The incomparable Robert Bluey has gotten ahold of an email sent by a senior staffer for Senate Majority Leader Reid to a top Washington lobbyist. It is one of these little things that tells you a lot about how our government really works.

The email begs for help to stop Republican Senator Jim Demint from curtailing the excesses of Fannie and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage securities corporations. Fannie and Freddie have been hiring top congressional staffers and lavishly backing the campaigns of incumbents. Are they simply buying protection from regulatory scrutiny?

It certainly looks that way. This email–a bona fide scoop by Red State–is more evidence of that.

For quite a while I thought that Obama’s slogan “change we can believe in” was a bromide wrapped in a truism.

After all, there will be a change of presidents in January 2009 and anyone observing this reality has to believe in it.  And empty slogans allow voters to project their own hopes onto a candidate.

But Shelby Steele sees something deeper in the Obama candidacy, an end to “white guilt.” Contra Jesse Jackson, Obama wants to drop “white guilt” as a form of cultural leverage and use the resulting “white gratitude to win the presidency. The “change” is a change in the political strategy of the black community. It is absolutely fascinating analysis.

Here’s the theme:

 Their faith was in the easy moral leverage over white America that the civil rights victories of the 1960s had suddenly bestowed on them. So Mr. Jackson and his generation of black leaders made keeping whites “on the hook” the most sacred article of the post-’60s black identity.

They ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently — that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality — took whites “off the hook” and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group’s bounty of moral leverage over whites. And now comes Mr. Obama, who became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites.

Mr. Obama’s great political ingenuity was very simple: to trade moral leverage for gratitude. Give up moral leverage over whites, refuse to shame them with America’s racist past, and the gratitude they show you will constitute a new form of black power. They will love you for the faith you show in them.

There are a few problems with this analysis. Michelle Obama seems to be the Jackson school. And “white guilt” is something that exists largely among liberals and baby boomers. Those of us born after the success of the civil rights movement simply do not feel guilty. We didn’t support any segregationists or oppose civil rights–and we don’t believe in guilt by association. Our friends come from diverse backgrounds and when race comes up it is almost always playful. (”White boy here says he knows how to cook ribs” or, when a friend calculates incorrectly, another says “What is that? Ebonics math?”). In the class room and certain professional settings, we tiptoe around race to keep our older, uptight baby boomer colleagues happy–but, in private, it is no big deal. Yes, there are still residual pockets of racism. But most of us think those people are misguided idiots, not a dire threat to the national consensus on racial matters. We have the equality they fought for and we like it.

In other words, Obama’s timing may be perfect. The supply of “white guilt” may have peaked. The time to trade it for gratitude may be right.
 

So Sen. John McCain’s campaign is trying to steal a play from President Bush 41.

Remember, Bush’s angry snarl at Dan Rather, which was designed to reassure conservatives that he would fight for their agenda?

Perhaps you think I am being a bit cynical. After all, the McCain campaign is usually very sensitive to the New York Times. And every one knows that the Times leans to the Left on its editorial page.

Finally, the Drudge Report notes: ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

The “mirror” comment is exciting a lot of blog activity, seeming to reinforce the idea that McCain either had to take Obama’s position or be denied access the Times’ Op-Ed page.

The bloggers are reading it wrong. A mirror does not copy something; it reflects something in reverse. What the Times was asking for was a piece that took an opposite point of view to Obama’s on the same subject.

So why didn’t the Times accept the piece “as it was currently written”? Well, read it for yourself. While I agree with Sen. McCain’s sentiments, it is a poorly written piece. It is wordy and wanders unnecessarily. When we received such pieces when I worked at the Wall Street Journal, we aggressively red-lined them and sent them back–if we wanted to use the piece. If not, we simply wrote “thanks, but we will pass.” The Times operates the same way.

The McCain Op-Ed has other flaws. It wastes time trying to rebut Obama’s op-ed, like a windy letter to the editor, rather than making an affirmative case. Look at the structure: it quotes Obama, then rebuts, quotes Obama again, and then rebuts and so on. It reads like a political commercial. There is a place for such op-eds, but any one who reads the Times regularly knows that such a format rarely appears there. The “thoughtful” essay is the house style.

If McCain did make an affirmative case for his position on Iraq, it would be a worthy addition to the national debate. McCain has met Iraq’s leaders and America’s generals. Can’t he cite his own experience rather than rehashing talking points from other news accounts?

At the very least, the senator needs a better ghost writer.

As for the Times, the Op-Ed  Editor said he wanted to see another draft. Why doesn’t McCain try writing one?

Sometimes it seems that Michael Novak is the custodian of common sense.

He is where you go when you lose something you ought to have. In a blog for USA Today, he writes about suffering and how it makes some people lose their faith. If God is good, some wonder, how can these good people be poor or have cancer or whatever.

It is an age old concern and one of first usually employed by atheists bent on converting you to their creed.

Of course, suffering is the natural course of events. Why do people, of any faith or none, believe that they and others should be free from nature’s grasp? Are we so spoiled by the artificial world we have made that we expect no bad things to happen to us, ever? Where did that idea come from?

Starbucks once had an amazing business: it mixed water and beans and made money.

At least, it did. Now it is closing 600 stores. Why?

Starbucks decided to take the world’s most charming business, a cafe, and McDonaldize it. One does not settle into a comfortable seat a wait for waitress. In short, Paris’ cafe des artistes is not threatened by the competition.

The food is cafeteria-quality and there is no wine. Sandwhiches are stale. Bagels are sold, but the stores do not have toasters. The so-called pastries are straight from 7-11.

But like fast food, Starbucks enjoyed good margins. A dollar’s worth of water, beans, and labor equals a five dollar cup of coffee. And hundreds of those cups are sold every hour.

Then came competition and higher gasoline prices. This Chicago Tribune piece nicely captures both, by interviewing ordinary people happily buying the improved coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts:

I was saved by a gracious lady, Rosemary O’Brien of La Grange. She’s no Starbucksista.

“That other stuff is expensive,” she said. “Here, you can have a doughnut. Or two and the paper and coffee—and it won’t cost you $5. And that’s important, especially today, with things being so expensive.”

What about being associated with Starbucks? Isn’t there value in having the Starbucks cup in your hand as you proclaim your sensitivity to the environment while driving one of those new green mini-Hummers?

“Oh, so you can walk around with a Starbucks cup? You’ll pay extra money for that? How nice. No thanks,” Mrs. O’Brien said.

Unfortunately for Starbucks shareholders, more and more people are agreeing with Mrs. O’Brien. Economists would say the “price-value relationship” is imbalanced.  Real people, recognizing that the general quality of American coffee has risen while the cost of living has tightened, will say “Starbucks is too expensive.”

The chain either has to give more or charge less. Or be prepared to close a lot more stories.

In Washington, the date that someone’s haircut was last fashionable is usually the same date of their last original thought.

Something happens here that makes smart people stop thinking. Perhaps all of their available hard drive space goes to calculating. Or perhaps they learn that they can coast on their accumulated insights gleaned long ago.

David Brooks’ column today is a sad illustration of this phenomenon. In the mid-1990s, when he first started writing about “national greatness conservatism” and “TR,” Brooks had returned from Brussels and New York. He had new ideas. Now, after a decade in Washington, he recycles his ideas.

As a matter of political prognostication, he may be right. We may be in for an era of government activism. President Obama and the Democratic Congress certainly wouldn’t object.

But the five crises that Brooks writes about are the kind usually invented to spur government action.

The “health care crisis” is really a crisis for unions, who have misspent millions meant for long-term care and now want someone else to foot the bill. They may get their way. The infrastructure crisis? Government contractors and unions want more money and know that the feds have deeper pockets than the states and cities, who should be paying for highways and bridges. Energy crisis? It is largely a supply problem caused by foolish restrictions on drilling and production. But the “crisis” view serves the interests of environmentalists who want to subsidize alternative energy sources and create jobs for their compadres. Brooks complains about the “stagnation of human capital.” Once translated into English, he means that teacher unions have failed to educate the next generation. Next, he calls for “financial market reform” and says “even Republican administrations cannot allow big institutions to fail.” So reckless bankers need to be saved from their own foolish behavior? Again, the “crisis” seems limited to the bankers and the investors whose trust they have abused. Liquidate the assets, let sharper minds buy them and let the investors have their day in court. We don’t need a new bureaucracy as Brooks suggests, he need to remember that capitalism’s two freedoms are equally important: the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. Failure is a teacher. Protecting people from their own mistakes only guarantees more mistakes, usually bigger ones. Put the bankers on food stamps and let them reflect on their decisions.

Brooks’ approach sounds like the Chrysler bail out. All that did is delay foreign ownership for 2o-odd years–and the cost of billions paid by ordinary tax payers.

In short, Brooks contends that any group that howls loud enough creates a “crisis” that demands government action.

Next, he pivots into a McCain campaign advice column. Big reforms usually happen under “conservatives” like Teddy Roosevelt and Benjamin Disraeli. Leave aside that neither man was a conservative, and Brooks might be right. Even when votes want big changes, they want a leader who seems reluctant.

But telling us that a McCain presidency will be all about “reluctant” government activism to solve the problems caused by unions and bankers… that is not going to help the McCain campaign very much.

These two headlines tell the story: Obama raises $52 million in June and McCain gets a respectful hearing at the NAACP.

Obama is using new media to raise money from non-traditional donors and is reinventing the modern presidential campaign along the way. While it is too soon to say that Obama owns the Internet the way FDR owned the radio microphone and JFK the tv camera, history shows that the candidate who adapts to new media first generally wins.

Meanwhile, McCain plods along, re-running the Ford campaign. Does the NAACP even matter any more? You can see the wheels turning: well, we’re running against a black guy, so we need to reach out to black people. Who knows black people? Oh, the NAACP…

This cycle McCain should ignore the black vote. It typically goes 90 to 95% for the Democratic nominee. This year, the excitement of the first black Democratic nominee for president is too strong to counter. It may go 99% for Obama. Simply holding the line at 95% would require a Herculean effort on McCain’s part. Instead, McCain should go to Hispanics, Jews and any one else whose vote is truly up for grabs.

And when you want to talk to black people, why not reach them through organizations that still matter to them that are not inherently hostile to Republicans? The neighborhood church. The many black professional associations. The Eagles clubs (formed back when the Elks, Friars and others wouldn’t let blacks in, but still going strong today). If McCain’s team used some imagination in reaching new voters, those voters might actually think that the candidate cares enough about them to figure them out.

Instead, McCain is going through the motions–running like an old man on auto-pilot. If he doesn’t wake up soon, he will crash and serve out his retirement years in the senate telling us that no one could have beaten Obama. No one? Yes, that’s probably right. But someone can. McCain should figure how to be that someone.

Marc Thiessen has written a splendid rejoinder to the conventional wisdom on Jesse Helms. As usual, well worth reading. He presents a pile of unadorned facts, not the emotional impressions supplied by those whose man lost a senate election due to an “unfair” ad.

The debate over Sen. Helms will continue, of course. But it should continue on the basis of facts. Do Helms’ critics have facts to go with their accusations? (Hint: Broder’s reprinted column is pretty sparse on facts and long on emotions and quotes from unidentified sources.)

Calling someone who beats them in a fair election a “racist” has become a favorite form of moral preening among liberals. It makes them feel superior, especially in defeat. It would be better for both liberals and the country to drop with form of moral vanity. In American politics, your opponents are usually people of good faith who see the world differently or rank the virtues in a different order.  Political opponents  may be wrong, but are usually not evil.  Once one accepts that, then a conversation becomes possible.  In our democratic republic, conversation and compromise are  how progress is made.

Regrding Helms, liberals might want to stop believing that millions of Americans are racists and wonder why a fair-minded person might find Helms appealing. I know plenty of conservatives who have gone through the same exercise with Sen. Kennedy. Now, they can understand him, but still not agree.

Both Marc Thiessen and I have made similar journeys by learning to understand and respect our opponents. When I first met Marc, in college, he was a liberal and I was a fire-breathing libertarian. One day, a political professor asked Marc, who was writing about divestment from South Africa in 1986,  to take the opposite point of view to the one his was comfortable with. He did. And an intellectual journey began.

Within a year Marc was leading the rebirth of the Vassar Spectator, “the journal of neglected ideas.”
It took me a while longer to come to my senses.

David Duke, the racist who was kicked out of the Republican party in the early 1990s, has now been told that Belgium’s conservatives don’t want him around either.

Below I have posted the official statement of the Vlaams Belang party, Belgium’s largest party. The party is controversial because some of its political enemies say that it is a racist party–i.e. it opposes the Islamization of Belgium. (Some American commentators put the term “racist” in American sense: hatred of a racial minority. That doesn’t apply here. In Belgium, racism is about religious minorities.) And, for what it is worth, the racism or anti-Semitism charge against Vlaams Belang is not true. Its defense of the Jews of Antwerp should have been enough to put paid to that notion.

Yes, elements of the party are hostile to immigration. I have debated this point with them, while I lived in Brussels, many,many times. They oppose immigration for two reasons: they like the welfare state and fear that too many newcomers will bankrupt it and, second, violent crime has risen sharply in Belgium and its all to often has an Arab face.  I think this makes many of them xenophobes, not racists.

And there is a liberal wing to the Vlaams Belang, which includes my friend Paul Belien and his wife Sandra. I have known them for years. They are not bigots, racists or any other disreputable “ists.” They believe in free markets, free speech, tolerance and an independent Flanders. (The Flemish pay the overwhelming majority of taxes, the French-speaking Walloons consume the majority of taxes through welfare and state subsidies for failing industries.)
Anyway, here’s the official statement. I post it because you are unlikely to see it posted on the Anglo-side of the blogosphere. And, yes, I think it would be better if Karin Milik were kicked out of the party.

Our party, Vlaams Belang, has been named in an involvement with the American “politician” David Duke. Karin Milik, one of our 1,500 local councillors, had Mr. Duke over at her house when he was in Belgium to speak at a conference with which our party had nothing to do.

Vlaams Belang does not wish to be associated or linked in any way with David Duke or his ideas. Vlaams Belang has no ties or affinity whatsoever with David Duke, the organisations he belongs to or the ideas he stands for.

Ms. Milik has apologized because it was never her intention to incriminate or associate Vlaams Belang with the figure of David Duke. Vlaams Belang will not accept any repeat of such incidents.

Vlaams Belang strives for the independence of Flanders, fights the Islamization of Europe, defends the Judeo-Christian values of Western civilization, opposes anti-Semitism and all forms of racial prejudice, and regards the state of Israel as an invaluable ally in the struggle in which we are currently entangled with an enemy – radical Islam – that is bent on destroying our liberties and depriving our nations of their identity.

Bruno Valkeniers

Vlaams Belang party leader

Gerolf Annemans

Vlaams Belang group leader in the Belgian federal parliament

Filip Dewinter

Vlaams Belang group leader in the Flemish regional parliament

The New York Times profile piece, which will appear in print this Sunday, is as good as Rush Limbaugh could reasonably expect.

As for the rest of us, there are some fun surprises. One is that the writer couldn’t seem to find many liberal critics, although a number are interviewed. Rush has been accepted as part of the landscape, a mountain that cannot be moved to improve the view. Another: The writer doesn’t seem to wonder why Rush makes more money that the top three nightly news anchors combined. Is it that he is serving an large audience that they have neglected? It is strange that the writer doesn’t wonder about this. Maybe he was afraid of where that thread would lead.

Still, it is well worth reading. Here are two interesting nuggets:

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners.”

Limbaugh’s audience is better informed than NPR’s? That’s got to be a surprise on the Upper West Side.

And Limbaugh’s take on Bill O’Reilly: “The man is Ted Baxter.”

As for the writer’s incessant baiting him on Sean Hannity, it reeks of editor-inspired bear poking.

Still, I suspect, that the full story about Rush is yet to be told. He has some 20 million listeners but is deeply private. He is breezily ebullient on the air but almost modest in person. He is an intellectual and a jokester. He went from being Hillary’s most effective critic in the 1990s to her biggest booster in 2008. He is the wealthiest man in the history of radio but still keenly feels his decades of loserdom.

There remains a biography to be written.