It’s interesting that whenever Hezbollah or Hamas makes a noise, Washington is quick to point to Iran as the mastermind and center of evil in the region. Pakistan, however, the actual home of Ossama bin Ladin and the hornets’ nest of Islamic radicalism from where the Taliban sprang and overran neighboring Afghanistan, is never called to account. Part of the reason is that Pakistan is a nuclear power and was, until recently, run by one of “our” dictators who we counted on to be our friend and to whom we funneled billions of dollars in the hope of keeping a lid on the simmering problem (just as we do in Egypt, another disaster waiting to happen). The dictator in Pakistan is gone and now the pot is boiling while we sit and watch the spillover into Waziristan, the tribal regions and now India. While nothing is proven yet, the attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai were no doubt planned and staged from Pakistan and should make everyone sit up and take serious notice.

Pakistan is, of course, the legacy the world has to bear from the British pullout of India. It was Britain’s “two state solution” to the problem of religious strife and the challenge for democratic pluralism, a challenge the Brits had no taste for dealing with once they’d made the decision to vacate. It was simply “Muslims here, Hindus there…and we’re outta here.” There has not been a day’s peace in the region since (which is certainly something promoters of a two state solution in Palestine/Israel should consider very seriously). Moreover, the creation of an “Islamic state” naturally attracted the hardest core radicals who began to congregate and share ideas and plans, which they took to their weaker next door neighbor, Afghanistan, to implement. One of those plans became “9/11.” While American security is more sophisticated than India’s, which proved itself breathtakingly inept, nevertheless the Taj Hotel could have easily been the Waldorf Astoria or the Hyatt Regency. Whereas 9/11 was four passenger airplanes, the Mumbai assault was in no fewer than seven locations at the same time. All it took was guns, grenades and a bunch of guys with can-do spirit. It could easily happen here. Mumbai is the heir to 9/11 and 7/11 in Britain and clearly shows, if anyone had any doubt, that Pakistan remains the most dangerous place on Earth. We had all better wake up and take a very different posture to what is in serious danger of becoming, for all intents and purposes, a rogue nation.

What should also disturb Americans is that this does not appear to be “al Queda.” Al Queda plans explosions and killing on as mass a scale as possible. The sticky business of taking of hostages has never been their pattern. It is exactly, however, the pattern of the al Queda clone groups who moved into Iraq in the wake of the United States military clearing the way for them by removing the regime of Saddam Hussein. What Mumbai means is that terrorist tactics that have played out since 9/11 are increasingly being adopted by low tech, and no doubt low income, people who are disaffected and who lack traditional political power. It is no coincidence that both the 9/11 and Mumbai attacks centered on financial centers. The attacks have no relation to the strife and glaring poverty and misery in India. Rather, these folks have figured out that stock markets and banks are the life blood of the infidel beast they feel oppresses them. This is the pattern- religious David vs. the infidel Goliah, not class warfare.

The challenge for the incoming Obama administration, and for the West as a whole, now will be to develop a cooperative, multilateral law enforcement entity to share data and enforce shared laws and protections as well as broadly enforced economic sanctions. The only defense against “terror” is accurate information about people and networks and monitoring the travel of suspects and organizational infiltration. Ironically, we already have a model for how to do this, it was called the “Cold War.” We just need Arabic and Farsi speakers instead of Russian and German ones. As Bush has so ingloriously proved to us all, there are no military solutions, and the worst thing America can be in the future is the lonesome cowboy who occupies countries. And the first place to focus on is not Iran, but Pakistan.

Today’s decision by Florida circuit Judge Cindy S. Lederman to strike down a 31-year-old state law that prevents gays and lesbians from adopting children will not be the definitive ruling on this contentious issue, but it is yet another step towards the inevitable removal of the barriers that same-sex couples face in American life. It follows the decision of the California Supreme Court allowing same-sex couples to marry, which sparked off the battle over Proposition 8, which banned such unions. California’s Supreme Court said last week that it will hear the appeal of a challenge to the voter-approved measure which it will inevitably overturn. Other laws, such as Mississippi’s bizarre law that allows single gays and lesbians to adopt- but not couples will likewise get tossed. All of these laws will fall away as the various “sodomy laws” did before them- and all the various race laws before that. The reason is plainly simple. No matter how you feel about what gays and lesbians do and how they choose to love, they are nevertheless protected by the Fourteenth Amendment that provides for “equal protection under the law.” In order to over come that one would have to suggest that same-sex couple are not in fact people. While there are many in this country who no doubt feel that people who become romantically involved with others of their same sex abdicate their standing before “god” or whoever, and deserve discrimination here on Earth as a result, withdrawing their status as humans is a tough legal case to make.

In the Florida case, the state mounted a classic extra-legal argument of the exact sort that was used against African Americans in the bad old days. The state claimed that gays and lesbians are in fact lesser humans and, as a group, suffer from depression, affective and anxiety disorders and substance abuse, and that “their households are more unstable.” With gays and lesbians in all walks of American life, there is, of course, no data to support such a patently bigoted suggestion which is why their case was dismissed. It was bullshit. It would be much easier to support the argument that people who sport tattoos and listen to heavy metal music are “unstable” and should be barred from adopting, or procreating for that matter, but no one attempts to mount that case.

The social problem for gays and lesbians, as it was for African Americans, is simply fear- fear of the results of mixing. A segment of the American population lives in mordant fear that homosexuality might be contagious and that gays and lesbians are necessarily predatory, and like vampires, need to feast on straight Christian flesh in order to survive. The obvious reality is that, like African Americans, gays and lesbians are the same as the rest of us, but it once again will take the federal courts to overturn the bigoted regional laws that this fear has produced. The losers will squeal about “activist judges” but all they really have to do is read the Constitution themselves- something the “Thank you Sarah Palin” crowd, like the Jim Crowe crowd before them, has shown itself painfully unschooled in.

The question is why? It’s like the end of one of those cheezy Godzilla movies when the monster is finally trapped and then engulfed by the flaming lava from a volcano and the world can once again live in peace- and then a nuclear triggered earthquake awakens the beast. Just when it was all over and a new day was dawning, why would President-Elect Obama pull the curtain back yet again on the Clintons- America’s premiere and most tedious soap opera? Why, when we have more problems than we can stomach already, would he empty the garbage can of the twenty odd years of tabloid dregs that comes with them? Why on Earth would he not want to really “turn the page” and see both the Clintons and the Bushes with all their attendant dramas and disappointments getting ever smaller in all of our rearview mirrors? Every new ship captain needs people who know the lower decks of the vessel and the appointments of the John Podestas, the Rham Emmanuels and other ex-Clinton staffers makes perfect sense. Obama is not a Bolshevik who wants to sweep out everyone who knows everything and replace them with “the workers.” But really, them? What makes this latest flirtation with the Clintons so maddening is that there is virtually, once again, no upside for either Obama or the country. Just bad and worse sides.

Other than the mythology that Ms. Clinton is “tough” of which there is no more public evidence than there is for Obama being a Muslim, it is impossible for even the staunchest Hillary fan to mount a credible case for why she is a leading candidate for the Secretary of State. There is virtually nothing in her background or resume that suggests so- and quite a bit that pleads the contrary. The leading canard is that Ms. Clinton “knows foreign leaders.” This suggests a prior working relationship that can be easily renewed along the lines of a Madeline Albright or a Richard Holbrooke who served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. This is laughable. While she did travel as First Lady, in a purely ceremonial role, the vast majority of the press Hillary has garnered has been of the decidedly gossipy variety. There are virtually zero political accomplishments on the world stage featured in the miles of ink spent on her. The reality is the Hillary Clinton the world and it’s leaders know is a creature of the tabloids akin to Britany Spears or David Beckham. The most concrete track record we have to study is her terrible and clueless campaign for president where she proved to be totally indecisive and unable to negotiate a peace accord even among her staff. Hardly the stuff of the nation’s premiere diplomat.

But were we to even ignore the woman’s dubious past, and even what should be an unquestionably disqualifying episode around her bizarre lies about her landing at Tuzla airport, there is the disturbing present. For ten torturous days, she has wallowed in the most public, self aggrandizing way over this job. While her husband has dutifully and publicly lowered his trousers, for her benefit this time, the one thing that is painfully obvious is that there is, once again, indecision. This is the very same quality- the lack of the ability to be a leader- that squandered a huge financial and name recognition advantage- and twenty odd points in virtually ever poll conducted- and prevented her from becoming the first woman president in our history.

This is not to say that she is entirely without talents and skills. She is a very smart and capable person, but the irony is that it is the senate, the office she sought solely as a platform to run for president, that best suits her. Congress is, de facto, the place for smart people who lack leadership qualities and who thrive in meetings that review and refine policy details that shape decisions that are slow and laborious in coming. The one place she could be the most useful would be in the senate forwarding the agenda of children, heathcare and families to which she reminded us ad nauseum she has been “fighting for thirty years.” She has proven that the one place she can’t perform well is under the spotlight. Best for all of us if she would get out of it once and for all.

Every football fan has watched their team mount a comeback late in a game only to see their quarterback scramble around the backfield, avoiding the rushing defensive players, throw a maddening interception to sink their team’s chances. The vast majority of the time it happens it is simply because the guy is trying too hard to make something good happen. The impulse he has is simply to do something rather than just eating the ball and going down. Such has been the prevailing mood in Washington of late with lawmakers being frantically chased by lobbyists and constituents under the glare of the ever expanding, ever voracious beast known as the press. Not only does the shadow of Herbert Hoover hang heavy over the city, but the more recent and tragic governmental inaction in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina makes the perceived need for action- or at least something that the voters can see that looks like action- all the more acute. And so, scrambling lawmakers have begun launching billion dollar footballs blindly down the field for the simple reason that they think it looks better to be trying something than to be seen just sitting doing nothing. Those passes are ending up in the wrong hands, making a bad situation that much worse.

The first fact we have to face on the road to fixing this mess is understanding that in America, we do not live in a free market society. For all the wishful Reaganesque blather over the last thirty years to the contrary, we have, and have had since the Depression, exactly what the Soviets had- a command economy that is overseen by the government. It is a diluted version to be sure, and the controls are less onerous, but it is the same principle nevertheless, and this fact has never been more nakedly obvious than it is right now. The corporate and business kids get to play their games with a lot of freedom, but it is the government and not the market, who provides the balls, gloves and toys and rules of the games and is the parent with the whistle. That supposed adult, however, just made the cardinal mistake of parenting- to just assume the kids are doing fine and to stop paying attention. Businesses, like kids, do not think about the whole game or the health of the field on which they are playing, they only think about their own scores (and corporate officers necessarily do so by force of law). Left to their own devices, and with cohorts in the halls of power, businesses make up rules to benefit themselves regardless of their impact on the broader playing field, and soon you have a complete mess (of which the new rules around the dodgy mortgage backed securities are the prime example). Now we all have disaster on our hands. While for most Americans, the talk of disaster seems hyperbolic, and it all just looks like numbers running across a screen, it will become apparent soon enough. We are in big, big trouble.

The central problem in our economy is simply that we have overspent for decades on a consumer economy similar to a pyramid scheme from the 70’s. As George Carlin so wryly and presciently observed, as long as Americans kept buying “stuff” then stuff makers and stuff sellers had jobs, made money, and they in turn could go out and buy stuff. The key to the game was that consumers must continue to consume “stuff” to keep the engine running. If they started saving money rather than spending it, the machine would sputter. The entire American culture began to revolve around consumer products from ever bigger, gadget-laden, SUV’s and trucks, to HD television sets, to cellular telephones that could shoot video, to video games, Xboxes and on and on. Status, more than ever, was predicated upon not only “stuff,” but the latest stuff. Even disposing of old stuff became a problem as computers, cellphones and laptops that were only a year old became garbage. This financial equation, obviously, cannot be endless, simply because there is only so much money but there can never can be “enough stuff.” In a culture barraged with daily advertising promoting an ever expanding roster of “must have” products, Americans who could not afford the latest stuff began to borrow money to stay up to date. Credit card debt ballooned and savings dwindled.

Ah, but salvation was at hand. Fortunately for the country, the housing market took off and folks were treated to a never ending supply of home equity from which they could borrow. With values going up 10, 15 or even 20% annually, Americans could borrow to stay in good cultural standing with a new Cadillac Escalade and a 42″ HD television. Everything was going just great, and the Federal Reserve kept lowering interest rates and banks and brokers dangled the keys to new homes before the eyes of folks who, while certainly not able to afford a property, would be able to get on the bottom rung of the ladder and then re-finance in a year to make the deal work for everyone. What everyone blissfully- and most deliberately- ignored was the obvious fact that a ceiling on values in the housing market was inevitable. It was not as though this cliff was not obvious, and couldn’t be seen coming up on the horizon, it was simply that no adults stepped in to stop bus before it went over. A country that wanted “less government” got what they asked for and we all sat and watched the free market eat itself.

And so, to come full circle, the responsibility ended up in the only place it could, with the government which now finds itself scrambling to look to the voters as if it’s doing something, and in so doing is blindly throwing the ball to the other team- the very folks who got us into this mess. Sure, the American public bears some responsibility for living beyond their means, but they are famously easy to trap. Dangle a flashy car with all the trimmings, or home ownership, in front of people, and make them appear affordable, and most will jump for it. But the real problem now is that so many America’s corporations- the auto industry in particular- never pulled their snouts out of the trough long enough to think about tomorrow. After decades of stubbornly staving off the innovations that would have prepared them for today’s new marketplace, the folks at the top of the auto industry have uniformly run their businesses aground. Not just into rough waters, but totally aground. While there are tens of thousands of jobs around the American car industry (and not the “millions” you hear in the media unless you stretch the calculation to ridiculous lengths), throwing a bundle of cash at it won’t help. The obvious- and wholly unasked- question is “what would they do with the money?” The answer is they would do more of exactly what they have been doing- nothing but holding off the inevitable harvest of collapse they have sewed.

Our $25 billion- or rather the first $25 billion installment in an endless succession of handouts to these corporate invalids- would be much better spent putting former auto workers into jobs in American infrastructure- building roads and bridges- than putting clearly dying corporations on life support. The bankrupting of GM and other automakers would not be the end of the world, or even the auto industry in America. GM and others could restructure themselves under bankruptcy protection with new management and without the union commitments into a viable entities- and doing so is the only way they could survive. The market place does kill, but it also does give birth. But, given that we live in a command economy rather than a free market one, we can look forward to the Soviet style propping up of our dying corporations at great expense while the dynamic innovations that will dominate tomorrow’s marketplace come from elsewhere. The sad question if we do down this sorry road will not be whether American industry will have a role in manufacturing these new cars, but will American consumers even be able to afford them?

It’s hard to remember now, but in 1980 there were many in the political center and left who hoped that Ronald Reagan would be the Republican nominee for president. They were sure that the intellectual lightweight with a dubious record as governor of California (including massive tax hikes) represented too small a faction of the American electorate to win a national election. They conceded that his warmed over John Wayne impersonation was effective in the media, but, like rightwingnut Barry Goldwater before him, that he was generally unelectable. The more moderate party hack George Bush seemed the more formidable opponent for sitting president Jimmy Carter. Those folks grossly underestimated a core tenant of American democracy- we vote for who we like. When choosing a doctor or a car mechanic we scrutinize referrals and track records, but we have never taken our voting as seriously. We vote from our guts, which explains so many dismal presidential choices and the national grief they have wreaked. Those who now write off Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a formidable political force in the future do so at their own peril.

Whether she realizes it or not, and it’s doubtful that she does, Palin is embarking upon the path blazed by another candidate whose political epitaph was written too early- Richard M. Nixon. The gameplan is to portray yourself as a victim of unfair treatment, especially by the ever smug “establishment press” who are always an easy target for middle America. Though it may sound counter-intuitive to the above observation, and hard to imagine today, in the 60’s and 70’s millions of Americans did actually like Richard Nixon. They liked him because, like so many of us, Nixon was not connected growing up, did not get into the best schools and had to work hard for what he got. He became a punching bag for the “establishment elite” that most people feel looks down on them as well. Much of Nixon’s well planned appeal was sympathy, which he milked for all it was worth. Working class folks, hard hats and those who felt threatened by changes and the outspoken ascension of young people and minorities liked Nixon because he was one of their own. A regular guy.

What the snarky “jerks” from the McCain campaign have unwittingly done with their over the top comments about Sarah Palin is position her to be the doe-eyed, regular girl who is now unfairly getting all the blame for a terribly run campaign by a terrible candidate leading a party in total disarray. While very little of the blame for McCain’s failure actually rests with Palin (even her selection was his fault, not hers), she is now making a spectacle of her victimhood in front of every camera she can find to re-enforce the image of a regular girl who got swooped up in the corrupt madness only to be blamed for its very insanity. Alice being blamed for the Looking Glass. Moreover, 100% of said blame is coming from anonymous sources so easy to portray as slimy, back stabbing, suits and skirts who lack the guts to stand up to make their accusations in public the way we’d all like our accusers to confront us. This image only underscores the notion of a lying, cheating, cabal of scumbags who live high on the hog running the establishment and engineering handouts to their friends out of the hard working, beleaguered taxpayer’s bank account. Such was exactly the message behind Palin doing an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer from her kitchen while she made the family meal- no whackjob Diva who shops at Neiman Marcus here, folks.

If she or her people get really smart, there is a rich additional layer they can put on this media cake. The next smart political play will be to make the case that America’s darling maverick reformer was really seen as a mortal threat to the corrupt establishment which is the real reason for the savaging. The case that the attack on Palin is because these creatures of Washington are afraid of good ol’ regular folk with actual values who would clean house is a potentially powerful one- particularly if the Obama Administration can be portrayed as backsliding into more-of-the-same corruption and scandal, any hint of which will be virtually impossible to avoid in that town. The fact that she’s a woman is hugely advantageous in all of the above regards. For a start, Americans are chivalrous people who don’t like to see women attacked, especially ones that look like Palin. The spectacle of the tender and innocent, all-American cheerleader, flesh of good ol’ honest Sarah from down the street being swarmed by the disgusting establishment Piranha fish can be milked for sympathy beyond Nixon’s wildest dreams. Americans also trust women more than men- especially mothers wearing oven mitts. Done right, Palin’s play is to stay sweet, eschew the Hillary linebacker manliness that was such a turn-off to male voters, and to bet that likability, a good heart and honest values trumps in-depth policy knowledge for the American voter. Laugh though you might, you’d be a fool to bet much against that.

Now forced into a run-off election, Georgia’s incumbent Republican United States senator, and heavyweight champion sleazebag, Saxby Chambliss has unleashed a new series of ads with footage of 9/11 in an attempt to suggest that his upstart Democratic challenger was in cahoots with the boxcutter wielding terrorists. This, from the man who so infamously did the same to triple amputee Viet Nam war hero Max Cleeland who rightly questioned the sweeping form of Bush’s proposed office of “homeland security.” How can Chambiss once again resort both to taking the good people of Georgia for fools by resorting to pure, unadulterated sleaze? Simple, because it works. It works like a charm, in fact, and has become a hallowed art form since its invention during the presidential election of 1968. In that election, Richard M. Nixon, the Thomas Edison of contemporary American politics, unveiled his lightbulb- divisiveness. While some level of divisiveness is obviously inherent in political contest, Nixon’s great innovation was to remove what had once been a natural law of the sport and of society, common decency. Rather than being qualities to admire, for Nixon, decency and truthfulness were quite literally barriers to success to be boldly overcome, and in the so doing was the test of one’s mettle. His example has been the gold standard ever since.

More than the pathetic man himself, the shadow of Richard Nixon is the underlying subject of Rick Perlstein’s excellent new book, Nixonland. Nixon is the grim triumph of the naked supremacy of winning at any and all costs and any means to that end being fully justified. What is particularly striking about Perlstein’s book is not simply that Nixon was a cesspool of moral hollowness, but the breathtaking depths the man was willing to plumb. Nixon had nothing to lose and did not so much as bat an eyelash at breaking the law if it would help him at the polls.

The starting place is a dismal one. Like George W. Bush, Nixon not only grew up in the shadow of the favored son, but was actually not liked. In Nixon’s case, the result was a grown man devoid of a functioning emotional center. Like most losers and felons, Nixon was incapable of emotional relationships and instead viewed the rest of the world as a dark and cynical adversary that had to be fought every step of the way in order to prove his own worth. From the outset, Nixon equated that validation with votes and electoral success became the obsession of his life. Recognizing his lack of physical gifts or personal charm limited the potential of his appeal, from his very first race for congress against Jerry Voorhis, Nixon focused upon tearing the other guy down. Where most politicians work on fluffing their resumes by taking undue credit and dodging blame, Nixon focused exclusively on questioning the integrity and throwing mud on his opponents. Not only did it get him into congress, but he made a national name for himself slinging accusations, deservedly or not, against the integrity and patriotism of others.

But just being a sleazy politician is not the story of Nixonland. The real story is also not limited to the way this country allowed itself to be manipulated and lied to and divided by so lowly and damaged a personality as Richard Nixon. Certainly it was a confusing and tumultuous time, but equally true was that Nixon, or “Tricky Dicky” as he was already popularly known, was a clearly dark and divisive figure. The big story of Nixonland is how Nixon’s blueprint of lying and smearing people to divide an increasingly diverse nation through fear has been replayed over and over ever since. The story, so wonderfully researched and written, is how Nixon branded George McGovern as the candidate of communist sympathy, abortion on demand and legalized drugs- things the Democrat never supported- and how Micheal Dukakis subsequently became the champion of rapists and murderers and John Kerry a Viet Nam coward. Nixonland is the story of a nation that lost the ability to differentiate between winning, cheating and losing. It is a sad story indeed, but one we all need to understand if we are ever to escape his shadow- especially when we look at Saxy Chambliss.

Not surprisingly, the wake of the approval of California’s Proposition 8, which put a stop to gay and lesbian marriage in the state, has produced outrage. While the result catapulted the ubiquitous, and useless, web petition emails, over the last several days frustrated people have channeled the very spirit that visited this loss upon them by doing the dumbest thing possible- taking to the streets in protest. There is no more certain way to alienate people than to parade your self-righteousness by blocking their freeway access during their already difficult commute. Self defeating stupidity in glorious full flower. The fault for this regrettable result lay not with folks trying to get on the freeways, but with the crew who worked against this measure, and their face, the ever smug, professional gay cockteaser, known as Gavin Newsom.

Proposition 8 was without doubt one of the worst measures in California’s history and its passage is a humiliation for the people of this state. It was worse even than the infamous Proposition 187, which sought deny undocumented immigrants access to public education and social services. What Proposition 8 did was, for the first time, to write the withdrawal of rights into the state’s constitution. It will likely be overturned in the courts as was 187 but that will only open a new round of “activist judges” blather. But sadly, either way, that will probably not teach those who opposed this measure any lessons. As we all must now tool up for a lengthy court battle and those marriages performed over the last few months are now also in peril. And it all could have been so easily avoided.

Political campaigns and results in democracies are theoretically testing grounds for ideas put before the citizens. The reality is that bad ideas and dumb people can prevail if they have smart people running their campaigns, in the same way that good advertising makes so many people opt for garbage that makes them obese instead of food. Bad idea campaigns have an even easier time if dumb people are running the opposition. Such was the case with Proposition 8.

The case against Proposition 8 was a very simple one to make- constitutions give rights they don’t take them away. Denial of rights- one’s freedom or the sanction of fines- is the exclusive domain of the courts in response to violations of law. What Proposition 8 makes law, boiled down to its central nugget, is the denial of rights based upon behavior that is not illegal and without due process. What it makes law is the very dangerous concept of the denial of legal rights simply for offending the religious or cultural sensibilities of others. It’s akin to denying equal protection under the law for atheists or denying the right to bear arms to people who wear camouflage pants. Instead of laying out this case, however, the message that came from the opponents of Proposition 8 was “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” That is as guaranteed a political loser as is imaginable and while the ever witless Gavin Newsom was the posterboy for this mess, the opponents of Proposition 8 never stopped the bleeding he created. Instead of focusing on the core concept of the denial of rights- especially in “communities of color” where that central message would have resonated, they never mounted a defense at all. No more telling fact to this failure exists than 7 out of 10 African Americans who voted for Obama also voted for Proposition 8.

Fortunately for all of us, across the entire country, the legal standing of this measure is untenable. It is quite possible that a proposition to prohibit the marriage of those whose skin tone didn’t match would have passed in Virginia in 1967. Fortunately, the issue went instead to the courts and we got the Loving vs. Virgina result which overturned that state’s anti-miscegenation statute, the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924.” While there is no similar statute in California crimanilizing gay and lesbian relationships to overturn, hopefully the courts will see that the notion of denial of constitutional rights for acts that are not illegal is cast in the same dismal light of ignorance. But the arrogance and stupidity of the forces against this measure will have handed cultural conservatives a plum example of the will of the good, God-fearing “real” American people being overturned by liberal judges- no doubt just in time for President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominations. Thanks for that.

The central problem with Oliver Stone’s new George W. Bush biopic is what should have been it greatest strength, the performance of star Josh Brolin in the title role. Brolin has showed great versatility in the past, from the charming, comedic stint hosting Saturday Night Live to his gritty and menacing portrayal of a thoroughly corrupt cop in American Gangster. Sadly, his Bush is more like the former than the latter and it robs the film of any chance of serious consideration. Brolin is unavoidably likable in an way that his subject is not. Even at his most worst, Brolin is goofy and even cute and never summons the caustic and galling sanctimony that has been Bush’s hallmark and provided endless fodder for The Daily Show and others. Nowhere was the unctious George W. Bush who patronizes and talks down with such palpable disdain for those who don’t agree with him- and engenders such bitter hatred. Brolin’s Bush is a dim but well meaning man/boy that strives to live up to his fathers’ expectations in a sad way that creates a sense of empathy which the real Bush does not invoke for most people- or deserve for that matter. Brolin is also thoughtful and has moments of introspection that, though he might, one can’t imagine the real George W. Bush ever having himself, so tragically for all of us. While Bush is certainly a cinema worthy character of Shakespearian proportions, for so many around the world, it’s impossible to feel anything but contempt, let alone compassion, for him.
The fault for the film’s shortcomings lay not just with Brolin but with Stone as none of the other portrayals rise above late night comedy sketch quality. Thandie Newton is particularly bad in her mimicry of Condoleeza Rice, and Jeffrey Wright’s Colin Powell bears no resemblance to the original whatsoever. Perhaps most disappointing, though, is the dreadfully miscast Richard Dreyfuss’ take as Dick Cheney. Unlike the more versatile Brolin, cold eyed, humorless sanctimony appears beyond Dreyfuss’ portfolio and he can’t help but exude a cuddly lovableness- a core humanity- that, needless to say, his subject lacks. Stone either never recognized the suburban, community theater level work of his cast as such as the film was rolling, or wasn’t concerned too much about it in lieu of his big picture message- and most likely it’s both.

On the positive side of the ledger, Stone does a nice job, with literal visual aids, of putting on display the big picture thinking that went into the Iraq invasion- the grand plan for an eternal American footprint in the center of the Middle East. While oil was certainly part of the equation, the overarching idea was more idealistic than simply the corporate harvest of Iraq’s oil reserves. What the “No blood for oil” crowd on the left has never appreciated is the galling messianic ambition that has been Bush’s guiding light for all these years. While he is no doubt happy to throw chum to his and Cheney’s corporate buddies, Bush’s core mission since 9/11 has been akin to the Catholic desire to bring the “good news” to the natives of Latin America which assumed the trade-off of righteous enlightenment in return for political subjugation and cooperation in the discovery and prosecution of traitors. That is always what has been missing from the legion of Bush impersonations that portray a bumbling, neerdowell, cowboy wannabe who landed way out of his league and aspired to nothing more than doling out spoils to his frat boy buddies in pinstripes. What Stone missed was the chance to portray the real George W. Bush, a man so consumed by his own self righteousness that he is not only impervious to criticism and differing opinions- and warnings- but has nothing but scathing contempt for anyone who disagrees with or doubts him, and by literal extension “God,” in any way. That contempt extends to indifference to the wholesale destruction of whole villages and towns in Iraq or Afghanistan and condoning the use of torture on a personal level. The Bush in Stone’s movie would have been disturbed by the photos from Abu Ghraib and might have looked himself in the mirror. The real Bush no doubt just chuckled and made jokes about the subjects in the grisly images.

While, with World Trade Center and other recent work, Stone has clearly wanted to rehabilitate his reputation and avoid another round of the ideological criticism he got over over his heavy handed JFK, by playing it safe and cute, once again, George W. Bush got off the hook and avoided the waterboarding he so richly deserves.