--from "ESQUIRE Endorses Barack Obama for President," in the 10/10/08 issue of ESQUIRE . . .
McCain has spent the past few years dancing like a monkey on a string, making brave noises in public that he later abandoned in private. And now he genuflects to Pastor Warren and a hundred other preachers who are a hundred times worse, people whom he called "agents of intolerance" eight years ago, when John McCain still had the soul he's sold off piecemeal to pay the salaries of the men he's hired out of Karl Rove's shop.
Then, of course, he picked an agent of intolerance to join him on his ticket. But it is not Governor Palin's religious beliefs that are of concern to us. More to the point, there is no serious debate to be had over Sarah Palin's preparedness to be president of the United States. Because in fact, she is stunningly unqualified, having never taken a position of consequence on an issue of consequence before she was selected in the last days of August. But she has now been put in a serious position to assume the presidency, and her selection is the clearest indication yet of the contempt that Senator McCain -- transformed into nominee McCain -- now feels for the process of governance.
More important still, however, is that nothing John McCain has done or said in this campaign would lead you to believe that anything the incumbent administration has done is simply wrong -- just badly executed -- and he's saying that now only because public opinion has turned so radically against Bushism and all its works. And the ultimate price of his capitulation is to continue Bushism, in all of its manifestations. Not even the presidency should be worth that.
Not even the presidency is worth what it's made John McCain do to himself.
John Paul Stevens was born on April 20, 1920, into a family of hotel magnates in the city of Chicago who, when Stevens was still young, lost everything in the Great Depression. In 1936, when John Paul Stevens was a student at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and preparing to enter the University of Chicago proper, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. In 1941, when John Paul Stevens was graduating Phi Beta Kappa and preparing to go and break Japanese naval codes and help shoot down Admiral Yamamoto in the South Pacific, Ann Dunham was born in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. In 1961, when John Paul Stevens was practicing law, Barack Obama and Ann Dunham married and had a son, whom they also named Barack Hussein Obama. In 1975, when President Gerald Ford named John Paul Stevens to replace William O. Douglas on the United States Supreme Court, the elder Obama was long gone and the younger Obama was a freshman at the Punahou School in Honolulu. In January of 2009, if and when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens will be closing in on his thirty-fourth year on the Court and his eighty-ninth year on earth. And there, really, you have it. The best argument for the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is written quite clearly in the peaks and squiggles of John Paul Stevens's EKG.
More than any other recent election, we are voting this year not merely for a president but to overthrow two governments. The one we can see is the one in which constitutional order has been defaced, the national spirit degraded, and the country unrecognizable because so much of the best of itself has been sold off or frittered away. The other one is the far more insidious one, a doppelgänger nation of black prisons, shredded memos, and secret justifications for even more secret crimes. Moreover, the current administration has worked hard not only to immunize itself from the political and legal consequences of the government we can see, but it has also worked within the one we cannot see in order to perpetuate itself.
To read the entire article, go to http://www.esquire.com/features/esquire-endorsements-2008/esquire-endorses-barack-obama?click=main_sr
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--from "ESQUIRE Endorses Barack Obama for President," in the 10/10/08 issue of ESQUIRE . . .
McCain has spent the past few years dancing like a monkey on a string, making brave noises in public that he later abandoned in private. And now he genuflects to Pastor Warren and a hundred other preachers who are a hundred times worse, people whom he called "agents of intolerance" eight years ago, when John McCain still had the soul he's sold off piecemeal to pay the salaries of the men he's hired out of Karl Rove's shop.
Then, of course, he picked an agent of intolerance to join him on his ticket. But it is not Governor Palin's religious beliefs that are of concern to us. More to the point, there is no serious debate to be had over Sarah Palin's preparedness to be president of the United States. Because in fact, she is stunningly unqualified, having never taken a position of consequence on an issue of consequence before she was selected in the last days of August. But she has now been put in a serious position to assume the presidency, and her selection is the clearest indication yet of the contempt that Senator McCain -- transformed into nominee McCain -- now feels for the process of governance.
More important still, however, is that nothing John McCain has done or said in this campaign would lead you to believe that anything the incumbent administration has done is simply wrong -- just badly executed -- and he's saying that now only because public opinion has turned so radically against Bushism and all its works. And the ultimate price of his capitulation is to continue Bushism, in all of its manifestations. Not even the presidency should be worth that.
Not even the presidency is worth what it's made John McCain do to himself.
John Paul Stevens was born on April 20, 1920, into a family of hotel magnates in the city of Chicago who, when Stevens was still young, lost everything in the Great Depression. In 1936, when John Paul Stevens was a student at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and preparing to enter the University of Chicago proper, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. In 1941, when John Paul Stevens was graduating Phi Beta Kappa and preparing to go and break Japanese naval codes and help shoot down Admiral Yamamoto in the South Pacific, Ann Dunham was born in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. In 1961, when John Paul Stevens was practicing law, Barack Obama and Ann Dunham married and had a son, whom they also named Barack Hussein Obama. In 1975, when President Gerald Ford named John Paul Stevens to replace William O. Douglas on the United States Supreme Court, the elder Obama was long gone and the younger Obama was a freshman at the Punahou School in Honolulu. In January of 2009, if and when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens will be closing in on his thirty-fourth year on the Court and his eighty-ninth year on earth. And there, really, you have it. The best argument for the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is written quite clearly in the peaks and squiggles of John Paul Stevens's EKG.
More than any other recent election, we are voting this year not merely for a president but to overthrow two governments. The one we can see is the one in which constitutional order has been defaced, the national spirit degraded, and the country unrecognizable because so much of the best of itself has been sold off or frittered away. The other one is the far more insidious one, a doppelgänger nation of black prisons, shredded memos, and secret justifications for even more secret crimes. Moreover, the current administration has worked hard not only to immunize itself from the political and legal consequences of the government we can see, but it has also worked within the one we cannot see in order to perpetuate itself.
To read the entire article, go to http://www.esquire.com/features/esquire-endorsements-2008/esquire-endorses-barack-obama?click=main_sr
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