REASONS...

This arrived yesterday as one of the many political emails I receive every day.  I thought it expressed things pretty well...

Thanks for reading.  Please join me... think about posting your own reasons to support this president in his reelection bid.  The country has a lot riding on his success!

HIGH MARKS...

... to President Obama for his handling of international affairs.  I sympathize with those on the left who criticize him for his use of drone strikes to take out Al Qaeda leaders and their gang of terrorists; I too shudder at the use of deadly force.  But then I am not the president, and I do not have the responsibility of protecting the lives of the innocent people these miscreants plan to attack.  I believe that in this world we humans have created, our leaders are constrained to undertake actions we civilians would eschew, and certainly disapprove.  I wish it were otherwise.

But reading and hearing what his opponent had to say in Israel yesterday, for the benefit of the right-wingers there and in this country, I am reminded what a good job this president has done.  His calm, thoughtful response to challenging, potentially destabilizing, sometimes chaotic events in other parts of the world has done much to restore this country's image as a strong center amidst the storms.  What Governor Romney seems to promise is a return to Bush-like bellicosity--the last thing the world needs.  His vision of America's place in the world is in stark contrast to the president's, and blithely ignores the realities of a new century in which co-operation is sorely needed in the place of enmity.

We should, by now, have left the twentieth century behind us.  Obama, in my view, has done that.  As in so many other matters, Romney appears to be stuck there.  On his "world tour," he looks like a dinosaur trampling clumsily through the morass.

A QUESTION...

... for Governor Romney.  A Buddhist question, really.  What are your plans for addressing the needs of the poor, the sick, and the aged?  

It's a serious question.  I’m pretty much clear about the answer I’d get from Obama and the Democrats: it’s a civilized society’s responsibility to provide help for those unable to help themselves. They support long-standing programs like Social Security and Medicare, along with all those government programs that provide needed help for the disabled and the poor.  They believe that it’s the government’s responsibility to assure educational opportunity for all. 

With Romney and the Republicans, I remain bewildered.  I know that they oppose “big government” in virtually all its functions except the military.  I understand that they wish to make huge cuts in the programs that the poor, the sick, and the aged have come to rely on for their security and well-being.  But I have yet to hear from any of them any clear statement on how, having made their cuts, they plan to address those needs. 

The needs, we can be sure, will not simply go away.  People will continue to get sick and grow old.  People will continue to struggle with poverty.  So my question for Governor Romney is a genuine one: what are your plans for addressing the needs of the poor, the sick, and the aged?  And I want to hear specific answers, not generalities.  The poor, the sick and the aged cannot survive on generalities. 

I would love nothing better than to enter into serious dialogue with those who do not share my point of view—those who would call me “liberal” and consider themselves “conservative.”  And serious dialogue, as I understand it, means coming up with alternative proposals for the real problems that we face.  I am familiar with all the negative arguments.  I’d like to talk about positive solutions. 

ROMNEY

When I thought about starting this "Vote Obama 2012" blog, I promised myself that it would concentrate only on the good and useful things that the president has accomplished, or tried to accomplish, during his time in office; and on what I saw to be his fair-minded approach to the country's problems, as well his substantial character and intellect.  I have reached the point in my own thinking where a less "fair and balanced" approach is called for.  With the Republicans working insidiously to stack the deck by manipulating the vote and exploiting the money advantage assured by their plutocratic supporters (now unleashed from any public accountability by Citizens United) it's becoming clear to me that a different approach is needed.  We need to talk not only about Obama's strengths, but also about his opponent's all-too evident weaknesses.

Do you think, for example, that Romney's current "world tour" will score points?  London, Israel, Poland.  Not sure why Poland--given his propensity for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, he may come up with a light bulb joke or two, I suppose.  But seriously, after his dubious performance in the UK, he has a ways to go in establishing his international diplomatic credentials.  He also has work to do in improving the image he projects on the television screen, where he seems to me insufferably smug.  But perhaps that's just me.

He was at pains, on NBC this morning, to distinguish his campaign--all about "the issues facing this great country"--with that of Obama, who descends, he says, to personal invective.  I have heard some uncomplimentary references from Obama's lips, directed at his Republican opponent; but they seem, frankly, rather mild and generally justified when compared with some of the insults sent his way.  The Romney campaign resorts indiscriminately to words like "complete failure" to describe his presidency, his handling of the economic crisis, of social issues, of international affairs (the latter, incidentally, the issue where the polls give him the greatest credit.)  There's a sustained and unrelenting attempt to cast a blanket of failure over everything the president has done, without mention of the fact that he has been stymied at every significant corner by a determined and implacable opposition to his smallest effort to move ahead.

From Romney, contrary to his protestations, I hear nothing by generalizations, unproven assertions and vague claims that he'll do a better job.  From Obama I hear concrete plans, specific proposals, hard facts and reasoned arguments.

In a rather cowardly manner, I thought, Romney distanced himself in the NBC interview from his wife's Olympic aspirations for her horse in the dressage contest--this despite the fact that he has apparently used the animal to provide himself with a substantial tax deduction.  I'm guessing that he prefers to downplay this association with an upscale, elitist, rather dandyish sport.  It would be a different story, I'm sure, if she was entering a car in a NASCAR speedway race.

Is this all relevant?  Is it fair game to point out the man's deficiencies?  My own feeling is that it all goes to character, and that Romney has some serious gaps to bridge to demonstrate his qualifications for the Oval Office.

WAR ON DEMOCRACY?

(Cross-posted to The Buddha Diaries)

I share the view expressed in today's lead editorial in the New York Times:

When Gov. Scott Walker moved to strip Wisconsin public employees of their collective-bargaining rights last year, a few weeks after taking office, it was clear that he wasn’t doing it to save the state money. If that had been the case, he would have accepted the unions’ agreement to pay far more in health care and pension costs. His real goal was political: to break the unions by demonizing their “bosses,” ending their ability even to collect dues and removing them as a source of money and energy for Democrats.

Am I a conspiracist--or simply a realist--for believing that the monied interests in this country have been working for years to acquire a stranglehold on the political system?  Or that there is, as Hillary Clinton once famously asserted, a "vast right-wing conspiracy"?  She was widely ridiculed, of course, for that incautious statement.  But I have always believed she spoke the truth.  The recent public television special on her husband, former President Bill Clinton was an alarming reminder of the similarities between the difficulties of his presidency and that of Barack Obama.  He was the target of the same legislative obstinate non-cooperation, the same hatred, the same personal attacks.  His legitimacy was questioned.  From his first day in office, as with Obama, the main objective of the Republicans was to get rid of him as fast as possible, or at the very least to disempower him until they could re-empower themselves.

I wrote yesterday about the role of money in the Wisconsin election.  I am not alone, I know, in my fear that money has already purchased our legislative process--and, indeed, the very highest level of our judicial system.  Citizens United is only one on a series of decisions that raise doubts--since Bush v. Gore!--about the impartiality of the Supreme Court.  The disempowerment of the unions as a political force has been the goal of the wealth-driven right wing for years.  In tandem with nation-wide state legislative actions to cull electoral roles and gerrymander political districts, the effort has clearly proved effective.  Not effective enough as yet, it seems, for the corporate powers, who continue to pour vast sums of money into contests like Wisconsin's in order to achieve their goal.

The preeminently white male right wing establishment is determined to fight back against the rising surge of power shifting into the hands of women and "minority" voters.  The poor are easy for them to keep in line.  It's my hope that their attempt to stem the demographic tide of rising consciousness among those who do not think like them and wish to challenge their power will eventually prove as vain as King Canute's.  My fear is that their defeat will come too late, only after their assault on democracy itself has damaged this nation beyond repair.  They risk bringing about the irreversible decline of the very nation they loudly claim to honor and protect.

NAUSEATING

No question but that Newark Mayor Cory Booker mis-spoke on that Sunday morning news show, when he used strong, passionate language to assail the use of personal attack ads, which he described as "nauseating."  Fair enough.  But he misspoke in suggesting a comparison between the Obama campaign ads about Bain capital and the Republican reversion to the old Rev. Wright assault on Obama.  As many commentators have already pointed out, Romney is running hard on his record as a successful "job-creator" as a businessman, which makes that record a legitimate subject for investigation and criticism.  Only by the wildest stretch of the imagination could Obama be accused of sharing the rabid anti-American views expressed on one occasion long ago by the Rev. Wright.

Still, the Republicans leap in with both feet when they see an opening, and they found one here.  Romney now openly accuses Obama of scurrilous personal attacks and self-righteously proclaims his own intention to run a spotlessly clean campaign.  It's amazing to watch the truth being turned so smoothly on its head--and being echoed by the multitude of right-wing zealots.  Booker himself has forcefully rejected his co-option into the Romney campaign, but that does not prevent the machinery of politics from turning his remarks into sausage for their breakfast.  I have no doubt we'll be seeing Booker's face in many a television commercial.

Obama's response to the press was, as always, measured.  I have not heard him stoop to a single personal attack on Romney.  Not so his opponent, who glibly "stands by" his comments, "whatever they were," in which he unambiguously accused Obama of wanting to turn this country into a "less Christian nation."  I personally would applaud such an effort, but the president has given no indication of attempting such a laudable goal.  But the remark allowed Romney to signal insidious support to those who persist in believing Obama to be a Muslim, bent on converting the entire country to Islam and introducing sharia law; and he stands by it, whatever it was.

Mayor Booker erred, in my view, in seeming to equate the strategies of the two campaigns.  I myself work hard to dissociate my personal opinions of Romney-which are not too high--from my critical understanding of the policies with which he proposes to lead the country.  I am not always successful.  But I can still be appalled by the cognitive dissonance purposefully exploited by the other side, where simple, self-evident truths get twisted into lies, and self-evident lies are presented insistently as truths.

GIVING CREDIT...

... where's it's due.

My friend and frequent Buddha Diaries reader Gary dropped me a line to remind me to take note of the arrival of Chen Guangcheng in New York.  It is, as he suggests, both a tribute to the deliberate and unflappable approach of Obama--and of course his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton--to the management of international affairs, and a rebuke to those who would go off half-cocked in response to the kind of crisis the blind lawyer's dramatic run for freedom might provoke.

I admire the quality of restraint.  Obama's refusal to act in haste attracts the ire of those to the left of him as well as of those to the right.  But he's right.  Two recent examples come to mind.  The first is the thoughtful--and to many, much too slow--process of self examination that brought him to his expression of support for same-sex marriage.  He stands accused from both sides of acting out of political contingency; I see it differently.  His statement, though likely precipitated by his Vice-President's remarks a few days earlier, emphasized the personal nature of his "evolution" to a new position, describing it as the result of internal debate, of discussions with friends and family, and of seeing things through the eyes of others--notably his children.  No doubt there were also political considerations but the man is, after all, a politician and must, of necessity, concern himself with the political repercussions of his actions.  They are a part of the debate.

The second example comes from my reading of this article by David E. Sanger in today's New York Times, describing in detail the process by which he reached his current position on the war in Afghanistan--a process that began in 2009 and reached its conclusion only recently.  I have no doubt but that the president was mindful of the conflicting political winds that swirled about him: those on the left dismayed, if not outraged by his failure to bring it to a swift conclusion; and those on the right demanding more aggressive action.  There were the voices, too, of his civilian advisors, and those of the military brass--not to mention those of NATO allies, of the internally warring Afghans and the neighboring nations, especially Pakistan.  Sanger's article describes a thorough, thoughtful, patient process, a willingness to listen and hold back until his own path became clear to him.  I have every confidence that he will pursue that path with the same patience and refusal to be swayed by those on all sides less patient than himself.

The President is given little credit for this quiet deliberation.  It does not lend itself to wild applause, and  mostly goes overlooked and under appreciated.  I myself am grateful for his steadiness of purpose.  It is infinitely preferable to the shoot-from-the-hip impulsiveness of his predecessor, which needlessly cost many human lives and hastened economic debacle.  It's time, I'd say, to give credit where it's due.

(Cross-posted from The Buddha Diaries.)