7 Days in America Blog

7 Days Talks with Donna Brazile

Mark Green — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:59:46 -0500

This time "the whole world was watching" was literally true...and they were waving flags not fingers. Our A+ panel discusses why -- W's uniting influence, O's bottom-up campaign, McCain's dishonort.

7 Days: FDR = Obama? Alter, Huffington, vanden Heuvel & Green Discuss and Compare Their Transitions, Nov. 15, 2008

Mark Green — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:36:27 -0500

Two Democrats succeed two conservative Republicans during economic crises. How parallel actually are Roosevelt's and now Obama's transitions?

7 Days Interview with Jonathan Alter, author of The Defining Moment, Nov. 16, 2008

7 Days: Pre-Mortem on McCain...and Howard Dean on '08, w/ Huffington, Conason & Green

Mark Green — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:14:04 -0400

What went wrong with McCain? Nearly everything. But mostly, he ran an
ok GOP campaign for 1952, 1968, 1980...but not 2008. A Cold-War
candidacy in the age of Google?

Let's put aside for a moment the phenomenon of Obama, his eloquence,
equanimity, organizing skills. McCain was old-time religion in the era
of super-churches, a cold warrior when non-state actors are the biggest
variables, a deregulator when even Randian Alan Greenspan questioned
market fundamentalism. He always seemed to be Mel Gibson in Forever Young, a 1940s flyboy transported to and stumbling around in the 1990s.

He simply ran plays from the Grand OLD Party's playbook when, as Obama
was doing on the other side, it was essential to call audibles given
the context of Bush, Katrina, the credit crisis.

First, he had nothing to say about the economic meltdown other than he'd a) cut earmarks (under .005% of the federal budget), b) balance
the budget by the end of his first term (which no one believed and, in
any event, was not very Keynsian when stimuli were needed), and c)
continue Bush's Gilded Age tax policies. Amazing. Bushonomics produced
one-third the job creation of Clinton -- and has helped to create the
current recession -- yet McCain tethered himself to that mast.
Going-down-with-the-ship may seem noble for the scion of admirals but
it's bad economics and worse politics.

Second, instead of talking about real problems, he resorted to a
standard fear-and-smear campaign, more McCarthy than Maverick. Dean
discusses how he'd have been better off running as the McCain of 2000
than the one who daily resorted to guilt-by-ancient-association --
palling around with terrorists, PLO spokesmen, socialists. But none of
that had real traction when the closest thing definitionally to a
socialist was Hank Paulson and voters were more afraid of their bills

7 Days Talks with George Lakoff

Mark Green — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:33:00 -0400

So why is Obama in such a strong position in the final stretch? George Lakoff has a brainy explanation.

7 Days: Daschle on Obama and McCain, with Huffington, Reagan & Green

Mark Green — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:47:09 -0400

We now see McCain's split-level strategy for the remaining two weeks -- while he stays patriotic and funny, his campaign quietly floods the country with slanderous robo-calls and ads equating Obama and Ayers/ACORN. The public Maverick vs. the private McCarthy.

Interview with Sen. Tom Daschle, October 17, 2008

GREEN: You know him well from when you both served together in the Senate. What was going through McCain's head during and since the debate?

DASCHLE: I think he was advised to be aggressive, and I think that came off as anger. You know, one of the great taglines that they told us to use during the post-debate spin period was to say that he's already convinced two-thirds of the American people he's angry, and he spent 90 minutes convincing the final third. And I think he did a good job of that; he convinced a lot of people last night that he's an angry man. And I think that frustration showed increasingly during the debate.

GREEN: On this blog three months ago, I wrote that Obama seemed to be our Reagan, a teflon candidate due to his sunny composure. How much is that the reason for his success to date?

7 Days in America: Will McCain Put Reputation First in Wednesday's Debate? w/ Mellman, Conason, Huffington & Green

Mark Green — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:34:55 -0400

Dear Senator McCain:
We don't know each other well. We only met once when I interviewed you in 2002 for a book on money in politics. And like many progressive Democrats, I found you interesting, engaging, pretty independent.

What happened?

I understand how ambition can warp judgment. But your recent personal attacks on Barack Obama are so beyond the pale for presidential politics that you now face a fateful choice by the Wednesday debate -- will you pull back from the abyss of sleazy slander or risk losing not only the election but also your reputation and honor?

If Friday is any indication, you're on the fence. On the one hand, when another rally started turning into a mob, you chastized some hateful supporters by saying that Obama was "a decent person [who] you do not have to scared of as president of the United States" and "we will be respectful." But that same day your campaign released an ad that was anything but respectful, asserting that Obama "worked with terrorist Bill Ayers" and then "lied" about it. And of course Sarah Palin keeps repeating that Obama "started" his political career in Ayers' living room.

According to newspaper reports, this is a big lie -- one any candidate should sympathize with. Hundreds of people have hosted events for me, and I assure you that I don't know what awful things they did decades earlier. Indeed, it's known that the two of them worked together handing out educational grants on the same board of the Annenberg Foundation, whose widow endorsed McCain this week! So are you supported by terrorists?

7 Days in America: Palin Fades. Will Bin Laden Again Try to Pick Our President? Ferraro, Huffington, vanden Heuvel & Green

Mark Green — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:37:41 -0400

The VP debate is over and the reviews are in -- Biden exceeded high expectations and Palin exceed low ones...she stayed on message, though not on topic. And now it's likely that, as so many VP nominees before her, Palin will disappear into small markets to work her conservative base far from the national media "filter."
So short of some Obama gaffe -- and the man doesn't appear to make major gaffes -- we're down to only three significant variables over these final four weeks:
^First, the economy is tanking so obviously that it seems likely to dominate the election. Per most presidential campaigns, it'll come down to pocketbook issues -- and again, McCain hasn't passed the economist-in-chief test.
^Second, the McCain camp keeps threatening to try to Willie Hortonize Obama with ex-weatherman Bill Ayres. This guilt by association technique has worked before, but the economy is too big and the hour seems too late for such a despicable, lame linkage. What next, Steve Schmidt -- an ad connecting O.J. and B.O.?
^Third is an "October Surprise" that forces the race to be decided on international, not economic, grounds.
Enter bin Laden? I recall how in March of 2004 I cornered Wes Clark at an event and asked why wouldn't bin Laden do something provocative to help Bush win relection since each protagonist helped the other -- in any Bush-Obama comparison, Bush was advantaged in America and bin Laden could better recruit al Qaeda. Being a discrete military grown-up, Clark wouldn't engage me -- so I launched a "Name the October Surprise Contest" on Air America Radio. We got thousands of listeners to suggest what might happen...and then something did. John Kerry blames his loss in part on bin Laden's Friday tape before the Tuesday election for focusing attention on the terrorist threat just as Kerry was starting to climb.

Bloomberg Vetoes Voters

Mark Green — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:20:14 -0400

New York City now has a choice--Democracy or Bloomberg. A Wednesday New York Times editorial reversing years of opposition to a City Council law overturning two referenda on term limits was unconvincing in at least three ways:

* First, any such law would be obvious self-dealing by the mayor and council. They are not disinterested parties acting only in the public interest since they are possibly extending their careers working for the city by enacting such a law. That's why the far better solution would have been another public referendum this fall, which the mayor could have gotten on the ballot at any time over the past few months. It's sheer political chutzpah for the mayor to say it's now too late to have a refendum on the ballot to extend term limits when it was he who stopped it from being on the ballot.

New Yorkers now have to think about who should decide this question--voters in a special referendum next January deciding about the public interest or incumbents voting in their political interest.

* Second, Bloomberg allies are arguing that the current economic crisis justifies this extraordinary remedy. But isn't that more an after-the-fact alibi rather than a real argument? Think about it. This week's national "crisis" will largely be resolved by national legislation within the week, with implementation occurring over the next year or years. By 2010, the only serious issue for the next mayor will be budgetary--and whoever serves 2010-2013 will have an OMB doing necessary belt-tighting. Since Bloomberg as mayor has no federal or local jurisdiction over this fiscal crisis, how can he imply that he's the indispensible man?

7 Days: Sherrod Brown on the "September Surprise" and Hans Christian Anderson

Mark Green — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:08:50 -0400

Has this week’s Wall Street “September Surprise” permanently altered the presidential contest? And now that mortgages rather than mooses are again on the agenda, let’s return to a fair question – is Palin qualified to be vice-president or president?

Our panel discusses both and arrives at some conclusions:

*Presidentially, at both style and substance levels, McCain has done himself enormous and probably permanent damage. While it can’t be fun to be not economically adept and in the party in power as the ship started sinking, still McCain’s lurching between Howard Beale, Herbert Hoover and Ralph Nader conveys no confidence. On any given day that Obama can truthfully say that he’s always warned that financial deregulation has created the context of this collapse. But McCain’s blusterery attacks on SEC Chairman Cox, on Wall Street “greed” and on Obama as the culpable agents here -– while alternately saying the fundamentals are “strong” -– has led even the Wall Street Journal to express disappointment (“we need steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers”).

McCain is digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole and his impulsive, fighter pilot instincts are providing him no way out.

*Congressionally also, it’s likely we’ll look back in six months and sixty years as this being the week when the 2008 national elections became cast in stone and when a progressive majority coalesced that led to a White House, Senate and House victories that in turn led to the greatest burst of progressive legislation since 1933 and 1965. For there’s really no answer to the political and policy charge that when the Reublicans had their chance on peace and prosperity, they blew it – now the other team will get its chance.

7 Days: SPINNING 12 HYPOCRISES w/ Huffington, Vanden Heuvel, Bender & Green

Mark Green — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:23:18 -0400

This week I attended the U.S. Open and watched the Republican Convention. Guess which had more spin? Can McCain's pedestrian stump speech Thursday night convince voters that a Bush look-alike for seven years is the change agent? Only in America.

Our panel below performs the Emperor-Has-No-Clothes assignment of saying what should be obvious but what Republicans are hoping Americans don't see. Look at how experienced she is! Who’s W?

One way to compare the Republican Convention and our American reality is to list their dozen top hypocrises. Admittedly, politics is often the art of squaring circles and finessing inconsistencies. But as commentators Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy accidentally told us, the level of BS and cynicism in the Twin Cities was mountainous:

*John McCain said that he doesn’t work for the special interests. Ok, but they sure work for him, given the lobbyists who run and give to his campaign.

*John McCain repeatedly told us that he was a man of honor and principle, but what was the principle when he belittled then hugged Bush, belittled then hugged the religious right, belittled then hugged tax cuts for billionaires and oil firms, condemned and then allowed torture?

7 Days: McCain and Palin - "Candidacy First," w/ Shrum, Podesta, Reagan & Green

Mark Green — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:03:43 -0400

Obama said he wouldn’t question McCain’s motives or patriotism, but I can: a man who said that Islamic terrorism is the #1 issue of our time has put political tactics above country and constitution by choosing a complete rookie as his VP nominee. Objectively, when you combine Dan Quayle and Chauncey Gardiner, you get Sarah Palin.

Two questions for Senator McCain: do you really think that Sarah Palin is the best Republican in the country to succeed you as president should you be unable to serve – or the best 10, or even the best 100? And does a Palin-Putin summit on nuclear arms worry you at all?

Our A List panel on 7 Days of Bob Shrum, John Podesta and Ron Reagan are underwhelmed by the choice of someone so underqualified. But they also tactically suggest that Democrats hold their fire and instead insist that the media hold her accountable for performing at a presidential level in the campaign so she doesn’t succeed by beating very low expectations, as W did in 2000.

KRUGMAN ON OBAMANOMICS...AND HOW TO PROSECUTE THE CASE, w/ Reagan & vanden Heuval

Mark Green — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:51:43 -0400

Perhaps the best columnist in America, Paul Krugman shares his anxiety on 7 Days in America about the gap between Obama's economic case and Obama's political candidacy.

In a week of excessive Democratic hand-wringing, though, the point is a fair one: given the Republicans' awful economic record, why is a brilliant and savvy Democrat running only slightly ahead of a Bush mini-me who got into Annapolis based on affirmative action (for admirals' offsprings) and who pleads ignorance on the dismal science?

Our conversation with Krugman -- and then Ron Reagan and Katrina vanden Heuvel -- did produce some ideas on how to turn a debate into a rout:

*TWO NUMBERS. It's my experience that in a back-and-forth, a powerful, concrete number can seize the rhetorical high-ground and dominate discussion. I recall how all my earnest (and long!) rebuttals in the 1970s about the benefits of consumer/envronmental regulation lost out in the public conversation when conservative economist Murray Weidenbaum asserted, without much evidence, that regulation cost $200 billion. Q.E.D.

Today's numbers are 95% and 300%. They should be put on buttons, used in podium speeches, and emblazoned on signs almost as often as "CHANGE we can believe in".

When McCain's chief spokeswoman went on Race to the White House last week saying it was "a lie" that McCain would be Bush's third term -- not wrong, mind you, but a "lie" -- the answer should always be that "McCain voted with Bush 95% of the time" in the Senate. What part of 95% didn't she understand? Ok, let's concede that McCain's views on tax cuts for the top one percent, tax giveaways to Big Oil, and trade aren't identical to Bush's but only 95% the same, voters will understand how the Republican nominee will predominantly continue policies that produced the worst job performance in decades, a sub-prime mortgage and credit crisis, and record gas prices.

1st POLL RESULTS -- WHAT 5000+ AIR AMERICANS THINK

Mark Green — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:55:29 -0400

True, our poll might not represent a scientific sample but a) it is five times larger than the usual national poll sample and b) we do represent a growing progressive movement. And collectively, you all did reveal a lot about the nature of Air Americans.

There were surprises. When we asked who would be the Denver Keynote Speaker (before Mark Warner was chosen last week), one name elicited 2.5 times the response of anyone else on the list -- Senator Jim Webb. Seems that someone who can both fight and write has struck a big chord.

7 Days: SORENSEN ON KENNEDY & OBAMA...AND WHY MCCAIN WON'T EXPLOIT EDWARDS' SCANDAL

Mark Green — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:03:19 -0400

As JFK's closest advisor for 11 years and then the first to prominently yoke Kennedy and Obama, Ted Sorensen's views are politically telling this month in our approach to Denver. But John Edwards' humiliating sex scandal is not for two reasons: it's a failing of person, not party, and John McCain did the same thing -- viz. have an affair while his wife was ailing.

This is not to say that the misconduct of both Johns should be disqualifying for president. If that were true -- and based on the best scholarship -- we wouldn't have had an FDR, IKE, JFK, LBJ or Clinton and we'd today be lionizing Nixon and W as top tier presidents. I recall once debating a religious conservative. Cal Thomas, on a talk show during the Clinton kerfuffle. "What could be worse than lying to your wife?", he said. "Nuclear war" was my reply. That is, looking back, who would we rather have had navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis when the world risked extinction -- a frisky Kennedy or a chaste Bush 43?

McCain has admitted to his misconduct. It hasn't come up in this contest and shouldn't. It should not be THE factor determining someone's vote but rather possibly a factor for those who choose to focus on bad behavior 30 years ago rather than his capacity to be president today.

Hear that, Republican mudslingers? Let us in this context urge rabid family-values Republicans and Atwater-Rove political operatives to stop their moralistic slandering when the shoe's on the other foot. Recall how most of those Hill Republicans hounding Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky in 1999-2000 had their own affairs -- Gingrich, Livingston, Hyde. Recall how so many anti-gay conservatives came out of closet later or were throw out.

7 Days: THE WEEK THAT ENDED A WAR & A CANDIDACY, w/ Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin and Huffington, Bender & Green

Mark Green — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:49:20 -0400

Obama's "Rolling Thunder Tour" through the Middle East and Europe has likely decisively changed the arc of both the war and McCain's presidential candidacy.

Usually it's only in retrospect that history judges a moment to be a turning point politically, like the day in 1980 that Jimmy Carter's helicopters on a hostage rescue mission crashed in the Iranian desert - and so did his chance for reelection.

But Senator Obama's trip this past week was like a rolling decisive moment, stylistically, substantively and politically. I'd be surprised if years from now we don't look back on these 10 days as when his 4-6 point lead hardened and expanded.

Our conversation with Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin - and Arianna Huffington and David Bender - converged on the conclusion that Obama looked "presidential" and like a commander-in-chief while McCain looked like a biblical Job wandering around from golf carts to supermarket aisles shopping for news and votes. Short of negotiating peace between Shia and Sunni, it's hard to conclude anything other than Barack Obama won the week, if not the election.

First, the contrast between the two candidates couldn't have been more pronounced. One was calm, cool, poised, positive - the other was surly and defensive.

Second, one was vindicated on his Iraq position when Prime Ministers Maliki and Brown agreed with a 16 month timetable for withdrawal - while Bush agreed on a time "horizon" and even McCain told Wolf Blitzer that "16 months was a pretty good timetable."

7 Days in America: BARNEY FRANK ON REGULATION & MCCAIN, w/ Frank, Huffington, Conason and Green

Mark Green — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:31:24 -0400

Two fuses were lit this past week that could eventually explode later in John McCain's campaign -- a housing-banking crisis exposing Republican anti-regulation orthodoxy and the senator's penchant for falsehoods that gives new meaning to Bush III.

First, the modern anti-regulation crusade began officially in 1978 with enactment of Prop-13 in California limiting property taxes and the defeat of the federal Consumer Protection Agency in Congress as "more big government." And then of course Reagan rode this deregulatory movement -- "Government is not the solution... Government is the problem" -- to the White House two years later.

Now cut to 1995 when two events combined to start a counteraction: Speaker Newt Gingrich's unpopular shut-down of the federal government during a budget battle with President Clinton and the attack in Oklahoma City by domestic terrorists who killed people precisely because they were federal workers. Responded Clinton, "I'll never criticize 'bureaucrats' again."

7 Days: KERRY ON OBAMA, MCCAIN, IRAQ & FLIP-FLOPPING, w/ Huffington, Vanden Heuvel & Green

Mark Green — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:16:25 -0400

When Barack Obama first met Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation magazine, he
said, "Remember, the perfect is the enemy of the good." So in a week when the
conversation is rising about what the left should properly do when the presumptive
nominee appears to emphasize his moderate side, I'd like to excerpt at greater length
than usual in our weekly 7 Days in America blog an interesting conversation about
this with John Kerry -- it's always instructive when the '04 Democratic nominee
analyzes the '08 Democratic nominee -- and with the ubiquitous two leading ladies of
the left, Arianna and Katrina.

Three points first.

*The two most successful Democratic politicians on the past century, the only two to
win the presidency more than once, were renowned for their ability to keep options
open with strategic ambiguity. FDR and Bill Clinton often infuriated their supporters
and staff. But they figured out how to win and govern in a country more to the right
than our European parents.

7 Days: WHY MCCAIN FLIP-FLOPS MORE THAN OBAMA, w/ Alter, Huffington, Reagan & Green

Mark Green — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:14:06 -0400

In a debate on Hardball last week, I was asked about McCain’s flip-flops vs. Obama’s, which is like contrasting Bonnie & Clyde with an alleged jaywalker.

Of course, it should be no crime that a person or candidate changes her/his mind based on new information…until the Bush Team turned ignorance into resolution and John Kerry fell into the trap with his for-it-before-against-it on Iraq funding.

So if “flip-flopping” is a test, our Air America panel of Alter, Huffington and Reagan concludes that McCain certainly scores higher based on sheer frequency. For he’s probably done a 180 degree turn – or changed significantly – on tax cuts, offshore drilling, Social Security privatization, negotiating with Hamas, Roe v. Wade, the Religious Right, presidential public financing, rights for Gitmo detainees, and torture.

Why? McCain is trying to do the impossible – satisfy both the Far Right of his party and the progressive majority in America in order to win 270 electoral votes.

7 DAYS: A "DEMOCRACY CZAR" CAN MAKE UP FOR OBAMA'S REJECTION OF PUBLIC FUNDING w/ Waldman, Huffington. Shrum & Green

Mark Green — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:32:32 -0400

It will be forgivable that Obama opted out of the public finance system IF he appoints a White House "Democracy Czar" to obtain pro-democracy reforms, like repairing the broken presidential system he rejected.

I'm a life-long zealot for public funding of public elections but Obama's refusal to opt-in to the presidential system was a "no brainer" that any candidate -- whether McCain, Clinton – would have also done if in his shoes.

Yes he had pledged to opt in to the system if the Republican nominee did so. His reasons for reversing field, however, are politically compelling:

7 DAYS: IS THE ELECTION OVER, ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING? w/ Bernstein, Huffington, Reagan & Green

Mark Green — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:09:11 -0400

Forget the relative skills, races, proposals and funds of Obama and McCain. Does an awful economy doom the nominee of the party in power, short of a calamity for the challenger? Probably yes, as Air America's 7 Days panel discusses. Events are in the saddle.

Political economist Edward R. Tufte of Yale has posited a simple model that has predicted every presidential election since 1980 except one – if the economic growth rate is greater than 3% in the year of the election, the party controlling the White House wins – and if it isn't, it doesn’t. (The exception was 2000 when Bush somehow hung Lewinsky around Gore.)

It’s John McCain’s misfortune to inherit a weak economy that’s growing at under 2% but that also endures:

^gas prices at $4-$5 a gallon due to international speculation and inadequate conservation;

^home foreclosures up 50% over last year, due to lender fraud and borrower exuberance;

^unemployment rising last month more than at any time in the past 20 years, as high energy prices ripple throughout the economy;

^a level of wealth & income inequality not seen since the 1890s and 1930s, due to the decline in unions and tax policies shifting the tax burden from capital to labor;

^millions losing health care insurance as employers drop coverage;

^climate change creating weather extremes because we’re hooked on a carbon-based economy;

^the collapse of Bear Stearns and near collapse of other investment banking firms;

^and a falling dollar and rising trade deficits as American live beyond their means and can no longer make up the shortfall by using credit cards or borrowing against their shrinking home equity or getting spouses to work for second incomes.

7 Days: Obama's Stronger Than Today's Polls

Mark Green — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:57:33 -0400

Many Democrats are fretting the fact that while a generic Democrat presidentially beats a generic Republican by 15 points, an Obama-McCain contest now is a near-tie, with RealClearPolitics putting the electoral math at 272-266 for Obama. But the Democrat is significantly stronger than today’s polls indicate. While he certainly sounds good, as was said of Wagner’s music, he’s even better than he sounds.

7 Days: What Should Happen? A Truth Commission for Bush

Mark Green — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:47:15 -0400

Scott McClellan’s book What Happened has been a feast for cable talk shows and commentators everywhere, with much discussion veering off on his motives. The Bush Team went into overdrive with its smear gear. Disgruntled? Money grubbing? Out of the loop? Off his rocker? A Manchurian author controlled by his North-Korean-like publisher? In a laughable attempt to blame the radar gun for the speeder, apologists Michele Bernard and Michael Smerconish actually argued on MSNBC that the big story was whether McClellan wrote the book in order to defeat McCain.

7 Days - McCain's Weak Week

Mark Green — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:45:09 -0400

If you add it up, John McCain had an unusually weak week, last seen angrily using his POW status to respond to Obama's criticism of his opposition to veterans benefits much as George Bush would reach for 9/11 to answer any criticism. Electorate to McCain: you were a heroic POW 40 years ago, now please talk about why you should be president for the next 4 years of the 21st century.

If his five problems in five days are an indication, McCain is on track to end up with a smaller vote than the last Republican nominee from Arizona in 1964:

7 Days: Moyers and Democracy -- He’d Rather Write than be President, w/ Huffington, vanden Heuvel & Green

Mark Green — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:01:48 -0400

There was lots of hard news this week -- West Virginia, John Edwards, appeasement, McCain’s 2013 Space Odyssey -- but it was Bill Moyers who uttered some hard truths on 7 Days in America on Air America.

Moyers is, simply, a national treasure, a reminder that we redeem the promise of America more through the morality, humanity and insights of unelected visionaries than insider politicians. By his books, TV programs and essays -- this month stitched together into a new volume, Moyers on Democracy (Doubleday) -- he’s a Sisyphus pushing his beloved country to higher ground.

In our interview, Moyers explains how he never was distracted by entreaties to run for president or any other office. No, his dream and achievement was to be a political journalist in general and a drum major for democracy in particular.

His book therefore explains how America needs less a laundry list of reforms after the Bush-Cheney junta leaves town but rather a new story to rebut Reagan’s version about “the freedom of the rich to get richer.” And the new story is – Democracy.

He goes on to note both that “Democrats talk about a new direction without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass” and that “the dilemma of democratic politics is how to translate Big Ideas into practical politics.”

Appeasement: Guilt-By-Analogy...When Guilt-By-Association Isn't Enough

Mark Green — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:21:14 -0400

I was the split-screen bystander on Hardball last night when Chris Matthews exposed Kevin James as the quintessential right wing slandering bloviator.

James was of course pathetic but his -- and Bush's and McCain's -- strategies aren't so funny. Basically, when you've lost an argument because facts and history aren't on your side, resort to unprovable guilt-by-association or, as in appeasement, guilt-by-analogy.

It was bad enough when McCain tried to link Hamas and Obama because Hamas said it preferred Obama. And if the Klan endorsed McCain because he wasn't the black guy, would McCain have a problem if someone said that McCain and the Klan are one and the same?

Then Bush makes his instantly famous appeasement attack at the Knesset on Obama. We've seen this movie before. Whenever conservatives can't win an argument on the merits, they attack some real or perceived enemy as Hitler. So Ho Chi Mihn was Hitler. bin Ladin was Hitler. Ahmadinejad was Hitler. Of course Hussein was Hitler. And anyone who does something to try to resolve conflict short of more war is Neville Chamberlain.

Beyond the fact that Mr. President 28% has next-to-credibility on much of anything, least of all in the Middle East, the attack on Obama is ridiculous.