Monday, September 29, 2008

How Obama and McCain View the World

I thought this was a pretty thoughtful article from Newsweek. Also, it gives some insight into why I'm going to vote Obama in November - we tend to like those who share our worldview and our hopes for the world.
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Worlds Apart

After last week's debate, it's obvious how different the foreign policies of Barack Obama and John McCain would be. What's less well understood are the key factors that shaped their world views. Here are five of them.

Michael Hirsh
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 6, 2008

Books have been written about 1968—"The Year That Made Us Who We Are," as NEWSWEEK proclaimed in a cover story 40 years later. The nation was gripped by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the Tet Offensive, Nixon's election. Far from the headlines, it was also a year that helped make John McCain and Barack Obama who they are. Both future senators had arrived in Southeast Asia around that time. Obama was a happy-go-lucky kid in Jakarta, thrilling to his exotic new surroundings—which included a pet crocodile—yet also savoring visits to the place he came to see as a symbol of hope and opportunity, the U.S. Embassy's American Club. McCain wasn't that far away from Obama geographically—Hanoi lies about 1,800 miles north of Jakarta—but as a 31-year-old naval aviator who had recently been shot down, he was beginning the five years of brutal imprisonment that would come to define his life and public persona.

Despite the 25-year gap in McCain's and Obama's ages, their Asian sojourns began to awaken parallel passions in each man: a love for his distant country, a keen appreciation of the unique values America stands for and a strong sense that it is America's destiny to keep the world an orderly place. Yet they also mark the beginning of journeys that would lead them to very different judgments about how the United States should fulfill that mission.

How McCain and Obama see the world—and hence how they might deal as president with an unexpected crisis—may seem obvious by now. "John Wayne" McCain, as he was known at Annapolis, is the tough-talking ex-flyboy who envisions the United States locked in battle with formidable foes, yet steeled to confront them. Obama is the more cerebral cosmopolitan, at ease with other cultures and calculating America's interests in broad, strategic terms. Each stereotype has elements of truth in it, but to understand truly the candidates' world views, one needs to look more closely at the places, people and ideas that have shaped each of them since 1968. Five such factors have been critical in both men's lives:

Two Trips
For McCain, the lessons of Vietnam did not end with his release in 1973. The next year, with the help of the then Navy Secretary John Warner, a future colleague in the U.S. Senate, McCain studied for a year at the National War College, where he devoured files and paperwork in hopes of finding out what had gone so wrong with the war.

As a part of that effort, McCain and Col. Bud Day, a POW cellmate of his and a close friend, returned to visit a teetering Saigon in late 1974. The pair dashed around town, scrounging up old buddies, trying to get the inside scoop so they could "make an assessment of what was happening with the South Vietnamese government now that [American] money had been cut off," Day says. Over drinks with an old friend of Day's from Sioux City, Iowa, Richard Baughn—who was then serving in the embassy as the American deputy defense attaché—they learned to their "astonishment that North Vietnam had a pipeline built to within 80 miles of Saigon … They were really ready for this invasion," says Day. A South Vietnamese general told the Americans his men were down to 10 rounds of ammo a day. Later they listened, aghast, to the U.S. ambassador telling them "not to worry about how the [South] Vietnamese would fight, rah, rah, rah!" says Day. "He didn't have the faintest clue what was going on."

McCain was furious: the cause for which he had endured five years of torture was being betrayed, in his eyes, by his own government. Most to blame were congressional Democrats, who controlled the purse strings—"McGovern, Javits, all those old antiwar hippies trying to sell Vietnam out," says Day. "We were both just really bent out of shape."

Friends say that for McCain, the son and grandson of admirals, Vietnam became the great cautionary example of squandering American blood. "Vietnam [taught] us that war is a terrible thing and you don't go in unless you're prepared to win and get it over with," says McCain's younger brother, Joe. "Here my father was commander in chief of the Pacific, he had the most powerful [military] force in the history of the world, and he was unable to use that force." Former senator Gary Hart says his old friend McCain, "like other veterans, believes that we could have 'won the Vietnam War' but the politicians panicked."

That view turned McCain into an early advocate of what would come to be called the Powell doctrine, named after fellow vet and later Secretary of State Colin Powell: do not commit U.S. troops unless the mission and exit strategy are clear and overwhelming force is applied. Then give the military, and your allies, full and unstinting support. McCain applied this lesson in late 2003 as he began to realize the U.S. military was undermanned in Iraq. "We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal," McCain said in a speech then.

Barack Obama's trip back to Asia was equally mind-opening. With a Pakistani college roommate, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, he went vagabonding around South Asia in 1981. He found himself overwhelmed by Karachi—a vast and chaotic metropolis clogged with the poor, and then, as now, rife with sectarian tensions. "Part of the most memorable portion of the trip," Obama told NEWSWEEK earlier this year, "was traveling to … a more provincial area outside of Karachi, seeing what was essentially a feudal life"—peasants who were eking out a subsistence living in the middle of a modern democracy. Obama was relearning as a young man, in other words, what he had only dimly understood as a child in Indonesia: most people around the world are looking to fulfill basic needs like shelter, jobs and education for their kids. Their primary concern is development, not democracy. Later, these experiences contributed to Obama's concept of "dignity promotion"—working to ease conditions of misery rather than focusing only on elections and other trappings of democracy. "He's very much committed to the challenges of strengthening the capacity of weak states to deal with poverty and good governance," says his top foreign-policy adviser, Susan Rice.

On the trip, Obama also became more acutely aware of the diversity of and tensions within the Muslim world. "Both as a consequence of living in Indonesia and traveling in Pakistan … I was very clear about the history of Shia-Sunni antagonism," he said. Obama's confidence in his knowledge of the Muslim world is so great that he has proposed holding a global summit of Muslim leaders early in his presidency. "I think that I can speak credibly to them about the fact that I respect their culture, that I understand their religion, that I have lived in a Muslim country, and as a consequence I know it is possible to reconcile Islam with modernity and respect for human rights and a rejection of violence. I think I can speak with added credibility."

Maverick Mentors
First as a naval liaison and then as a congressman and senator, McCain admired many of his colleagues on the Hill—most of all, perhaps, John Tower, the GOP Texas senator whose nomination as defense secretary went down to defeat despite McCain's fierce support. (Choking back tears, McCain declared from the Senate floor: "God bless you, John Tower. You're a damn fine sailor.") But for McCain, the hawkish Democratic Sen. Henry (Scoop) Jackson, one of the leading lights of the neoconservative movement, "remains the model of what an American statesman should be," as the GOP candidate said in a speech in June.

McCain's admiration is revealing: Jackson was a maverick who bucked his own party on the biggest issue of the day— how to confront the Soviet Union. In the late 1970s he opposed a Democratic president over détente and SALT II, and he refused to accept the view that Moscow could safely be contained. "Some people saw the principal cold-war issue as managing the relationship with the Soviet Union," says Richard Perle, another acolyte. "[Jackson] challenged the fundamental legitimacy of the Soviet Union. And he was right." This sense that evil must be confronted by strength appealed to McCain, who had not questioned the cause in Vietnam, only its prosecution. And Jackson, McCain later said, was a symbol of stalwart courage in the pursuit of a great cause—a model he wanted to emulate as a politician.

Obama's senatorial role model is also a man of principle from the opposing party. But Richard Lugar cuts quite a different figure than Scoop Jackson. The 76-year-old Indiana Republican is as deficient in charisma as Obama is blessed with it. (Lugar's 1996 presidential bid failed in large part because he put audiences to sleep.) Nevertheless, when Obama arrived on Capitol Hill in January 2005, he worked hard to impress Lugar, sitting through gavel-to-gavel hearings of his Foreign Relations Committee.

What Obama most admired was that Lugar, a pragmatist and internationalist with far-reaching vision, was focused on core national-security issues like nuclear nonproliferation. To achieve his long-term goals, Lugar set aside politics to work across many different administrations as well as party lines. "Not ending all our problems in four years or eight years, but putting in place, like Harry Truman, structures that are sustainable," says Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes. "A guy like Lugar has spent his life doing that."

In August 2005 the two men traveled together to the former Soviet bloc, rummaging through leaky old stores of radioactive material. Obama, who prides himself on his coolness under pressure, watched admiringly as Lugar maintained his "gentle, imperturbable manner and an inscrutable smile … during the often interminable meetings we held with foreign officials," the candidate later wrote in "The Audacity of Hope." As another Obama aide described Lugar: "He was smart, reserved and had this sense of humor that would defuse things when people got worked up. He was determined without batting an eyelid or giving way on anything." Lugar has endorsed McCain, but some Obama aides suggest the Republican would be first on a shortlist for secretary of state in an Obama administration.

The Uses of Power
As a congressman in 1983, McCain defied a president he admired, Ronald Reagan, over the question of deploying U.S. Marines to Beirut. The mission, he said, simply wasn't clear enough. "What in the world are a few hundred Marines doing [there] but making themselves targets?" McCain's top aide, Mark Salter, later explained. For similar reasons, McCain was publicly leery of committing U.S. troops to a ground war in the desert after Saddam Hussein's tanks rolled into Kuwait in the summer of 1990.

He ultimately voted for the war, and its outcome altered his thinking on the exercise of American power. Desert Storm marked the beginning of the "smart bomb" era. Saddam's supposedly formidable million-man Army was routed in weeks. American soldiers were sent off to Kuwait and returned home as heroes. The sight was liberating for McCain, says a former senior McCain staffer who would discuss the candidate's reaction only on condition of anonymity. "He saw the country [had gotten] over a hump and was able to … move past the legacy of the Vietnam War," says the staffer. McCain had never doubted that "there were circumstances where aggression needed to be reversed." Now, though, he saw that the nation was more willing to agree—and to sacrifice.

That didn't transform McCain into an eager warmonger. He still resisted what he saw as muddled interventions in Somalia and, initially, Bosnia. But after the massacre of thousands of Muslim men in Srebrenica, he endorsed a bombing campaign there, and later harangued President Bill Clinton for not being active enough in halting ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. By the late 1990s, McCain was among the signers of the Iraq Liberation Act, calling for the overthrow of Saddam.

For Obama, the gulf war was less transforming than an event that had occurred a year earlier—Nelson Mandela's release from prison after 27 years. His ecstatically received freedom marked the effective end of apartheid, the brutal policy of white rule in South Africa.

As a freshman student in the early 1980s at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama got his first taste of organized politics and foreign policy in the growing antiapartheid movement. The cause of the day was pushing colleges to give up their investments in South Africa, and Obama's first attempt at public speaking came at a divestment rally. As he later described it in "Dreams From My Father," he began speaking to a group of Frisbee-throwing kids one afternoon on campus, but few were listening when he began in a low voice, saying, "There's a struggle going on." Obama raised his deep baritone, and suddenly "the Frisbee players stopped … The crowd was quiet now, watching me. Somebody started to clap. 'Go on with it, Barack,' somebody shouted … I knew I had them, that the connection had been made."

More important, the success of the antiapartheid movement shaped Obama's views on how to tackle problems that don't lend themselves to military solutions. "Unique among people who have ever run for president, he was coming of age in the '80s, toward the close of the cold war," says speechwriter Ben Rhodes. "There you see the combination of bottom-up movements in Eastern Europe," like Poland's Solidarity organization. "Politically, he believes in bottom-up change with social movements. Economically, he believes in bottom-up growth and development. Similarly, in foreign policy, he believes security starts at the individual level."

Mandela was released three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Obama believed the two historic events converged in some ways, representing what could be achieved when ordinary people united to take action and were supported by international pressure. Obama's view is that the United States should support such "people power" movements wherever possible as the best hope for securing U.S. interests. But aides say he is also realistic about the limitations of both grass-roots movements and international will. In Obama's view, the lessons from South Africa and Germany are tempered by two historic failures that also took place around the same time—the Tiananmen Square massacre in China and the Rwandan civil war in the mid-1990s.

The Predecessors
John McCain's hero worship of Teddy Roosevelt dates back to McCain's days as a boy talking about historical figures at the breakfast table, says McCain's brother, Joe: "He's probably his most important historical role model, a sickly asthmatic kid who became a robust type." Both Bud Day and John Raidt, a former Commerce Committee staff director for McCain, say he mused about TR deep into the night with them too, whether in the Hanoi Hilton or the halls of the U.S. Senate.

Roosevelt is the patron saint of what's come to be called national-greatness conservatism, of which McCain is a proponent. At the turn of the 20th century, a time when the United States was seen as a secondary power, TR built up the country's might, preaching both intensive diplomacy ("speak softly …") and military investment ("… carry a big stick"). McCain admired his sheer grit—Roosevelt once delivered a speech after being shot in the chest—and he appreciated that Roosevelt believed "the U.S. was the greatest force for good in the world," says the senator's brother. The Great White Fleet that Roosevelt sent around the world in 1907 was the greatest armada in history at the time, and a potent warning to America's enemies. (Standing on the fleet's flagship, McCain later wrote, was "a skinny young ensign" named John Sidney McCain, his grandfather, who went on to become a famed admiral in World War II.) "He sought to preserve peace and order by confronting potential adversaries with America's resolve and readiness to fight," McCain later wrote.

McCain is friends with TR's great-grandson Theodore Roosevelt IV. Obama, too, has a direct personal connection to his own presidential hero, John F. Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy has praised Obama as a man who can inspire people "in the way my father made them hope." Ex-New Frontiersmen like speechwriter Ted Sorensen and Newton Minow, a senior Kennedy administration official, have also joined the cause. "In the summer of '06, by chance I saw him speaking at a big event," says Minow. "I watched him dealing with the crowd and said, 'My God, that's JFK all over again'."

While he hasn't made Kennedy his role model as forthrightly as McCain has TR— Obama also likes to invoke Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lincoln—he has sought to identify himself with JFK's foreign policy (at least after the disastrous Bay of Pigs). "Kennedy had a vision for America's leadership role in the world that is very much like his," says Susan Rice. The candidate likes to compare his proposal to talk to Iran without preconditions about its nuclear program to JFK's bold bid to negotiate a comprehensive nuclear-test ban with the Soviets at the height of the cold war. "It was cheeky of Kennedy to do it at a time when we were so polarized," notes one adviser. Obama's "No. 1 quote," this adviser says, comes from JFK: "We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate."

Obama himself, in private meetings, has cited Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis as a model, especially how JFK consulted widely and negotiated directly with the Soviets to defuse an intense situation effectively. Obama admires Kennedy's steady, cool leadership and his ability to bring many people into the process: Ben Rhodes says that Obama also often cites the successful resolution of the crisis as an example of what can come from negotiations, even if there is no immediate resolution. Only five months before, JFK held a summit in Vienna with Nikita Khrushchev. "JFK had begun to acquire some knowledge of Khrushchev, which not only enabled him to be in touch with the Kremlin during the crisis, but to have a little bit of insight into the guy," says Rhodes. "There are benefits to direct contact with adversaries, even if you don't reach agreement. You get to know your adversary."

Everything Changed
McCain was crossing the 14th street bridge in Washington, D.C., near the Pentagon, when he heard news of the first plane crash at the World Trade Center. Upon arriving at his office on Capitol Hill, he immediately went into the office of his then chief of staff, Mark Salter, where he, Salter and other aides watched on television as a second plane hit the South Tower. "I immediately thought, 'This is war'," McCain recalled. A few minutes later, an aide rushed in and announced that the Pentagon had been hit.

Bud Day, his old friend, says McCain's first reaction that day was to suspect Iran. "It was such a shattering day," he says. "They had been attacking us all over: Hizbullah … had blown up the Khobar Towers [in Saudi Arabia], bombed the Marines in Beirut … Who the hell else would it be?"

Salter claims that McCain "knew, like everybody else, that Al Qaeda was almost certainly responsible." And U.S. intelligence did quickly identify Al Qaeda, which was not linked to Hizbullah or Iran, as the culprit. Regardless, for McCain, the event signaled the start of another grand struggle, like the one that his grandfather undertook after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The morning after 9/11, McCain did an interview with his closest Senate friend, Joe Lieberman, on CBS's "The Early Show." Lieberman targeted by name Iran, Iraq and Syria, saying the United States needed to focus on countries that gave terrorists a safe haven. Asked if he agreed, McCain said yes. "These [terrorist] networks are well embedded in some of these countries," he said. Just over a month later, after a deadly strain of anthrax had been mailed to offices on Capitol Hill and to various news organizations, McCain brought up Iraq again, this time on the "Late Show With David Letterman": "Some of this anthrax may—and I emphasize may —have come from Iraq," he told Letterman.

Salter says McCain was responding to the climate of those days, when Washington was looking to pre-empt further attacks. "After 9/11, it became clear that the central security challenge was that terrorists, Islamic extremists, would acquire weapons of mass destruction," Salter says. "You looked around the world, and who was a threat?" McCain, though, continues to group the various strains of Islamic extremism together, calling them collectively the "transcendental challenge" that faces the country and the next president. "You could trace [the threat] back to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut" by Hizbullah, McCain told NEWSWEEK earlier this year.

Obama had a very different reaction to 9/11. He was a state senator heading to a committee hearing in downtown Chicago that morning, driving along Lake Shore Drive. When he heard the initial news reports, he, like many, thought a small propeller plane had mistakenly crashed into the Trade Center. By the time he arrived at his meeting, the second plane had struck, and Obama's building was evacuated. People gathered in the streets, looking up at the sky and at the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States, 10 blocks away. Obama went to his law office, where he worked part time, and watched the television footage of the planes, people jumping from windows, the towers collapsing. Then, after the retaliatory attack on Afghanistan—which he supported to the point of wanting to "take up arms myself," Obama later wrote—"I waited with anticipation for what I assumed would follow: the enunciation of a U.S. foreign policy for the 21st century … This new blueprint never arrived."

For Obama, say aides, 9/11 presented not just a tactical problem—finding Osama bin Laden and punishing the Taliban—but also a golden strategic opportunity. Obama wanted to put in place a framework to tackle a host of 21st-century transnational threats, like nuclear nonproliferation and endemic poverty. Instead, he found the Bush doctrine to be all too similar to the way that Teddy Roosevelt had interpreted the Monroe doctrine—as an excuse to remove unfriendly foreign governments. A year later, Obama was delivering the speech in Chicago's Federal Plaza that first brought him to national attention, vehemently opposing the impending invasion of Iraq as "dumb" and "rash."

For Obama, 9/11 brought into focus all that he had learned abroad—in Indonesia, Pakistan and elsewhere—about how raising people's living standards is key to U.S. national security. He saw the challenge of the post-9/11 era as similar to the one taken up by JFK and, before him, Truman: to introduce long-lasting strategic structures in concert with U.S. allies to tackle the world's worst problems. In a larger sense, 9/11 was a chance to reaffirm America's wisdom and promise as global leader. "Instead, what we got was an assortment of outdated policies from eras gone by, dusted off, slapped together and with new labels affixed," Obama wrote.

How They ' d Lead
Obama and McCain are complicated men, and the pieces of their lives don't exactly fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. But in the four decades since their time in Southeast Asia, a picture of how each might lead begins to emerge. McCain has spent much of his life and career trying to guide America through a complete recovery from Vietnam, championing a Rooseveltian buildup of U.S. might and prestige. Obama is keen on reaching across vast divides like JFK; he seems more preoccupied with restoring U.S. legitimacy and securing America's safety through patient work like Lugar's and summits of understanding, and with rebuilding America's strength from the "bottom up"—through its economy.

It's fair to expect a McCain presidency to be a harder-edged one than Obama's. Like his forefathers, McCain believes in "victory," sees a world made up of enemies and friends and is determined to show resolve above all. His passionate advocacy of friends like Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, his open detestation of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his refusal to talk to Tehran could well produce a series of confrontations. For Obama, the danger is the opposite. He would need to take care that his eagerness for negotiation and mutual understanding doesn't verge into appeasement, whether with Iran, Russia or other rogues. His focus would be different, too: Obama seeks to "contain" the Islamist threat rather than aim for some grand victory over all terrorists.

But the two candidates do have some important things in common we can be fairly sure of. Both know a lot about the real world—they've "pierced the veneer," as the explorer Ernest Shackleton, one of McCain's heroes, once wrote—and are pragmatists at heart. Despite that, neither will miss a chance to trumpet the creed they learned in their youth—that America is a unique place, and its values should be an example for the world.

With Suzanne Smalley, Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe in Washington

new life and old


I think now is a good time to start cultivating relationships. Crazy thought, I know, especially since I'm just about to embark on the "busy" part of my 3rd year rotations. But really, what better time than during Labor & Delivery, when I'm helping new life enter the world, to contemplate the meaning of our human lives?

I have some great people in my life. I feel really lucky. I know they won't necessarily be around forever, so I want to enjoy my time with them now. I have a list of the people I want to keep in my life most. You may be on that list :-)

(ps) Keep good and decent people in your thoughts. I know someone who could use good vibes.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

*sigh*


I don't know what to do, and I'm not sure that anybody else does either. Is it not possible to discover yourself and make mistakes without inflicting too much damage upon others? Is it so hard to live decent lives?

Friday, September 26, 2008

site of the day

In a follow-up to my previous post in which I discovered I had an atrocious carbon footprint, a possible remedy/guide: GreenYour.com, a website that teaches you how to be become more resource efficient in a variety of database-searchable topics. Explore and enjoy!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Was the troop surge really that effective?

I ran across this article today, and thought it was rather interesting. In general, I'm beginning to get the impression that events follow little discernable and predictable cause-and-effect; what we think is the etiology is always just one factor out of many. I will post something else on statistics soon...

Satellite Images Show Ethnic Cleanout in Iraq
-Reuters, 9/19/08

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday

The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves.

The study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A, provides more evidence of ethnic conflict in Iraq, which peaked just before U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of about 30,000 extra U.S. troops.
The extent to which the troop build-up helped halt Iraq's slide into sectarian civil war has been debated, particularly in the United States, with supporters of the surge saying it was the main contributing factor, and others arguing it was simply one of a number of factors.

"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved," Agnew's team wrote in their report.

Agnew's team used publicly available infrared night imagery from a weather satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force.

"The overall night light signature of Baghdad since the U.S. invasion appears to have increased between 2003 and 2006 and then declined dramatically from 20 March 2006 through 16 December 2007," their report said.

They said the night lights of Shi'ite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as did lights in the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound in central Baghdad. Lights increased in the eastern New Baghdad district, another Shi'ite enclave.

Satellite studies have also been used to help document forced relocations in Myanmar and ethnic cleansing in Uganda.

the meaning of this blog's URL


"Birches"
- Robert Frost

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Obama's not the only one who's all talk...

Looking at this transcript of Palin's interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson, she's also full of fluff, and worse, completely ignorant of the magnitude of her actions on world politics. Check out this internal memo leaked the day of her selection as VP: anyone else notice how closely she's sticking to those speaking points? And more importantly, if that's the best the GOP can spin her, should she really be our new vice president?

***

TALKING POINTS: MCCAIN-PALIN '08

McCain-Palin: Team Of Mavericks To Change Washington

Barack Obama has been running for president ever since he was elected to the Senate, but

Sarah Palin is a governor with a record of achieving results for Alaska. Obama's "experience" is running for political office;

Governor Palin's experience is bringing people together to get things done.

The Obama-Biden ticket is big on talk. The McCain-Palin ticket is big on results. To change Washington, it's going to take a team of Mavericks who have a record of accomplishment in shaking up the status quo. Last night we heard a negative, partisan speech from Barack Obama. He made the argument that if we have Democratic one party rule, our problems will be solved.

For those who think that the Democratic Congress has done a great job over the past two years, Barack Obama might be right.

But John McCain has made the case that the problem isn't a Republican Administration or a Democratic Congress, the problem is Washington.

Governor Palin: A Tough Executive With Record Of Results

Governor Palin is a tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president. She has brought Republicans and Democrats together within her Administration and has seen approval ratings of over 80 percent.

1) She has challenged the influence of the big oil companies while fighting for the development of new energy resources.

2) She leads a state that matters to every one of us --

Alaska has significant energy resources and she has been a leader in the fight for America's energy independence.

· She has actually used her veto and cut budgetary spending. And she put a stop to the bridge to nowhere that would have cost taxpayers $400 million dollars.

· In Alaska, she challenged a corrupt system and passed a landmark ethics reform bill.

· As the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself, Governor Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops.

Governor Palin has a record of accomplishment that Barack Obama simply doesn't have. She has spent her time in office shaking up government in Alaska. Barack Obama has spent his time in office running for President.

Her experience in shaking up the status quo is exactly what we need in Washington.

In choosing Governor Palin, John McCain put Washington on notice that he is serious about shaking up the status quo.

What we're seeing is a maverick who has shaken up Washington picking as his teammate a maverick governor who has shaken up her own state.

[end of transmission]

I love SNL


technical difficulties

My laptop is having some problems so I may not be posting as regularly as I'd like to for this next week or so. :-(

Friday, September 12, 2008

pimped during clinic...


... and FAILED. I can't believe I forgot the phrase Mongolian spot. I knew it wasn't child abuse, but the term just would not come to me. I am rather disappointed in myself. Yet again. How much longer must I wait until I am omnipotent?! To quote someone else, "I can't wait until I learn how to be patient."

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

stuff I want


Power Uterus Tote! There's no message per say but the sentiment comes across clear :-)

guilty pleasure: wedding stuff


I know, it's really not suitable for my outward persona. But secretly, I adore wedding decorations and wedding planning. Unless I'm just SWAMPED with work, I'll definitely plan my own. Hell, even if I hire a wedding planner, I'll probably want in on all the little details.

Anyways, Snippet & Ink is the type of wedding website that has the style I like. Clever, classy, and (environmentally and financially) conservative. Plus, it has gorgeous photos and great ideas!

Also, check out this high school alum's blogsite - it's cute!

the soft and the austere...

... is a love affair of every young girl.



If this video doesn't work, use this link.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

two from Ozge Samanci

This first one is from my birthday this year, and I was thrilled that she mentioned Atlanta. Later, I found out it was because she's currently at Georgia Tech, but it still feels like karma.


The second one is from today, and it's a nice sentiment, although I'm having a hard time feeling this particular emotion right now.


(ps) She friended me on facebook! YAY :-)

the sentiment is all wrong


The song no longer applies. I am a little angry.

Home Visits

Followed a home health nurse all day today. I'm still mulling over how it should affect my clinical practice (which was the point of the assignment). All I'm sure of right now is that I could never do a job like that - I give my nurse much kudos for having done this for 14 years. It is too much chasing tails, too many unsupportive families, and too many cockroaches.

One thing the home health visit does make you think about is how your patients cope with life after discharge from the hospital. For instance, one of the patients we saw today was a 24 year old female with uncontrolled type I diabetes. By 22, she had already suffered a stroke that paralyzed her left lower extremity. She was legally blind in one eye and going blind in the other from diabetic retinopathy. She was taking Erythropoietin weekly because her kidneys were already failing, and could no longer produce adequate amounts of red blood cells. These things initially stood out to me because I am a medical student who predominantly works in a clinical setting, and these are the clinical items of interest. But as we left, and she trudged off to lunch - the only person under 60 in this lonely, aseptic nursing home - I thought about how I would feel if I were in situation.

Given the "miracles," of modern science, she'll live well into her 40s. I have to wonder what kind of life that is. I fear that it will be bereft of all those events that make life truly meaningful - having a successful career (she used to be a Wound Care technician, and now she is permanently on disability and likely never to be employed again given her blindness), finding love, creating a family, traveling the world, etc etc etc. The worst part is, I'm befuddled as how I, as a medical professional, can truly help her achieve any of those milestones. I went into medicine because I wanted to give people the ability to lead the lives they deserve, but for a disease such as hers, she will never have a cure within her lifetime. She will never be able to lead the life that she would want. What can I offer her?

I'll think on this some more, but what I don't want to hear is the usual old cliches about how I can help her accept her new role in life with dignity. Having seen what I saw today, I no longer see much dignity in disease.

Monday, September 8, 2008

I'm bad for the environment :-(


According to The Nature Conservatory's carbon footprint calculator, my estimated carbon footprint is 35 tons of CO2 per year. That's above the national US average of 27 tons, and way above the world average of 5.5 tons. By another calculator, it's 19.9 tons, which is "much larger" than the average of 7.5 tons per year. Whichever calculator you use, it's incontrovertible that I'm shamefully bad in terms of CO2 output. And I thought I was a good citizen!

Where is most of the usage coming from? After all, I try to turn off lights, and maintain my car, and to reuse and recycle (or, even easier, donate). Apparently, it's my massive use of transportation. My 4 flights last year and my driving (which is apparently more than the US average, but it's only because I drove to NYC and back folks!!) accounted for a whooping 30% of my carbon footprint - and that's with a pretty energy efficient Mazda6. Most of the rest, roughly 50%, comes from my home usage, in particular my electricity bill.

I would LOVE some advice on how to make that bill go down, because I hate paying whopping electric bills even more than I hate single-handedly destroying the planet. I try to turn the thermostat down low, although I admit sometimes it goes to 74 F as the default temp even though I've tried repeatedly to program it to 80F. I close my laptop when I'm not using it - do I need to actually shut it down? I turn off lights when I'm not in the room. I run the dishwasher only when it's full. I don't water my plants during the day (hell, anyone who's been in my backyard can deduce I hardly water them at all). I use energy-saving light bulbs, you know, the types that use 15 watts to run a 60 watt equivalent, and last 10 times as long. Any tips, anyone? What am I doing wrong???

Anyways, here is a link to "50 Ways to Help the Planet." The tips are good, but I'm already doing most of them, so maybe helping the planet isn't the same as reducing your carbon footprint. But if you're not doing these things already, it can't hurt :-)

Sunday, September 7, 2008

a commitment


Yesterday, I found a cache of my old writings, and reading through my old thoughts made me see that I really have changed these past few years. It was a bit of a surprise, because I really didn't think I had. I guess it all just comes upon you so gradually that the change is imperceptible. I want different things now than I did when I was 18, I admire different types of people, and I demand different qualities in my friends. Who would've known??

So, in response to that, I'm going to try to become a little bit more self-aware, and I'm going to do that via my blog. I'm going to try and post something at least every other day, for an entire year. The posts might not be significant; they may be quotes, they may be links to articles, products I find interesting, or just a thought I had. But they shall be posted!

It's an experiment on several levels.
1. Can I do it? I AM inclined to be lazy!
2. Will I read through my posts in the future, and think, as I did while reading my old journals, "Wow, this is a different person than who I am now!" (I suspect I will).
3. Finally, I hope that this promise will keep me thinking, even if the thoughts aren't deep. What I've realized about med school is that it gets so busy and overwhelming that you forget to take a step back and actually SEE the world again. Or to look inside yourself, and see how all these experiences are changing you. I'm worried that I'm turning into a competent automaton, without any sense of the beauty of things I used to have.

I once told a friend to make a list of all the things he loved best about his youth, and to hold on to those things. I still believe that's a good thing to do, but I fear I haven't exactly been doing that myself. So here is the list of the traits of my youth I'd like to hold on to: a sense of wonder, unbridled laughter, and an optimism about the world that does not preclude rationality.

Jonas Brothers - What's the big deal??


I'm (half-heartedly) watching the VMAs right now, and lo and behold, the new tween pop sensation is on - JONAS BROTHERS. Honestly, I do NOT understand why they're so freakin' popular. I know that I'm not exactly their target audience, being in the bitter 20s, but the adoration they receive is NAUSEATING. Case in point: the VMAs had 1000 screaming girls chasing them as part of their act, and those girls sure looked thrilled to be that creepy. Below are my Top 3 Reasons why the Jonas Brothers are not all that:

1. Obviously amateur song-writing.

Let's quote from this song: "Ooh, this is an SOS, don't wanna second guess, this is the bottom line, it's true I gave my all to you, now my heart's in two, and I can't find the other half." Mind you, this is a song that starts off lamenting the fact that his girlfriend brought her friends to a date. That sucks, but dude, it didn't sound like it was that deep of a relationship to begin with, and certainly not one that you could give all your heart into. I mean, seriously, I know you're only, like, 14, but even at 14, you should know that annoying friends don't qualify as a traumatic, heartbreaking occurence. You know what it sounds like, Nick Jonas? It sounds like you have crappy taste in women.... and your pathetic riffs and jumping around in a faux-emo pink shirt and tie won't make up for that. Also, you blatantly ripped off from Annie Lennox in the third stanza - "Walking on Broken Glass" is HER line, bitches.

2. Cliche and insincere. Let's quote from another popular song of theirs, "Burnin' Up": "I can't hold myself back - high heels, red dress." What, did you just watch The Matrix? This is such a stereotypical image of a "sexy" woman, and in any case, I don't see why the wholesome, family friendly Jonas Brothers would be shooting their cream over a vamp like that. Unless, of course, they're not really that wholesome (see critique #3). The point is, unless you lead a completely vapid and boring existence, there are a hella lot more things to sing about besides a pin-up. A lot more DEEP things to sing about. Why don't you pick out some actually meaningful experiences, and a song with some depth to it? Listen to some Dar Williams for godsake.

3. Irritatingly smug about their chastity vows. I'll be honest about this: this is probably my top pet peeve about Evangelical Christians. Is it really that much of an accomplishment to abstain until marriage (especially if you get married by 23 like most of these guys)? Does it really make you a proper Christian, or does it just mean that you have standards like many other people in the world? In my humble opinion, it's pretty weak to have to wear a ring to remind yourself to be chaste. Or to make sure other people know you're not the type to bang their brains out tonight. Should that not be obvious already if you're such a good Christian?

Moral of this post: Jonas Brothers, pssht. It's all about Hanson, baby! Now THAT shit is deep!!

site of the day


A Softer World

Friday, September 5, 2008

ah, Lou Lipsitz

I'd let you be my psychotherapist, if you'd let me do you...

"10 Warnings for Men"

"Beware of the man who praises liberated women; he is planning to quit his job."
- Erica Jong, "Seventeen Warnings in Search of A Feminist Poem"

Beware of the woman poet;
she's waiting to be surprised by a swan.

Beware of the woman with sharp pencils;
she thinks you're a marginal note.

Beware of the woman who keeps coming toward you;
she thinks she's the light at the end of the tunnel.

Beware of the woman who accepts you as you are;
she's weary.

Beware of the woman who loves to cook;
she'll make you delve into the leftovers.

Beware of the woman who won't cook;
she'll eat you raw.

Beware of the woman who won't be touched;
she keeps a list of small injuries.

Beware of the woman who lifts weights;
she'll let you down.

Beware of the unliberated woman;
she knows when to call her lawyer.

Beware of the liberated woman;
she's her own lawyer.

something old


From China 2004:

And sometimes, I feel like the glass of the

window of a cement house: seeing everything,

pure and lucid with hope, but inextricably

melded to that awful cement, made more

awful by the fact that I would shatter

should it all disappear.


Thursday, September 4, 2008

"Why the Media Should Apologize"

This was linked to me by a friend from college. I've got a lot of (conservative) friends here who have been talking my ear off about how the liberal media has been unfairly bashing poor Sarah Palin. This response just about sums my sentiments on the matter. Brilliant, Roger Simon, just brilliant.



ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols.

Sarah Palin hit the nail on the head Wednesday night (and several in the audience wish she had hit some reporters on the head instead) when she said: “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”

But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways:

First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture.

Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it).

Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.”

Why go there? What trees does that plant?

Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.

Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”

Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to.

Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.

Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.

Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

The official theme of the convention’s third day was “prosperity,” but the unofficial theme was “the media are really, really awful.”

Even Mike Huckabee, who campaigned for president this year by saying “I am a conservative, but I am not mad at anybody,” discovered Wednesday night that he is mad at somebody.

“I’d like to thank the elite media for doing something,” Huckabee said, “that, quite frankly, I didn’t think could be done: unify the Republican Party and all of America in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

And could that be the real point of the attacks on the media? To unify the Republican Party?

No, that is simply the cynical, media view.

Though as Lily Tomlin says, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up.”

I couldn’t resist that. For which I am sorry.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

If Evil Exists


How would my worldview change? Do I believe in it already?

2 Posts about Sarah Palin (Part 2)

And now for the David Brooks article...

"What the Palin Pick Shows"

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

2 Posts about Sarah Palin (Part 1)


I don't care about Bristol Palin's teen pregnancy - and unless Sarah Palin proves herself to be a hypocrite on the issue, America shouldn't either. I am more interested by the critiques brought up by these two articles, both of which present a fairly McCain-tolerant worldview.

The first is by Robert J. Elisberg, printed in the Huffington Post. The second is by David Brooks, at the New York Times. Two biased liberal media outlets, you claim? Hate the publication, but not the ideas.
***

"The Worst VP Nominee in US History"

There was a TV ad for deodorant that said, "Never let them see you sweat." The John McCain campaign has just showed the world that it is drenched.

Selecting Sarah Palin as its choice for a vice presidential candidate is perhaps the worst such choice in American History. To be fair, maybe there are worse choices, but I don't know how bad William O. Butler was when he ran with Lewis Cass against Zachary Taylor.

But it's far worse than Dan Quayle, who was a sitting senator. Worse even than Geraldine Ferraro, who at least served in Congress for three-terms. And far worse than William Miller, a choice so obscure when selected by Barry Goldwater that he (honestly) later did an American Express commercial asking, "Do you know me?" And that ad was after the election. But even Miller had been a Congressman for 12 years. And been a prosecutor during the Nuremberg War trials against Nazis. Sarah Palin lists her credits as a hockey mom.

There was a point during the Republican primaries when I was trying to figure out who I hoped got the presidential nomination. Someone so weak he'd be easy for the Democrats to beat, or someone more challenging who at least wouldn't be a disaster for America. I decided on the latter because America has to resolve its serious problems and can't afford risking some glitch where another George Bush got elected. And so I felt that John McCain, for all his weaknesses, was the lesser of all evils and was glad he got the nomination. Throw that out the window. McCain-Palin is an unthinkable disaster.

I completely understand the reasoning behind the decision for John McCain to select Sarah Palin. Absolutely. It's the thinking that settled on Sarah Palin that's missing.

No doubt John McCain will get some women to vote for him who wouldn't have otherwise, and even some independents. But he will also probably lose as many Republicans uncomfortable with a woman on the ticket - let alone a woman with so little experience as Sarah Palin. Not to mention that the choice will cause many undecided Democratic women to be aghast and push them back to following their Democratic beliefs. And further, it will lose all the independents who look at the GOP ticket and say "This is who I'm supposed to give my vote for the next four years to lead and protect America??" It may even appeal to right-wing evangelicals for her strong pro-life stance and get some to vote - but that position and others related to it are specifically what loses even more women voters. And men. Ultimately, the nomination will lose far, far more votes than it gains.

But this is not the reason the decision is so terrible.

It's always said that the most important decision a presidential candidate makes is their pick for vice president. It shows their thinking and judgment. John McCain, in his first decision, has just told the world that he believes Sarah Palin is the most qualified person to be a heartbeat from the presidency. Forgetting all the available men for a moment, if John McCain felt it critical to select a woman in an effort to somehow grab the Hillary Clinton supporters, look at his choice of women he had available: Christine Todd Whitman, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Elizabeth Dole, Susan Collins, even - for goodness sake - Condoleezza Rice. Or Carly Fiorina. Each of these have marks against them, and perhaps some might not have wanted to run, but it's near-impossible to look at the list and suggest to the American public that Sarah Palin is the best choice of Republican women to be vice president. And again, this is ignoring the men he who could have been chosen.

It's not that Sarah Palin is inexperienced. It's that this is gross political misconduct.

Sarah Palin has been governor of Alaska for just a bit over 18 months. Alaska has a population of 683,000. (Though that doesn't include moose.) This would only make it the 17th most populous city in the United States. Just ahead of Fort Worth.

Before that, she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Population 9,000. I know Republicans like to promote "small town values," but this is taking things to ridiculous extremes, don't you think? I'm from Glencoe, Illinois, population 8,762. It's so small it doesn't even have a mayor, it has an appointed village manager. I'm sure that Paul Harlow is doing wonderfully at his job in the village - but I don't expect that he sees himself as even wanting to be a heartbeat from the U.S. President in 18 months. You know what the top news story is on the Glencoe website? "Fire Hydrant Painting Underway." (To be fair, it's the #2 story. The top news is a clarification about displaying political signage.)

Do you know what the first two "powers and duties" are for the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska? Check their municipal code:

1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie;


2. Act as ceremonial head of the city;

Swell.

If you live in small town America (and I mean really, really small), look around you and be honest - do you see your mayor (or village manager) as a heartbeat from the presidency in 18 months?

But that's not the reason either that the decision to make Sarah Palin the VP nominee is so terrible.

It's one thing to discuss how unqualified Sarah Palin is. That's a national matter and huge. But on a grassroots political level, her nomination takes away the Republicans' ONLY weapon in the campaign - calling Barack Obama inexperienced. They haven't even been trying to run on the issues, or on the eight-year record of George Bush, which John McCain has supported almost 95% of the time. They've only been running on the faux-issue of Barack Obama's experience of 14 years in federal and state government. Yes, Sarah Palin is merely running for VP, not president, but with a 72 year-old candidate with a history of serious medical issues, this is who they're saying is able to step in as president in a heart-beat. She has so little experience that she makes Sen. Obama look like FDR, Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar combined. So, the Republicans pulled the rug out from under themselves. They have no issues. The economy? Housing? The national debt? Education? The Environment? Iraq? Afghanistan? Nothing. All they have is "Dear Democratic women: please pretend our VP candidate is Hillary Clinton. Just forget that she's pro-life. And against most things Democrats stand for."

But that's not the reason the decision is so terrible.

Because if the hope for John McCain is to get women to vote for him who otherwise supported Hillary Clinton - if anything could get Hillary Clinton campaigning in full force and fury...this is it. She likely would have campaigned hard, but it's in Hillary Clinton's best interest to be the leading voice for women, and the leading woman candidate for president in the future, so having another woman as the potential Vice President (and potential President) is a significant challenge to that. The Republicans just opened Pandora's Box and brought Hillary Clinton roaring to Barack Obama's side on the Democratic train. And Bill Clinton, too.

Yet even that's not the reason the decision is so terrible.

What this does in the most profound and grandiose way possible is give lie to John McCain's pompous posturing that he Always Puts America First. And that undercuts the most prominent campaign issue of his entire career, that everything he does is for reasons of honor. There is nothing honorable about making Sarah Palin your vice presidential nominee. Nothing. Unless you define honor as "blatantly pandering."

But that's not the reason either that this decision is so terrible.

But before we get to that, let's look at the actual announcement to make Gov. Sarah Palin (AK - pop. 683,000) the Republican nominee for president, and put the horrible decision in perspective.

First, John McCain stood at the podium, looking up-and-down reading his speech. It's impossible not to compare that to Barack Obama giving his majestic speech the night before that even conservative analysts were admiring in awe.

Second, the cameras were polite enough to avoid it, but there were empty seats in the gym. It's impossible not to compare that to a stadium of 75,000 people that Barack Obama spoke to the night before.

Third, when people around the nation were waiting to hear about Sarah Palin's qualifications and gravitas to be Vice President of the United States, the first five minutes of her speech were spent talking about her husband being a champion snowmobiler.

Fourth, when she finally got around to her qualifications, pretty much all we discovered was that she fought to cut property taxes. And then, she basically stopped there.

She did, however, mention becoming energy self-sufficient - by talking about how she supported drilling in Alaska!!! Perhaps to Republicans this is being an environmentalist, but to most of America, not so much. Then again, she's also against putting polar bears on the endangered species list (which the government did), so maybe her environmental qualifications are more lax than she thinks.

And then, finally, she spent the rest of her time praising John McCain. Fine, that's very supportive of her...except that the one question on everyone's mind was not -- "can you say John McCain is a swell guy and tell us that he was a POW", the question on everyone's mind was - "Who in God's name are you, and please tell us why you should be a heart-beat from the presidency?"

In the end, the only case she herself made for being on the ticket was praising Hillary Clinton! That's it, period. Now, it might be enough to attract some women -- but it doesn't make a case for the ticket. Why? Hint: some women did vote for Hillary Clinton solely because she was a woman. But most women voted for Hillary Clinton because she was a Democrat, as well as a woman, who stood for important Democratic values they seriously believed in. If Sarah Palin wants to praise Hillary Clinton, go for it. But at least understand what you're praising. Because it will likely come back and bite you.

It was a thin, nothing, empty speech. It was a speech to be head of the Chamber of Commerce. Compare that to the speech by Joe Biden when Barack Obama introduced him. Eloquent, soaring and explaining in blunt detail why John McCain should not be president. Joe Biden must have been watching Sarah Palin's speech, in order to take notes in preparation for his debate with her and thought, "This isn't fair."

And all that's not even the reason the decision is so terrible.

The reason is because the election is not about Sarah Palin. Or about Joe Biden. As much as TV analysts want to be excited by the balloons and hoopla, tomorrow the air will be let out, and there are still over two months to go for the campaign.

The campaign is about Barack Obama and John McCain.

Sarah Palin's nomination doesn't change that. In fact, it reinforces it. Nothing about putting Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket changes a word that Barack Obama said in his vibrant acceptance speech - about himself, about his issues, and about John McCain's repeatedly faulty judgment on the critical issues facing America.

What Sarah Palin's nomination does do is focus attention on John McCain's age. Indeed, the nomination was made on his birthday, when he turned 72, the oldest man ever to run for president. As the crowd sang "Happy Birthday to You," you almost sensed that through John McCain's clenched smile, saying, "Thanks for reminding me," that what he was thinking underneath was "Please, oh, please, don't sing the 'How old are you now?' part." And how good a message was it that he's saying he supposedly forgot it was his birthday?

Vice presidents are usually selected as people who are adept at blasting the other side's presidential candidate, because it's only the presidential candidate that matters. Joe Biden has already done that - twice - at length, spoken as someone who knows John McCain well and likes him. Sarah Palin had her first chance...and whiffed. Didn't even try. And it's hard to imagine what she has in her arsenal that will remotely allow her to do so in the future.

The election is about the presidential candidates. And the selection of Sarah Palin now allows Barack Obama to campaign untouched by the Republican ticket. John McCain's only other option is for himself to personally become negative for two months - which is disaster in presidential politics.

Now add on all the problems expressed above. Sarah Palin's inexplicably laughable lack of substance, most-especially on the foreign policy stage. Her taking away the one issue, experience, Republicans were even attempting. Her pushing away voters who might otherwise be willing to vote for a senator with 26 years in the Senate. Her bringing Hillary Clinton aggressively back into the campaign. Her inability to offer anything to off-set Joe Biden. Her standing as supposedly the most-qualified Republican woman as John McCain's first decision.

And, in the end, it all focuses back on Barack Obama, with his indictment of eight years of the Bush Administration and of John McCain's flawed judgment - and John McCain's defense of all that.

Republicans might be dancing earlier today, because there was a lot of fun music playing. But the music has stopped. The actual campaign has now started. For Republicans, it might have ended.