The Editorial Page

What Obama must do

EDITORIAL — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:14:51 GMT

A new talent must wrestle with an old hand at political survival
For all the fawning press Barack Obama has received, the grace and favor with which he has been treated is nothing compared with the free ride McCain has enjoyed.

More coverage from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

During the past several national elections, whenever a Democratic presidential candidate has changed his or her mind on an issue, or trimmed his or her sails in the face of hostile public opinion, the mainstream media have been quick to tag that candidate a flip-flopper. When John McCain changes his mind, he is being a maverick, a tell-it-like-it-is hombre. For all the fawning press Barack Obama has received, the grace and favor with which he has been treated is nothing compared with the free ride McCain has enjoyed, at least from the predominantly old white guys who dominate convention coverage.

The benefits of the doubt Obama has been granted — and he is granted fewer every day — are probably attributable to his freshness as a tasty new morsel for a television-dominated process. TV demands lean meat it can fatten so it has someone to devour. The fact that Republican McCain as well as Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton have survived repeated cycles of this cannibalism gives them a special status: survivors.

Survival, in fact, is perhaps the most exalted state to which a politician can ascend in the ultimate reality show known as presidential politics.

Survivors have proven their very seriousness by having escaped scandal or defeat, or having weathered a particularly turbulent political storm. And because they have survived, they reap the benefit of extra consideration. Past skill warrants a suspension of judgment rarely extended to most politicians.

Senator Ted Kennedy is a case in point. His survival of a cheating incident at Harvard and the drowning of a female companion at Chappaquiddick (tempered as they were by the murder of Kennedy’s two brothers, as well as by other family tragedies) gives his career as a national icon an unspoken but palpable poignancy that is further enhanced by his ongoing cancer battle. Kennedy’s unexpected and moving speech at the Democratic National Convention was another triumph over adversity. As such, it was an apt metaphor for a nation that has had to endure eight years of President George W. Bush.

The Clintons may be on a path to achieving similar gravitas. Hillary’s speech certainly laid the foundation for such a reputation. She was breathtaking in the sweep of her Tuesday night convention speech, fortifying in her message that the Democrats must unite behind Obama to spare the nation four more years of Bush policies, this time with McCain’s name on them. It only remains for Bill to equal, or exceed, her performance for the Democrats to put behind them the memories of the Clintons’ attempt to blackmail Hillary’s way onto the ticket by holding her voters hostage. After Tuesday night, it is hard to imagine that stain having any relevance.

Cash-strapped government

EDITORIAL — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:56:35 GMT

Plus, what to do about Russia, and Obama’s upcoming convention
Most people realize that the nasty economic news is getting nastier.

Most people realize that the nasty economic news is getting nastier. Unemployment is rising. Pay checks have stopped growing. And the cost of essentials, such as food and gasoline, has hit painful highs. Yet significant pockets of state and local government seem oblivious to reality.

The MBTA is a case in point. What was transit leadership thinking when it granted 237 nonunion, executive employees nine-percent raises? Never mind that the state is already financially strapped. The T itself is running in the red. And while the agency — more vital today than ever — needs greater taxpayer support, the way to get it is not to act as if it is your due.

Governor Deval Patrick did the right thing when he pressured the T into rescinding those raises.

The Boston City Council has likewise shown questionable judgment in awarding many members of its professional staff with sizable bonuses. Those bonuses allowed the Council to pay staffers more than the authorized pay range for such positions — $65,000–$85,000 for the staff director, for example — listed in city statues.

While that might seem like a substantial salary range to the blue-collar Joes and Josephines who constitute the bulk of the Council’s constituency, the public sector — like the private sector — must offer competitive salaries to attract talent. Hence a State House staffer can, and often does, receive a much higher salary than someone who does similar work at City Hall, only five minutes away.

Should some Council staffer deserve higher pay than he or she currently receives, however, the compensation should not be rewarded in a stealth manner — that only plays into the hands of the mad dogs of talk radio, and others who seem hell-bent on trying to cripple government a time when their services are so necessary.

The public sector should raise the amounts in public instead, in a straightforward way. Let voters know what’s going on.

If not, it is not alarmist to say that next year Boston may find itself in a fiscal crisis, with truly vital services threatened.

Only some deft fiscal management by Mayor Thomas Menino saved the city’s school from serious pain this year. But the handwriting is on the wall. The city is so apparently strapped for cash that it asked for, and received, approval from the private, nonprofit Boston Public Library Foundation for $20,000 to help the newly appointed library president relocate here from Minnesota.

Georgia on your mind?

EDITORIAL — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:28:58 GMT

Why the Russians are acting like Soviets! And why it will be difficult to stop them!
So much for the Republican Party’s long-standing boast that Ronald Reagan neutered the Soviet Union.

So much for the Republican Party’s long-standing boast that Ronald Reagan neutered the Soviet Union.

Russia’s brutal Soviet-style invasion of the relatively small and decidedly democratic nation of Georgia this past week may not have been enough to provoke a “better-dead-than-red” backlash here in the United States. But the Russian tanks that rumbled toward the Black Sea must have made former Soviet citizens (such as the independent people of the Ukraine) and former Soviet clients (say, in Poland and the Czech Republic) more than a bit nervous.

The Kremlin has been off its game for much of the past 20 years. Losing control of Eastern Europe and watching the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolve into 15 different nations must have been a bummer.

Now, thanks to the corrupt and anti-democratic leadership of Vladimir Putin, together with a multi-billion surge in treasure from oil and natural gas, Russia is again flexing its muscles.

Putin, having squelched Chechnyan rebels in two multi-year rounds of bloody fighting, was emboldened to deal with the Georgians, who Russians traditionally consider to be obstreperous upstarts. The Kremlin likes its neighbors tame.

Georgia, with 4.6 million people (a bit more than half the population of New York City), is — or was — perhaps the most pro-American of the former Soviet Republics: witness the 2000 troops that nation committed to President Bush’s Iraq War.

The ostensible trigger for this latest invasion was the desire of provinces in western Georgia to break away and affiliate with Russia. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, an admirable democrat who nevertheless is considered a loose cannon by diplomatic standards, appears not to have handled the situation well. Two weeks ago, the long-simmering conflict erupted into mortar fire along the border, prompting air strikes from the Kremlin soon thereafter, as Russian troops and armored forces entered the fray in support of the splinter region. Early Wednesday, a cease-fire was agreed upon by both sides, but the peace remains tenuous at best.

However, when a big power like Russia (or China or the United States) desires to intervene militarily in a neighboring state, almost any reason can be manufactured.

Turmoil in the Georgian provinces is only a pretext for the Russian war. The underlying reason has more to do with the misguided American policy of seeking to integrate such former Soviet Republics as Georgia and the Ukraine, and such former subject Eastern European nations as Poland, into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — against Russia’s protestations.

Mao's ghost

EDITORIAL — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:58:50 GMT

The spirit of the chairman haunts the Beijing Olympics
When the 21st century is old enough to support a sense of historical perspective, the date 8/8/08 may well be more significant than 9/11.

Photo illustration by K. Banks.

When the 21st century is old enough to support a sense of historical perspective, the date 8/8/08 may well be more significant than 9/11. The Olympic Games, which begin today, mark China’s modern coming of age.

Beijing 2008: Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

“Modern” is an important qualification. As the planet’s oldest civilization with a recognizable sense of continuity, China has seen glory before. Gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass were all products of its ancient genius. But for much of modern history, China was a nation on the margins: misunderstood and discounted, shamelessly exploited by Western powers and brutally pillaged by the Japanese.

Chairman Mao Zedong changed that — though it takes a strong constitution to stomach the murderous nature of his achievement.

Mao brought China neither peace nor prosperity. His Soviet-inspired agricultural policies led to famine; his Cultural Revolution transformed the country into a massive concentration camp. Median estimates of the total number dead as a result of Mao’s will and whim float around 50 million — give or take 10 million. Whatever the body count, most historians agree that Mao was the greatest mass murderer of all time.

It was Mao’s perverse achievement to forge in the smithy of the ancient Chinese soul the makings of a reconstituted superpower. Whether the nation’s ascendancy is because of Mao or in spite of him is almost irrelevant. The DNA is too tight to unravel, the duality too synthesized to deconstruct. Mao, or a version of him, is China. China, in some manifestation, is Mao. Mao’s embalmed corpse on display under glass in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square taps into the Confucian ideal of ancestor reverence, and yet also transcends it. Mao, the great helmsman, washes all other ancestors with his wake.

The cult of Mao is a form of zombie politics; it is part of the voodoo employed by the shrewd, sophisticated bureaucrats who command the Middle Kingdom. They are, by Mao’s standards, faceless. The art of ruling the world’s most populous nation is to be one of a crowd. (During the terror of the Cultural Revolution, only Mao’s favor could save one from the chaos; to survive, the individual had to melt into the mob. Its memory disciplines the masses.)

China today is a dragon with a capitalist head and a communist heart. It is a living, breathing, thriving contradiction. Because the dragon is rising (the metaphor is no less apt because it is melodramatic), its momentum tends to mask its weak spots.

A sobering question

EDITORIAL — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:28:59 GMT

Can Obama make Democrats face up to economic reality?
With every passing week the nation’s already-screwed-up economy becomes even more distressed.

With every passing week the nation’s already-screwed-up economy becomes even more distressed.

Consider just two trends: food and fuel prices are rising faster than at any time in recent memory. Housing prices, meanwhile, have suffered their biggest decline in 21 years.

This means that average citizens will be paying more to put food on their tables, to drive to and from work, and to heat their homes this winter. While the nation’s average Joes and Josephines are dedicating a higher portion of their take-home pay just to get by, they also are helplessly watching the value of their homes — their principal and most basic investment — decline in value.

As for sending their kids to college, that, too, has gotten more difficult. Nationwide, more than 50 education-loan providers have discontinued offering both private and federal money. In Massachusetts, some 40,000 students will similarly go without loans because the state agency charged with helping low- and middle-income students could not secure funds due to distressed capital markets.

Will things get better? Sure, but not any time soon.

One factor that will keep the economy bollixed is runaway federal spending and borrowing. President Bush is going to saddle either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama with a record deficit of nearly $500 billion, once the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are factored in.

It is a fact of life — though most Republicans do not want to recognize it — that Bush squandered the surplus his presidential predecessor, Bill Clinton, left the nation. The Bush tax cuts, which favored the wealthy and the well-off, helped to wipe away the Clinton surpluses. These days, the United States borrows about one-third of its operating expenses (excluding Social Security) just to keep the government going.

Simply put, the national government is in even worse shape than the average American family. If that is not a sobering thought, then what is?

While Bush is certainly the poster boy for reckless handling of the economy, he is not the only culprit. Every president since (and including) Democrat Jimmy Carter has contributed to the sorry economic state in which we find ourselves. Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush helped dig the hole. And Clinton shoveled more than is commonly realized.

With the assent of Congress and the connivance of the Federal Reserve Board, the White House, for more than 30 years, allowed the financial industry — the banks, insurance companies, and brokerage businesses — to relax or abandon meaningful standards of regulation.

AG should probe BPL

EDITORIAL — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:58:41 GMT

Supposedly ‘independent’ trustees receive city funds. Why Birmingham rather than Bulger for the top job?
Political innocents who discount allegations that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is politicizing the Boston Public Library’s board of trustees so that he can directly control the nation’s oldest free municipal library received a rude awakening recently.

Political innocents who discount allegations that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is politicizing the Boston Public Library’s board of trustees so that he can directly control the nation’s oldest free municipal library received a rude awakening recently.

It turns out that three of the library’s nine trustees — who are appointed by the mayor, but by custom and tradition are expected to impartially oversee operations and development in the name of the public — do outside business with the city, and failed to disclose that fact.

This is an apparent violation of Massachusetts’s conflict-of-interest law. Attorney General Martha Coakley should act quickly and decisively to investigate the troubling situation. While she is at it, Coakley should also investigate whether this practice is an aberration from the norm, or whether it has occurred under previous mayors.

We’re not suggesting that Coakley must prosecute the trustees. (Although that would be in her purview, should she find that any laws have been broken. State law holds the penalty for failing to disclose potential conflicts of interest to be fines up to $3000 and jail terms as long as two years.)

Rather, the central concern here is that this revelation calls into question the integrity of the library system and the independence of the trustees from political pressure and mayoral whims or dictates.

News of the trustees’s business dealings with the city comes as a result of some deft detective work by Donovan Slack of the Boston Globe. Of the trustees in question, Slack established that Donna DePrisco of the family jewelry business bearing her name received $38,148 for city gifts and engraving; fundraising consultant Karyn Wilson was paid $48,300 for service rendered to the city; and Zamawa Arenas received payments to her company, Argus Communications, of $174,829 while on the board. Before Arenas joined the board in May of 2006, Argus received $488,845 for city work.

The tainted trustees said that they were either unaware of the requirement to declare potential conflicts or thought that the specifics of the law did not apply to them in their circumstances. Trustee chairman Jeffrey Rudman, a high-powered lawyer who practices with the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale in the Financial District and is widely viewed as Menino’s agent and go-to guy on the board, likewise said he was unaware of disclosure requirements and doubted that they applied. As an attorney, Rudman’s stated lack of awareness of a core element of nonprofit board service particularly stretches credulity; and, of course, ignorance of a law is never an excuse for not following it.

Voting right

EDITORIAL — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:04:37 GMT

Why Beacon Hill should adopt same-day voting and join the national popular-vote movement. Plus, that Obama cover.
The Massachusetts Legislature is expected to vote in the next several days on two proposals that would make democracy, well, more democratic.

The Massachusetts Legislature is expected to vote in the next several days on two proposals that would make democracy, well, more democratic. One of these would provide for the direct election of presidents by national popular vote; the other for same-day voter registration, allowing previously unregistered citizens to qualify at their polling places on Election Day. The Phoenix urges the legislature to adopt both.

The national popular-vote proposal would not replace the Electoral College; rather, it would modify its procedures.

The popular-vote plan is an interstate compact, a type of state law allowed by the US Constitution that enables states to enter into a legally enforceable contract to undertake agreed joint actions, such as electing a president.

The compact would take effect only when similar legislation has been enacted by states collectively possessing a majority of electoral votes — that is, 270 of the 538.

Those states will then vote as a bloc for the winner of the national popular vote, guaranteeing a supermajority of electoral votes and thereby preventing the candidate who receives the fewest popular votes from ending up in the White House, as was the shameful case in 2000. It would also eliminate the possibility that now exists of the election being thrown into the House of Representatives — where each state has one vote (regardless of population) — if no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College. And it would force presidential candidates to campaign nationwide, instead of concentrating their efforts in a handful of so-called battlefield states.

So far, the bill has been approved by the Massachusetts House of Representatives and awaits action by the State Senate. Around the nation, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland have already approved national popular-vote legislation. And in 20 other states, one body of the respective legislatures has also done so. The State Senate here should approve the bill.

Same-day voter registration is an easier concept to understand, but it faces a more uncertain fate on Beacon Hill. As this newspaper noted when it endorsed the idea back in April, voter turnout is depressingly low. Massachusetts ranks only 21st in the nation in this respect. The idea of making it easier and more convenient to register voters, by allowing those with proper identification to do so at the polls, should be a no-brainer.

Reality bites

EDITORIAL — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:24:56 GMT

Will Obama make good on his plan to exit Iraq by 2010? Don’t bet on it.
The war in Iraq has been on the back burner of the American political scene for some time.

The war in Iraq has been on the back burner of the American political scene for some time. During the final months of the interminable primary season, the headlines were dominated by relatively hollow talk about NAFTA, a vitally important discussion of Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the now moot question of whether onetime Democratic front-runner Senator Hillary Clinton could beat the math and wrestle her party’s nomination away from Obama.

Obama has yet to confirm when he will make his promised trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, which will also include visits to France, Germany, Great Britain, and Israel — though it seems to be scheduled within the next couple of weeks. Regardless of whether it comes before or after the August 25 Democratic National Convention in Denver, that trip once again will catapult the Iraq War to the center of political debate.

The presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, discounts the continuing psychic, political, and economic cost of maintaining a large American military presence in Iraq for as many as 100 years. Obama does not. But so far, at least, Obama has failed to communicate the grave and complex difficulties the nation will face in withdrawing from the Iraq quagmire. That none of his fellow Democratic presidential aspirants failed to fully appreciate those difficulties is beside the point. After Obama’s official August instatement as his party’s standard-bearer, that will be even more irrelevant.

At issue is Obama’s campaign position to immediately begin withdrawing combat brigades from Iraq, and to have achieved total withdrawal — save for some non-combat troops necessary to protect our diplomats — within 16 months of assuming office, which would be May 2010.

Putting aside the definition of what constitutes “combat” troops — and that is sure to become an issue in the months ahead — there are approximately 152,000 American servicemen and -women in Iraq. A close reading of the policy tea leaves that gather around Washington think tanks suggests that it would not be a surprise if the US still had somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 boots on the ground by the middle of 2010. (For readers interested in more detail than space here allows, check out former Phoenix political writer Michael Crowley’s piece in the May 7 issue of the New Republic, and George Packer’s report in the current issue of the New Yorker.)

Crackpot court

EDITORIAL — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:34:39 GMT

Taking a shot at the Supreme Court’s recent gunplay
This past week’s Supreme Court ruling, invalidating Washington, DC’s handgun ban, demonstrates just how far afield “movement conservatism” has taken our country.

This past week’s Supreme Court ruling, invalidating Washington, DC’s handgun ban, demonstrates just how far afield “movement conservatism” has taken our country. For that, we have an irresponsible Republican Party to blame; tragically, real people will have to pay dearly.

For years now, the GOP has embraced crackpot conservative theories for political advantage. “Trickle-down economics” helped convince middle-class voters to support reckless tax cuts for the wealthy. Global-warming denial was dreamed up and propagated by corporations who wished to avoid regulation. Myths of a “war on Christmas” and doomsday consequences of same-sex marriage have pulled evangelical Christians to the voting booth to elect Republicans.

Firmly held, irrational, absolutist beliefs may be good short-term politics, but they make for terrible policy — somewhere along the way, the political right lost control of the distinction. Ever since Congress subpoenaed Terri Schiavo’s vegetative body, it’s been clear that the Republican Party is being ruled — and destroyed — by right-wing nut cases.

“Gun rights” has been for the Republicans one of the most important, and most crass, of these foolish ideas. Most reasonable people agree that private ownership of weaponry should be carefully controlled and regulated — as a public issue, guns are not all that different from automobiles. Debate over the details properly belongs in the venue of local, state, and national legislatures, to be shaped through discussion, lobbying, public pressure, and ultimately elections.

But that approach doesn’t get people riled up to pay membership dues to the National Rifle Association (NRA), or to vote Republican out of the belief that Democrats intend to take away one’s hunting rifle.

So, since the early 1970s, the NRA and its ideological brethren have pushed the novel, and unjustified, theory that private gun ownership (for other than state-militia purposes) is an enshrined constitutional right. Republicans latched on, and won over millions of working-class voters.

Now, five justices have turned this ludicrous idea into constitutional law, proving that years of nominations made to appease the far right have at last given us a crackpot Supreme Court.

For a full dissection of the case, see the well-argued (and appropriately outraged) two-part dissent written by Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer. Suffice to say that Justice Antonin Scalia, in his almost willfully irrational majority opinion, finds that the Second Amendment “elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” If you can find anything in the Second Amendment’s 27 words that remotely supports that conclusion, well, you apparently are fit for today’s Supreme Court. Talk about “activist judges”!

As goes Gloucester?

EDITORIAL — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:40:01 GMT

Debating the ‘pregnancy pact’ will not make a surge in teenage motherhood disappear
Waves of chatter wash over the city of Gloucester, where 17 high-school students are pregnant.

Waves of chatter wash over the city of Gloucester, where 17 high-school students are pregnant. But for all the yapping in print, online, and over the airwaves, there’s little clarity — and even less wisdom — to be found.

The rip tide of publicity that hit the blue-collar fishing port comes from the disturbing story in Time magazine that approximately half of the now-pregnant girls made a pact to have children and raise them together, giving unintended meaning to the concept “it takes a village.”

The idea that there was a “pact” was clearly attributed to high-school principal Joseph Sullivan. He, it appears, has been muzzled by local authorities and is now on vacation, unavailable for follow-up.

Into the breach steps Gloucester mayor Carolyn Kirk, a political newcomer with a lot of energy and a can-do style that helped her win office. Kirk may have succeeded in raising questions about the existence of a pact. She has not, however, been able to alter the underlying reality that at least some of the girls — pact or no pact, widespread or smaller than suggested — wanted to get pregnant. “Pinkies up” is not an appropriate strategy in this situation.

Conservatives should take note of the fact that Gloucester has, well, a piss-poor sex-education program. Its opposition to making birth control available — some fear it might promote sexual license — seems asinine given the number of pregnant girls at Gloucester High, not to mention the number who already walk the halls with baby strollers. Unwanted pregnancy is not the only issue. There are also sexually transmitted diseases to consider, and the possibility of HIV infection. By several measures, the Gloucester community is being dangerously irresponsible.

Liberals likewise should be chastened. The overall sex-education program may leave some wanting in Gloucester, but short of birth control, sex-oriented health-care services are available. The question of whether single, teenage girls who want to become pregnant can be dissuaded is a bit of a new frontier. The situation is more complicated than teaching the facts of life. Sociology trumps biology.

One of the factors making it difficult to understand what is going on in Gloucester is the age of the girls involved. Old enough to become pregnant, they are sufficiently young that news organizations are reluctant to report on them in detail. Privacy, of course, is a humane consideration. But it’s hard to imagine that the issue of parental consent isn’t also at play: old enough to get pregnant, but too young to be quoted in the papers without the okay of a parent.

Russert explained

EDITORIAL — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:29:36 GMT

NBC’s top talking head had an outsized influence simply because he did his job so well
In terms of being an old-fashioned, old-style media icon, nobody in broadcasting today could top Tim Russert.

In terms of being an old-fashioned, old-style media icon, nobody in broadcasting today could top Tim Russert, the host of Meet the Press and the Washington bureau chief for NBC News, who died this past week without a hint of warning at the age of 58. Stephen Colbert is surreal, Jon Stewart is satirical, Keith Olbermann is outraged, and Russert was, well, tough and amiable and grounded, rooted in American politics as it has been played since the days of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

The airwaves and news pages have been full of well-deserved tributes to Russert. Among his memorable qualities was the sense, as so many observed, that he “never forgot where he came from.” (Russert hailed from the blue-collar precincts of Buffalo, New York, a city of undeniable grittiness.) If there is a problem with this line of remembrance, it is that the eulogists did not push it far enough. If Russert did not forget his roots, is that to say that others in journalism have trouble remembering where they came from? Or whom, or what, they are supposed to be serving? Hint: think the public interest.

The reporters and commentators today are not the civic heroes they once were. A 2004 public opinion poll suggested that, among the wretched, journalists score only slightly better than used-car salesmen, and on par with politicians, in terms of credibility. There is, of course, a gross dollop of unfairness in much of this, scorning the messenger for the bad news he brings. And there is much bad news to digest these days: war in Iraq and the prospect of conflict with Iran, rising gas and food prices. There is even talk of charging Internet users not flat fees but fares determined by how much they download. As the line between what was once considered news blurs with what was once clearly entertainment, those who seriously cover the facts are tarred with the sins of those who transmit gossip. It does not help that a handful of international conglomerates own most of the media. It just makes it easier to tar so many with the same brush.

Many, it is sad to say, deserve such treatment. Exhibit A in the most recent case against mainstream corporate media is that, in the run-up to the Iraq War, the press allowed President Bush to lie and hoodwink the nation into following his criminally mistaken lead. It is hard to imagine an issue closer to home than an international conflict in which American men and women are dying in the name of a bogus cause. But the sorry record of the press gets even sorrier when one considers what else Bush and the Republicans got away with for so many years: the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle class got screwed.

Intelligence deficit

EDITORIAL — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:37:18 GMT

Bush fooled voters and the press once on Iraq. Can McCain get away with the same thing?
The American press and public rarely get riled up these days over new revelations concerning President George W. Bush and his administration’s sorry history.

The American press and public rarely get riled up these days over new revelations concerning President George W. Bush and his administration’s sorry history. Perhaps America’s outrage has been tapped out. Maybe that’s why so little attention was given to this past week’s Senate Intelligence Committee report on the misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. Bush lied, people died — tell us something we don’t know.

Well, apparently not everybody knows yet. Five of the seven Republicans on the committee refused to endorse the report, and instead blasted its findings. (Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine joined the Democrats.)

And John McCain, who touts his military and foreign-policy experience as his main credential for the presidency, has yet to concede that the Bush administration misled anyone in order to wage an unnecessary war — indeed, he continues to claim that the invasion was justified, even knowing what we do now.

Despite this glaring lack of judgment, McCain remains nearly even with Barack Obama in national polls. So, apparently people still need to be reminded of how we got where we are with this war.

This latest Senate report, as well as former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, makes the answer increasingly clear. It is not that the administration was acting upon, and relaying to the public, faulty intelligence. It was that Bush administration officials didn’t care what the intelligence — either from our own agencies or other countries’ — said. And they had even less interest in conveying that information to the American people, so that they might have all the facts at their disposal.

“As Scott McClellan has now confessed, and as the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed just this week,” veteran journalist Bill Moyers said Monday in a speech at the National Conference for Media Reform, “the administration, with the complicity of the dominant media, conducted a political propaganda campaign using erroneous and misleading intelligence to deceive Americans into supporting an unprovoked war.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee looked at false public statements made by Bush, Dick Cheney, and others, and compared them with the intelligence information that the administration actually had. Some of those statements were, in fact, based on the best intelligence available, which happened to be wrong. Other claims were deliberately puffed up, and contrary intelligence opinions tamped down. In other cases, they were based on no intelligence at all, such as the suggestion that Iraq was developing drones to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States. (The committee’s report has prompted Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich — over objections from the timid Democratic leadership — to introduce 35 articles of impeachment against Bush, beginning with “Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign To Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.” Another prominent Democrat, Rob Wexler of Florida, is a co-sponsor.)

Gold muddle

EDITORIAL — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:01:42 GMT

George W. Bush is going to the Beijing Olympics
President Bush’s decision to score a historical footnote and be the first sitting US president to attend an overseas Olympic Games seemed like a good idea at the time.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. President Bush’s decision, that is, to score a historical footnote and be the first sitting US president to attend an overseas Olympic Games, in this case the August Games in Beijing. Like many of Bush’s “good ideas,” however, this one is another big mistake.

It is hard to imagine a more politicized pageant than the Olympics.

The vile Nazi theatrics of the 1936 Berlin Games are now the stuff of history books.

Closer to the world’s collective memory are the 1968 Mexico City Games, which began with that nation’s government forcefully dispersing thousands of protesters, shooting down and killing perhaps 300 (the estimates vary) in the process.

Four years later, Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes in Munich.

In 1980 the US boycotted the Moscow Games in protest of the Soviets’ 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984 the Soviets and 13 Eastern Bloc nations and allies returned the favor, shunning the Los Angeles Games, at which even saber-rattling President Ronald Reagan kept a low profile to keep international tensions within acceptable bounds.

And in 1996 — one year after America-born terrorists bombed the Oklahoma City federal court house — a bomb killed one person and wounded others in Atlanta, sparking what, by post-9/11 standards, now seems like a “manageable” panic.

In every instance, the Games went on. Dead bodies were and are beside the point. Political repression, international terror, and geopolitics do not register with the curiously obtuse, corporately fueled ethic of industrialized sport that is the Olympics.

If the grand masters of the Olympics were truly interested in depoliticizing the Games, why not settle on a permanent home in more neutral settings, say, Switzerland or Sweden for the winter sports and Greece, the Games’ historic home, for summer sports?

The answer is simple: cash. Ever-changing locations allow the Olympics a steady stream of funding from would-be hosts who trip over themselves to pay to hold the Games. The cost to China this year has been estimated at $20 billion and counting.

There is also, of course, television. Static sites might be less politically charged, but rotating host cities provide the sort of backdrops that the television industry needs to justify its huge investment in broadcast rights. NBC paid a combined $1.5 billion for the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Games, and will be charging as much as $750,000 for a 30-second spot to recoup.

Hit the brakes

EDITORIAL — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:54:25 GMT

When the primary season closes on June 3, it is time for Hillary Clinton to exit the race
New York senator Hillary and former president Bill Clinton, who not too long ago were seen as America’s pre-eminent and prototypical power couple, have recast themselves as a coed Thelma and Louise.

New York senator Hillary and former president Bill Clinton, who not too long ago were seen as America’s pre-eminent and prototypical power couple, have recast themselves as a coed Thelma and Louise.

Hill and Bill are on a road trip. Hill and Bill have spunk and energy. Hill and Bill have chips on their shoulders, but so do the legions of blue-collar voters who have been screwed by nearly eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

It is a tribute to the Clintons’ considerable political skill that a couple who became undeniably rich while so many others became undeniably worse off can enjoy the rousing support of those on the losing end of the Bush equation. That, of course, is because Hill and Bill haven’t screwed the poor, shortchanged the working class, and pandered to the elderly, as Bush and the Republicans have done.

Still, as entertaining — and at times compelling — as the Clintons’ star turn as feisty underdogs out to beat the odds has been, it is wearing thin. The buzz is just not intense enough, the word of mouth not loud enough to catch on with those not predisposed to vote for the senator from New York.

The former president did his wife no favor when he suggested again recently that the Democrats are not likely to win the presidency in November if Hillary is not their nominee. At the moment, some polls may show that. But other polls tell different stories. The fact of the matter is that, after months of bruising political battle, none of the three major candidates still standing looks anything like a sure thing.

The McCain camp is in disarray, thanks to its (for the moment) warm embrace of Bush and the forced expulsion of the corporate influence peddlers who were running its show. Barack Obama’s wonder-boy image has been tarnished not only by his association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but also by the corruption charges faced by his former political patron Tony Rezko. And then there is the inconvenient reality that Hillary’s personal negatives are exceeded by only one other elected official: the loathsome Dubya.

Under kinder, gentler, and less critical circumstances, Bill’s windy warning to his fellow Democrats might pass for understandable hyperbole. Instead, the Clintons sound desperate. Adding to this sense of desperation is Bill’s charge that a media conspiracy is seeking to deny Hillary the nomination. It is true that over the years the press has been tougher on the Clintons than Bush. But, ironically, it was the media that helped maintain Hillary’s carefully cultivated aura of invincibility. Voters, not reporters, shattered Hillary’s dream.

A force

EDITORIAL — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:17:48 GMT

Never in his long career has Ted Kennedy been more vital or central to political life
Ted Kennedy has beaten the odds before.

Ted Kennedy has beaten the odds before. Fourteen years ago, it looked as if Kennedy would be forcibly retired from the US Senate, where he had served for more than three decades. His Republican challenger was a then-fresh-faced novice named Mitt Romney. Polls showed that more than half of Massachusetts voters thought it was time for Kennedy to make way for new talent. Kennedy’s failed presidential bid was 14 years behind him; his awkward silence during the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings suggested that his days of relevance were over. Kennedy, however, came back. Animated by the legendary energy of his legendary family, fortified by a stoic resilience, Kennedy proved himself to be a virtual force of nature.

The indefatigable Kennedy, now 76, has recently seemed more energetic, more passionate, and more vital than ever. He has thrown himself vigorously behind the cause of Barack Obama (as he had with the campaign of John Kerry), led the charge to expose the lies and misdeeds of the Bush administration, fought to protect Massachusetts jobs and funding, and passed legislation that would have been impossible without his guiding hand.

Forget relevant; Kennedy today seems indispensable. That makes the news that he is suffering from a malignant brain tumor all the more shocking and sobering.

Kennedy had surgery for a partially blocked neck artery just seven months ago — reportedly his first serious hospitalization since breaking several bones in a small-plane crash in 1964.

The treatment only briefly interrupted his stumping for congressional candidate Niki Tsongas; then it was right back to Washington to grill attorney-general nominee Michael Mukasey — one of many recent hearings that have seen the top figures in the military and justice departments get a tongue-lashing from the “liberal lion” of the US Senate.

In January, Kennedy proved himself more forward-looking than many of his younger colleagues; he rejected the insiders’ choice of Clinton, and shook up the presidential race by endorsing Obama — comparing the young Illinois senator to his brothers John and Bobby.

It was not merely an endorsement. Kennedy made the announcement at a rousing rally that was treated by national media as one of the biggest political events of the campaign. He then stumped nationally for Obama — in particular among Hispanics. The Globe’s Susan Milligan reported at the time that “to the hundreds of East Los Angeles residents who turned out to see the senior Massachusetts senator . . . Edward M. Kennedy is still a Democratic rock star.”

Sunshine needed

EDITORIAL — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:53:46 GMT

Political transparency is key if DiMasi is to transcend his crisis
Sal DiMasi has a track record of great accomplishment as Speaker of the House, with victories that include health-care reform, gay-marriage protection, and an economic-development package that offers unprecedented support for the arts, to cite just three examples.

Previously: DiMasi's Sheep: How Stepford politics rule Beacon Hill. By David S. Bernstein.

Sal DiMasi has a track record of great accomplishment as Speaker of the House, with victories that include health-care reform, gay-marriage protection, and an economic-development package that offers unprecedented support for the arts, to cite just three examples. For that reason, many in Massachusetts — particularly progressives — have been willing to overlook the so-called process issues that they complained about under DiMasi’s predecessor, Tom Finneran.

But those process issues — secretive bill-writing practices, heavy-handed control of votes, and centralized management of committees — are behind the Speaker’s current difficulties. Those difficulties now imperil his ability to lead, and to produce any further good for the Commonwealth.

DiMasi has been accused of pushing through legislation at the behest of his friend and accountant Richard Vitale, who had loaned DiMasi $250,000 secured by a third mortgage on his residence; of steering a multi-million-dollar software contract to a company represented by another friend; of accepting a free golf game from a race-track owner and potential casino developer while casino legislation was pending in the House; and of changing or blocking bills to benefit a close friend, developer Jay Cashman.

In all of this, it is entirely possible — in fact, believable — that DiMasi has committed no serious violations of ethics, nor abused his power on behalf of his friends. But because of the opaque manner in which his House runs its business, there is no way to know. In total darkness, people can speculate about anything without it being disproved.

Take, for example, allegations that DiMasi used his position to aid Cashman. Cashman did get what he wanted in several instances. Very likely, though, those gains came about innocently, for legitimate reasons, and without DiMasi’s personal involvement.

Unfortunately, as with so much House legislation, the legislation benefiting Cashman happened without public discussion, in DiMasi lieutenant Robert DeLeo’s Ways and Means Committee, and flew through to passage with little debate.

That is DiMasi’s preferred process: disputes, disagreements, and compromises get worked out behind the scenes. All the public sees is a finished product, a unified concurrence; nobody’s fingerprints are on any specific piece of the puzzle.

As a result, it is easy to speculate that DiMasi intervened for Cashman’s benefit. And, when DiMasi sent his leadership team out to defend him this past week, it was easy to dismiss them as reflexively defending their boss.

Courting disaster

EDITORIAL — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:15:51 GMT

Why McCain’s right-wing judicial pledge would further compromise America’s future
With the price of food and gasoline running at punishing levels, it is no surprise that the economy has replaced the disastrous war in Iraq as the issue with which voters are most concerned.

With the price of food and gasoline running at punishing levels, it is no surprise that the economy has replaced the disastrous war in Iraq as the issue with which voters are most concerned. Taken together, the two are quite literally issues of life and death. But as understandably preoccupied as the nation is with the current sorry state of affairs at home and abroad, voters should not lose sight of the fact that while the next president confronts the crises of the moment with one hand, he or she will craft the future with the other.

Judicial appointments are among a president’s most effective tools for shaping the social, political, and economic future of this nation. The dozens of trial and appellate judges a president names will determine the quality of justice, referee appointed and elected officials, and regulate the intricacies of our vast corporate culture.

The most important appointments, of course, are those to the Supreme Court. It is a risky business predicting how many vacancies might occur on the Court over the next four years. But putting larger issues of fate aside, it is likely that the next president will make one or maybe two appointments, to fill the seats of Republican justice John Paul Stevens, who is 88 years old, and Democratic justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 75.

Putative Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s recent speech at Wake Forest University — in which he pledged to extend the legacy of President George W. Bush by continuing to appoint radical, right-wing judges — should come as no surprise to even casual political observers, particularly as he continues to pander to the hard-core conservatives of his party whose contributions and votes he must garner to have any chance of winning in November.

Despite McCain’s highly publicized maverick moments, he is at his core a ruby-red Republican. Like Bush, McCain values the economic supremacy of the few over the many, and is dedicated to the proposition that the power and prerogatives of the presidency are more important than the civil liberties of the citizenry. Any Democrat disenchanted with the hard-fought primary season would do well to remember this.

While we admire Senator Hillary Clinton, the Phoenix has a clearly stated preference for Senator Barack Obama. But it is painfully clear to this newspaper that either of the Democrats would name superior candidates to the judiciary. If McCain is elected, Bush’s royalist economic policies and reactionary political and social vision will become even more entrenched than they are today.

Is the MBTA on track?

EDITORIAL — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:39:04 GMT

In the real world, funding is only an issue; politics is the most persistent problem
As targets for criticism go, it is hard to imagine one more inviting than the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, better known as the MBTA, best known as the T.

Smells like T spirit!
Boston’s mass-transit system dates back to 1631, when sailboats ferried passengers from Chelsea to Charlestown. In the subsequent 377 years, service has become a teeny bit faster — but at a price that has put the MBTA in debt to a tune of more than $8 billion. With transportation issues getting renewed scrutiny under the Patrick administration, Phoenix staffers fanned out to kick the T’s tires.

• The trolley Svengali: Why Dan Grabauskas might actually fix the T — if he can keep his job. By Adam Reilly.
• Trouble 'round the bend? MBTA workers have been without a contract for two years. Arbitration will settle the matter soon, but could stir an angry hornets’ nest for 2010. By David S. Bernstein
• Seven habits of highly effective T-riders: Keep your hands on the pole and not on your neighbor’s ass, bucko. By Sharon Steel.
• The T and the Tube: London’s Underground is seething with danger. Boston’s T has cuckoo juice. By James Parker.
• Underground art: Reviewing the MBTA’s subterranean aesthetic. By Mike Miliard.
• A sinking feeling: Leaky MBTA tunnels have been seeping Boston’s groundwater for years. Can a new plan prevent potential catastrophe? By David S. Bernstein
• State of hock: If the MBTA wasn't in debt, these items would be at the top of its new wish list. By Jason Notte.

It must be something in the air. Or the water. Maybe it is our Puritan heritage. Whatever the reason, Bostonians love to criticize, to complain. If there is an upside to the local culture of negativity, it might be that it keeps everyone on their toes.

As targets for criticism go, it is hard to imagine one more inviting than the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, better known as the MBTA, best known as the T. That such a sprawling system is nearly universally recognized by a single letter is a testimony to its ubiquity. It also suggests the central role the T plays in so many lives.

As with other institutions that protect or foster the common good — schools, police departments, fire stations — Boston was an innovator, a pioneer in providing mass transport. The American Public Transportation Association credits Boston with the nation’s first publicly operated ferryboat (1631), first commuter fare on a railroad (1838), first fare-free promotion (1856), first public-transportation commission (1894), first electric underground street railway line (1897), and first publicly financed transportation facility (1897).

After Pennsylvania

EDITORIAL — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:40:09 GMT

Increasingly obsessed with political gamesmanship, the presidential candidates must confront reality
Hillary Clinton’s 10-point win in Pennsylvania means the Democratic battle for the presidential nomination will continue.

Hillary Clinton’s 10-point win in Pennsylvania means the Democratic battle for the presidential nomination will continue. There is no end in site. The likelihood is that the race will go on until the final votes are cast in June in Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota — the last primaries. Even then, there is little reason to believe that Clinton will quit the field until August, when the party gathers in Denver for its convention.

If that is the case, the nomination will not be settled until after a bloodcurdling floor fight over seating delegates from Florida and Michigan, two states that lost their convention presence because they defied party rules and held their primaries earlier than allowed.

The math still favors Barack Obama. He leads in popular votes (49.2 percent to 47.5 percent, excluding Florida and Michigan) and in the delegate count (1713 to 1586, with 2024 needed to win). But Clinton is reminding the nation that she, like her husband, is a force of nature. The Clintons perform best in punishing adversity.

She is fixed on two horizons: the August nomination and, if she fails to win that, the 2012 White House race. Successful presidential-grade politicians have to be skilled at talking out of both sides of their mouths. John McCain, the putative Republican nominee, has the gift. So does Obama, who compounds it with eloquence. But Clinton has the gift in spades. Her belief in herself is complete; her intensity, if not deadly, is wounding — as Obama found out in Texas, Ohio, and now Pennsylvania.

Clinton has promised to support Obama vigorously if he wins, but campaigns by saying he cannot and should not. Clinton takes this one step further by contending at regular intervals that, in terms of stature, only she is in the same league as McCain. It is a remarkable strategy. The unwritten rules of party politics hold that the charge of unsuitability be leveled at only the candidate of the opposing party; Clinton, again like her husband, writes her own rules. This repels some as it attracts others. It is the key to understanding her two-tiered strategy: if not now, then later.

For all its drama, bile, and episodes of silliness — the wrestling moment shared by McCain, Obama, and Clinton being perhaps the most comically degrading (so far) — the campaign is curiously divorced from reality. The three candidates are working inside a bubble, a televised womb. On the campaign trail, their reality is what the late George W.S. Trow called “the context of no context.”

Time to break a sweat

EDITORIAL — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:44:03 GMT

Massachusetts may be beyond reform, but couldn’t Governor Patrick try a little harder?
Deval Patrick won the governor’s office by raising expectations that he could quickly make a difference on Beacon Hill.

Deval Patrick won the governor’s office by raising expectations that he could quickly make a difference on Beacon Hill. That’s a tall order. Governors may reign in the Commonwealth, but the legislature rules. Even more important, the legislature makes the rules. That reality has become painfully clear to Governor Patrick in the first 15 months of his 48-month term.

Only the wildly idealistic optimists — and there were many who rallied to the governor’s campaign rhetoric — could have expected Patrick to revolutionize Massachusetts in this short a span of time. Idealism, of course, is in relatively short supply up on Beacon Hill. And optimism is a similarly precious commodity.

Patrick’s problem — and anyone who doubts he has a problem should look at his deeply declining approval ratings — is that, having cornered the limited market for idealistic opportunism, and then expanded it, he is now being judged by its cruel utopian standards. (Barack Obama, take note.)

If Patrick were ever to drop his guard for a moment — and charming though Patrick is, he appears to be increasingly guarded — he might admit something like this: politics is a lot tougher than government (which is tough enough), and running a state is a lot trickier than being a corporate executive and a board member.

So how’s Patrick doing? The assessment, not surprisingly, is mixed.

Patrick has genuinely improved many facets of state government, and has laid the groundwork for more important changes.

He has also misspent much effort by introducing overly ambitious and wide-ranging proposals that he and his staff were ill-equipped to usher through the dense political thickets.

Patrick and his team came out of the gate in January 2007 with an aggressive first budget, seeking in one stroke not only to fulfill a variety of campaign promises (new cops, property-tax relief, expanded early education, increased immunization programs), but also to overhaul state government (earmark elimination, restructured departments, consolidated budget items). The former were unrealistic given the huge budget shortfall; the latter sought to emasculate the very legislature whose votes were needed to pass that budget.

This budget, far more than the drapes, the Cadillac, and even his inexplicable call to Citigroup executive and former US Treasury secretary Robert Rubin on behalf of mortgage lender Ameriquest (on whose board Patrick had served) revealed a tin-eared political neophyte with much to learn. (The flap over his recent book deal, too, calls into question how much he’s learned — or at least retained.) And it was followed, even as the legislature was still working on that first budget, by a seemingly endless series of grand proposals, including a corporate-tax package, local-options taxes, life-sciences investment, a package of environmental and energy initiatives, commuter-rail extension, post-release public-safety reform, and, of course, the casino plan.