Here's the part of what Bush said in Israel that I think needs more precise and developed comment now and as the general race unfolds.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all long." [Emphasis added.]

I notice that many of the pro-Hillary commentators and Hillary herself have the above narrow view of diplomatic relations, reminiscent of an authoritarian style they are steeped in. Hillary's father, she has said to the media, was the ultimate threatening, condemning parent, as was Bush's and Bush's grandfather. Their view is moralistic, or judgmental and profoundly cynical about humanity. Their method is to lecture and threaten enough that our opponents change their tune.

This view and method is at the root of what's known as the Realist School of International Relations. They think they're realistic, because, unlike wimpy, soft-hearted guys like Obama, they know with certainty that foreign radical opponents are like sociopaths--they are not amenable to reason and empathy. Their realism, it has to be said, is only a theory, but to them, it feels like the ultimate truth because it's so thoroughly imbedded in prevailing morality.

The realist perspective truly is the archaic view represented in prevailing morality, in which even most lefties are still locked. On the cutting edge is the now highly developed view in the social sciences that our old view of even sociopaths is, well, just mistaken. When you stand outside of moralists' dire warnings against considering "relativist" views, it becomes obvious that the old view has to be mistaken, because it's based on the patently tautological, primitive view that people do bad things because they're bad. And, giving the Devil his due, if they're bad through and through, of course, opposition is our only course. If that cornerstone of morality--that estimation of what's going on in peoples' minds--is valid, then the Realists should be in control. Their entire position is based on a psychology, albeit a pop one that's so widespread that it's difficult to imagine an alternative But it's obviously way off the beam.

Missing form morality's reductive equation is humanity's vulnerability to maltreatment and the distortions it generates in its victims. Based on the evidence-based view, proof now has been gathered that even career criminals diagnosed Anti-Social Personality Disorder, or sociopaths, are suffering from mind-numbing levels of humiliation and the torment it generates, not bad. That's what motivates their criminality, not an evil nature. Conceived of as horrifically suffering people whose suffering is repressed and disguised in an uncaring persona, they are amenable to profound expressions of respect and caring.  

In Wilson's Ghost, the leading exponent of the alternative school of international relations, which I provisionally prefer to call the School of Realistic Empathy, James Blight of the Watson School at Brown U., provides the international relations analog to the above empathic view that is emerging in the psychotherapy especially. He explains that you've got to take a lot of time and care getting to know your opponent. Instead of lecturing, you ask questions and listen. And you try to hold their feet to the fire not by making threats but by bringing to meetings all the witnesses and documents and summaries of them you can to make certain that you and your opponents agree on the facts. The point is not at all to condone or appease or anything of the sort. Thinking mechanistically for a moment, the point is to learn enough about the inner workings of the machine to be able to fix it or operate it or dismantle it. This is what Obama did with conflicted groups in Chicago, and this is what he will attempt in the Middle East.

Study realistic empathy, I say. It's our frontier.

My only quibble with the School of Realistic Empathy is that its proponents eschew sympathy. The supposed maladaptiveness of sympathy in social science work has become a shibboleth. But unless you've evoked sympathy for your opponents in you and in them, you've not empathized thoroughly enough to solve the most intractable problems. You may solve some problems without getting to that point, but the sine qua non of empathy is the feeling of profound caring it evokes.

We know this in ordinary life situations. For instance, when I learn that my middle-aged wife screamed at my son partly because she had to stop taking estrogen, has no serotonin in her brain, and so on, I feel for her. I don't just understand mechanistically as a basis for correcting the problem.

That feeling deepens the resolution of our family problem by making my and my son's concern and good will more believable and genuine. The more profound the problem, the more profound the empathy, the more profound the caring. Ultimately, love, as the Song of Solomon says, is more powerful than death. Empathy is what evokes it. Or, it cooks. Love is the food that sustains and heals us.

Imagine Obama teaching us this stuff and then going to the Middle East and expressing profound, extensive feeling for the victims of the Iraq war. Imagine him describing empathically Bush's motives, the forces driving him and the neocons. It would take a lot of explaining for this measure to be convincing. But that's just what he is capable of doing, along with the help of people like Blight and other social scientists bursting at the seams to have a leader who draws the best and the brightest conflict resolution folks to him for the sake of the world.

See why my friends call me "Preach'"

Joe Klein said,

I wish Blitzer had been a bit more dogged and asked, "What could you possibly mean by that, Senator Lieberman--and please be specific. Why do you think Hamas "favors" Obama over McCain? What are you implying here, Senator? And were you worried about Obama's Middle East policy positions when he came to campaign for you in Connecticut?

Klein is recommending that reporters actually be dogged in trying to get the specifics behind a vague allegation. But he falls short of framing his recommendation as a widely-applicable method for helping the public to deal with guilt by association accusations. We need such a method to help us reach people who are initially influenced by guit by association attacks.
 
If I were Klein I'd continue, explaining that

the power of McCarthy-style accusations exists partly because they're vague. "Hamas prefers Obama" seems to imply that Obama is like Hamas. He's a radical sympathizer. Is that what Lieberman actually means? of course not.  If he were peppered with a series of deft questions, it would become clear that the only somewhat supportable charge Lieberman can make in this realm is that Obama doesn't have the experience to protect Israel. But, of course, the implication that Obama is a closet radical is what Lieberman's base and the undecided are likely to infer.

Klein can add that guilt by association attacks require reporters to ask for proof in the form of something radical Obama has said or done. And if there is no proof, reporters should ask if this kind of attack subverts the democratic process by repeating unsubstantiated attacks.

The point of the choice by NARAL was that Obama is much better suited to unite us. He has experience doing that. He has top-flight judgment, as evidenced throughout this campaign and most notably in his decision to come out against authorizing the use of force in Iraq. He is winning this race, despite all of his disadvantages. His character is stellar. He is perhaps the least expedient candidate since Lincoln. People who have worked with him in every phase of his life have nothing but praise for his trustworthiness and authenticity. Obama is, most importantly, deeply empathic, as demonstrated in his speech on race when he, unlike any public figure in history, soulfully and with intellectually credible ideas empathized with white workingclass neoracists. The genuiness of his empathy is attested by many people on both sides of the political spectrum who have worked with him. The noted historian, Gary Willis, in the New York Review of Books, compared Obama's speech on race favorably to one of Lincoln's speeches, mostly because both men were able to stem the tide of divisiveness in one speech.

The removed, ideologically driven critics just don't know him, don't know the evidence, haven't carefully studied his close associations he's had throughout his careers. 

Hillary has everything going for her except character and temperament. She lied shamelessly re. landing in Bosnia,  her husband's politically suicidal infidelities, Obama's views on NAFTA, her actual, true beliefs about Obama staying in Wright's church.

More important, as fair witness Bill Bradley quoted her as saying in a small Democrat meeting, she does intend and always has intended to "demonize" as craftily as possible anyone who opposes her concerning an issue or race that can "establish my place in history." She is entirely Rovian in this regard. She will say or do anything that she thinks will increase her success.

These conclusions about Hillary are documented in extensive articles in the New Yorker and elsewhere. Bill is quoted as saying that he would have a better chance of throwing the huge oak desk in the Oval Office through the window behind it than changing his wife's mind. That trait came into play during her attempts to push through her version of health care reform. When Bill worked out a compromise with her leading opponent on health care, Rep. Cooper, who was widely considered a thoughtful conservative. Bill then deferred to his wife, saying to Cooper that Cooper must get her to sign on to the compromise that he, the President, mind you, already created and agreed to. That compromise, according to Bill, would've increased the number of people covered by 15 mil. Hillary trashed the compromise and politically trashed Cooper.

Why is she amazingly arrogant and destructive?  This is an important question, because without some understanding of the cause of her negative traits, they seem fabricated. The most likely answer was inadvertantly supplied by her in various interviews conducted long ago. A likely explanation is that she is driven by the degradation she experienced at the hands of her cruel, merciless father to have a prominent place in history. She's quoted as saying in private that she continued to push for her health care bill because she wanted this prominence. But in the bargain, she destroyed the promise suggested by the 72 percent of the public who, during the early 1990s, said they wanted national health reform. Because of her arrogance and poor temperament, she broke faith with them so that, now 16 years later, we're no further ahead than we were.

Prominence, for many of us, is the most satisfying antidote to our hidden feelings of worthless. I know it's part of my motivation for trying to write a scintilating article despite inadequate training. Now, her amazing competency as a lawyer and politician coupled with her drivenness has put her in a postion to finally quench the fire of self-hatred her father implanted in her. Of course, it ain't gonna work this time, and really there's no satisfying that kind of father. More important, the distortion of character and feeling for others wrought by his cruelty is dangerous for America.

She might be okay in the end. It's too difficult to predict. But it's reasonable to fear her and at least provisionally conclude that can't possibly unite this country. Right up until this moment, she continues to do what's best for her and her most ardent supporters than what's best for America. Most pointedly, she's emphasizing her supposed superior ability to connect with white working class people. I could fly with that much more than I can now if she was making this appeal when she had some chance of winning. But now, it just hammers away at the public the notion that her rival can't connect. She's undermining our nominee, the last great hope we have to avoid more devastation in America and the world.

She just can't be a uniting force. At least Obama is bent that way, as his entire history demonstrates.