Bill’s View

The United States far less than the shining example of democratic governance it claims to be. Roughly fifty percent of the eligible population simply doesn’t bother to vote in a presidential election. Furthermore, most people, including most Americans, think that the candidate with the highest popular vote wins the election.

Ask Al Gore if such is true. In the 2000 election, running against George Bush, the Democrat had nearly three-quarters of a million more votes than did his opponent, yet Bush won the election. How did that happen? The short answer is the unique institution known as the Electoral College.

Most Americans are clueless as to how this anachronistic and fundamentally undemocratic institution actually works. Eight years ago they – and much of the rest of the world – waited for more than a month before a determination was made as to which candidate won Florida’s disputed twenty-seven electoral votes. As it turned out, George Bush was alleged to have defeated Gore in Florida by fewer that 1,000 votes. Yet, the Republican was awarded all twenty-seven of Florida’s votes, allowing him to eke out a narrow five vote victory in the Electoral College and, consequently, the American presidency. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Florida’s governor in those days was Jeb Bush, George’s younger brother. Click to continue »

The United States far less than the shining example of democratic governance it claims to be. Roughly fifty percent of the eligible population simply doesn’t bother to vote in a presidential election. Furthermore, most people, including most Americans, think that the candidate with the highest popular vote wins the election.

Ask Al Gore if such is true. In the 2000 election, running against George Bush, the Democrat had nearly three-quarters of a million more votes than did his opponent, yet Bush won the election. How did that happen? The short answer is the unique institution known as the Electoral College.

Most Americans are clueless as to how this anachronistic and fundamentally undemocratic institution actually works. Eight years ago they – and much of the rest of the world – waited for more than a month before a determination was made as to which candidate won Florida’s disputed twenty-seven electoral votes. As it turned out, George Bush was alleged to have defeated Gore in Florida by fewer that 1,000 votes. Yet, the Republican was awarded all twenty-seven of Florida’s votes, allowing him to eke out a narrow five vote victory in the Electoral College and, consequently, the American presidency. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Florida’s governor in those days was Jeb Bush, George’s younger brother. Click to continue »

Bill Ayers is, by all accounts, a mild-mannered professor in his mid-sixties who teaches at the University of Illinois. He lives with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. That’s the same neighborhood in which Barack Obama and his family live. Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, lives there as well. So does my sister and her husband. My brother-in-law teaches at the University of Chicago Medical School. Before getting elected to the United State Senate, Obama taught at its Law School.

Hyde Park is a genteel, slightly upscale, southside neighborhood that borders the campus of the University of Chicago. It’s a neighborhood that’s not marked by great wealth, but it does have a racially mixed population filled with various kinds of professionals who prefer urban to suburban living. It has lots of bookstores, organic food outlets, funky cafes, interesting restaurants, coffee houses and an extraordinary intellectual life.

Hyde Park is surrounded on its other three sides by far less well off black, urban ghettoes. It was in these surrounding neighborhoods that Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer in the eighties. Click to continue »

As I write, there are a mere twenty-seven days to go until the American people decide whom they wish to see as their next president. Normally, about half the population doesn’t even bother to vote. For many, voting is irrelevant: “What difference does it make who is elected? Why waste my time?”

My own guess is that, because of the unprecedented historical circumstances – the racial factor – the voter turnout will be a good bit larger this November 4; perhaps close to sixty percent. Some normally non-voters will vote simply to vote against Obama because he is black, but many more will vote for him because they see in him a change from what is typical American politics. A larger turnout should work to Obama’s favor.

Lots of things can happen in the next four weeks to change the campaign’s dynamics. In an American presidential election there is always the possibility of an “October Surprise”. They’ve happened before and they could happen again. A conspiracy-minded colleague of mine thinks the Republicans will announce in the next week or so they have captured of killed Osama bin Laden, an event that would swing the voters toward McCain. We’ll have to wait on that. Click to continue »

The answer to the question posed in the headline above is, “Probably not”, but the avatars and born again prophets of the miraculous curative powers of the Church of Free Market Capitalism are trembling around the world today. As a system it probably hasn’t yet run out of answers to its periodic crises.

Nevertheless, global capitalism is staggering and the system shows signs of breaking down, if only temporarily. Capitalism has shown throughout its history to have amazing powers of recovery and capacity for rejuvenation and I suspect it will pull off yet another recovery, but this will be followed, as inevitably as night follows day, by yet another crisis.

This past week two more megabanks in the United States – Washington Mutual and Wachovia - went belly up. The former was seized by the US government and is being sold off piecemeal with the government, presumably, picking up most of the worthless paper that had been passing for assets.
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The men bearing long knives bespeaking of political assassination came for South African President, Thabo Mbeki, last week. The African National Congress’ party mandarins had met privately and voted to tell Mbeki he had to go immediately, even though he still had another year to run on his second term. The already mortally wounded Mbeki was put out of his misery; his political life terminated.

This political coup de’grace signaled the final victory of the party faction loyal to current ANC party leader, Jacob Zuma. Zuma, Mbeki’s long time rival for ANC dominance, had been the Deputy President until dismissed by the President several years ago. Mbeki’s excuse then was that Zuma was under fire for corruption and other malfeasance. However, it was clear to observers of the ANC’s internecine conflicts that Mbeki had used Zuma’s legal troubles, which may well have been valid, as an excuse to rid himself of a rival.

The charismatic and voluble Zuma, unfortunately, did not go quietly into his political good night. He first tended to his problems which resulted in an acquittal on rape charges and then managed to have the corruption charges dropped. Click to continue »

Until recently I have been convinced that Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States. I thought it would be close, but I was pretty certain it would be Obama. Now I’m no longer certain. Obama and the Democratic Party’s mandarins are feeling the same; worried!

It is axiomatic of American politics that substantive issues are not what win elections. American presidential elections are decided by two things: “hot button” cultural issues which mostly are not presidential prerogatives anyway. Obama is pro-choice and McCain pro-life, but Roe v. Wade (1973) was a Supreme Court decision declaring state laws forbidding women to terminate an unwanted pregnancy unconstitutional. The president has no control over a Supreme Court decision. Even if the Court reversed itself most northern, urban states would immediately pass laws permitting this procedure and, of course, women from those states forbidding it would immediately go to those that did.

The second is personality and something elusive called “character”. The candidate who inflicts the most damage by impugning his opponent’s character is the one who will win. In American political jargon this is referred to as “going negative” through the use of “attack” ads. In the academic or intellectual world, where contentious debate is normal, such tactics are referred to as “ad hominem” because they go after the opponent’s character instead of his argument. In the scholarly world such ad hominem arguments are frowned upon and those who use them are considered foolish in front of his peers. Click to continue »

Before it recedes, mercifully, into history next January the Bush Administration and their Democratic enablers (Obama’s V-P candidate, Joe Biden is only one; Obama himself is sounding like another) would appear to be trying to force the Russians into a situation of confrontation. Military confrontations between nuclear powers are inherently more dangerous than others.

The bear is the symbol of Russia. Bear-baiting was popular sport in England during the late medieval and early modern period. In this most “civilized” of sports, a chained and more or less defenseless bear would be set upon by trained dogs in an arena. The unfortunate bear was then slowly torn and bitten to death by his canine tormenters to the delight of the human audience. Elizabeth I was, reportedly, an aficionado of this savagery.

Unfortunately for the aggressive and bullying Bushies in Washington, the Russian bear has escaped its tether. It has proven it can and will use its own power to defend itself and what it considers its vital interests. Click to continue »

It was truly an extraordinary sight. There he was, on a podium in the center of a sports stadium in Denver, Colorado, surrounded by more than 80,000 adoring supporters and an estimated television audience of more than forty million people (not counting the rest of the world), accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party for the office of President of the United States; the most powerful office in the universe. And what did he do? One more time he delivered one of those soaring and extraordinary rhetorical excursions at which he seems so adept.

Barack Obama, a forty-seven year old African-American, is poised to achieve his dream. There is more than a little irony in history. Obama gave his acceptance speech on the forty-fifth anniversary, to the day, of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech demanding equal rights for black people before a quarter million people on The Mall in Washington, DC in 1963.

The symbolism, of course, was not lost on anyone. There’s no question that King’s “dream” is still quite far from being realized. Having said that, though, one cannot deny the enormous cultural and political change the United States has undergone over the past half century; an extraordinary self-transformation the extent of which cannot be minimized.

There are few similar examples. The only one I can think of that even remotely compares is that accomplished by Germany after 1945. For those who think that transformation was imposed by the victorious Americans, I beg to differ…but that’s for another time, place and discussion. Click to continue »

The closer he gets to the ultimate prize the more Barack Obama sheds his reformist – “Change We Can Believe In” – image. He is rapidly turning into just another typical American politician getting as close to the middle as he possibly can.

This is conventional wisdom and, as a student of American politics I would agree, is probably what one needs to do in order to get elected. In American politics, principles always take second place to opportunistic pragmatism. Barack Obama is no different from the rest of them. His choice for running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, a more or less liberal Democrat from the tiny state of Delaware, has been in the United States Senate since 1972. Biden illustrates Obama’s “realism”.

The notion that an Obama presidency would represent substantive change, it seems to me, is delusional. Unless, of course, one wants to argue that his “race”, his blackness, is in itself substantive change. On the other hand, consider whether or not your attitude would be any different if a black or a white American president ordered a bombing raid on your village in some remote corner of the world. Click to continue »