The evening of Nov. 11, when Lou Dobbs formally ended his career in journalism, may mark the beginning of a political nightmare for conservatives. In his departing remarks, he surely hinted at bigger ambitions when he said that "some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day."
The next day, in his first radio broadcast after resigning from the news network, he appealed directly to independent voters, whom he said "dominate the registration rolls in this country for the first time," and went on to criticize President Obama as a leader who "focuses on the partisan and racial" in a "21st century post-partisan, post-racial society."
Having observed the former CNN anchor for many years, including a number of recent appearances on his nightly broadcast, I suspect that he may well nurture ambitions to run for president, as reported in the trade press -- and could mount a formidable campaign drawing upon the same resentful remnant that Republicans hope to mobilize in 2012. Except that he probably won't be running as a Republican.
Thanks to the crusade mounted against him by Media Matters for America, Presente.org and a host of other progressive and ethnic organizations, Dobbs is known most widely these days for his inflammatory attacks on illegal immigrants. Stoking nativist paranoia, he has blamed undocumented workers for problems both real and imaginary, from lost jobs and violent crime to increasing leprosy and conspiracies against U.S. sovereignty. On more than one occasion, he has encouraged far-right suspicions about Barack Obama's citizenship, allowing the "Birthers" to spout their theories on a network that had already discredited them (even on his own program). As those incidents were documented repeatedly and amplified by his critics, the tension between Dobbs and CNN executives inevitably rose toward a breaking point.
But in Lou's own mind, at least, there is more to the Dobbs brand than stoking white fears and resentments. Unlike Patrick Buchanan, a populist who more or less admits that he is a racist and Nazi sympathizer, Dobbs resents accusations of prejudice (and happens to be married to a Mexican-American woman -- with whom he lives on a 300-acre horse farm in New Jersey).
The image that he has crafted for himself over the past several years is "Mr. Independent," an identity that has always seemed more appropriate for a political candidate than a news anchor. Mr. Independent is a star-spangled superhero, dazzling enemies with his ferocious smile as he restores truth, justice and the American Way to a grateful "independent nation." If that sounds like a ridiculous exaggeration, check out his Web site.
It is true that LouDobbs.com provides much of the same right-wing rhetoric available from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News Channel, featuring guests such as Mike Huckabee, Bill Donohue and Frank Luntz. Glancing at the Web site or listening to him on the radio makes Dobbs appear to be a "lifelong Republican," as he has occasionally described himself in the past. He lambastes ACORN, the "national liberal media," Nancy Pelosi, "government-run healthcare" and, of course, Barack Obama, all in the usual frothing style.
Yet there is much about his fundamental outlook that simply cannot fit within the Republican party today -- and in no fewer than three bestselling books, he has poured scorn upon the GOP and its free-market idolatry. His skepticism of open borders has long extended to trade as well as immigration, and he has fervently denounced the corporate greed that led to the outsourcing and offshoring of millions of American jobs. That pugnacious attitude won him the George Kourpias Award for Excellence in Labor Journalism from the International Association of Machinists in 2004. ("We would canonize him if we could," said the union's president as he presented the award to Dobbs.)
He despises corporate lobbyists, complains about corporate tax evasion, and has supported public financing of elections. He blasted the banking and credit card industries for pushing through the bankruptcy "reform" that ruined families while fattening their profits. In the past he has even criticized Republicans for promoting cultural warfare over abortion and gay marriage, although he recanted last September with a groveling address to the Values Voters Summit (another possible signal of an incipient candidacy).
Does the Dobbs catalog of outrage make sense as a political platform? Or is he merely another demagogue who encourages dangerous bigotry without offering any real solutions?
As anyone who has debated him will acknowledge, Lou is smart and informed as well as skillful and telegenic -- all of which makes his pandering to the Birthers and the bigots even more disappointing. But the history of third-party movements in modern American presidential politics, from Ross Perot to Ralph Nader to Buchanan, suggests that those who should fear him most are his fellow conservatives.
Not only would he be capable of splitting at least some of the right-wing "tea-bagger" vote away from the GOP, but he might insist on exposing the most damaging effects of the market idolatry that has hypnotized the Republican establishment. Speaking of that establishment on his morning-after radio show, Dobbs warned against the Republicans as "absent" and "inadequate" in the "contest of ideas and values," while promising to "recommit ourselves" to "a contest of ideas in the open and public arena, unconstrained by notions of orthodoxy or political correctness."
He sounds like he's running already.
Urging the Justice Department to move the trial of al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his accomplices from Manhattan's federal courthouse to a more remote location, Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggests that he is merely talking common sense. Holding the KSM trial downtown will cost too much money, says the mayor, and "disturb" too many people.
Actually, Bloomberg was closer to the mark when he first commented on the pending trial last December. As he told reporters then: "It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered." As long ago as last November, he had received assurances from Attorney General Eric Holder that the federal government would not expect the city to pay the huge security costs of the trial.
But with the real estate industry, Sen. Charles Schumer and Wall Street demanding that the trial be moved -- along with the Republican congressional leaders and a host of right-wing blatherers -- Bloomberg quickly dropped his own instinctive principle. Why didn't he inflate the cost -- and ask the Obama administration to pay the estimated $200 million -- before he endorsed the Manhattan location? And why did he choose to blindside the president -- who helped him win an amazingly close election last year with a tepid endorsement of the Democrat? With his exploding cost estimates and subsequent flip-flop, Bloomberg looks unreliable, untrustworthy and unserious.
There happens to be a strong argument for Bloomberg's instinctive first response, as Peter Bergen and Karen Greenberg pointed out in a highly perceptive CNN.com essay titled "Why the 9/11 Trial Belongs in New York." Bergen, a highly respected international expert on al-Qaida, and Greenberg, who heads New York University's Center on Law and Security (and lives and works about a mile north of ground zero), note that if necessary the trial could be moved to one of the other four boroughs -- or to Governor's Island, a former military base in New York harbor that is a short ferry ride from the downtown neighborhood ravaged on 9/11. They offer two compelling reasons:
"The courts in New York are unusually well-prepared to try Mohammed. Although the federal courts in general have a strong conviction record in trying terrorism crimes, New York's federal courts have won a 100 percent conviction rate on terrorism trials.
"Before 9/11 as well, New York courts successfully prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for life the likes of the 'Blind Sheikh' Omar Abdel Rahman; the al Qaeda bombers who launched the attacks on the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and the plotters of the first Trade Center attack five years earlier.
"And New York City is now preparing for the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al Qaeda member allegedly involved in the 1998 embassies bombings who, unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, has been living in prison in the city for nearly eight months, without incident…
"... Most important of all, perhaps, is that the fearfulness of New York authorities feeds a sense of learned insecurity that has dominated the U.S. since 9/11. By contrast, the American military families posted to Guantanamo Bay chose to stay when they learned that suspects who they legitimately believed were the worst of the worst terrorists would be imprisoned there. They did this because they trusted U.S. troops to protect them.
"The backing down of the Obama administration ... signals weakness and fear. Rather than facing our enemies by showing confidence in ourselves as a nation that knows how to protect itself, our government leaders have let us know that they do not trust our institutions to protect us, an idea that should be intolerable to Americans."
There is also a strong argument for the Obama administration to stand up to Bloomberg and the rest of the fear chorus -- as Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism advisor to Presidents Bush and Clinton, noted in a brave Sunday News essay on the politics of terrorism.
The genuinely tough Clarke is not fazed by the bombastic rhetoric of the neoconservatives, who are trying to frighten New Yorkers so they can harm Obama -- even at the cost of humiliating the United States in the face of its enemies. As Clarke recalls, correctly, "There were numerous al-Qaida trials in Manhattan when Rudy Giuliani was mayor and the world did not end. Yes, Manhattan will become a target of al-Qaida if a trial takes place there. But it already is target No. 1 for al-Qaida; it can't get any more so.
"The evidence is clear that the GOP talking point machine, repeated by Fox television commentators and others, does not bother to learn the facts about terrorism before they leap to attacking the party in power's handling of the issue. They are wrong on the facts and they are wrong morally to attempt to make political gain on the damage inflicted by terrorism."
As the Republicans foment hysteria around the 9/11 trial -- and pretend that hiding KSM on a military base would somehow be more macho -- it is hard not to remember the old slogan from the authoritarian world of Orwell's 1984: Weakness is strength.
Back in early December, I suggested that the Obama "surge" in Afghanistan might not be exactly what it seemed -- and, in fact, that the president may seek a negotiated settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, if he expects to meet his early deadline for withdrawal of American troops. Along the same line I noted that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s own report on the situation in Afghanistan had acknowledged, in passing, that the likeliest outcome of counterinsurgent warfare is negotiation and reconciliation rather than total victory.
No doubt such a settlement would mandate amnesty for Mullah Omar, the Taliban boss who escaped justice in 2001 along with Osama bin Laden, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush war cabinet. That is hardly a pleasing prospect. But the deeper question for American policymakers is whether the Taliban would agree to the U.S. bottom line: the expulsion of al-Qaida from Afghanistan and the renunciation of all ties with bin Laden.
Today, Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service reports on a team of four former high-ranking Taliban officials, who have served as intermediaries between the government and the rebels, and who believe such an agreement is not only possible but likely. The team includes the deposed regime’s former foreign minister and its former ambassador to Pakistan.
"The four Taliban mediators have been encouraging both Karzai and the Taliban leadership to begin with steps toward military de-escalation and confidence-building before proceeding to the central political-military issues that must be negotiated," writes Porter, who interviewed Arsullah Rahmani, a member of the mediation team who is also an elected member of the Afghan parliament, at his home in Kabul.
Rahmani said that President Hamid Karzai personally asked the four ex-Taliban officials to assist in launching peace talks. Porter, an American historian and journalist, also talked with Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, the former foreign minister, who is another member of the team, who told him that the Taliban "are going to accept some of our suggestions."
These mediators and other observers in the region believe that the al-Qaida issue will not be difficult to resolve. Rahmani pointed to a statement released by the Taliban in early December, which offered to negotiate "legal guarantees" against "meddling" beyond Afghanistan's borders. Instead, the mediators say their main worry is a fluctuating American attitude toward talks with the enemy that reflects divisions within the administration.
"I don't understand U.S. policy," Rahmani told Porter. "Sometimes they say 'we will negotiate with the Taliban, and sometimes they say 'we must destroy them.'"
For worried Democrats, the sudden return of Social Security privatization as a fashionable nostrum among Republicans should lift their gloom. Or it would if only the Democratic leaders understood what to do when their opponents deliberately step into a messy dogpile again.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a pair of the most outspoken conservatives in Congress, are trying to revive plans to transform Social Security into a system of private accounts (while cutting benefits for anyone under 55 years old). Speaking for Republicans on the House Budget Committee, Ryan proposes a “road map” for Social Security that strongly resembles the old Bush plan. The Ryan version would phase in individual accounts funded by an increasing portion of FICA taxes, limited to investments in a list of approved funds and "guaranteed" by the federal government. Meanwhile, Hensarling simply asserted on "Hardball" that "you can get better healthcare and better retirement security if you go to a defined contribution plan," which is the same idea.
Junking social insurance for private accounts is a Republican obsession -- and a Wall Street fantasy -- that dates back decades (see "The Raw Deal" for a history of the recurring right-wing campaigns to kill Social Security and their financing by the corporate elite). While there are many sound arguments to maintain the current system with a few actuarial tweaks, the most compelling is the disastrous corporate stewardship of the financial markets in recent years.
Did cheery Republicans like Hensarling somehow fail to notice the sickening fall of stock indexes between 2007 and 2009? The only annuity fully exempt from the economic ruin brought on by the investment banks and insurance giants was ... Social Security. Yet despite all the fresh evidence of greed, swindling and incompetence on Wall Street, the Republicans have renewed their calls for privatization. "We had this debate in Social Security a few years ago," Hensarling recalled a bit wistfully. "Now, ultimately we weren’t victorious ..."
No, they certainly weren’t. The privatization fiasco played an important part in the inexorable decline of President Bush’s approval ratings and the removal of his party from power. The plunge began as soon as the White House announced that Social Security privatization would be the primary domestic policy objective of his second term. Public rejection of that plan -- with more than 60 percent consistently disapproving in nearly every independent poll -- soon overwhelmed the multimillion-dollar corporate campaign behind it.
Bush’s own popularity never recovered. And then came the 2006 midterm election, also known as "the thumping," which smashed Karl Rove’s dream of a long era of absolute Republican domination. If that’s really what they want to talk about, then Democrats should accommodate them with a smile.
Evidently James O’Keefe and his boss Andrew Breitbart believe that the world will accept their excuses and complaints -- no matter how implausible -- if repeated loudly, brazenly and often.
Consider, for instance, O’Keefe’s thin explanation of what he and his chums were doing at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in the New Orleans federal building on the day they were arrested. While he insists that reports in the mainstream media misrepresented their adventure as an attempt to set up a “wiretap,” his alternative version strains credulity.
According to O’Keefe, he and his associates were trying to find out whether the telephone lines were out of order at Landrieu’s office, following political uproar in Louisiana over her vote for healthcare reform. “I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for ‘weeks’ because her phones were broken,” he wrote on Breitbart’s Web site. “In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office -- the people’s office -- to ask the staff if their phones were working.”
That isn’t what O’Keefe and crew were up to, however, according to the FBI complaint filed against them. O’Keefe himself walked into Landrieu’s office and waited for Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel to show up in their phone repairman costumes so he could videotape them. Rather than interview the Landrieu staffers about communications problems, the two phony phone guys said they had come to fix broken phones and asked where to find the telephone wiring closet. Informed that the closet was on a different floor in a General Services Administration office, both men left Landrieu’s office and went to the GSA location -- only to be busted when they claimed to have left their IDs in their truck.
Did O’Keefe or his pals ever actually “ask the staff” whether the phones worked? That will become clearer if and when the videos that are now in federal custody are released, but the FBI complaint doesn’t mention any such inquiry. The more pertinent question for now is why Flanagan and Basel sought access to the telephone closet. If they weren’t planning to install a listening device, what did they have in mind for Landrieu’s phones? The FBI believes they were plotting to tamper “maliciously” with the federal government phone system -- the “people’s phones,” as O’Keefe might say.
Perhaps there is some innocent explanation for their behavior, and their arrest is the result of a “huge misunderstanding,” as O’Keefe says. One theory that can be dismissed immediately, however, is Breitbart’s suggestion of a conspiracy by the Justice Department to “frame” or “smear” his employee O’Keefe, with the complicity of the media. When U.S. Attorney James Letten recused himself from the case, Breitbart immediately piped up to claim that this proved Letten was involved in a scheme to ruin O’Keefe, supposedly as revenge for the ACORN videos. Such imagined intrigues collide sharply with the reality of Letten’s career (and his reputation for probity). Appointed by George W. Bush, Letten is perhaps best known for putting Edwin Edwards, the colorful former governor of Louisiana, behind bars in 2000. Both Sen. Landrieu and Republican Sen. David Vitter supported Letten’s reappointment by President Obama, which may be the real reason that he recused himself from a case involving Landrieu’s office. (Or Letten may feel uncomfortable prosecuting Robert Flanagan, the errant son of U.S. Attorney William J. Flanagan in the adjoining federal district.)
Here is an example of "conservative journalism" at its worst, and a glimpse of Breitbart's character as well. When he claims to be victimized by a “smear,” be prepared for him to launch a nasty smear of his own -- even against a fellow Republican, if that will divert attention from his own embarrassment.
Tony Blair's widely panned appearance at last week's Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war reminded the world about the former British prime minister's role in that lethal fiasco. Like many of the Iraq war's instigators here in the United States, Blair has gotten a free pass while flaunting his lack of remorse. Indeed, the failure to hold him accountable resulted in his appointment as the special envoy of the "Mideast Quartet" in June 2007, charged with reviving the peace process on behalf of its members -- the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the Russian Federation.
Blair has been serving as the Quartet's representative in the troubled region for well over two years without much protest or much impact. But his smug, self-serving testimony about Iraq -- filled with the same deceptions and evasions that irreparably marred his reputation -- may at last render that position untenable. According to the Guardian, moreover, he will be called to testify again sometime within the next few months about the precooked and plagiarized intelligence reports used by his government to prove that Iraq's mythical "weapons of mass destruction" posed an imminent threat.
During Blair's long-winded justification of his actions, he compared the current threat from Iran's nuclear program with the supposed threat from Iraq's supposed WMD arsenal no fewer than 58 times. "We face the same problem about Iran today," he said -- a call to war that sounded weirdly discordant coming from a man committed to encouraging peaceful negotiation.
Now many in the Mideast have lost patience with Blair, whose lack of achievement, focus on personal enrichment, and tactless commentary cancel out whatever prestige or influence he may still possess. When he was first appointed, moderate Arabs gave him the benefit of the doubt, despite the Iraq war and his perceived favoritism toward Israel. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, publicly welcomed his appointment.
The goodwill is gone. Over the weekend, the Gulf News -- an important English-language daily based in Dubai -- published a lead editorial titled "Blair simply isn't up to envoy job." Reviewing his tenure in scathing terms, it said that he has been "consistent in one thing since his appointment -- issuing statements that are filled with impractical suggestions, ineffective calls and hollow promises. Surely, Blair's uselessness and redundancy are ample reasons for the Quartet to dismiss him from his current post." Perhaps the foreign ministers of the quartet members will be smart enough to heed that advice before Blair embarrasses them again. It seems quite unlikely, based on his public displays so far, that he has the decency to resign.
Today the Wall Street Journal editorial page joined the chorus of usual suspects claiming the president lied when he said the following about the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United:
"I believe [that decision] will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections."
Let's leave aside for a moment the obvious rejoinder, namely that neither the Journal's editorialists nor any of his other critics can possibly know whether Obama actually "believes" what he said or not. Instead, let's revisit the issue at hand, which is whether foreign interests will now be able to influence American elections.
The Politifact Web site, in a post that curiously described Obama's remark as "barely true," went on to quote legal experts who provided clear support for his concerns. Robert Kelner, chairman of the election and political law practice group at Covington and Burling, said: "Some people think that Kennedy's opinion in Citizens United logically leads there. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. We don't know for sure." Brett Kappel, who specializes in political law at Arent Fox, said the majority opinion "certainly could be read as declaring this provision unconstitutional, so I'd have to say the president's interpretation is correct -- but we won't really know for sure until a court rules on the issue."
Meanwhile Politico quoted Michael Dorf, a Cornell University law professor who doesn't oppose foreign contributions to American political campaigns: "It is a plausible inference from the court's opinion that [foreign] money can't be restricted," he affirmed.
Experts at two of the most respected nonpartisan organizations in Washington agreed on the likely impact of the court's ruling. J. Gerald Hebert, executive director and director of litigation at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, noted that the prohibitions on foreign contributions in current law do not control contributions from foreign-controlled domestic corporations: "With the corporate campaign expenditure ban now being declared unconstitutional, domestic corporations controlled by foreign governments or other foreign entities are free to spend money to elect or defeat federal candidates," he told the Center for Public Integrity.
Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, who is among the most experienced reform advocates, went further -- and his analysis deserves close attention for its lucidity and logic in exploring whether the Court opened the political process to foreign financial influence:
"Some have argued that this will not happen because there remains a separate federal law that prohibits contributions and expenditures to be made by any 'foreign national' in connection with any Federal, State or local election. The Court in Citizens United did not review this separate law - section 441e - and it remains in effect.
"Section 441e prohibits contributions or expenditures by any 'foreign national' - which is defined to include any corporation 'organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign corporation.'
"Thus, a corporation organized in Germany, or with its headquarters in China, remains subject to a ban on spending in U.S. elections.
"But there are domestic corporations - those organized under state law in the United States - which are and can be controlled by foreign interests.
"Those kinds of corporations - domestic corporations owned by or controlled by foreign governments, foreign corporations or foreign individuals - are not in any way prevented by section 441e from spending corporate treasury funds to influence U.S. elections.
"Prior to the Citizens United decision, these corporations were prevented from spending their funds on expenditures to influence federal campaigns by the general prohibition on corporate campaign spending. But now that that prohibition has been struck down, these foreign-controlled domestic companies are free to spend their treasury funds directly to influence U.S. elections.
"Thus, there is no statutory prohibition against foreign-controlled domestic corporations from making expenditures to influence federal elections, following the Citizens United decision.
"The Federal Election Commission has a regulation in this area, but it is inadequate and does not provide effective protection for the public against foreign involvement in federal elections.
"The FEC regulation prohibits any foreign national from directing, controlling or directly or indirectly participating in 'the decision-making process' of any person, including a domestic corporation, with regard to that person's 'election-related activities,' including any decisions about making expenditures.
"The regulation does not prevent foreign owners from making their views known to their American domestic subsidiaries about the governmental and political interests of the controlling foreign entity; it just prevents them from directly or indirectly participating in the formal "decision-making process."
"Those who manage the domestic subsidiaries, furthermore, can be expected to know the governmental and political interests and needs of their foreign owners, and to be responsive to the needs of their owners, even absent any participation by the foreign owners in the formal 'decision-making' process regarding expenditures in federal elections.
"In other words, the existing FEC regulation is an inadequate and ineffective safeguard, by itself, to prevent foreign nationals from exerting influence on U.S. elections through the use of election-related expenditures made by domestic corporations which they own or control.
"Thus, following the Supreme Court's invalidation of the ban on corporate expenditures, section 441e does not address at all the problem of expenditures made by domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies or domestic corporations controlled by foreign nationals, and there is no statutory prohibition on foreign nationals being directly involved in expenditure decisions made by foreign owned domestic corporations.
"The only restriction here is an ineffective FEC regulation administered by an agency that is widely recognized as an abject failure in carrying out its responsibilities to enforce the nation's campaign finance laws."
Did You Hear the One About the Illinois Primary…?
