Barack Obama, meet Herbert Hoover… There is a lot more resemblance between the über-old-white-dead president and the hip, urbane Democratic candidate from the cover of GQ than meets the eye.
     Both of them have the very important trait of being unable to stare an unpleasant fact in the face.
     While Hoover was president, years of margin buying on the stock exchange began to catch up with investors. In those days you could buy a dollar’s worth of some stocks for as little as 10 cents down. The 90 cents you didn’t pay was the margin. For reasons that economists are still trying to figure out, but which include the fall of the far-off Austrian schilling and the effects of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the people selling the stocks needed their 90 cents. Now. All at once.
      People who thought they had, say, a portfolio worth $1,000 (which was a lot of money in 1929), discovered that instead, they owed $900. People were forced to liquidate their savings, sell their businesses, their houses and their personal possessions to pay off these debts. So many businesses closed and downsized that a full third of the labor force lost their jobs.

     In those days there was no welfare safety net... There was the “dole,” which could be the state or the city or a church group passing out bread or coal to the needy. Al Capone opened a string of soup kitchens. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Al Capone was doing more to materially help poor people than Herbert Hoover.
     Hoover starved the people to death over a principle. Principles matter, but hungry bellies matter more. Hoover believed that a welfare state would corrupt the character of the country, devalue work, and encourage idleness. Ironically, he was a hero in Europe, where he spearheaded Belgian relief after the Great War. There was nothing wrong with eroding Belgian character, but he would not do it to Americans.

     So instead of offering relief, Hoover offered encouragement. “Prosperity is just around the corner,” Hoover said. With all the grass growing in the streets you couldn’t even see the corner. “The fundamental economic basis of this country is sound,” Hoover averred. The only sound was of children crying with hunger.
     Hoover, the chief executive of the United States, pronounced himself unable, as a matter of principle, to address the crisis: “Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.”
     And it was that quote which reminded me of something Barack Obama said a few days ago.

     Let me preface this by saying that Obama was trying to be factual… In Springfield, Missouri, Obama said, "Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups…. You could actually save just as much."
     Wow. There is an estimated 1.6 trillion gallons of oil to be had in the Outer Continental Shelf. That number, written out, is 1,600,000,000,000 gallons. That is the oil supply the Republicans want to drill. Is that how much we are wasting by riding on soft tires in a year? Or six years? Or 50 years?
     According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if cold tire pressure is adjusted to specification on all cars, we would effect a 3.3 percent savings of fuel. Our total gasoline consumption in a year is 142.3 billion gallons, according to the DOE; so Obama is wrong about the amount saved, but not about that fact that gasoline would be conserved.

     But here’s the problem... Checking your tire pressure is not going to roll back gasoline prices from $4 a gallon back to $2.50 or even $3.50. Being told that Prosperity is just around the corner (like wind and solar power) is hopeful and encouraging. Being given something we can do to save a buck is a nice gesture.
     Unfortunately, encouragement, gestures, bromides, helpful hints and principled stands that fly in the face of the overwhelming will of the people don’t get the job done. In order to get out of the Depression, America had to take a big gamble and let Franklin D. Roosevelt essentially rebuild the structure of American society from the ground up.
     The Republicans are asking for something much less risky. They are simply asking to drill holes in the ground. What principle is it that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hold to be more sacred than the well being of working Americans?
     Herbert Hoover did a century’s worth of damage to the Republican Party by his insistence on the principle of “rugged individualism.” Are the Democrats willing to sacrifice the White House and destroy their party for the benefit of the Greenland ice cap and the beach residents of Santa Monica?

Numbers don’t lie… The Gallup organization has predicted the winner of the 2008 presidential election. The next president if John McCain…if you’re a USA TODAY reader. If not, then Barack Obama is the next chief executive. Allow me to elucidate.
    Gallup conducts polling for the USA TODAY daily newspaper. When they polled for the Monday paper, Gallup asked “likely voters” whom they support in the election right now. A month ago, McCain trailed Obama in a poll of this type by 6 points. In the survey published Monday, McCain was leading Obama by 4 percentage points. The numbers were collected between Friday and Sunday from a sample of 791 voters.
     Gallup notes a difference between “likely” voters and “registered voters,” the difference being that the likely voters may have voted more often in the past (which makes them more apt to vote in the future) and say they have given a certain amount of thought to the election --while the “registered” respondents are counted whether or not they voted in the past.
     Polling all registered voters for the general media and not just USA TODAY, Gallup finds Obama comes out the winner with a nice post-World Tour bounce of eight points in the daily poll as tallied on Sunday, July 27, with 48 percentage points to McCain’s 40. The average score for Friday through Sunday is Obama 48.33 percent to McCain’s 40.33 percent. Gallup interviewed 2.674 registered voters over the three-day period.
     BUT… Counting registered voters just for USA TODAY, a sample of 900 interviewees, Gallup finds Obama leading with 47 percent to McCain’s 44 percent –a three-point lead.
     Is the difference in sample size? Gallup counted more voters for it’s standalone poll and fewer for its USA TODAY poll. Between likely and registered voters they got two different results. It stands to reason, from this pundit’s perch, that Gallup accurately predicted the outcome of the election, at least in one try out of two.
     Or, as they say in horse racing, “Pick ‘em.” It does make you wonder what's the value in having polls anyway, when they can be soinaccurate. Let's face it. There is something goin on here between the  likely voters and the registered voters. One group is not being  forthcoming, I fear, about their true intentions.  If that isn't the problem; if the size of the sample is what is making the difference; then perhaps we shouldn't even be taking notices of samples smaller than 1,000 interviewees...

     Going by the gut… which is the highly unscientific way that most of us predict political outcomes, Obama is still the favorite. He is the one exuding a glamour not seen in presidential politics since Reagan, or perhaps even Kennedy. Boss Tweed once said, complaining of Thomas Nast’s political cartoons, “My voters can’t read but they understand those damn pictures!”
      William Marcy Tweed’s complaint was echoed by Richard Nixon’s people in 1960, after the debate with John F. Kennedy. On radio, listeners tended to think that Nixon had bested Kennedy. On television, Nixon, who was recovering from the flu, looked gaunt, His gray suit melted into the background. He may have had just a hint of 5 o’clock shadow. People tended to just stare at the handsome, tanned, fit-looking Kennedy in his dark blue power suit. TV viewers gave the debate to Kennedy.
     And that’s what’s going on now. McCain looks like a sack of wet cement. Obama looks like the cover of GQ. Never mind that Obama has shifted his position in so many areas. Never mind his narcissism on the World Tour trail. We instinctively like leaders who look the part. Obama does.
     Republicans may be consoled that McCain has kept it as close as he has. When you distill all the results of all the polls the answer you get is “dead heat.” And that may be an advantage to McCain because Obama’s camp thinks their man has already won. That kind of arrogance, or hubris, if you will, often earns the reward prescribed by Aristotle: downfall.

The Victory Lap Ends… Barack Obama came home this week after his “World Tour” in which he celebrated his impending election as President of the United States of America.
     This was so momentous and historic an event that the three network news anchors accompanied him on the voyage …only to find that his “availabilities” to the press were going to be rather limited.
     In making this trip Obama stood some traditional notions on their head. One is the notion of the “Middle East fact-finding trip.” Obama found the facts first and then took them East to educate the leaders there on what the situations are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel. It went down pretty well with al-Maliki in Iraq. He endorsed Obama’s 16-month troop withdrawal plan. Thanks to The Surge, which defeated the insurgency, shattered Al Qaeda in Iraq and crippled the Shiite militias, leaving Iraq in 16 months now looks kind of doable.
      That’s no excuse, however, for reporters to try to embarrass Obama by asking him if, had he known then what he knows now, he would have supported the Surge. Of course not, he answered, since his way –to start to withdraw two years ago—might have worked better!
      I do not make this stuff up. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You can look it up…”

     Berlin was always to be the highlight of the Victory Lap… Two of the past century’s most recognizable moments of presidential triumph took place in Berlin, at the Brandenburg Gate (which stood where communist East Berlin was walled off from West Berlin). It was where JFK declared “Ich bin ein Berliner,” (which translates into “I am a jelly doughnut,” a “Berliner” –but Kennedy’s noble heart was in the right place) and Ronald Reagan demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down that wall!”
     Strong stuff. Strong presidential stuff. Obama wanted his moment at the Brandenburg Gate too.
     Slight difficulty, the Germans pointed out, JFK and Ronald Reagan were Presidents of the United States when they made their speeches. Kennedy and Reagan had both demonstrated, forcefully, that they would put the security of their own countries on the line in defense of freedom. The people of Berlin and of Germany understood this. This knowledge and background is what gives those precious moments in history their force and meaning. As tactfully as possible, the Germans indicated to Obama that he would have to be President, or have achieved something to stand in the spotlight hitherto reserved for Kennedy and Reagan.

    Obama did speak… but it was an odd affair all around. As one German official put it, you would never see a German candidate give an election campaign speech on the Mall in Washington, with the Capitol or the Lincoln Memorial as a background. So what wasa Obama doing in Berlin? When the question was put to a campaign aide, the aide retorted that it wasn’t a political speech; that when the President of the United States speaks overseas it is never a political speech… At which point a reporter mildly interjected that Obama isn’t the President…yet.
     Instead of the Brandenburg Gate, Obama got the Victory Column relocated onto a traffic circle by Hitler during his redesign of Berlin. About a half million people turned out to hear Obama, and each was served a nice bowl of oratorical oatmeal. Obama uttered platitudes against walls that divide different peoples (the Berlin Wall divided Germans..ahem!), joked that he was probably not the kind of American official they were used to seeing (unless they had seen Colin Powell or Condi Rice), boasted he was a citizen of the world, and led a chorus or two of “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” (okay, I made that last item up). Even to claim he was a jelly doughnut would have made a more lasting impression.
     Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news publication summed it up: "Huge Crowds Left with Mixed Feelings." The visuals were nice though.

     Obama may have thrown a brief snit fit while in Germany... Just before he was to go to the U.S. Military hospital in Landsthul to visit some severely injured G.I.s he was reminded by the Department of Defense that his visit would have to conform to DoD regulations. The rules are that no campaigning is allowed using the wounded soldiers as props for a visual. To his credit, Obama had already dis-invited the press to accompany him. When told he could not bring any of his campaign staff. He cancelled out completely.
    In a press release the campaign explained that Obama “decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign.” McCain’s retort was that it is never inappropriate for a public official to visit wounded soldiers.
     If Obama had shown up alone to pay his respects to our wounded soldiers. I am sure it would have been as big a thrill for them as it would have been if he had brought his speechwriters, photographers and spin doctors.
     On the whole, however, I have to rate Obama’s trip a success. He looked presidential while McCain looked like a bag of sand –if you could see him at all.

Strategy 101…Barack Obama rates the invasion of Iraq as the “worst strategic blunder” ever made by the United States. When we withdraw from that country, he adds, we need to send our troops to where the real front line of the War on Terror is: Afghanistan (and maybe Pakistan).
     Where do we begin?
     The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks but because the U.S. Government believed that Saddam Hussein was building an atom bomb and had other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Bush’s CIA believed it. Clinton and his CIA believed it. Our NATO allies believed it (even if some didn’t support the invasion). And we knew for certain the Saddam had used poison gas, on his own people, and that he was a murderer and torturer capable of using WMDs if he had them. That’s why we invaded. But Saddam had either dismantled or hid any evidence of WMDs.
     That was bad enough, but inexcusably, the government, especially the departments of Defense and State, had no plans to restore peace and order in the country after the invasion. The way was opened first for lawlessness and then for outright insurrection.
     Five years have passed and we have finally defeated most of our foes in the country, including “Al Qaeda in Iraq.” But Obama still maintains that the war was a strategic blunder, says knowing what he knows now he would still vote against The Surge and that the real center of gravity of this conflict is in Afghanistan.
     Here is why he is wrong: Iraq sits between Iran and the rest of the Middle East, including Israel. Iran has made a satellite out of Syria and Lebanon, but with a free, democratic Iraq sitting between Iran and the Levant, the ability of the Iranians to dominate the region is severely hampered. With a free Iraq, Iranian hegemony in Syria and Lebanon might be broken. Iraq blocks overland aid and reinforcements from Iran going to Syria, Lebanon or to Palestinian terrorists.
     Iraq sits on great underground lakes of oil. Victory in Iraq means that their oil will not become a bargaining chop in an Iranian power play, but will be available to all who can afford to buy it. If Iraq becomes a U.S. ally, we could station troops and air power there to keep an eye on Iran without having to risk carrier task forces in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf.
     Finally, a free and democratic Iraq will prove to the Muslim world that democracy and its institutions are not incompatible with Islam.
    Afghanistan does have strategic value. It harbors Osama Bin Laden and the remnants of Al Qaeda. Eliminating them would cripple terrorist groups around the world. Defeating the resurgant Taliban will reduce the influence of the Islamist fascists in Pakistan. Obama is right to propose a surge—if you will—in U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to achieve these goals.
     But when you look at the geographic position of Iraq, its oil and its potential for containing Iranian expansionism, there can be no doubt that Iraq has more strategic value to the United States. Our challenge now is to get the Iraqi government to let us stick around as we have stuck around in Japan and Germany: as a friendly presence insuring that country’s lasting security. 

Am I imagining this?…Or is Barack Obama just a teensy weensy bit full of himself, taking his victory lap around Europe three and a half months before the election? The Daily Show said Obama visited Bethlehem while in Israel just to have a look at the manger where he was born….

Does anyone here know how to play this game? …Wailed Casey Stengel when he managed the hapless 1961 New York Mets. Senator John McCain might be excused if he were to wail Stengel-like about his campaign team. It’s a fine thing when a guy with all the experience in the world, like McCain, looks like a duffer on the campaign trail while Obama, who not that far removed from his days as a neighborhood activist cuts a fine presidential picture.
    Sic semper Republicans…Thus be it ever with Republicans. They seem to have lost the knack for political campaigning. Campaign staffers have been providing McCain with plenty of gaffes for him to apologize for …while Obama strikes presidential poses at the Wailing Wall, Berlin and etc.
     McCain’s effort has the same lack of fire we saw in George H.W. Bush’s 1992 bid and Bob Dole’s 1996 attempt. What McCain needs is a James Carville-type organizer who gets everyone on message –the SAME message, it should be stressed for this lot—and who is not afraid to get tough with the opposition. We deserve to see a little more fight from McCain, if only to toughen up Obama for the job he is well on course for winning.

Reader Response: When you say we have to go down a level to meet and destroy evil are you saying waterboarding is not torture? Christopher Hitchins got waterboarded and said if that is not torture, then there is no torture.
     What I am saying is that stopping Hitler --or the genocide in Darfur--  requires armed force and the will to use it --which means killing people. That is what I refer to when I say we have to get down into the gutter ourselves. War, after all is evil. Even a "just" war entails the taking of human lives.
     I agree with Obama and McCain that waterboarding and other forms of torture are not permissible for Americans. But if the matter were left up to you, personally, and you could absolutely prevent the planes crashing into the World Trade Center by waterboarding a terrorist, would you do it? If you didn't do it, and the planes crash, what would you say to the families of the victims? Would the 3,000 dead be on your conscience? Let’s make the dilemma even more onerous. You have in your custody 100 suspected terrorists. One of them, you don’t know who, may have information on a WMD attack on an American city. Do you waterboard them all? Do you waterboard none of them?
     Moral choices become agonizingly complicated when you fight evil. If the only way to bring down the Nazis is to kill them, do we do it? What if some of the killing is long, drawn-out and painful, involving lots of innocent civilians? Do we do it anyway or do we let Hitler continue to ship Jews to Auschwitz?  If the only way to stop the Janjaweed from raping 7-year-old girls in Darfur is to drop napalm on them, do we do it? Or do we let the girls get raped?
    And if we do use deadly force, do we lower ourselves to the level of the enemy? Can we do that as long as our motives are “pure?”

My Reader Retorts: Seems your questions are only answerable with 20/20 hindsight, which does not exist. McCain gave the Green Bay Packers offensive line as member of his squadron when tortured in North Vietnam. Seems your questions are only answerable with 20/20 hindsight, which does not exist. McCain gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line as members of his squadron when tortured in North Vietnam. So the reliability of the information is in question when torture is used. When we violate the premise of our country (and even the Attorney General won’t say if waterboarding is torture) I believe the country sinks into a murky area that will be difficult to extricate it from. There must be a high road and someone needs to walk it or we look as bad as the bad guys.
     If I were about to be tortured I would be screaming –for a stenographer. But I would tell the bad guys anything they wanted to hear, true or not. Torture has proven over the centuries to be an unreliable way of getting at the truth. And for the record, waterboarding is torture.
    I still believe that deadly force is the only thing that can deter genocide in Darfur. What I’m saying is that if we have to engage in the evil of war to rescue the suffering black Africans of the region, we just have to be careful that we don’t lower ourselves so far into hatred and brutality that we squander our souls in the process. 

Defying logic…Barack Obama has gotten an eyeful in Iraq. He has met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who said he thinks the Coalition troops could be withdrawn over 16 months as Obama proposes. There is a reason the Iraq government believes this. The war has been won. The government is meeting the political and social goals set by the Coalition, banished armed resistance from the cities and is backed up by a reliable army that grows stronger every day.
     For that they can thank General David Petraeus’ brilliant counter-insurgency strategy and The Surge. The Surge put enough additional American troops on the ground to allow the establishment of neighborhood strong points in Baghdad and to train and support the Iraqi army as it developed into a respectable fighting force.
    So, given the success of The Surge, why did Barack Obama say this to ABC’s Terry Moran when asked if, knowing what he does now, would he still have opposed The Surge: “These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult….Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is, at that time, we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with, and one that I continue to disagree with -- is to look narrowly at Iraq and not focus on these broader issues [Afghanistan and Pakistan]." Huh?    
     In other words, even if he knew The Surge would be successful, Obama would still have opposed it. This says volumes about his capacity to be commander-in-chief.

A reader remarks…

     What about the argument that the oil companies are not drilling on leased areas as it is and the deregulation of futures speculation (Enron loophole) that has also contributed to driving up the price of oil? Why wont US oil companies get oil from South America or Canada? Why does most of the oil have to be bought from OPEC?
     Seems there's more to it than the offshore drilling solution… Not that I am against it, because I am for it. But that is only part of the solution on Middle East oil dependence.
     Actually, we need a mix of traditional and new energy sources (natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric as well as coal and oil) to gain our independence from foreign oil. Germany is leading the way in this area, with legal mandates and tax incentives for the adoption of wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and solar heat. Google the city of Freiburg and you’ll find a town that makes so much of it’s own energy that it has a surplus the citizens sell at a profit to the national grid. They have homes that lose so little heat they can be warmed comfortably in the dead of winter using 30 lit candles and the trapped heat the occupants give off. So yes, there is more to the solution than drilling.
    But when President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling yesterday the price of oil futures dropped by $9 a barrel, finally stabilizing at a net reduction of $7.33 by the end of trading. Supply and Demand. What do you think would happen to the price of oil if Congress followed suit?
    Right now there are oil fields off California that, if opened back up for drilling, would produce oil in one year. Other areas will take much longer to develop, but we are looking at the possibility of almost immediate relief.
    If there is oil to be had on the leased land I think the oil companies would be drilling for it right now, given the price per barrel. I suspect most of that leased land is not as promising to yield oil as the outer continental shelf, our western oil shale and the ANWR deposits.
    I’ve heard that speculation adds from 40 to 80 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline. This may well be. On the other hand –and hear me out on this— the speculators, oil futures buyers, provide a valuable service. There is competition among nations to buy oil. India wants it and so does China. The futures buyers secure a reliable supply for U.S. end users. In other words, they make sure that when we turn the car on, there’s gas in the tank. The $4.50 a gallon is the price of buying the gas in a competitive world market. Once again, supply and demand.
    If you look into whom the futures buyers are, you won’t find a crew of buccaneers like Enron. You will find pension funds and public employee unions.
     We do, in fact get oil from Canada, which has the biggest deposit of tar sand in the world. The oil is processed out of that material, which is mined. Our South American supplier is Venezuela, which is run by our adversary Hugo Chavez, who is every bit as obnoxious as any Arab oil sheik ever thought of being.
    So I’m with you. Let’s drill and let’s diversify our energy portfolio. That is a solution that is truly pragmatic and truly progressive.

Burning food in a hungry world…

     Count me out when it comes to ethanol, however. In a world where starving children bloat up and are too week to brush the flies off their own faces, it is a grotesquely selfish and ultimately obscene act to take edible corn and turn it into fuel for SUVs. By 2015 as much as half of the U.S. corn crop could be going into ethanol production. What will this do to the price of animal feed? Meat and milk prices are already rising, what about the thousand-and-one other food products made directly or indirectly from corn?
     We Americans can afford a bigger food bill. What about the less fortunate peoples of the world? What are they to do when food is either too expensive or unavailable at any price? It is something to think about as we crank up the air conditioning in our SUVs this summer.    

Mr. Obama goes to Washington…by way of Baghdad

     Barack Obama is going to Iraq. The only question is …why? The answer is far from obvious because Obama went to some pains yesterday to say that the war in Iraq was a strategic mistake and it’s the war in Afghanistan that we absolutely, positively must win.
    There was no hint that Obama planned to modify or refine his position on the war for any reason. That’s because his net roots are being especially vigilant in examining anything he says about the conflict for signs of a shift to the center.
     This puts Obama –ahem!— between Iraq and a hard place because while the Democratic primary candidates bickered earlier this year about who would get us out of Iraq the fastest, the Surge worked and we more or less won the war. The terrorists have not been completely eliminated, but they hold no cities, Al Qaida in Iraq has been reduced by about 90 percent and the Iraq army is taking on more and more responsibility in the conflict.
    This calls for at least for a more nuanced approach to withdrawal by the Democratic standard-bearer. But with a civil war brewing on his own website over his shifts to the center on faith-based programs, gun rights and immunity for the telecoms who helped the government wiretap terrorists, Obama cannot move to the center on the war. He cannot cross the Netroots on the signature issue of the campaign.
    So if going to Iraq is not going to change his mind on policy, what’s the point? Frequent flyer miles? Or the excellent roast lamb they serve in Baghdad?