be our nominee.'' He may be ''our nominee,'' but he'll still be a boring stiff. OK, sort of an impressive boring stiff.
So far, this is a swell race, and we're in for another terrific week if both Kerry and John Edwards do the issue stuff they're both well-placed to do. Kerry has a strong, well-thought-out healthcare plan, and he should make it his signature issue -- and put some passion into it, if he's got any. Edwards, with his populist riff, is perfectly placed to take on globalization directly.
I recommend that everyone take another look at Edwards, especially if you wrote him off as too pretty and too light the first time you saw him. I did, too, and I was wrong: He's a much better candidate than he was a year ago. Ever since his speech at Georgetown University last summer, Edwards has shown that he knows how to take that old time populist gospel and update it. Of course, Bush keep making that easier for him.
One of the best political races I ever saw was Kerry against William Weld in Massachusetts a few years back. Their final debate was almost enough to restore your belief in democracy -- two intelligent candidates both talking good sense. So I know that Kerry can get crisper than he has been.
Dismissed as protectionists
Edwards might want to take some text from John Ralston Saul's article, The collapse of globalism (and the rebirth of nationalism), in the current Harper's magazine. Saul sees globalism as a failed theology that confuses ethics with morality. ``Ethics is the measurement of the public good. Morality is the weapon of religious and social righteousness.''
In addition to the abandonment of a broad sense of the public good, Saul manages to tuck deregulation, debt and many other horrors into his recounting of how globalization has played out. Those who dare to differ with globalization (still pretty daring in the United States, not in the rest of the world) are usually dismissed as protectionists.
In fact, the best argument against globalization is precisely that it kills the goose that lays the golden egg -- capitalism. In case you hadn't noticed, advanced, deregulated capitalism is rapidly producing a world without competition. In one field after another, corporate gigantism has reached such a berserk extent that it eliminates the competition that keeps capitalism healthy. When one giant bank swallows another giant bank -- knocking out 10,000 jobs in the process -- what is the public good?
Saul's thesis is that globalization -- like the history it once claimed to have ended -- is over. But it's a good news-bad news argument: The resurgent nationalism he sees replacing it is certainly unattractive.
Meanwhile, the punditry is busy cranking out mostly pro forma hail-and-farewells to my man, Howard Dean. I hate whining, but I still think that a whole lot of people who should have known better freaked out over Dean, treating a mostly mild-mannered, perfectly sensible and quite cheerful fellow as some kind of anti-establishment anti-Christ. I mean, he was governor of Vermont for 10 years, not Lenin.
But Dean did tap into some real political anger, and look how many people turn out to be just scared to death of that. This is not the fake, pumped-up indignation of Rush Limbaugh's dittoheads over gay marriage -- now there's something that'll cost you your job -- but real anger about being lied to over war.
Emperor is naked
What was so scary about Dean? Could it be because he (and some very bright young people who worked with him) found this way to raise real money in small amounts from regular people, and that this just threatened the hell out of a lot of big corporate special interests? And out of an entire political establishment that is entirely too comfortable with the incestuous relationship between big money and politics? For just a moment in time, Dean was ahead of the pack -- and no one owned him.
I'm not crazy about anger as a motivating force in politics -- but didn't someone need to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes? Didn't someone need to say that we were led into war under false pretenses? Imagine an entire campaign in which all the candidates ignored that because they were all complicit in it.
What is the public good in numerous more expensive, inefficient little banks?
Self-proclaimed Texan liberal feminist. Author of the [vulgar from what I hear] book, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America.
Great title.
I thought people would like it. :)
Could this lib *be* any more ignorant ?
Well, it was just a quick list. I, too, enjoy Steyn and Buckley a great deal. However, they don't draw quite as much widespread attention to themselves as the four I mentioned.
Doesn't she still? This column lamented the fact that Dean shot his campaign in the foot and hinted that perhaps it was not his own fault (it was) but a product of a vast right-wing propaganda machine (there's no such thing).
Exactly.
Molly Ivins sure wouldn't be much fun to debate... one could rip her to shreds without any work.
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