Hillaryland vs. Arnoldland

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network at 6/21/07

There are two kinds of people in this country: Those who look West and those who want to go Back East. Those who look West follow the Sun on its morning path across the Plains, the Pacific and the far waters. Those who look Back East move faster into its dwindling light.

California, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Arizona and the Southwest are the final destination of those who follow the Sun – they are the last places for new beginnings in America. New York, Boston, New England and Europe are the destinations of the Returners.

They are entirely different. The Sun Followers change – they greet change; they make change; they welcome change. The Returners get alienated by places they don’t know and haven’t been and they try to recall the early days. They remain the same throughout their lives, echoing the same cord in their 60s that they felt as young college students.

Here in New Hampshire last year one of the ritzy prep schools generously held a symposium for us proles in the state and our high school kids. In one of the exercises, the parents were asked to write a creative paragraph about themselves. I was surprised that almost all the men – they all had their hands up to read their comments out loud – most exclusively wrote about when they were in college or went to Woodstock and heard Jimmy Hendrix, or when they were teenagers in a band. They were all Returners. Maybe because they were all businessmen and couldn’t think of anything that would sound artsy. But they were all Returners anyway and at 50 years old they had no anxious life crossings to report, no salvations, no creative failures.

We have quite a few Returners up here. People “return” to New England although there is no more New England to return to because of all the Midwesterners and suburban types who have returned, and brought it with them.

A lot of the Returners are college oriented – they want to return to being in college. I talk to them about their dreams and they dream of being in college, although they are in their 60s. Which is kind of unfortunate. They come here to retire in the region of the college campus they went to because they have no place else to go; no town, no parish, no family. ‘Tis the curse of federalism and the corporate culture. (Do we still need federalism? New York and California seems to be very well today without it. Indeed, it seems increasingly to be a useless appendage.)

But there are issues with going back. One must cross life’s rivers. And when you cross the one river, it brings you to the second and then the third, and finally you reach some oasis in life’s journey. It is there from which life begins again. But if you don’t cross the first river you never get to the second or third.

Those who cross every river go back as well at life’s end. We return, in shadow, to whence they came. You have to go back; everyone is called back to her or his beginnings, it is the way of all things; God will call you back to the stone church and the green mornings and the smell of childhood friends when you are old – you will dream about the friends you were born with. But those who have made the journey, like Bilbo Baggins, are restless in old age and yearn to head West again; to camp under the stars in Sonora risking scorpion bite or paddle the Boundary Waters deep into the Yukon and grizzly territory. They feel maybe it is better to be eaten by a Grizzly than to pad around doing tai chi on the old college campus at 75 years old. Those who have made the journey are not afraid to die. The Returners all live to be 110.

Hinduism has it that life is always awakening and moving with the path of the Sun, and always returning with its Shadow at the same time. Newton found this core principle of the East as well; the path of Vishnu, the Creator, is balanced by that of Shiva, the Destroyer, and for every Force there is an Equal and Opposite Counterforce: again, the way of all things.

Two people represent this in high contrast here today in the Land of the Free; Arnold Swarzenegger, the Sun King who rose out of the beach scene and Southern California’s strong man culture – ( large as a Titan, no? Like the one which is claimed to Pour the Water in the icon of Aquarius) and Hillary Clinton, who, after victory of a sort, returns East; to New York and to the constancy of issues which have not changed in her life since she was a college student. In full truth, she is the representative figure of the Democratic Party today. Arnold is the representative of a diametrically opposed new movement in American culture.

Anyone who was in college in the late Sixties and early Seventies will recognize a familiar ring to the “Take Back America” conference the Democrats held recently. It echoes the “Take Back the Night” feminist concerts from college days, and it thus resonates the same cord of angst, alienation, approbation and victimization of that time and place, echoing into this.

This is the Hobbit tendency. As their Master Creator pointed out, the Hobbits like to read the same book over and over. These are the Bagginses, loath to leave the Shire and terrified by the river. Does Obama’s autobiography somewhat resonate with Richard Wright’s “Black Boy” and somewhat with a touch of Malcolm X?

Echoing the Original Spirit creates the reinforcing orthodoxy around the shining moment and fortifies the waning spirit. But it leaves a hunger in the third or fourth generation’s repeat. Like that horrid music they constantly play in supermarkets and malls and everywhere; rock without roll, as Joni Mitchell called it – the spirit left eons ago. A Xerox copy of a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy on to white.

How many times have we heard now the “new JFK” or the “new Bobby.” Of course a new JFK would only be a shadow of the original. It is modish cultism; let’s restore that feeling which gave us such a buzz when we were 18. It is modish idolatry; let’s bring back the once and future king. The consequences on personality can be pitiful; it presents one from crossing the rivers ahead if one can only see into the past.

Thanks to YouTube, I can plug in and show my kids the power, courage, danger and fearlessness that Malcolm X found when he universally scared the pants off the white people. He still does. But Obama, who speaks of a “quiet riot” does not. There is no such thing as a quiet riot. Malcolm was a man who didn’t long to retire in his college campus. Or the anguish of Bob Dylan at Newport in 1965, like a magical animal come out of the North Woods; a heartbroken and drunken John Brown warning of pestilence, danger and the end of things ahead. The Poet of the Heart rarely expects to live past 30 and the best do not. Malcolm, like John Lennon, managed to get to 40 before he was gunned down.

We face the big transition now, and not because of this upcoming Presidential race. All healthy people are sick of this consultant’s scam already. Today America’s new generation faces the question every generation faces: Do we follow the Sun or retreat into Shadow?

I don’t care if Arnold runs for President. I don’t care what he intends to do. Nature will call him forth where he is needed. There is a new thing started up here in New Hampshire at high school graduations, much to the great dismay of the guidance counselors: When the boys get their diplomas, they collectively light up cigars. I believe it is an Arnold thing. From the kids I talk to, they seem to like Obama. But they idolize Arnold. He is perhaps the First Citizen of America’s finished journey in its last frontier; the place at the end of journeys where the world begins again.

We face now our first days: The North/South contention which has resonated heart and mind in this country for 400 years in cord and chorus and sometimes in blood and anger is over. That age was Prelude. That day has passed. We are now an East/West country and we will be for the next thousand years. And the representative avatars of this new condition are Hillary Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This is the question we ask today: Do we cross the river ahead and all the other rivers? Or do we return again to the Shire?

Bloomberg: The Mark Warner Paradigm

By Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network 6/20/07

Mike Bloomberg is old school from the time when politics formed around New England's ethnic and religious tribes as in the movie "Miller's Crossing." He and his family are highly respected here in the Boston area as authentic and original and trustworthy people; in a word, formidable. I've felt from the beginning that Bloomberg was acting as a concerned citizen, as it was said that he would only enter the Presidential race if both parties failed to put up worthy candidates. He's one of the smartest men on earth and he's not going to throw away a half billion bucks.

Interesting that he says today that he is no longer a Republican but did not yet declare himself to be an "Independent." His staff says he will not say what he’s going to do until February when the other two parties have declared their candidates.

If Bloomberg decides to make an independent run for the Presidency it could well awaken a permanent third party and one of the other parties will head to Palookaville. The conditions are perfect. The Republicans have at the moment the most to lose, as nominally this represents a division in the Republican Party, leaving the Religious Right and the Old South Republican wing to dangle. The loudest squawks have come from the torture buffs in the Republican nut-job wing.

But the Democrats have a lot to lose as well. They have made great strides gathering independents in ’06 and have brought a new face and a new beginning to Congress. But they have squandered the energy and already alienated the independents who brought them to the new Congress. Pundits say that new energy in the voting public could well go to Bloomberg. All those gains could now disappear.

Which is too bad. This dynamic new crowd of Democrats, which includes Iraq war veterans like Patrick Murphy and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania and Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire were just starting to get their stride. They were on a good track until the consultants took over the show and started this absurd early primary season and the American Idol Presidential lineup. Most in the mainstream are already sick of hearing about these people.

If Bloomberg does go ahead with his new party his tag team will certainly include his California bud, Arnold Schwarzenegger in some capacity – Secretary of State maybe. They are two of the country’s most savvy politicians according to Time where they made the cover this week. Warren Buffett has called for Arnold as VP candidate on a Bloomberg ticket. No question, the political season has changed and almost overnight.

In California today Bloomberg is saying: "Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles, and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology."

Likewise, Arnold's key phrase is "post partisanship." It is the new season and the new tune, and the Democrats are still playing the odd, whiny and inauthentic grocery-store music of Celine Dion.

But Bloomberg’s theme isn’t his own, and post-partisanship isn’t Arnold’s either. Five years ago you might have heard these same sentiments from the Governor who was considered one of the best in the country and one of the best in post-war politics; Mark Warner of Virginia.

Warner invented Mike Bloomberg. He invented Arnold Schwarzenegger. His decision not to run for President left a big hole in Democratic politics.

Warner might have transformed contemporary Democratic politics. Harvard educated and Yankee-reared, he campaigned vigorously and joyfully at Virginia’s NASCAR track and Appalachia’s Big Top churches, where Nantucket liberals fear to tread. But I can see Mike Bloomberg welcomed there as well.

In Warner's tenure as Governor, Virginia could be seen as a Petri dish for a new political sensibility. He proved beyond any doubt that the South and all of the red states could be brought back home to the Democratic Party by a genuine, enthusiastic and sincere politician with excellent management abilities, who respected his fellow Southern citizens as he found them.

As Governor of Virginia and as a Presidential candidate, Warner abandoned the politics of confrontation and established a new model, reaching across the isle to create working relationships with Republicans and ignoring ideology and issues-oriented strategies which often alienated mainstream voters and filled Republican ranks in the Old Dominion.

In an early foray into Iowa, Warner refused to enter into the politics of polarization when reporters pressed him into positioning on the most contentious issues. He once answered, “97% of what I do is management.”

It’s a management thing. The Democrats needed to understand. There is the essence of the new paradigm of what could have been the Democrats’ auspicious political future. When Warner dropped out of the Presidential race, the same management-based, bi-partisan political model was adopted here in New Hampshire by our Democratic Governor, John Lynch. He was reelected in this reddest of states with 80% voter support.

What Arnold brings to California today is new energy to face the new century. He defies the tradition-bound and calcified parties and pushes ahead with his own home-grown environmental treaties in utter disregard for the federales and the inch-worm bureaucrats at the EPA. And to his Republican friends who say that green power will slow business, he responds that green business is good business and forward-looking and alive states will include clean-energy entrepreneurs and be part of the ascending economic arc of the new century.

These are new ideas which are now awakening in the new century and leaving the hide-bound behind. It is good that Arnold has adopted them.

But they are not Schwarzenegger’s ideas. They are Mark Warner’s ideas. When Arnold was pushing his line items against the tide in his first term, Warner was up here in New Hampshire promoting green entrepreneurs and talking up these exact, same ideas. He had made them begin to work in Virginia and could well have made them work across America.

Now these ideas which were leading to a new Democratic awakening are entirely identified with Bloomberg and Arnold.

What happened? The Democrats’ dynamic new people and ideas were driven out by that destroyer of world; the middle-minded minions of the rank and file.

Bloomberg is a master. No one has ever changed the political landscape so dramatically by dropping so few crumbs. And the framing is brilliant: He is now making it crystal-clear that he will undoubtedly act, but he is giving the two parties time to shape up. He brings a decent and civil warning.

There is still time; the Democrats can still turn to their First Tier: Warner, Jim Webb, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Mike Easley of North Carolina, Wes Clark, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, John Lynch of New Hampshire, Joe Sestak and others. But they have to look within themselves and ask what is it that compels them to send forth the middle and the middlin’ (Celine Dion?) when the best and the brightest are left on the sidelines.

The Democrats have to let go the current crowd and gather and spread in the South and Southwest and heartland as Warner and Wes Clark have done, as per the prognosis of Mudcat Saunders and Steve Jarding, in their book Foxes in the Henhouse. They need to move the headquarters of the Democratic Party away from Nantucket Island and Bill Clinton's NY penthouse to Richmond or Austin if they ever want to participate with the real people of our country again.

And this could be their very last chance.

Is Wes Clark the Last Hope for the Democrats?

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network 6/18/07

Senator Clinton's negatives are now to 52% according to Gallup, the highest of any candidate in the human history of the Democratic Party. Up from 46% about nine months ago. The more money she spends the more her negatives go up. And John Edwards, who recently cited Paris Hilton as poster-child for his “two Americas” pitch has drifted into Triple A. A few of the other Democrats who want to be President are so forgettable that most can’t even remember their names.

In contrast, Mitt Romney is beginning to boom and will continue to do. Headlines in my morning paper: "Romeny Grabs Lead in Early Voting States." Romney is smart as paint, is a masterful administrator and is very rich. I don't think the people who care about religion will actually much care that he is a Mormon when it comes time to vote. He goes to church and that is what they want; most of the others seem to go for the camera.

Any of the Democratic contenders against Romney will fail. But this time the Democrats approach a catastrophic failure. It will be the Democrats fourth total failure since Eisenhower.

It is quite possible that the Democratic Party itself cannot survive such a failure. I’m sensing entrenched retreat: Nihilism, born of desperation, has poisoned the blogs like DKos and some of the major bloggers are dropping out. This will further sink the Democrats' chances.

Ships come and go in such an uncertain political environment – last week Colin Powell and the week before, Al Gore. Then they pass again into the night and fog.

Wes Clark is still here. He says consistently that he has not ruled out a run in ’08. Wes Clark, as Dark Horse, can retrieve this for the Democrats and now he is quickly becoming the only hope the Democrats have.

We have been hearing from General Clark quite a bit, but you have to want to listen. He’s not on the Big Screen; he has no Hollywood poster child like Edwards and no mangled and misbegotten “quotes” from Lincoln of things never said (grabbed form the Internet) like Gore. He is right on the facts and accurate in his historical perspective. He is precise and perfect in presentation. And he’s been going on and on about Iran, like the Ancient Mariner, to anyone who will listen; in the Huffington Post, on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, and at the 92^nd St. YMCA in New York City, on Fox news and now as a commentator on MSNBC. He’s at StopIranWar.com, alone among the Democrats to warn of impending neocon-inspired invasion of Iran.

Like those who denounced Churchill as crying wolf, Rove & Company have called Clark’s claim about a pending Iran invasion absurd, and most of the Democratic contenders hope this will pass them by as well, as they hoped Iraq would. But this weekend in the NYTs, we are told that Vice President Cheney and the incompetent war cabinet has been pushing for strikes against Iran all along. Joe Lieberman, who used to be a Democrat and sometimes thinks he still is, is openly pushing for strikes on Iran. The Republican right is calling for the “nuclear option” as it has been since the beginning of the Iraq conflict.

Only General Clark speaks up.

Condi Rice, the Administration's Incredible Shrinking Woman, is said to prefer conversation rather than bombing Iran, but the NYTs reports that “ . . . Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.”

Cheney is incapable of seeing warfare as anything beyond revenge and dominance. He is the Anti-Eisenhower; he has a mind which rebels from strategic thinking and planning. They still haven’t avenged the Ayatollah Khomeini and the taking of American hostages in 1979. It will be the administration’s last bit of business as they finally close the door that Ronald Reagan opened.

Only General Clark and a few others – Eric Massa of New York, Andrew Horne of Tennessee and Jon Soltz; all military officers – are speaking up. But they are building a new Democratic Party and General Clark was elementary in organizing and husbanding its awakening.

I was pleased to hear on NPR this week and again on NBC over the weekend, a tribute to Jim Webb, the new Senator from Virginia, for Father’s Day. He talked about fathers and sons and the tradition of military service which has gone back in his Virginia family to before the American Revolution.

How times have changed in the last two years.The rise of Jim Webb, Joe Sestak, Tammy Duckworth, Andrew Horne; the kind of solid-stock heartland politicians like New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter and Arkansas's Woody Anderson that we haven't seen since the days of JFK. Clark tirelessly supported these candidates throughout '06 political season. They are forming a new Democratic sensibility.

They bring a new and different attitude to the Democratic Party - a positive attitude.

This new Democratic sensibility is a good fit for our country at the beginning of the new century. My feeling is that it is unfortunately the Democrats own internal energy - the pseudo-Republicans of the DLC in particular and what Democratic strategist Mudcat Saunders recently called the Metropolitan Opera branch of the Democratic Party - that is sinking these efforts, striving to return to pre-9/11 conditions.

The Democrats have to get serious now or it will soon be too late: As said; Romney is smart and he is a fantastic manager. But sending the country to such a detached manager as Romney, who was key to the progress of financial institutions like Bain & Company and Bain Capital, would be sending it into receivership.

And the crisis which begins our century could well be at hand right now as Hamas takes the Gaza Strip. This victory by the radical force in Palestine will empower a new generation of revolutionary, anti-Western young people. As General Clark said, Gaza could now be a breeding ground for Al Qaeda connected radicals. It is the beginning of a new framework of discussion and diplomacy and it is possible now for warfare to spread and alliances to harden.

I hope General Clark continues to speak up. Harry Reid is hitting a wrong note: This is not the time to go after General Petraeus with personal criticism. It encourages a negative mood for the Democrats. And it is wrong to criticize soldiers on the ground as “detached” and “incompetent” as Reid has recently done. It shows an intrinsic misunderstanding of the matrix of power in our country.

Perhaps only General Clark can forcefully and effectively shape the issues now for the Democrats and prevent the descent into this kind of "shadow" criticism that they are rapidly sinking into - it will drive the Democrats to nihilism and irrelevance, which at this point could lead our country to hidden disasters.

In The Wall Street Journal this week Reagan speech-writer Peggy Noonan all but called for a third party. David Broder of the Washington Post actually called for a third party last week.

Mainstream conservatives like Noonan and Broder are getting the idea: There are always other options.

One such attractive option is New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who said he would start his own third party if the standing parties can’t come up with something original and dynamic. Bloomberg himself is nothing if not dynamic and he does speak to the heart of New York City as great mayors like Ed Koch and Fiorello LaGuardia did. But he is enigmatic as well and is said to have all but sponsored Lieberman’s forey into third-party politics in Connecticut in ’06. Bloomberg could well bring the same Lieberman perspective to the national stage. Coincidentally, Mayor Mike is up here in New Hampshire this weekend. Just visiting, he says.

Bloomberg, nominally a Republican, has bi-partisan support, and political venerables like Ham Jordan, former chief for Jimmy Carter and Angus King, former Independent Governor of Maine, have been calling for a third party all year.

It should be noted as well that "post partisanship" being advanced in California in particular by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is an ascending political trend in political journals like The Nation. These new directions would well coalesce in a new framework provided by Bloomberg and the half billion of his own cash that he is willing to put up for this new venture. If so, one of the two standing parties could get a one-way ticket to Palookaville, as the Whigs did in the mid 1800s.

The Democrats need a candidate with the smarts and managerial abilities of Romney or they will be dead in the water come September. They need Wes Clark: If they don’t come forth now with their best First-Tier managers and strategists - Mark Warner of Virginia, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Mike Easley of North Carolina, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania have been strangely overlooked for the naive and ideological American Idol lineup - they may find themselves descending into a spiral of irrelevance and caught in a twist of fate which they can no longer find their way out of.

Wes Clark is Dark Horse

by Bernie Quigley for Fighting Dems on 6/16/07

Senator Clinton's negatives are now to 52% according to Gallup, the highest of any candidate in the human history of the Democratic Party. Up from 46% about nine months ago. The more money she spends the more her negatives go up. And with all due respect, John Edwards, who recently cited Paris Hilton as poster-child for his “two Americas” pitch is drifting into Triple A. A few of the other Democrats who want to be President are so forgettable that most can’t even remember their names.

In contrast, Mitt Romney is beginning to boom and will continue to do. Romney is smart as paint, is a masterful administrator and is very rich. Any of these Democratic contenders against Romney will fail. But this time we approach a catastrophic failure. It will be the Democrats fourth total failure since Eisenhower.

It is quite possible that the Democratic Party itself cannot survive such a failure. I’m sensing entrenched retreat: Nihilism, born of desperation, is beginning to poison the blogs like DKos and some of the major bloggers are dropping out. This will further sink the Democrats' chances.

Ships come and go in such an uncertain political environment – last week Ron Paul, this week Colin Powell and the week before, Al Gore. Then they pass on into the night and fog.

Wes Clark is still here. He says consistently that he has not ruled out a run in ’08. Wes Clark, as Dark Horse, can retrieve this and now he is quickly becoming the only hope for the Democrats.

We have been hearing from General Clark quite a bit, but you have to want to listen. He’s not on the Big Screen; he has no Hollywood poster child like Edwards and no mangled and misbegotten “quotes” from Lincoln of things never said (grabbed form the Internet) like Gore. He is right on the facts and accurate in his historical perspective. He is precise and perfect in presentation. And he’s been going on and on about Iran, like the Ancient Mariner, to anyone who will listen; in the Huffington Post, on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, and at the 92^nd St. YMCA in New York City, on Fox news and now as a commentator on MSNBC. He’s at StopIranWar.com, alone among the Democrats to warn of impending neocon-inspired invasion of Iran.

Like those who denounced Churchill as crying wolf, Rove & Company have called Clark’s claim about a pending Iran invasion absurd, and most of the Democratic contenders hope this will pass them by as well, as they hoped Iraq would. But this weekend in the NYTs, we are told that Vice President Cheney and the incompetent war cabinet has been pushing for strikes against Iran all along. Joe Lieberman, who used to be a Democrat and sometimes thinks he still is, is openly pushing for strikes on Iran. The Republican right is calling for the “nuclear option” as it has been since the beginning of the Iraq conflict.

Only General Clark speaks up.

Condi Rice, the Administration's Incredible Shrinking Woman, is said to prefer conversation rather than bombing Iran, but the NYTs reports that “ . . . Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.”

Cheney is incapable of seeing warfare as anything beyond revenge and dominance. He is the Anti-Eisenhower; he has a mind which rebels from strategic thinking and planning. They still haven’t avenged the Ayatollah Khomeini and the taking of American hostages in 1979. It will be the administration’s last bit of business as they finally close the door that Ronald Reagan opened.

Only General Clark and a few others – Eric Massa, Andrew Horne of Tennessee and Jon Soltz; all Democrats and military officers – are speaking up. But they are building a new Democratic Party and General Clark was elementary in organizing and husbanding its awakening.

I was pleased to hear on NPR this week and again on NBC over the weekend, a tribute to Jim Webb, the new Senator from Virginia, for Father’s Day. He talked about fathers and sons and the tradition of military service which has gone back in his Virginia family to before the American Revolution.

How times have changed in the last two years.The rise of Jim Webb, Joe Sestak, Tammy Duckworth, Andrew Horne; the kind of solid-stock heartland politicians like New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter and Arkansas's Woody Anderson that we haven't seen since the day of JFK. Clark tirelessly supported these candidates throughout '06 political season. They are forming a new Democratic sensibility.

They bring a new and different attitude to the Democratic Party - a positive attitude.

This new Democratic sensibility is the best fit for our country at the beginning of the new century. My feeling is that it is unfortunately our own internal energy - the pseudo-Republicans of the DLC in particular and what Democratic strategist Mudcat Saunders recently called the Metropolitan Opera branch of the Democratic Party - that is sinking these efforts, striving to return to pre-9/11 conditions. Any of these new people: Tammy Duckworth, Jim Webb, Eric Massa, Joe Sestak, Wes Clark, would awaken American and beat the likes of Mitt Romney hands down. I'm hoping that Katrina Swett and/or Jay Buckey, who are both running against Senator John Sununu here in NH, can follow Shea-Porter’s lead and marshal this new Democratic sensibility in New England and bring it forward.

The Democrats have to get serious now or it will soon be too late: As said; Romney is smart as paint and he is a fantastic manager. But sending the country to such a detached manager as Romney, who was key to the progress of financial institutions like Bain & Company and Bain Capital, would be sending it into receivership.

The crisis which begins our century could well be at hand right now as Hamas takes the Gaza Strip. This victory by the radical force in Palestine will empower a new generation of revolutionary, anti-Western young people. As General Clark said, Gaza could now be a breeding ground for Al Queda connected radicals. It is the beginning of a new framework of discussion and diplomacy and it is possible now for warfare to spread and alliances to harden.

I hope General Clark continues to speak up. Although I appreciate the leadership in the House and the Senate, I'm afraid that Harry Reid is starting on the wrong note: This is not the time to go after General Petraeus with personal criticism. It encourages a negative mood for the Democrats. And it is wrong to criticize soldiers on the ground as “detached” and “incompetent” as Reid has recently done and shows an intrinsic misunderstanding of the matrix of power in our country.

I feel only General Clark can forcefully and effectively shape the issues now for the Democrats and prevent the temptation of this kind of "shadow" criticism - the thing which could drive the Democrats to nihilism and irrelevance, which at this point could lead our country to great disaster.

In the Wall Street Journal this week Reagan speech-writer Peggy Noonan all but called for a third party. David Broder of the Washington Post actually called for third party last week.

Mainstream conservatives like Noonan and Broder are getting the idea: There are always other options. One such attractive option is New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who said he would start his own third party if the standing parties can’t come up with something original and dynamic. Bloomberg is nothing if not dynamic and he does speak to the heart of New York City as great mayors like Ed Koch and Fiorello LaGuardia did. But he is enigmatic as well and is said to have all but sponsored Lieberman’s mischief in third-party politics in Connecticut in ’06. Bloomberg could well bring the same Lieberman mischief to the national stage. Coincidentally, Mayor Mike is up here in New Hampshire this weekend. Just visiting, he says.

Bloomberg has bi-partisan support, and political venerables like Ham Jordan, former chief for Jimmy Carter and Angus King, former Independent Governor of Maine, have been calling for a third party all year.

It should be noted as well that "post partisanship" being advanced in California in particular by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is an ascending political trend in political journals like The Nation. These new directions would well coalesce in a new framework provided by Bloomberg and the half billion of his own cash that he is willing to put up for this new venture. If so, one of the two standing parties could get a one-way ticket to Palookaville, as the Whigs did in the mid1800s.

We need Wes Clark now: If we don’t come forth now with our best managers and strategists, we may find ourselves descending into a spiral of irrelevance and caught in a twist of fate which we can no longer find our way out of.

Mother Duck

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network 6/04/07

We missed most of the debates last night – Democracy’s only show in town featuring eight ducklings and Mother Duck. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer being the Mother Duck.

We have a statue of Mother Duck here in the Boston region. The Boston Common, homage to Protestant Clarity and Yankee Character, features in statuary the whole crew from Robert McCloskey’s classic “Make Way for Ducklings.”

It is a great book and deserving of the statuary. And it does explain how the world works: Mother Duck is Kundalini, the primal force of the Universe. The little ones come along under her wing, try to do something by themselves, but fail and fall again and again until they finally fulfill Mother’s form. The world stops and patiently and kindly waits for them: The Irish Cop stops traffic all across the Universe till Mother Duck finds her way through the Boston traffic and finally arrives safe to brood on the little island among the Swan Boats to raise her babies. But it is all about Kundalini, the brooding Mother Duck: Everything which comes from the ducklings comes from Mother Duck and is a manifestation of Mother Duck. In the Chinese version of the story, the yin and the yang and the ten thousand things all come from Mother Duck.

Last night in the part of New Hampshire we call Massachusetts North, Wolf Blitzer actually asked the baby ducks to raise their hands on different hypothetical issues just like in school. But it makes no difference what the little ducks say or do, it is all about Wolf Blitzer. The ducklings are only the partial and secondary aspects of Wolf Blitzer.

TV debates are the worst way of deciding Presidents anyway. They would be good for deciding a tenured professor or a monk maybe. Or a President’s helper. (One of the best in recent years was the Cheney/Lieberman debates – both helper ducks, but now one has taken over the show.)

We only caught parts of the debate because I got distracted by Arianna Huffington in the last few days before. Her daily paper, The Huffington Post, has found the new voices this past year and increasingly they go there to gather. I go there to look for opinions as I used to go The Nation, The New Republic and NYTs 30 years ago.

But I like her voice as well. Last week she interviewed Al Gore about his new book and Gore talked about several failures of the people and its government. But Huffington sees at the core a failure of character – a failure of the American soul, she says - and she is right: Character and courage is central to all the other failures; it is a failure of leadership and competence, but beneath it is a failure of attitude, character and courage. And it is the one lacking ingredient in Big Nurse, Big Hair, Bad Hair, Happy Face Button, The Guy from Alaska and all the other little duckings in Wolf Blitzer’s passive and accommodating debating society. (If you can’t say anything nice about someone, call them names.)

I hope she was watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers last night as I was when I was supposed to be watching the debates. Their dance together was the essence of character: A free dance in the free world – the antithesis of brooding and dominating Mother Duck on the other station. At the top of the Great Depression, with fascism spreading across the one half of Europe and Stalinism the other, Fred and Ginger dressed to the nines and spun in circles like American mystic dervishes, as no one ever has before or ever will again. Their dance was a collective attitude study in the courage of the common people to face their dangers in 1936. Hitler was watching. The world was watching.

They did it all with such apparent ease and nonchalance. And at the end, Fred and Ginger casually walked off the stage; nothing to it - all in a day’s work. But the last number alone in Swing Time took 450 hours of rehearsal and 47 takes. By the end Ginger was bleeding through her shoes. On the final take, the studio crew broke into applause and so did the world. And the applause has never stopped. Ginger never complained. In the spirit of Roosevelt and the spirit of the day, they hid their wounds and bandages as Roosevelt hid his wheelchair.

The only purpose of these early primary debates is to advance the agenda of the brooding and dominating Mother Ducks who have territorialized the political process. Al Gore, in his recent comments on Charlie Rose recalls the idea that by asking the questions, you control the debate: This is how Mother Duck controls her ducklings.

Huffington’s new paper, blogs like the Daily Kos other new on-line journals like this one are the only venues asking other questions. These journals are entering the new century first. New voices are coming through like Jon Soltz’s of VoteVets.org, and some good old voices, some of which have long been silenced or exiled by Mother Duck; the voice of Gary Hart, the Democrat’s brilliant foreign policy commentator who accurately predicted the way things would go in Iraq; of novelist Erica Jong and activist Tom Hayden and the creative and versatile Nora Ephron, who represents us collectively at times as well as George Stevens did in 1936 when he directed Swing Time.

These new venues and voices should establish their own debates and ask their own questions. New organizations like the Fighting Dems might join in with them. It they still want to hear the voice of the enigmatic and gnarly codger – which brought creative spark to both parties in earlier New Hampshire debates, they will have to move it up here way north to the mountains. I’d propose holding alternative debates at Dixville Notch, NH, maybe, way at the top of the state, where Wesley Clark won with eight votes in 2004, John Kerry came in third with three and John Edwards third with two votes in 2004.

Al Gore Rising

For The Free Market News Network; diary on Daily Kos and Raising Kaine 5/27/07

They come in twos. But which is the Emperor? Which is the Sith? – Star Wars tradition

We are reaching the end of things now . . . best for Congress to hold quiet. The culture is about to flip. And when that happens everything gets different. The poles reverse their electrical pull. The Emperor becomes the Sith, the Sith the Emperor.

I’ve seen it flip before. Practically in my high school football field in Newport, RI. From Eisenhower Optimism & the Positive Face. Then a little known and undernourished Magical Animal came out of the borderland forest and lake lands of Minnesota. It is said in hindsight that the Sixties started in a minute, when Bob Dylan switched form a wooden guitar to an electric one in Newport, in the summer of ’65. Then everything was different.

And now it is flipping again. In September it will flip.

History has its gatekeepers. They open doors and they also close doors. Ronald Reagan was a gatekeeper to the third post-war generation of culture and politics, now in the last 15 minutes of its 11^th hour.

George Bush the Little is gatekeeper too. Since he first arrived in national politics it was clear that his fate would be to close the gate that Ronal Reagan opened.

‘Twas ever thus. Strauss & Howe’s remarkable perspective of post-war politics draws on Spengler and on Carl Jung: History runs in cycles and follows archetypal paths, the one compensating and balancing the other. History’s picture is generational, each generation with its own Monkey Gods and goddesses, heroes and siths. Replaced then every 20 years with countervailing gods and siths. Toynbee read Spengler and Jung half way through his history of the world: Yin becomes Yang, he wrote. The Sith becomes the Emperor, the Emperor, the Sith.

Boy George’s fate, since the day he was born, was to crash. It showed from the beginning. He was chosen by his father’s friends to oppose his own generation and he had the tendency from the beginning. He was always unstable; an alcoholic who transferred his obsession direct to religious fanaticism in the classic pattern. Other issues: He has no friends his own age; he is an introvert without the introvert’s path – poet, artist, preacher – and was driven instead to govern by his family, tempermentally ill-suited for the task. But this is characteristic of the cycle’s natural path to failure. And all must fail in history but the last standing: Washington, Grant, Eisenhower, the final figures in the previous three “saecula” of Strauss & Howe. Worth pointing out that all were Generals.

We are at the end, but only at the end of the middle: It is the deep gulf between historical big changings in the world - a gulf of mischief and incontinence, illusions and imitations of life, false premises and sociological vanities and follies – history’s forgotten realms.

This end is the beginning.

The Strauss & Howe books, particularly The Fourth Turning, are easier to understand than the Vedic wanderings of Spengler, Jung and Toynbee. And as far as I understand it, they follow the path with some accuracy: History comes from its own nature and the seeds of the third generation are sown in the first. The seeds of the fourth generation are sown in the second. In between, the avatar which will rise later lives in shadow. (Like the “Sleeping King” in the Tolkien stories.)

John McCain is exemplar of the third generation, taking his inspiration from the first and finding his “Fathers” in first generation - the WW II warriors. But it is a feeling thing, don’t you know. The third generation warrior wants to be like the first: He wants to live again the culture of valor because it is good and true. But first generation didn’t get to valor from book, movies, and memories of blood relatives. It came to them instead direct from necessity and the survival instinct.

The second generation sleeps as the third rises or sends forth it’s sith and its shadow side. It is time for it to rise now and it will rise with this picture: Earthrise. Earthrise is the picture taken from space of the earth rising in the distance with the moon as ground in the foreground. It is time for this to awaken.

The picture was taken in 1968 from the dark side of the moon. Mythologist Joseph Campbell said at the time that this image would change us. It would change the way we would see ourselves, much as the discovery that the world was round changed the way we were centuries ago. The Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” opens with this image and the fourth generation will also open with this image and this movie.

It was 90 degrees thereabouts yesterday here in the northern mountains of New Hampshire. Our third day of North Carolina weather so far this year. In 1968 we’d have a day, maybe two or three of these between late July and early August, but no earlier and no later.

The new generation will awaken now with the awareness that we and the planet are in danger. And Al Gore opened the gate.

Of all people my age who think of being President, Gore generates both general interest and generational cache with Millennials – fourth generation types. On DKos polls where 60-year-old Democratic Leadership Council probe droids rate only three to six percent, Al Gore jumps to 65% and higher. On Larry King last week when the audience was asked how many thought Gore should run, 82% said run.

They come in doubles – the Emperor and the Sith are one. But which is which? We see this everywhere: The Beatles/Rolling Stones, Woodward/Bernstein, Emerson/Thoreau, The Bronte Sisters Light and Dark, Bill Clinton/Al Gore. When the one rises to its fate, the other submerges. Then the culture flips.

It is flipping now. The Republicans seem to understand that it is all over for their ride by September. But it is the Democrats who lag. They were right from the start with Wesley Clark on Iraq/Iran but selected otherwise. To their detriment.

As well, the Democrats these recent years have largely supported Bush/Cheney on Iraq, from the beginning a kind of third generation fantasy play created in Dungeons & Dragons warriors who have never worn the uniform of their country or fired a shot in anger. It was to the Democrats an occasion to “act strong.” In that it was indeed the true test of leadership and the Democrats failed on this issue of authenticity. As the Lion King said to his cub: “I’m only brave when I need to be brace.” Indeed. Otherwise it is dress up and play theater, the fate of draft dodgers and cowards as they grow increasingly older.

The war in Iraq and the Bush/Cheney quagmire is now second cause in the world. Environmental disaster is imminent. And if no one else will lead, Arnold Schwarzenegger will.

This week, with Jodi Rell, Governor of Connecticut, the Governator has all but threatened secession if the feds don’t take action. Yet the feds refuse. Texas, threatened most by desertification, remains in denial. But California’s southern places will be turned to sand as well if action is not taken. Arnold appears to be building his own alliances of blue states, Canada and Europe in opposition to the tradition since 1865. And New England is joining.

Both Wesley Clark and Al Gore have been insinuating Mario Cuomo style “hovering” strategies this past year in the run up to ’08. They have both been critical of the early primaries and the consultants, cash and press hype which have turned our honored tradition into political novelty of trash TV like American Idol. They are not actually running, but haven’t said they won’t enter. For Al Gore it is working, but without greater secondary publicity, General Clark’s numbers are low.

There are two great problems for the U.S. in the world today that need to be solved. Environmental destruction is one. The Iraq/Iran disaster which has destroyed U.S. legitimacy in the world is the other. Al Gore brings Best Practices on the environment. Wesley Clark brings Best Practice solutions to Iran/Iraq.

This is an Al Gore/Wes Clark diary rather than a Wes Clark/Al Gore diary because it is hot today in New Hampshire and it is getting hotter. The climate crisis now supersedes the Iraq disaster.

Al Gore leads the charge.

France’s New Boss

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network, 5/15/07

It is part of life’s illusion that the world began the day we were born. Everything prior to our conception is pre-history. For people my age, Howdy Doody was the first Creation Myth (a Western tale), then Davy Crockett (another tale of heading West), Elvis and The Beatles. After that, nothing was left but work and death. Likewise today with my kids: The world begins with Pokemon, then onward and upward to the Brit wizard Harry Potter, Tolkien and “Lost.” Computers were already there at the Creation. TV too, but that is old pre-history stuff like railroad trains and the space program.

But time has its own paths and initiatives; it is not born in forgetfulness, or in the illusion that the world did not exist before we were born. It is always here on its continuum, ascending and descending in death and life like the ceilings in the mosque at Cordoba.

Those of us who were born again with Davy Crockett were also born at the end of things. And the end was a horror that the European world had neither endured nor encountered before.

That ending was marked at Yalta and at the Nuremberg trials, when the Euro world and all the world came to adapt to the American moment. America was driving the bus and as Ken Kesey said, you were either on the bus or not on the bus.

But America moved to its own tempo: We have been through three distinct periods since Yalta: Eisenhower yielded to Kennedy and Kennedy yielded to Reagan. And we today are three-quarters to the end of things in our own post-war arc.

Americans are fast moving beyond the Clinton and the Reagan generations. Those periods allowed us to move forward. And something for us is just ahead and it will hatch either in 2008 or 2012.

Here in 2007 Ron Paul offers new direction, and so do Barack Obama, Mike Bloomberg, Jim Webb and Arnold Schwarzenegger. One or some of these will be the new pathfinders. The purpose and genuine function of this upcoming election will be to cast off that which has become anachronistic and post-seasonal and find the new direction and the new generation that will rise with it.

It is a problem for France because the recent election asked the French to chose between a Thatcher/Reagan candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a Hillary composite, Ségolène Royal. Their choice: come into the 1980s or come into the 1990s, both periods being left behind by Americans as the Free World enters the millennium.

The results bring France now to a dilemma.

France and Germany are linked in a binary relationship that rose when the Sun King consolidated France into one big state. What will the French do when they no longer look to America in imitation? And when America’s gaze turns East, and it inevitably will as economy shifts across the Pacific, how will France find its way with Germany?

The election of Sarkozy offers a suggestion. Sarkozy is two things: He is the Reagon/Thatcher Frenchman. He is also an aristocrat from Hungary which was part of the Austrian Empire at the time Robert E. Lee signed at Appomattox. It is the realm of French and German contention since Napoleon.

Shortly before the election, Sarkozy was pictured riding a handsome white horse as Ronald Reagan was pictured on a white horse at the beginning of his Presidency. Sarkozy wants to be the Reagan guy in France and set closer ties with America. But there is an issue here: Ronald Reagan was a genuine, ordinary, American following the same path in the Land of the Free that most others of us followed. He was not an aristocrat. Sarkozy is an actual, Hungarian aristocrat and noble.

Today in the NYTs Serge Schmemann, writer and editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune writes that the new French President’s roots are worth remembering.

He recalls an Algerian woman asking the displaced Hungarian nobleman about his roots. Sarkozy said to her, “You are not Algerian, but French. And I am not Hungarian.”

One of America’s most poignant transitions was at Appomattox when Ulysses S. Grant’s Native American adjutant said to Lee, “We’re all Americans here.” That went for Lee, Jeff Davis, Ronald Reagan, myself, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But not necessarily Royal or Sarkozy. They are not Americans. They are Europeans. If they want to be like us that is good, but for them it is by choice – it is only an option. We are as we are by fate and American destiny.

It would seem that France has to decide now if it wants to be colleague, friend and cousin to America or to Germany and the EU. But two facts enter in: Frankly, most Americans don’t particularly care what France does so long as it doesn’t cause us problems. Second, France is already part of the EU and sits next to Germany, the EU’s most essential partner, as it always has. It is from this for the French as it always has been and from this that there can be no turning away.

We’re all Americans here, said Col. Parker, the Seneca Indian who accompanied Grant. That is true for Lee, Hillary and Obama because when we leave our other places we leave them behind and become a different people. In the end, we are not Europeans or Africans or anything else but Americans. We are the Texas Ranger, died and born again at the hands of the Indian.

But Europeans leave nothing behind. They may look away for awhile but it is always there. And Europe today sings together its own tune, Ode to Joy. It is a beautiful tune but it is not an American tune. Nor is it a French tune. And as France enters the millennium with a Bavarian Pope who looks to an earlier time, it sings a beautiful anthem, but one which has Austrian roots, as does France’s new boss.

Obama takes the Initiative

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network, 4/8/07

History is in the details, and this week when the ’08 candidates presented the cash available for the upcoming primary season, history turned the corner. I knew it when I went to Canadian Broadcasting Company looking for a hockey game. An ad came up for CBC news with all those fast action photos they run by you – a Bush close up, war in Iraq, fires in California, bears slipping on ice floes in The Great White North.

This time there was a new face: Barack Obama’s and it popped up a few seconds even before Bush’s. Another famous face was conspicuously absent: Hillary Clinton’s.

Yahoo told the same story: Greeting you on the banner head yesterday morning with the campaign cash story were two faces, Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s. No Hillary. Even The New York Times, which has been Hillary’s Secret Santa for years now, had to yield: The centerpiece front-page story on Easter Sunday was Barack Obama.

It was reported that Obama raised 25 million in the first quarter, just a million under Clinton. Romney also raised 25 million, far ahead of any of his flagging competitors. But some of this cash is not available to spend on the upcoming primary.

The Daily Kos posted the new figures of available primary cash: Obama has 23.5 million, Clinton 20 million, John Edwards 13 million.

What is possibly more important is that Obama's cash comes from 100,000 donors, Clinton’s from only 50,000 and Edwards from 40,000. I’m betting that Clinton’s cash is coming all from much the same place – from the Northeast and from people of her own generation unable to let go. Hubbie Bill, that perennial Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love, has been holding event after event on her behalf all over New York City this past month where she wasn’t even present. But the Northeast likes Obama as well.

Clinton's cash is from a DESCENDING POLITICAL SCENARIO - an end game of Billaryism and Democratic Leadership Council influence which has been running now for some 14 years (and the descending end of a generational arc of influence which has been running for 40-plus years). Obama's cash will be applied to an ASCENDING SCENARIO and a political movement just beginning to rise (and the rising front and avant garde of a new generation’s political influence).

Gauging the blog community as an indicator of generational influence, Hillary has almost no youthful support from the critical fourth post-war generation. But the rising generation likes both Obama and Edwards.

It will be increasingly more difficult for Clinton to raise more money in the second and third quarters. It will be increasingly easier for Obama to raise money.

And the press is hungry for a new zeitgeist and a fresh and photogenic face like Obama’s. Hillary is old and stale news and so is McCain. Obama brings the new season. Mad Ave., where the true poets and prophets of America live, actually recognized this months ago. Whenever I pump gas I see a happy and prosperous Obama look-alike doing the same in the gas company’s new ad campaign.

’08 is perhaps one of the most important election cycles since post-war. Like the Kennedy race and the Reagan race, whichever candidate wins now could well determine the direction of the political scene for the next 20 years.

Both major parties have taken new initiatives and both are feeling their Old Guard falling be the wayside; Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council for the Democrats and the Christian Coalition for the Republicans.

With 25 million in hand Romney could well go the distance for the Republicans. He is a great manager and a decent human being. But his incoherent and ill-mastery of symbolism is bound to trip him up.

Recently, he described himself as a “life long hunter” and it was revealed later that he had only hunted as a child, then again last year for a political photo-op in Georgia. And in explaining it away to the press he carelessly described hunting rabbits with a semi-automatic rifle.

For people who are unfamiliar with firearms, a semi-automatic weapon sounds like a Uzi or an AK-47 or an M-16. The image of Elmer Fudd throwing dynamite down a hole to obliterate the source of his perennial wabbit twoubles caught the public imagination three days before Easter. The blog “Unconfirmed Sources” offered a satire of Romney going hunting over the weekend with Dick Cheney, and the Republican’s answer to Elmer Fudd and Syd Vicious shooting caged birds together and possibly each other on Easter Sunday.

But as the Democrats push aside their own Old Guard, they have also brought forth a whole new group of individuals in the last two years, some of them veterans of the Iraq war: Mark Warner, Wesley Clark, Jim Webb and Joe Sestak have all been key players in the ’06 race and in the current season. And there are more behind them, some of whom were elected to the new Congress and others who will run again or take other roles in the party like Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania, Eric Massa of New York, Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, Andrew Horne of Tennessee and Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire.

This is the starting line-up of a new political generation. The Democrats have also established veteran credentials with new groups like the Fighting Dems and VoteVets. And consistently, in the blogosphere and in the rising generation, these new candidates have come forward while the DLC candidates are being left behind.

This week Obama has taken the initiative, and he has the opportunity now to put together an entirely new package for the Democrats that will have a long ride.

Obama was first presented to the public by Oprah. I have opposed the "democratization" of political discourse on such a vast and generic level as the Oprah TV show making the case that political discourse on such a low entertainment level will destroy the Republic. I have changed my position over the last years for this reason: Oprah, more than anyone advances the "participation mystique" of American culture and politics and this is perhaps the most important cultural driving force in America.

After his visit to America, Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung said that he found the “participation mystique” to be the pervasive cultural force in America and it was a cultural initiative that came from the African village. It featured a removal of walls and a blending of one culture to another. Historians John Hope Franklin and W.J. Cash also make the point that African-American influence has had an "environmental" or benign cultural influence on all the major institutions and cultural relationships in America, especially in the South. But since WW II that influence has come to the North as well and is pervasive today throughout the Republic.

The Obama candidacy represents a shared cultural identity; that is, there is no distinction between white and black “culture.” Perhaps, as the poet Walt Whitman claimed, this is one of the most essential transitions that people make when they come to America: They come to share culture and consciousness with other races. (And if they don’t intend to, they will anyway.)

Oprah, probably more than anyone today, represents this vast, subtle and pervasive influence and this shared racial destiny. And she is probably one of the five most important people in the world today in terms of cultural influence.

The Obama story is the story of the emancipation of all of the races and cultures in North America and the passing of the Protestant Ethic as the territorial determinant in American politics: It is a story that we have been moving to for 400 years on this continent and it is perhaps the most important story to be told to date about our American condition.

Elmer Fudd meets Syd Vicious: Obama Takes the Initiative

by Bernie Quigley Daily Kos diary, 4/7/07

“ . . . seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage . . . .”

- Walt Whitman, Passage to India

History is in the details, and this week when the ’08 candidates presented the cash available for the upcoming primary season, history turned the corner. I knew it when I went to Canadian Broadcasting Company looking for a hockey game. An ad came up for CBC news with all those fast action photos they run by you – a Bush close up, war in Iraq, fires in California, bears slipping on ice floes in The Great White North.

This time there was a new face: Barack Obama’s and it popped up a few seconds even before Bush’s. Another famous face was conspicuously absent: Hillary Clinton’s.

Yahoo told the same story: Greeting you on the banner head yesterday morning with the campaign cash story were two faces, Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s. No Hillary.

It was reported that Obama raised 25 million in the first quarter, just a million under Clinton. Romney also raised 25 million, far ahead of any of his flagging competitors. But some of this cash is not available to spend on the upcoming primary.

The Daily Kos posted the new figures of available primary cash: Obama has 23.5 million, Clinton 20 million, John Edwards 13 million.

What is possibly more important is that Obama's cash comes from 100,000 donors, Clinton’s from only 50,000 and Edwards from 40,000. I’m betting that Clinton’s cash is coming all from much the same place – from the Northeast and from people of her own generation unable to let go. Hubbie Bill, that perennial Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love, has been holding event after event on her behalf all over New York City this past month where she wasn’t even present. But the Northeast likes Obama as well.

Clinton's cash is from a DESCENDING POLITICAL SCENARIO - an end game of Billaryism and Democratic Leadership Council influence which has been running now for some 14 years (and the descending end of a generational arc of influence which has been running for 40-plus years). Obama's cash will be applied to an ASCENDING SCENARIO and a political movement just beginning to rise (and the rising front and avant garde of a new generation’s political influence).

Gauging the blog community as an indicator of generational influence, Hillary has almost no youthful support from the critical fourth post-war generation. But the rising generation likes both Obama and Edwards.

It will be increasingly more difficult for Clinton to raise more money in the second and third quarters. It will be increasingly easier for Obama to raise money.

And the press is hungry for a new zeitgeist and a fresh and photogenic face like Obama’s. Hillary is old and stale news and so is McCain. Obama brings the new season. Mad Ave., where the true poets and prophets of America live, actually recognized this months ago. Whenever I pump gas I see a happy and prosperous Obama look-alike doing the same in the gas company’s new ad campaign.

’08 is perhaps one of the most important election cycles since post-war. Like the Kennedy race and the Reagan race, whichever candidate wins now could well determine the direction of the political scene for the next 20 years.

Both major parties have taken new initiatives and both are feeling their Old Guard falling be the wayside; Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council for the Democrats and the Christian Coalition for the Republicans.

With 25 million in hand Romney could well go the distance for the Republicans. He is a great manager and a decent human being. But his incoherent and ill-mastery of symbolism is bound to trip him up.

Recently, he described himself as a “life long hunter” and it was revealed later that he had only hunted as a child, then again last year for a political photo-op in Georgia. And in explaining it away to the press he carelessly described hunting rabbits with a semi-automatic rifle.

For people who are unfamiliar with firearms, a semi-automatic weapon sounds like a Uzi or an AK-47 or an M-16. The image of Elmer Fudd throwing dynamite down a hole to obliterate the source of his perennial wabbit twoubles caught the public imagination three days before Easter. The blog “Unconfirmed Sources” offered a satire of Romney going hunting over the weekend with Dick Cheney, and the Republican’s answer to Elmer Fudd and Syd Vicious shooting caged birds together and possibly each other on Easter Sunday.

But as the Democrats push aside their own Old Guard, they have also brought forth a whole new group of individuals in the last two years, some of them veterans of the Iraq war: Mark Warner, Wesley Clark, Jim Webb and Joe Sestak have all been key players in the ’06 race and in the current season. And there are more behind them, some of whom were elected to the new Congress and others who will run again or take other roles in the party like Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania, Eric Massa of New York, Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, Andrew Horne of Tennessee and Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire.

This is the starting line-up of a new political generation. The Democrats have also established veteran credentials with new groups like the Fighting Dems and VoteVets. And consistently, in the blogosphere and in the rising generation, these new candidates have come forward while the DLC candidates are being left behind.

This week Obama has taken the initiative, and he has the opportunity now to put together an entirely new package for the Democrats that will have a long ride.

Obama was first presented to the public by Oprah. I have opposed the "democratization" of political discourse on such a vast and generic level as the Oprah TV show making the case that political discourse on such a low entertainment level will destroy the Republic. I have changed my position over the last years for this reason: Oprah, more than anyone advances the "participation mystique" of American culture and politics and this is perhaps the most important cultural driving force in America.

After his visit to America, Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung said that he found the “participation mystique” to be the pervasive cultural force in America and it was a cultural initiative that came from the African village. It featured a removal of walls and a blending of one culture to another. Historians John Hope Franklin and W.J. Cash also make the point that African-American influence has had an "environmental" or benign cultural influence on all the major institutions and cultural relationships in America, especially in the South. But since WW II that influence has come to the North as well and is pervasive today throughout the Republic.

The Obama candidacy represents a shared cultural identity; that is, there is no distinction between white and black “culture.” Perhaps, as the poet Walt Whitman claimed, this is one of the most essential transitions that people make when they come to America: They come to share culture and consciousness with other races. (And if they don’t intend to, they will anyway.)

Oprah, probably more than anyone today, represents this vast, subtle and pervasive influence and this shared racial destiny. And she is probably one of the five most important people in the world today in terms of cultural influence.

The Obama story is the story of the emancipation of all of the races and cultures in North America and the passing of the Protestant Ethic as the territorial determinant in American politics: It is a story that we have been moving to for 400 years on this continent and it is perhaps the most important story to be told to date about our American condition.

Rudy Giuliani and the Bada Bing School of Ethics

by Bernie Quigley for The Free Market News Network 4/4/07

The Republicans are turning to Fred Thompson increasingly since the Barbara Walters interview with Rudy Giuliani. I happen to know that Giuliani's favorite TV show is The Sopranos (it is mine too). And I thought his answers to Barbara Walters were kind of spooky. They were much like a session with Dr. Melfi.

To review: The premise of The Sopranos is that Tony was sent to a psychiatrist after he fainted in his yard watching some ducks fly away from his swimming pool. The psychiatrist is the wise and beautiful Dr. Jennifer Melfi. She, like Tony, is a second-generation New Jersey Italian and with Tony, struggles with a classic second-generation identity crisis. There is a sense of no longer really being Italian, but not yet feeling fully American. (Not feeling fully at home in “Elvisland,” says Paulie Walnuts, the vast panorama west of New Jersey.) Dr. Melfi becomes Tony’s muse. Her character appears to be based on Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy. Beatrice is a spirit form and is Dante’s guide to spiritual awakening. She is what psychiatrists call his anima – his female side, don't cha know.

Now Giuliani is suddenly all Bill and Hillary with his third wife and he says (holding hands with his newlywed) that he would like to have his wife in cabinet meetings. (Actually, I think psychiatrists call this "anima pollution" – meaning that the female side has come to dominate the masculine side – a chronic issue with Democrats these past generations, but until now an affliction fairly rare in Republicans. There is a much better street expression for this but it is unprintable even here in Live-Free-or-Die Land.)

I think Giuliani, his first wife having been from the old neighborhood like himself, is going through the same sociological changes that Tony and Dr. Melfi are – a journey from St. Gennaro’s Little Italy Festival to Elvisland. But he misunderstands Tony’s fate and journey in this greatest piece of ensemble acting ever, as Tony’s is a Buddhisty journey to transcendence while Giuliani’s is simply a ride to Ultimate Power in the Presidency.

Dr. Melfi warns about this second and third generation leap to inauthenticity: the closet desire to join the "mayonnaise faces" at Starbucks; to trade canoles for tofu; to send your kids to New England’s Bard rather than to Catholic Georgetown. In one of the episodes she has dinner with her own son who is a student at Bard. She asks him what he is studying and he replies, ” . . . the Deconstructionists” – referring to the trendy, French nihilist literary critics.

“A Deconstructivist,” she says scornfully. “And your grandfather a general contractor.”

And we always thought Giuliani was a tough guy. I notice that he drives the same kind of car that Tony drives – a Cadillac Excalibur. And didn’t he last get married at Graceland (“Elvisland?”)? Very mixed karma. Gives people the creeps. And gives "environmental exposition" to his aura that casts a darker light on his relationship with Bernie Kerik.

The Bernie Kerik episode - in which Giuliani colleague and appointee managed his life and professional career with all the élan of an MBA from the Bada Bing School of Ethics - could have possibly been gotten around – but now it looks like part of the whole package.

Maybe Giuliani missed the first episode of The Sopranos, in which Tony’s first concern is that if The Bosses find out that he is seeing a psychiatrist, it will make him look weak. Likewise, a Barbara Walters interview would make Tony look silly.

I think the Republicans will turn to former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson who is no less qualified to be President than anyone else who has announced so far except Mitt Romney. And he is so, so good at TV.

As Howard Baker's Watergate associate he came up with those great phrases like "What did the President know and when did he know it?" But he will fade too to Mitt Romney, who raised $21 million this last quarter and who is at least an honest man and a good manager.

I wonder what my wife would say if I asked her if she would like it if I sat in on one of her departmental meetings at the university she works at. Get a life?