Above: Editorialist and cartoonist Ted Rall's clever take on progressives' presidential choices (well, actually, the lack thereof) for 2008. Below: Barack Obama is pictured, in an undated photo, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor whom he has sold down the river.
Associated Press photo
"As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." -- the late great* Donald Rumsfeld, former Bush regime secretary of defense
Obama: For better or worse,
he's the best that we've got
I love ideological purity. It's fun. It's invigorating. It's so, so -- well, pure.
But in the real world of politics, it rarely works.
Ask Dennis Kucinich, the 2008 Democratic candidate I would put in the White House if it were up to me.
Al Gore probably would be my second choice. So Barack Obama is no more than my third choice.
But progressives' best choice right now, it seems to me, is to go with the best candidate who is available to us, the one who is most aligned with progressive values. That candidate, for better or for worse, is Barack Obama.
Is Obama perfect?
Oh, hell no.
It rankles me how Obama, intentionally or unintentionally -- you almost never really know whether a politician states what he or she really believes or whether he or she states that which he or she feels is the most politically benificial -- panders to the mindless middle.
This Associated Press news story, for instance, suggests that the main problem that Obama has had with the Second Bush War on the People of Iraq (also known here as the Vietraq War) hasn't been the thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis whom the U.S. military has slaughtered for the billions and billions of American taxpayers' dollars stolen from the U.S. treasury by the war profiteers, but has been that King George I got permission from more other nations than did King George II before shocking and awing all of those innocent Iraqi civilians who had the pay the price for the fact that Saddam Hussein refused to kiss U.S. ass.
And I agree with fellow leftist Ted Rall that Obama has "[thrown] his truth-telling preacher under the bus."
Obama indeed has sold the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently stepped down as the pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, down the river; as Rall correctly notes, "If Obama can't bring himself to speak the truth, he could at least support those who do."
But Obama doesn't. On Thursday Obama said this about RevWrightGate: "Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church." (The Associated Press notes, curiously, however, that "Obama seemed to suggest ... that [Wright] has acknowledged that his controversial remarks were inappropriate and hurtful, although there are no public accounts of [Wright] having done so.")
The zinger in the the quote of Obama above, I think, is "the greatness of this country, for all its flaws."
The problem is the the United States of America, in its chronic spiritual illness, perpetually refuses to acknowledge its flaws -- or that it even has any flaws. And therefore its flaws -- yes, including racism (the civil rights movement did not magically solve racism in one fell swoop, as so many would love to believe) -- perpetually remain.
Obama panders to the America-can't-be-wrong-and-can-do-no-wrong crowd, which is much, much larger than is the so-called blame-America-first crowd, which is a tiny minority compared to the former.
But I am torn.
Part of me says that a man of great character won't budge a fraction of an inch from truth-telling, even if truth-telling might cost him the White House, and that therefore, Barack Obama can't be called a man of great character.
But another part of me really, really wants to see President Obama rather than President McCain.
And that part of me can forgive, to some degree, Barack Obama for selling his own former pastor down the river in order to satisfy the America-can't-be-wrong-and-can-do-no-wrong crowd, which, because of its sheer numbers, will decide who occupies the Oval Office next.
I guess that I have to go back to the quote of Donald Rumsfeld above. Don't get me wrong about Rumsfeld; I think that he deserves to be executed, as do all of the traitors and murderers who comprise the Bush regime.
But the ideological purists like Ted Rall, as much as I love 'em, frustrate me a bit. They talk of the left-wing army that we might want or wish to have at a later time. And I'd love to have that army, too.
But right now, it seems to me, all that we can do is go to war with the right with the army that we have, and our best choice for commander in chief at this time is Barack Obama.
Once he is in office, it seems to me, it will be much easier for us to fight for the army that we might want or wish to have at a later time.
*He's not dead. I was just indulging in some fantasy... And he certainly isn't great.
11:51:11 AM 
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