|
Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
February 11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve
Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
Febrauary
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't You Know
You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich Shouldn't
Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change CEOs?
Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris
Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush B-Boys
Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment: Boob Tube
Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with Jewish
Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine in
Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide from
Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure: Our
Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan
Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
|
February
11, 2004
Campaign Diary
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Farewell,
Clark: "Dude, Where's My Candidate?"
By ALEXANDER
COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
We
await Michael Moore’s concession speech after his hero, General
Wesley Clark, tasted the ashes of defeat in Tennessee and Virginia and
sensibly threw in the towel.
If
Dean was the hero of the dot coms, Clark was a creation of the Arkansas-Hollywood
axis embodied in Clinton-era stage managers such as Harry and Linda
Thomason, Mary Steenbergen and Ted Danson. It was supposed to be The
Man from Hope: The Sequel, this time with a genuine military officer,
rather than Bill the Draft Dodger. The roll-out for the Clark campaign
was Linda Thomason’s Native Son, alluding to Clark’s early
years in Little Rock. At Clark’s elbow was Bruce Lindsay, former
law partner of Bill Clinton and later his White House counsel. Lindsay
put it about that Clark’s mission was to stop the meteoric surge
of Howard Dean and Clark told reporters that the Clintons had urged
to get into the race. In the weeks before the Iowa caucus Clark was
the only Democratic candidate who was able to get Clinton to appear
in a campaign commercial. Rep Rahm Emanuel, former Clinton White House
staffer, declared for Clark. Further glitzy support came from the Detroit-Hollywood
axis of Michael Moore and Madonna who, in the wake of her hero’s
withdrawal, has now said she’s moving to France. Additional liberal
backing came from the New York Review of Books, which ran an entire
chapter of Clark’s unreadable campaign bio.
Tottering
under the burdens of such sponsorship, Clark was soon sprawling in a
heap of contradictions. He had supported the attack on Iraq, but now
he opposed it. The war was launched under fraudulent pretences but yes,
he had agreed with Bush and Rumsfeld about the menace of Saddam Hussein’s
WMDs. It wasn’t long before his campaign was dead in the water
as ordinary voters couldn’t figure what Clark was all about. Virginia
was meant to be his big state, and he didn’t break into double
figures.
Moral:
get Bill Clinton or Al Gore throwing you their support and you sink
like a stone to the bottom. At least Gore’s support of Dean was
an honest bet on a man Gore thought was the likely winner and a good
opponent to put up against Bush. As always, the Clintons were playing
a selfish game. For them Clark’s function was to merely stop Dean,
thus preserving their power within the Democratic National Committee.
Day after day Clinton Mafiosi like McAuliffe, Carville and Begala worked
the phones and the talk shows, deriding Dean and their onslaught was
very effective.
Dean
made his own mistakes and spent much of his $40 million foolishly on
lousy campaign ads but it’s clear that in Iowa and New Hampshire
he was up against the Democratic Party machine and lacked the experienced
operators who might have saved the day. It was the party machine that
pulled it out for Kerry, and once Kerry had got those two crucial victories,
the overwhelming eagerness of Democratic voters to annoint an uncontested
champion to go up against Bush carried him forward.
Across
the last thirty years it’s hard to think of a Democratic candidate
seemingly assured of his party’s nomination who has had less of
a baptism of sewage in the primaries than Senator John Kerry. Normally
a front-running candidate can expect a roughing up from his sparring
partners. But Dean drew all the fire, with Clark as prime diversion
and Kucinich as the small white hope of the progressive crowd. So Kerry’s
dismal record has been allowed to remain in decorous seclusion.
Most
Democrats consider Kerry’s record as irrelevant and view those
with the bad taste to excavate it as active subverters of a righteous
cause. But Karl Rove, Bush’s political commissar, will not be
so polite.
Kerry
reminds us of no one such as Mr Facing-Both-Ways, in Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress. Unlike Bush, who sensibly took a vacation
from the perils of conflict in the National Guard, Kerry enlisted for
combat in Vietnam and shuttled up and down the Mekong river commanding
a Swift Boat, deployed for the sort of counter-insurgency missions that
had Kerry’s former senatorial colleague, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska,
slitting the throats of Vietnamese villagers.
Kerry
returned to the US, thrust himself forward as a leader of the antiwar
movement, but made a point of distancing himself from the Vietnam Veterans
Against the War. Like Clinton trying to figure out how to dodge the
draft respectably, Kerry was zealous to preserve his political viability
within the system. “The agenda of some of the folks within the
veterans’ movement ultimately became confused and went way beyond
trying to end the war,” Kerry later told the Boston Phoenix. “There
was a lot of rhetoric about every social ill and evil there was.”
The media got the point. Morley Safer of CBS applauded Kerry as “a
veteran whose articulate call to reason rather than anarchy seemed to
bridge the gap between Abbie Hoffman and Mr Agnew’s so-called
Silent Majority.” From Abbie to Agnew, now there’s a leap!
Distaste
for anarchy notwithstanding, when the VVAW forced a senate hearing on
the war, Kerry pushed himself to the front to deliver the high-profile
testimony before the tv cameras and, later, at a Vets’ demonstration
at the White House similarly took advantage of the heavily covered event
to join other vets in throwing war medals over the White House fence.
The ones tossed by Kerry actually belonged to someone else, thus permitting
the prudent Kerry to preserve his own for later proud display in his
various offices and for their ultimate deployment as blazing reproaches
to Bush.
Like
many a political aspirant eager to buttress viability, Kerry the gap-bridger
then became a prosecutor in Middlesex county, then lieutenant governor
in 1982 in the regime of governor… well, you can search high and
low on Kerry’s campaign bio but you will find it difficult to
detect the name of Michael Dukakis. Kerry was elected to the US senate
in 1984.
In
his first term Kerry ventured onto some interesting and politically
perilous terrain, with hearings into the scandal-ridden CIA-linked bank
BCCI, and into the arms-for-cocaine contra scandals in Central America.
In the end he lost his nerve and the hearings ultimately floundered
to an inconclusive close. It was the last spark of vigor in a senatorial
career of singular blandness and timidity.
Already
in the 1980s this supposed Massachusetts liberal (always an oversold
species) supported the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act, a dagger
in the heart of social programs. Kerry later renewed his commitment
to the war on the poor by backing Clinton’s successful onslaught
on aid to poor mothers and their children and more recently still, voting
for the Bush tax cuts. In the Clinton years Kerry positioned himself
as one questioning the efficacy of affirmative action.
When
the Reagan administration launched the full might of US power against
the island of Grenada (population, 80,000) in 1983 Kerry criticized
this imperial excursion. These days, with his medals out of the closet,
he says “I basically was supportive. I never publicly opposed
it.”
With
the first Gulf war at the start of the 1990s Kerry changed positions
so rapidly his staff grew dizzy with the effort of keeping up with their
boss’s gyrations. He finally voted against authorizing the war,
but almost immediately issued a press release supporting the invasion.
The 2003 war finds Kerry voting with the Bush administration, only to
cast himself in the early primary season as an opponent.
Kerry
voted for Clinton’s crime bill and for Clinton’s Counter-Terrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act which set the template for Bush’s
Patriot Act, which Kerry, who now loses now opportunity to belittle
the insipid John Ashcroft, also saw fit to support.
Kerry
has indulged himself in some dutiful populist rhetoric against Big Oil,
the drug companies, the HMOs and “the influence peddlers. Given
his overall record, these burbles are not to be taken seriously, as
anything beyond campaign insurance against the occasional populist talk
of John Edwards, his sometime rival on the primary trail.
The
Kerry campaign has the enduring benefit of the vast fortune of Mrs Kerry,
the former Teresa Heinz, the tumultuous child of Portuguese empire.
Mrs Kerry can use her inheritance to run issue ads. Her interest in
environmental issues has been mostly expressed through her Heinz Foundation
whose board until very recently was adorned by that hero of free-market
enviros, Ken Lay of Enron.
The
Heinz Foundation put Ken Lay in charge of their global-warming initiative.
When Enron went belly up, the Foundation stuck by their man: “Whatever
troubles he had at Enron, Ken Lay had a good reputation in the environmental
community for being a business man who was environmentally sensitive.
When someone does wrong in one past of their life, it doesn’t
mean they can’t do good in another part of their life.”
It’s
the kind of sublime indifference to the messy realities of politics
and life that is now inspiring Democrats to rally behind Kerry, under
the vacant banner, Anybody But Bush.
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax--Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links / |