The Unthinkables

Rick Moran gives readers a tour of the "Chicago Way" and starts off the education with a quote from the movie The Untouchables.

Malone: You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?

Ness: Anything and everything in my power. Malone: And then what are you prepared to do? If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way because they’re not gonna give up the fight until one of you is dead.

Ness: How do you do it then?

Malone: You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way…

Many of us familiar with Chicago politics have been wondering for months at the apparent disconnect of the media regarding Obama’s relationship to the Chicago political machine. Where did they think this guy came from?

The lack of curiosity by the press about Obama’s connections to one of the most corrupt city governments in the United States should be one of the big media stories of this campaign. While it is true that Obama’s connections to the Machine are not as extensive as many other politicians, I’ve got news for you Obama apologists; try running for any office in Chicago – local, state, or federal – and see how far you get without support from the regular Democrats.

Moran's article is a tour de force. There's just one thing I don't get. The guys down at the NYT can read the Chicago Tribune just as well as anyone else. New York may be big, but Chicago isn't that small a ville. So why would political events roiling that town give the national news a miss? What else is going on? What explains the curious media blindness towards Chicago, Rezko and -- coming in from left field -- Auchi? The blindness isn't caused by illiteracy, it's not even caused by bias.

The blinders were probably caused by the Audacity of Hope. The inability to look closely at Obama was rooted in what they feared to see. It's not as if Obama's media admirers didn't know about the Chicago Way. They just didn't want to think about it; that would break their own spell.

The more bankrupt an ideology, the more more manic-depressive it is. The more manic-depressive it needs to be. In Orwell's 1984 the Two Minutes' Hate regularly alternated with ecstatic news bulletins about mythical victories on the Eurasian Front. True believers oscillated from a state of outrage to ecstasy with the permission of the Party because both were safe states. It was the quiet that was haunted. It was the moment of calm realization that the Party feared. Bankrupt ideologies require prodigies and miracles to keep its world spinning on its axis. As long as it spins you can't look around. And in the 21st century, which has been shorn of miracles, the wows are supplied by appearance, rhetoric, youth and glitz. Liberalism needed Obama as much as he needed them. He gave them dreams and they would give him power.

To truly accept tha the existence of the "Chicago Way" is to simultaneously concede the necessity of the painstaking, often morally ambiguous ways needed to deal with it. The "Chicago Way" is the domestic expression of the International Way. Not the fairy-tale United Nations paradise imagined by some, but as it really is: a sad place thronged with tyrants, psychopaths and dangerous people, the Capones, Rezkos and Daleys of the world stage.

People who need to believe Barack Obama can solve the world crisis by calling a Muslim summit must of necessity need to forget you can't clear corruption from Chicago by meeting with the aldermen of that great city. To believe in the Audacity of Hope you need to dis-remember the Chicago Way. Especially if you plan on voting for the man representing Hope who came from there.

Mayor Richard Daley making an argument for raising real estate taxes to fund a bankrupt rapid transit system.

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Spengler on Obama

Spengler at the Asia Times is uncharacteristically vituperative about Barack Obama. And we get a clue to the mysterious Spengler's real identity. He writes under an alias for the Asia Times

Spengler drops a hint about where he's been, who he knew.

The senior Obama died in a 1982 car crash. Kenyan government officials in those days normally spent their nights drinking themselves stupid at the Pan-Afrique Hotel. Two or three of them would be found with their Mercedes wrapped around a palm tree every morning. During the 1970s I came to know a number of them, mostly British-educated hollow men dying inside of their own hypocrisy and corruption.

I'll guess that Spengler once worked as a consultant for either an international aid agency or a multilateral financial institution. That's always an interesting but disillusioning experience.

Development aid to the Third World is largely a racket run for the benefit of "international staff" who revel in their quasi-diplomatic status amidst poverty so extreme they are as gods by comparison. The other major beneficiaries are the host country counterparts who shamelessly rip the development assistance off. Everybody knows and everyone plays along. It's a corrosive moral atmosphere in which hypocrisy is the principal virtue. In consequence people who work in International Development consist of two basic types. The first type is the cynical, devil-may-care consultant who never rises in the aid bureaucracy but is indispensible to getting anything done. They pointedly reject the trinkets of international bureaucracy and while young enough think they can change the system. But they always give up in the end. The second type is the anal careerist of the subcontinental sort who scrupulously claims every perk due him, from paid home leave to relocation and drapery expenses; and who is as soulless and dead as the carpet he walks upon. In contrast to the first type, they never give up, no matter what.

But living the life of the first type provides a great opportunity to absorb color. There's nothing like sitting in a home-made sauna, built by a mad Finn in the tropics to remind him of home, with the temperature turned up so high that the pitch is bubbling out of the pinewood and dripping on your hair. Then running out when you can stand no more and leaping into a swimming pool, much to the consternation of the local househelp, who can never quite get used to the antics of the mad foreigners. And then to stagger back to the bar and buddy up to a German consultant so drunk he is toasting to the Fuhrer's health and greets you as his favorite untermensch.

And then to go out into Third World night and watch the children asleep on the street unaware that the angels who are meant to guard them are forever barred from their simple dreams.

Does Hillary still have a miracle play left?

Victor Davis Hanson is a sporting man, and thinks that Hillary may find a way (to use an NBA metaphor) to put the Democratic Primary game into overtime. Here's how he thinks it can be done at NRO's Corner.

I still maintain that the Clintons (if she can squeak by in the next two primaries) will use every means to find a way to challenge, seat, or sway delegates to win the nomination, regardless of the aggregate popular vote or ongoing delegate count. While that may not work, I still think she will try if she wins Texas; and if she wins the last three states, it will work. Apparently Peter wants to suggest that the people of Florida and Michigan should be "disenfranchised" or that "undemocratic" caucuses in the night should weigh the same as the results of plebiscites, or that time-tested and loyal super-delegates should have their traditional roles neutered, or that tiny states that will not be in play or won't matter in the fall should count the same as CA, Fl, MI, NJ, NW, OH, TX, and PN.

Dan Gerstein at the Politico thinks a similar scenario is possible. Why? Because cheating is built into the Democratic primary system. At least that's what Gerstein says.

Now an even more disturbing realization is beginning to set in: If the Clinton firewall holds in Texas and Ohio, there may well not be a clean/just way out of the delegate stalemate that this cockamamie system is on track to produce.

The fact is, just about every corrective Democrats have proposed to the crazy quilt of anti-democratic rules and decisions that have recently come to light are themselves antithetical to the values we claim to hold dear. Which is to say, they are non-starters for fairly finishing this contest and avoiding a debilitating backroom bloodfight in the lead-up to the convention.

Will the Democrats be hoist by their own petard? Er, done in by their own rules? Can Hillary do it? My guess is no. Jerry West retired a long time ago.

Best mystery writers; staying out of jail; Hillary wants Florida, Michigan seated

50 crime writers to read before you die. Rick "Wire Fraud" Renzi versus William "Cold Cash" Jefferson. Hillary: Seat Michigan, Florida Delegates. Plus, Clinton to Obama: 'Shame on you'.

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The Daily Telegraph's literary staff, after a long study compiles a list.

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Captain's Quarters looks at the practical advantages of being either a Republican and Democrat after indictment.

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From Poll Dancing, which had a thirty minute interview with the candidate. "Remember that she won both states despite signing a pledge with the other Democratic candidates not to campaign there -- and remember too that, as a result, her name was the only name on the Michigan ballot."

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Hillary Clinton lashed out at Barack Obama for distributing what she called "blatantly false" campaign literature.

Clinton jabbed the air with her hands as she told a crowd in Cincinnati, Ohio, that two Obama mailings spread lies about her positions on universal health care and the North American Free Trade Agreement. "Shame on you, Barack Obama," she said. Polls show Clinton and Obama are in statistical dead heats in delegate-rich Ohio and Texas, which both hold votes March 4. With Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland nodding in agreement behind her, Clinton accused Obama of emulating the tactics of Karl Rove, President Bush's former political director who is reviled by Democrats. Obama "is continuing to send false and discredited mailings with information that is not true to the voters of Ohio," Clinton said.

"Sen. Obama knows it is not true that my plan forces people to buy insurance even if they can't afford it," she said.

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Obama as McGovern?

TalkLeft describes the danger of an "Obama Bubble" which when popped might culminate in a McGovern-like crash.

To be clear, the McGovern comparison has nothing to do with Obama's liberalness. I don't think he's a liberal. The comparison has to do with the result in November if the bubble bursts on his message of hope and change and if the right wing successfully smears him with it. In that event, I'm asking whether the results in November will resemble those of the McGovern race.

The Barack Obama phenomenon is probably a compound of three things. Mr. Obama's own considerable talents as a politician and speaker; the reaction against the Clinton Machine and the absolute dearth of new ideas in the Democratic Party. It has nothing to do with renewed excitement in the Democratic Party message; it is intensely personal. The enthusiasm is generated by Him; the hope is engendered by the Face.

And to Barack Obama's credit he has carried a near-empty hand to triumph. That alone is testament to his political skill. But he has done it at the cost of not talking about the platform of his own party, which truth to tell, consists of a collection of rotting planks left over from the 1960s and which no one is safe treading upon. Instead of embarssing himself by talking about higher taxes, more appeasement and more special interest politics, Barack Obama has done the smart thing. He's talked about himself; about "us"; about the future, about Hope and most of all, about Change. The subliminal message is that we want to Move On. And part of what the electorate wants to Move On from is all the fermenting baggage that Hillary Clinton keeps hauling along. It's as neat a piece of conjury as has been seen for the last fifty years.

Thus the Obama "bubble" isn't his personal problem, it's his party's problem. He's throwing a personal force shield around a decrepit core agenda and if it fails sometime in the next few months it will be no fault of his. He's already done the unbelievable. Any collapse will be foreordained by the Democratic Party's agenda.

Comparisons to McGovern and 1968 are all the more painful because they highlight how little has substantively changed from then. McGovern gone from politics, but the dead agenda lives. And poor Obama, having to carry the moldering corpse on his shoulders!

Watching Obama struggle forward, keeping up his momentum with the thin gruel of speeches, charisma and bravado is almost like watching a champion who you know is eventually going to be overhwhelmed by uneven odds continue a game fight. Whatever one thinks of Obama, he doesn't deserve so tragic a fate. Obama's worst enemy isn't the conservatives. It isn't even liberals. It's the dead hand of the past. The Spirit of '68, cackling and wheezing from the closed room which no one goes into. Except Hillary, who emerges each time to pronounce Mother alive and well.

From the 5th Annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum

Tamara Cofman Wittes, who's attending the annual 5th Annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum notices that anti-US rhetoric is way down this year. Instead of fire-breathing anti-American keynote speakers, "the opening keynote was instead delivered by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who argued that Muslims in Afghanistan and Bosnia were right to expect and accept American military intervention to relieve their suffering, and America was just in coming to their aid."

The reason for the change in tone has been a grudging respect for successes in American foreign policy and Washington's new focus on Iran.

Violence in Iraq is down, there’s new (if fragile) hope for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and pushy rhetoric from the White House, once directed at autocratic Arab allies, is now reserved for Iran, which Americans and Arabs both perceive as threatening. A cynical colleague of mine here argued that the positive tone from the regional leaders at the conference reflects age-old realities of international politics: when America is weak, he said, everyone loves to beat up on us—but when America is stronger, everyone wants to be on our side. That’s great—as long as the current lull in Iraqi violence lasts.

But the real buzz at the conference has been about the Face.

Quite honestly, though, I don’t think the relative love-fest at this year’s meeting is all ascribable either to regional shifts or to the conference organizers’ choice of speakers. The most powerful explanation for the change is evident in the overwhelming fact that all anyone at this conference really wants to talk about is Barack Obama.

A friend from the Gulf tells me her young relative was so excited about the Democratic candidate that he tried to donate money over the Internet, as he’d heard so many young Americans were doing. Then he found out he had to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Another young woman, visiting from next-door Saudi Arabia, said that all her friends in Riyadh are “for Obama.” The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia, certainly speaks to Muslims abroad.

There are two ironies here. The first is that while Barack Obama has gone out of his way to say that he is 'not a Muslim', in a wider sense the Muslims have taken him into their bosom. An acquaintance, writing from Jakarta says the same feeling is pretty strong over there too. While in America he projects the image of rallying America he simultaneously conveys the impression of being on the side of the Arab too.

The other irony of course is that the Arab attraction for Obama is potentially at odds with the Arab desire for a powerful America which can contain Iran. So far Obama has managed the remarkable feat of being all things to all men, even men who are mortally opposed to each other. What happens when he has to come down on one side or the other?