Despite all of the drama of this campaign process, when I think this through, I can very easily constrain my enthusiasm for any of the candidates.

I've spent about a month in Iowa over the last year including a week spent with family over the holidays and I'd say you've captured the spirit of the Iowans I know from the far right to far left and everywhere in between. 

What I sense more than anything from everyone is a desire for change and doubt that any of the candidates are up to the task.  I find no enthusiasm at all for Hillary.  A few are invested in her machine but no one really seems invested in her.  Many are attracted to Obama but doubt he has the experience.  Some are in harmony with Edwards' message but don't believe he can go the distance.  The Republicans are disillusioned with every candidate and I sense are disillusioned by their message.  Even the most far right family values cousin of all seemed more impressed with the odd-ball sincerity of Kucinich than with all the Elmer Gantrys the Republicans are trying out.

I sense populism out there folks and a populace looking for a message and a messenger and not finding one.   What I don't sense is any interest in American greatness or its place in the world.  I see people looking inward trying to figure out who they are and who we are as a country. 

When will someone turn up to focus that sense of unease? 

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a clown! Speaking earnestly with a foreign accent doesn't a Kissinger make.

The Middle East story is old and worn; it's raised whenever one has nothing to say. There are at least five more important issues and climate control and the international implications of it are way more important.

Can we, at this late hour, start and deal with details instead of Zbigniew Brzezinski type sound bytes?

My agony over the candidates has led me to decide to give my vote to the candidate who is doing something useful Now and taking risks that show Leadership during the campaign. McCain and Obama made the first cut, but it really seems Ron Paul and John Edwards are the only two who aren’t delivering the status quo message on a different platter or hedging much. I lean more towards Edwards’ views, so that leaves Edwards.

Edwards is using the campaign to educate the electorate about how and why special interest control is the main cause of our broken government. Some candidates will touch on this a little, then back off . Edwards isn’t backing off. It’s his central message, he’s not afraid and he acknowledges that none of his –or anybody else’s--ideas will amount to anything if we allow special interests to continue their rule on the hill.

Although voters don’t need Edwards or any other candidate’s permission to get together and stop voting for candidates who take special interest money, at least he’s telling the most important truth.

I thought Edwards started out weaker, but his speeches now sound like they are coming from a person fighting for something he believes in. He might have tripped over this cause on that road that has led so many to suffer as slaves to special interests. However, he sounds like he’s after the power and benefits that come with leadership and lifting people up.

Edwards is hammering on the only door to positive change—though I will always remember that John McCain was the first to have the courage to do this. So unless Edwards backs down, I may just vote for a candidate I did not take too seriously when the campaign began.

tlees2 said:

Beware of Brzezinski. He is the one who started the idea that we needed to support the mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

The actual quote [ from How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen: Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France),
Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Q: The former director of the CIA,Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Back in 1956 I decided not to vote for Stevenson because I thought something he said in the campaign was unjustified and unfair. Since then my position has been that a campaign is a campaign: every candidate is going to say something that won't be up to my standards, no candidate is going to be perfect, my responsibility is to make an overall judgment with respect to which candidate is overall preferable, and it's likely that there will be plenty of evidence in advance of the campaign as to which it is.

At a very low level, people talk about the campaign being a test of character: nonsense, if the voters were any judge of character, Bush wouldn't have been elected even once, let alone twice. (Even I didn't know how bad his character was back in 2000, I merely voted against him because I'm an issues-oriented liberal; but he got re-elected by a real majority when everyone should have known what kind of person he is.)

At a (slightly) higher level, I find two kinds of positions both foolishness:

Some people think both the Republican candidates and the Democratic candidates are too partisan, too extreme; and

Some people think there isn't enough difference between the Dems and the Repubs to matter.

Both of these are silly. There is an issue of judgment here; and judgments are based on huge amounts of information which if one goes to the trouble of laying them out still can be responded to by someone with very bad judgment laying out another long piece with selected pieces of info which lead to a wrong conclusion. (The fool is married to his dogma.) I'm too lazy to argue for my judgments, I just deliver them.

My own finding is that the Republican candidates are a lot of really awful people with a varied lot of really awful policy positions. Giuliani is the worst of the lot, on character and foreign policy advisor choice grounds, while McCain is in my view the slightly least evil of the lot -- at least he would be preferable with respect to torture. (If I lived in NH instead of MA, I would consider crossing over to vote for him, just to hedge my bets, especially if Giuliani seemed to be running well.) On the other hand, I consider any of the Democratic candidates acceptable. It appears to me that reasonable evaluations of any of them would be in the range of mediocre to decent -- I will in 2008 vote for the Democrat, regardless of who or she is, without a moment's hesitation, and I will have contributed monies after the nomination which I am largely holding back for now.

I try to tune out campaigns, because they contribute more noise than enlightenment. However, I must say that a number of the Democratic candidates have advanced policy proposals which I consider quite constructive. Assessing the policy advisors is the right thing to do -- but I get the impression that comparing the advisor choices of the Republicans versus the Democrats gives a pretty clearcut overall answer. For the present, I've made quite minor contributions to Edwards. I may later make a decision on electability grounds, but I don't think I'm terribly good at assessing that.

Dan K wrote:

American hegemony was a by-product of the convulsive global changes brought about by the Second World War, during which the US was able to use its relative geographical security in the western hemisphere to build a powerful military-industrial state. In the aftermath of the war this state machinery, built for war-fighting, was transitioned to Cold War purposes, and the extensive national security and intelligence apparatus created to meet emergency wartime needs was cemented in place, aand even extended. The devastation wrought by the war throughout Europe made it easy for the US to establish leadership of the western coalition, build a consensus around that leadership and expand its power. And the new national security state generated powerful corporate and governmental interests, combining into a peculiar economic interest of enormous, and seemingly unstoppable, influence. It also created a class of intellectuals and technocrats whose education is organized around the service and maintenance of this state.

Excellent summary of where America is today, although I feel compelled to add two points neglected here, that Dan K. does cover later in his ten challenges. But it is important to develop some sense of importance in his very good list.

1. It was the development of the atomic bomb and the decision to use it to establish hegemony and World Empire that is at the heart of the problem. For those not familiar with the development of the bomb, and under the illusion that it was used to "save American lives", please educate yourself.

As phelicity said:

Maybe if we started facing up to the lies that we've been telling ourselves and the rest of the world for decades our politicians could do the same.

The US not only went ahead with both the development and deployment of the bomb despite objections at LANL (it would not even share info with the UK), seeing an opportunity to use what the CFR now calls nuclear primacy to "rule the world". Despite UN Resolution Number One, addressing the nuclear problem the US chose instead to mislead the public and the world on the nature of the problem, attempting to monopolize the weapon for itself, believing it could maintain its nuclear primacy indefinitely, or at least as Andrew Marshall advocated, until Russia fell and before China rises to wage a winnable nuclear war. The record of all this. through the "Committee on the Present Danger", DOD Sect/ Charles Wilson (different from the Tx Rep on Charlie Wilson's War) "New Look Policy" to the "Delicate Balance of Power" of Albert Wohlstetter (Mentor of Pearle, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Pipes, et al) has been clearly exposed, if one looks.. During the Agnew resignation and impending impeachment of Nixon, Haig's deal giving us the Ford (aka as the Princeton or Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush sr Presidency) and the precedent that "if the executive office does it, it is not illegal”) set the stage for Team B [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B ], and the falsification of NIE's and the manufactured "cold war".

For those familiar with intelligence and NIE's from that period (mid 70's), the record is irrefutable that the US was the "bad guy/ axis of evil" fomenting war and killing worldwide, although that had been the policy since 1945.

2. The second lack of emphasis is what Naomi Klein calls the "Shock Doctrine ”, or the attempt to market monopoly and deception as “free markets”. Using the threat of nuclear military might as the muscle behind the extortion shakedown, USA foreign policy has attempted to keep slavery and predation alive. Until we find some way to regain the countervailing power of citizens and workers to share in economic goods in a more just and fair process domestically, we are not in a position to offer leadership to the rest of the world. And as Steve Clemons has sensed, it may well be too late for all that, "having crossed the Rubicon" by the fascization of our judicial and voting systems. Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that we are more able than the Germans to stop the inertia of a system run this far amok.

To Steve, my apologies for taking this thread into what you may see as a "side issue". But, as Woodrow Wilson said:

"As long as you have a military class, it does not matter what form your government is: if you are to be armed to the teeth, you must obey the only men who can control the great machinery of war. Elections are of minor importance"

So in this environment, elections are perhaps best seen as a placebo, a hat trick scam, to misdirect and attempt to appease the public and offer some legitimacy to what many (most) see as an illegitimate regime, put in place by fraud. While many recognize that the Iranian and Russian power structures severely impinge on fair elections, what is the consensus here? Is there really any meaningful connection between what people want and what they get?

jalmari said:

Zbigniew Brzezinski's right: the Soviets were a bigger threat than the Islamists in 1979. So obviously the Carter Administration made a cost/benefit, ends/means calculation, did what they did and ZB stands by it.

Only from the perspective of someone from Poland.

Otherwise the threat of the Soviets was grossly exaggerated. Read some of the Team B stuff, that Dr. Anne Cahn (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-1980), forced into daylight by a FOI inquiry in 1991, many of the links are posted in the Wikipedia article on Team B. As she says ""I would say that all of it was fantasy."

Military power wins battles; Spiritual power wins wars -- 5 Star General George Marshall

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." -- Mahatma Gandhi: