"The wars are long, the peace is frail, the madmen come again."

I have been listening to Al Gore's Nobel address at the ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize: He says, "We are what is wrong and we must make it right." It makes me so sad to think that we could have been reaching the end of HIS second term instead of the rattlesnake who currently resides in the White House. How different the world could have been! Instead we find ourselves praying that Bush doesn't get us blown up or leaves the planet so damaged that no one can fix it. If you want to hear his address:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/10/gore-nobel-speech/

There's an old song by the Weavers, a folk group from the 1940s, that I wanted to share:

WASN'T THAT A TIME (Lyrics)
Written by Lee Hays & W. Lowenfels

Our fathers bled at Valley Forge, the snow was red with blood
Their faith was worn at Valley Forge,
Their faith was brotherhood.

Wasn't that a time, wasn't that a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Wasn't that a terrible time?

Brave men who fought at Gettysburg now lie in soldier's graves
But there they stemmed the rebel tide
And there their faith was saved

Wasn't that a time, wasn't that a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
wasn't that a terrible time?

The wars are long, the peace is frail, the madmen come again.
There is no freedom in a land where fear and hate prevail.

Isn't this a time, isn't this a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Isn't this a terrible time?

Our fathers bled at Valley Forge, the snow was red with blood
Their faith was worn at Valley Forge,
Their faith was brotherhood.

Wasn't that a time, wasn't that a time?
A time to try the soul of men,
Wasn't that a terrible time?
--------------------------------
I just hope we can get through this.

Faith and War by Cindy Sheehan

This commentary by Cindy Sheehan expresses exactly what I feel about the disconnect between conservative Christians and the war in Iraq.

Published on Friday, November 9, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Faith and War

by Cindy Sheehan

A friend of mine, who is Chair of the Economics Department, invited me to speak to the students and faculty at the University of Dallas (where the Veterans for Peace convention was that I spoke at the day before I went to Crawford on August 6th, 2005), which is a small, non-culturally or non-racially diverse, Catholic college.

Surprisingly, my friend Sam, received little protest over inviting me, but there was a “Support the Troops” rally in the room next to where I spoke. Some Camp Casey friends accidentally went into that room and only heard the speaker call me names like “scum” and he called the rest of the people at my event “peace fairies.”

I was heartened to find the first three rows of my speech were filled with young people who were smiling and vigorously nodding their heads at everything I said. Most of the audience clapped or laughed in the right places so I was feeling pretty good. However, I was a little sad when there were some snide snickers when I had the unmitigated gall to call Iraqis “human beings.”

During the “Q and A” part, the first question I received amazed me. Now, I was raised Protestant and received an excellent training in the Christian scriptures and I know after being a Catholic for 25 years and a Catholic youth minister for nine of those years, that the average Catholic does not know a great deal about the Bible as most of their religious training is in the tenets of the Catholic faith. Here’s how many Catholics quote scripture: “It’s somewhere in the Bible,” when, in my experience, many times they are actually quoting: “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”

An emphasis on the biblical support for the teachings of the church was never used as long as I taught in the church using the approved teaching materials of the church, but the depth of ignorance of Jesus of Nazareth exhibited in the first question still had the ability to astonish me.

The question printed neatly on a 3 by 5 index card was: “How do you reconcile your progressive ideals with your faith?” I answered the question that Jesus cared about the poor. He admonished us to “feed the hungry,” “clothe the naked,” “heal the sick,” and “visit those imprisoned.” Jesus performed a stunning feat of civil disobedience by over-turning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple and was subsequently executed by the Empire of his time. Jesus was the ultimate progressive radical. Jesus’ name is exploited by our materialistic society at Christmas time when he changes from the right-wing Christian warmonger to the “Prince of Peace.”

Jesus welcomed the “least of these” to his table. He didn’t exclude sinners, lepers or prostitutes who were the pariahs of his day. Today, I am convinced that if Jesus returned he would welcome gays and non-white people (even “illegal” immigrants) to commune with him. The only people I ever heard Jesus speak badly about were the “brood of vipers” (Mt 3:7) that were the Sadduccees (Democrats?) and Pharisees (Republicans?) who in the parable, with hypocritical piety, walked right by the man who had been beaten, robbed and left by the side of the road to die without helping him and they turned his “Father’s” house (the Temple) into a “den of thieves.” (Mt. 21:12).

My question for the questioner was: “How do you reconcile your faith with supporting war and killing?”

If Jesus came back today and was a politician, I know, because of my faith in the inherent goodness of the Universe, that he would not be a “politician” but a public servant. Jesus would be in favor of single-payer health care, solar and wind energy, unions, free post-secondary education, Social Security, fair trade, free speech, civil rights, and human rights. Jesus would be against the death penalty, torture, extremist religions that exploit His Name for profit, extremist states that exploit His Name to kill innocent people, and the ultimate crime against humanity: war.

Whether one is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, or like me now- nothing, Jesus of Nazareth and his story is still worth studying and emulating. At the risk of sounding judgemental, I have a feeling that these reactionary Christian extremists are going to be shocked when they go to meet their maker and find out that Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God” (Mt 5:9). The converse of that saying is: “Cursed are the warmakers for they are not the children of God.” There is a very relevant saying of Jesus in the Bible that these self-proclaimed “Christians” should also pay closer attention to:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:43)

Wise words for everybody to strive to live up to: From presidents to college students and everyone in between.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace and the author of two books: Not One More Mother’s Child and Dear President Bush.

Cringing at the Stars

Published on Sunday, April 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Cringing at the Stars

by Rosa Maria Pegueros

What do Alberto Gonzalez, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Miguel Estrada, Linda Chavez, and Clarence Thomas have in common?

If you do not know, then you have not been paying attention.

They are high-profile people of color who are highly accomplished; they have reached the highest levels of government service, and their politics fall into line with the most conservative leaders of our country. The uniqueness of their positions is such that they cannot strictly be defined as tokens but when they sit in relation to their colleagues, you cannot miss them: Their black or brown faces are alone in their fields.

When you scan the Republican convention, you see black and Latino faces sprinkled lightly throughout the crowd but they do not belong to a latter-day Fannie Lou Hamer, Julian Bond, Bayard Rustin or anyone else who would pose a serious challenge to the white leaders of the party. Either you are for the GOP or against it; that is how it maintains its homogeneity.

I have some personal experience with this way of thinking. Some years ago, I was drawn into organizing for a peace march. Week after week, they hired more people. It was a youthful, creative group and the experience was very exhilarating except for one thing: Among more than one hundred staffers, only two of us were people of color. Many of the people of color that they approached responded that world peace was not high on their list of priorities nor was it a major concern for people of color in general, and they declined. The leaders of the peace march were completely baffled by this. Doesn’t world peace benefit EVERYBODY?

As the hiring continued, the management took to posting a photo of the staff once a week. The only other minority member of the staff, a black woman, and I posted a small note under it: “What’s wrong with this picture?” Then we watched as people stared at the photograph trying to discern the joke. Nobody figured it out. We knew that despite our expertise, our colors mattered but beyond the two of us, they did not know what to do, nor cared. Nor did they understand the priorities of non-white communities.

George W. Bush has surrounded himself with talented people of color but what does that say about his relationship with the organizations that represent their interests? When has he deigned to speak at an NAACP convention? Is he pro-affirmative action? Does he provide the funds needed by minority communities for health and education?

When he “speaks Spanish”­-I’ve heard parrots with better accents-­does he do so because he actually knows the language and has a warm connection with our cultures or has he been trained to say just enough to sprinkle in a stump speech?

One thing is sure: His appointments send his opponents into a tizzy. How can we reject a black Secretary of State? Two? A Latino attorney general? Take Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Her conservatism makes us cringe. Why, we ask ourselves, is this talented and brilliant woman a conservative? Is it because she has forgotten her roots as child in Birmingham, Alabama during segregation? She was eight when the four little girls were killed in the KKK bombing of a church. In a commencement address at Vanderbilt University in 2004 she said,

“I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed.”

It was at her father’s church! And she has not forgotten! So why does she ally herself with George W. Bush, a man who tries his best to be the good ol’ boy that he idealizes and whose policies further degrade the already low standard of living for African Americans and other ethnic and racial minorities. Moreover, she is a staunch believer in the Right to Bear Arms. She claims that if gun registration had been required, her father would not have had any defense against the Ku Klux Klan. Yet she has also defended affirmative action to the president as did Colin Powell. She is complex but I still do not understand her conservatism.

Many African Americans want more than anything else to forget: To forget slavery, to forget Jim Crow, segregation, the KKK, the murdered civil rights leaders and workers. Does this determined amnesia account for her choices? Or is it the double burden that black and Latino history places on its best and brightest?

To be a high achiever requires a very high level of ego and individuality. It can also lead one to delude oneself into thinking that one’s accomplishments were done without help from anyone else. It’s the old bootstrap mentality: I made it on my own; so can you. If “they” think I made it to my high position in life BECAUSE I am black or Latina, it will be tainted. The world will not give me the respect I deserve.

The burden of history lies on our shoulders because those who excelled have a duty to our communities, because we did not achieve by ourselves. It is a burden and it cannot be escaped.

Then there is Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez whose fascist policies make one think that he got his legal training at the School of the Americas. His strong Roman Catholic upbringing would predispose him to conservative viewpoints. Sad to say, there is little in Latin culture that inculcates liberal ideas. Even the Leftist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua denied legal abortions to women.

Those of us involved in solidarity work have allied ourselves with the Latin American Left for only it has taken on the trial and tribulations of the poor and disenfranchised. In the United States, we can be found working with the poor, with immigrants, or other community concerns. Gonzalez would not have been found among us.

A. Leon Higginbotham, a Federal Circuit Court judge who passed away in 1998, was a tireless worker for civil rights. In a now-famous letter to Clarence Thomas when he was nominated to serve on the United States Supreme Court, he wrote:

“. . .you have often described yourself as a black conservative. I must confess that, other than their own self advancement, I am at a loss to understand what it is that the so-called black conservatives are so anxious to conserve. Now that you no longer have to be outspoken their behalf, perhaps you will recognize that in the past it was the white “conservatives” who screamed “segregation now, segregation forever!” It was primarily the conservatives. . .who stood in the way of almost every measure to ensure gender and racial advancement.”

I wish I could present a solution but I cannot think of one. Just as we cannot force another to love us nor can we force all of our children to care and remember. Some of our prominent Latinos and African Americans will continue to distance themselves from their communities because to them, remembering causes negativity. They are lost to us; in a generation or two, their children will have no memory of our cultures.

To me, one who turns away is a member of the real nouveau riche, Jay Gatsbys with shaded pasts, trying to forget from whence they came. As a historian, I believe deeply that memory is life; that our identities are found in the memories of our peoples.

Where will our next Judge Higginbotham come from? Our next Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.? Our next Cesar Chavez? Our next Rosa Parks? They will come from our communities and our classrooms for it is our responsibility to teach not only the facts of our peoples but the love of our cultures. Our lives and theirs will be richer in the spirit than those who run away and do not look back.

Rosa Maria Pegueros (pegueros@uri.edu) is an associate professor of Latin American History and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.

GUEST: Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: Online Ugliness

My column on General Peter Pace drew the ugliest flaming I have ever experienced; so disgusting, in fact, that I only shared it with a couple of friends. Thus I am very glad to see Howard Kurtz addressing this issue. -Rosie

Online Ugliness

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 26, 2007; 7:36 AM

One of the unique qualities of Internet discourse is its freewheeling, no-holds-barred nature, where passionate arguments are often accompanied by some choice expletives and a virtual finger in the eye.

But what happens when the talk turns ugly, racist and violent?

In recent weeks, some of those who post comments on the conservative blog Little Green Footballs have said they wished that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had succeeded in what the Gitmo prisoner says was a plot to kill Jimmy Carter. And some who posted comments on the liberal Huffington Post have expressed regret that the suicide bomber at a military base in Afghanistan failed to take out the visiting Dick Cheney.

No corner of the Net is safe from this bile. The Washington Post's Web site has been grappling with a surge in offensive and incendiary comments.

The really gruesome stuff represents a tiny minority of those online. But is there a way of policing the worst stuff without shutting down robust debate?

The comments about Cheney at the Huffington Post included: "You can't kill pure evil." "If at first you don't succeed . . . " "Dr. Evil escapes again . . . damn." Founder Arianna Huffington wrote that "no one at HuffPost is defending these comments -- they are unacceptable and were treated as such by being removed."

The comments about Mohammed and Carter at Little Green Footballs included: "Can we furlough him -- just so he can realize the Carter plot? Please?" and "Even this schmuck had some good ideas."

The site's founder, Charles Johnson, wrote on Little Green Footballs that such comments "reflect only the opinions of the individuals who posted them" and doubted that they "rise to the level of hatred that showed up in Arianna's readers' Cheney-related comments."

Some conservatives and liberals seized on the incidents to denounce the other side, but no conclusions should be drawn from wackjobs on the fringe.

Since last summer, washingtonpost.com has allowed registered users to post comments on any news story. A recent report about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who said the slow recovery of his city was part of a plan to change its racial makeup and leadership, led to a number of offensive or inflammatory remarks:

"Some Black politicians are [expletive] idiots." "IF a white MAN were to speak as you do, you'd look for a lynching party." One person described Nagin as a racist and a women's sanitary product.

Washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady says he does not have the resources to screen the roughly 2,000 daily comments in advance. He has one staffer deleting offensive comments after the fact, and banning the authors from further feedback, based on complaints from readers. Brady plans to devote more staff to the process and to use new filtering technology.

"The medium allows for readers and journalists to engage in conversation, and to say we're not going to take advantage of that doesn't make a lot of sense to me," he says. "I'd rather figure out a way to do it better than not to do it at all."

But Post reporter Darryl Fears is among those in the newsroom who believe the comments should be junked if offensive postings can't be filtered out in advance. "If you're an African American and you read about someone being called a porch monkey, that overrides any positive thing that you would read in the comments," he says. "You're starting to see some of the language you see on neo-Nazi sites, and that's not good for The Washington Post or for the subjects in those stories."

After Post reporter Darragh Johnson wrote in February about a Northeast Washington teenager who was fatally shot while being chased by police, some readers posted comments, including racist comments, criticizing the boy. Johnson says the 17-year-old's father cited the comments in declining to answer most questions about his son.

What is spreading this Web pollution is the widespread practice of allowing posters to spew their venom anonymously. If people's full names were required -- even though some might resort to aliases -- it would go a long way toward cleaning up the neighborhood.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/03/26/BL2007032600347_pf.html

General Peter Pace, Have You Ever Been To a Prostitute?

Published on Monday, March 19, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

General Peter Pace, Have You Ever Been To a Prostitute?

by Rosa María Pegueros

General Peter Pace, have you ever been to a prostitute?

When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff makes a pronouncement on what he considers to be a moral question, it naturally brings to mind all of the matters on which the Reverend General could rule. Most people believe that prostitution is immoral, either because it exploits women or because it violates sexual mores, so I was just wondering, have you ever gone to a prostitute?

And while we’re at it, have you ever issued a directive that any soldier who patronizes prostitutes will be summarily dismissed from the armed services? Will he get a dishonorable discharge? Lose his pension?

Were you to issue such an order, would your fellow generals laugh at you as you stride around the Pentagon? Or would it be ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge,’ public morality, private perversion?

If there is one tell-tale sign of the presence of American soldiers in a war or occupation it is the trail they leave behind of babies with American fathers. In the past, marrying the mothers of those children was discouraged by the armed services; special permission to marry was required. Most soldiers’ relationships were purely proprietary; money on the table, with no thought for the woman or the illegitimate children that might result.

Why should Americans care that Koreans, for example, shun mixed-race persons? What about the thousands of American-Vietnamese children?

Of course, the “fighting men” could not be expected to remain celibate during their tours of duty. In the past, it has even been the policy of the army to issue condoms and treat sexually-transmitted diseases with no questions asked, the assumption being that boys will be boys. Besides, it helps the local economy so everybody’s happy. The girls need the money, right?

So I was wondering, have you ever been to a prostitute? Have you turned a blind eye to your troops’ dalliances in town while on leave?

You may be a straight-arrow kind of guy who has never and would never visit a whorehouse but if we are talking morality, do you condemn the “johns” in your command with the same animosity that you direct towards gay soldiers? If not, why not? Or is “don’t ask, don’t tell,” your policy in this case? Do you believe that it is moral for soldiers to spend their leaves in brothels but not to seek the love of another man? Or are you a homophobe, plain and simple?

The issue of sex and the troops is taboo. Despite its artistic representations from the 19th-century Puccini opera, Madame Butterfly, to the Vietnam War version in Miss Saigon, male sexual behavior in war zones is so taken for granted that nobody talks about it. Consider some other aspects of the problem. The recent rape and murder by an American soldier of a young Iraqi girl and her family may deviate from the usual behavior of American soldiers; it is certainly against the stated ideals of the armed services but it is not as rare as we would hope.

What about Tailhook in 1991, where dozens of female members of the Navy were assaulted and sexually molested; where the participation of senior officers in the incident was concealed and the whole thing was covered up to avoid publicity? Finally, two years after the incident, 140 officers—officers!—were being considered for prosecution for public exposure, assault, conduct unbecoming an officer, and lying under oath to the Pentagon investigators. Then the top brass granted immunity to a number of them undermining the prosecution. The only reason that any disciplinary action was taken against the male officers in the Tailhook incident was because of outside pressure. Boys will be boys, eh?

Tailhook may seem like ancient history but the mistreatment of women in the military has continued to be the norm. Sixteen years later, female soldiers make sure that they go nowhere alone because even in the presence of other soldiers, they can be sexually assaulted and no one will intervene.

In 2006, Col. Janis Karpinski who had been the commandant of the prison at Abu Ghraib, reported to the International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military commander in Iraq gave the order that the real cause of the deaths of some female soldiers was to be concealed. They had died of dehydration because they were afraid to go out after dark because they were afraid of being assaulted and raped by their own comrades. To avoid the trip to the latrines, they didn’t drink water late in the day. Lacking adequate water in the terrible heat of Iraq, they died of dehydration.

No matter how good female soldiers are in their jobs, no matter how dedicated that they are to our country, to many of the men in the armed services they are little better than whores. They are always at risk for sexual assault or rape, and the brass will do little to protect them; boys will be boys, and the big boys cover for them. If you go out after dark, girls, you’re asking for it.

Writing on Salon.com in The Private War of Women Soldiers, Helen Benedict quotes Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21 “There are only three kinds of female the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke.” “[Abbie Pickett, 24, a specialist with the 229th Combat Support Engineering Company] told me, "It's like sending . . . women to live in a frat house."”

Furthermore, says Benedict, the situation has gotten worse for female soldiers since the armed services have drastically lowered their entrance requirements to induct men with criminal and violent records, women soldiers are at an even greater risk. Add to that the constraints of operating in a Muslim country where there are no prostitutes are available, and women soldiers become even bigger targets.

Pace should take a leaf from General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s playbook. During the post-World War II occupation in Europe, Eisenhower heard rumors that there were many lesbians in his command, so he called one of his aides, WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps, and told her to collect the names of all the lesbians so that he could get rid of them. Estimating that some 95% of the women in the 900 women in the battalion were lesbians, Phelps told him that she would make the list but that it was one of the most decorated companies in the army, with the lowest number of venereal diseases and pregnancies. He would be losing all his top staff, all his clerical help, and furthermore, her name would be at the top of the list. Eisenhower gave up on the idea.

So General Pace, if you want to win this war, give the valiant gay and lesbian soldiers the respect they deserve and stay out of their bedrooms. If you want to clean up the sexual morals of your troops, you have your work cut out for you.

[This piece appeared in Commondreams.org and was picked up for Smirkingchimp.com. Two small corrections to clerical errors appear in this version.]

Hillary Clinton? Barak Obama? Bill Richardson? Time Will Tell

Its very telling that while President Bill Clinton was self-immolating on national television, telling a barefaced lie about something that was not our business to begin with, a pollster reported that his wife Hillary Clinton's ratings in the polls were very high. Yet when she had put her considerable intellect into creating a health plan for America, she was vilified as thoroughly as if she had committed a sex act in public. What is it about the American electorate that it accepts women into the public area only so long as they keep their places? Only in hindsight does it honor an independent, outspoken former first lady as it did with Betty Ford, the late President Gerald Ford's widow.

So long as First Ladies serve homemade cookies (baked by the White House chef, of course), espouse a non-political cause and stand silently in their husband’s shadow, they are celebrated. Look at any poll about the most admired women in our society and the First Lady is usually in the top five. What outstanding feat did they accomplish to arrive at this exalted standing? They married politicians. While staying married to one of those fellows may be a feat in itself, it certainly does not merit such admiration.

American women have made great strides in the public sphere. The majority of students in colleges and law schools are women. The women in medical schools have reached parity with their male counterparts. The sound of glass ceilings being shattered can be heard all around us but there are significant ways in which women continue to tread water; among those arenas are the highest levels of government and commerce.

Those who reach the ultimate heights of power, the presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, represent the most dominant members of our society. We, who are not male, not rich, not white, long for those like us to grace those hallowed halls but because of the way the society is structured, the likelihood of a black president, a Latino president or a woman president is very small.

Consider some of the non-traditional candidates in past presidential elections. The first black woman to run for the presidency was the incomparable Shirley Chisholm, the first African American women to be elected to Congress. In 1972, she ran for the Democratic Party nomination, garnering 152 votes but losing the nomination to Senator George McGovern in spite of her extraordinary, and rhetorical skills. 1972 was a very contentious year: it was during a war, in the wake of the Kennedy-King assassinations, the riots that followed the King assassination, and the tensions of the Civil Rights movement.

Senator Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman to serve in the Senate, put her name forward for the 2004 presidential race but she was forced to withdraw before the Iowa caucuses in the wake of a number of financial scandals and criticism of her by black lawmakers and human rights leaders for meeting with dictator Sani Abacha during a trip to Nigeria in 1996. I was very sorry to see her fall by the wayside.

Other black candidates for president? The Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for the 1984 Democratic Party nomination but failed to get it amidst questions that questioned his handling of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalitions finances and his personal morality. I doubt he could have won it even if his record had been pristine. He was already tarnished with accusations of using his association with the Rev. King to advance his career. And if it had not been that, it would have been something else. The fact is that his race was a barrier to the nomination.

The Rev. Al Sharpton ran in 2004 and was painted with the same kinds of calumnies that dogged Jesse Jackson. Its interesting to note that when a black leader speaks up for his people, he is immediately condemned as being self-promoting.

A cursory glance brings other black faces to the fore. Colin Powell? In spite of the pressure brought to bear on him, he was clear that he was not interested. He would have been the most likely African American to get elected precisely because of his "good soldier" persona. That he advocated affirmative action can be explained by his career in the military. Absent the ground-breaking Executive Order by President Harry S Truman desegregating the Armed Forces it is unlikely that Powell would have reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Oh yes, and then there's Alan Keyes, but I digress.

Latino candidates are even more invisible. New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson has thrown his hat into the ring. Despite his strong foreign policy credentials and his governorship, a traditional springboard to a presidential nomination, I would be surprised if he got half the press that the African American or female candidates will get. Latino leaders have been marginalized in all but a few communities.

A considerable number of American women have run for president since Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket because she wanted to send a message that it was time for a woman in the White House. Few, however, have run on a major party ticket. The one who was considered to be the most likely to get elected in 2000 was Republican Elizabeth Hanford Dole, a former Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Labor under Ronald Reagan. She is also the wife of retired Senator and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole of Kansas. As formidable as she was perceived to be, her campaign did not reach the Republican convention for lack of funds. I wonder if her husband's shilling for Viagra on television commercials hurt her candidacy. She ran for the Senate from her home state of North Carolina in 2003 and is in her first term.

This brings us back to Senator Hillary Clinton. Her detractors are quick to remind us time and again that she is a polarizing figure. What major politician isn’t? It is a matter of degree; this early on, it is hard to tell the impact of that accusation. The Left is quick to jump on her failure to condemn the Iraq war from the outset. The hard, indigestible fact is that if she had, she would have lost her viability in the minds of many.

After all, President Bush and his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, claimed that they had absolute evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Like most people on the Left, I thought he was lying, but I wonder if I would have voted to invade Iraq faced with the purported evidence and the responsibility to protect the nation that a senator holds. Senator Barak Obama was prescient in his opposition to the war but he was not in the Senate yet when the votes were cast.

Conservatives get apoplectic when it comes to the Clintons. The middle of the country regards them as spawn of Satan. I doubt that anyone who is truly progressive can get elected. Now I hear that one of the Rupert Murdoch papers "revealed" that Senator Obama spent four years in a Madraza (Islamic school) in Indonesia. The initial report was that Hillary's campaign had put out that report. The fact is that Senator Obama wrote about his youthful years in
Jakarta in one of his books but he was and continues to be a Christian. But the majority of Americans don't read so the lie will continue to make the rounds, and the truth will be overlooked in favor of the perception that he tried to suppress this story and Hillary was the sneaky Pete who leaked it.

Senator Clinton has many things in her favor. She is in her second Senate term from New York having been reelected easily. Having worked with Bill in his two campaigns as well as own two senatorial campaigns, she knows the challenges and pitfalls that are still new to her challengers. She is smart. After two terms of the current resident of the White House, she will restore the sense that the nation is led by the best and brightest. In addition to representing her constituents well, she has won the grudging respect of conservatives in upstate New York as well as those across the aisle in the Senate. She has the support of the organized women’s movement. Finally, she has Bill who loves to campaign, is a formidable fund-raiser, was well-loved despite his peccadilloes and left the White House with the highest approval ratings in our time: 66% compared to Ronald Reagan's 63%.

When countries elect leaders who are not from the dominant class--in our case, white men--they elect conservative leaders whose beliefs and agenda hew closely to those of the most conservative group. So for England, it was arch-conservative Margaret Thatcher. For us to elect a black president it would have to be a Colin Powell; a woman, Elizabeth Dole. For Senator Clinton to get elected, a lot will depend on how conservative she appears to the electorate.

I believe that that's why she has been so circumspect about her response to the war and why she has been so successful in the Senate. Ironically, she is perceived as conservative by the Left but ultra-liberal by the conservatives. Bill was solidly a centrist, he wasn't an ultra-liberal. If he hadn't gotten in trouble for the Monica business, the spin on his administration might be very different.

Even when a white man runs today, he has to demonstrate his conservative credentials. The charismatic Senator John McCain, a conservative Republican, has had to backpedal to make himself more conservative than he is naturally. George Bush 41 went anti-abortion to get elected as did Ronald Reagan. I'm waiting to see how far to the right Senator McCain will go to get elected, for if anyone wants it, he does.

How does the Left achieve its agenda in the White House? Can a Senator Bernie Sanders (the Socialist former governor of Vermont) get elected to the White House? I would like to think that it is possible but it is not likely that it will happen at a time when war and fear dominate the country. The atmosphere of the politics in our country is a complex mix of elements. The politicians tend to rule from the right or the center in fearful times because people want to hold on to the semblance of control that they get from those positions. Advocacy groups must raise their voices, write, campaign, and pressure to force our elected leaders to make our concerns their own. If Hillary were president I doubt that she would ever be as progressive as I'd like but at least she would be a friendly face on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Politics is the art of the possible. It is a negotiation. What we in the loyal opposition must do is to represent our ideals to the pragmatists in Congress. By its nature, Congress cannot do what we do. Congressional representatives have to worry about a huge number of issues and constituents. We have to make our voices heard over the din.

The Left, through organizations like Move-On has shown itself to be formidable opponent. We will not get all we want in a presidential candidate but it is better to have a friendly ear in the corridors of power than to be shut out as completely as Bush-Cheney administration has done to us. Furthermore, the mainstream media must also be willing to challenge any administration that comes into office. For too long it has offered deference to those in power instead of acting as the watchdog for the people.

It is gratifying to look at the field of Democratic candidates and see the diversity there. That is a big change from when I voted for the first time in 1972. Who knows, in my lifetime we may actually see two black, Latino or female candidates running for president.

And the Republicans? Well, they may just have to press Condi into running for president. Planting black faces at the GOP convention just will not be enough.