On solid footing.

A few remarkable things about this video:

0. The aim. I don't think I could get that close. Twice.
1. The secret service response time. If you've seen Spike Jonze's "Five Stop Mother Superior Rain" video, you get a sense of the silent pandemonium in the first few nanoseconds of an assasination.
2. Bush seemed to enjoy this, proving that the inner fratboy is hard to kill.
3. Nuri al Maliki was the most breathtaking. This is a replay of his unflappable form last year when a bomb exploded outside a press conference with the new UN secretary. Ban Ki Moon tried to crawl under the table, and Maliki looked as if bomb blasts within retching distance are an everyday thing. Which I suppose they are.
4. The SOFA, which brought Bush to Baghdad, may surprise in its content. Patrick Cockburn has it covered here.

After the race

"Thaht's kwoit ah hedd o' hairrr ya gat therrrre," at which, startled, I gave up the attempt at removing my underpants to address the wizened frame of the hulking Scot who towered over me (in the mens' change room at the Sea Point swimming pool). It was an unusually grey and rainy Cape Town summer's morning, which I found fit for a swim.

He was very friendly, this grey-bearded haggis eater, who - in an apparent bid to ant-dissapate the tension from his dreadful greeting offered "Sooow, arrr ye ahs huppy aboot thah eleyction ahs wee arrr?" And then, when my expected "absolutely" was met with awkward pause he coninued "wahll, ut least therrr'll be ahn ehnd ta tha worrrs."
"Well not if it's up to Obama, he favours an intensification in Afghanistan."
"Whall, at least tha parrrtie of warrr is ote."
"Not really. Vietnam was a Democratic initiative. The (uncapitalised) bay of pigs was Kennedy."
"Uhm ohld enuff ta rememberrrr thaht, yong mahn", he intoned serenely. And then, flashing youthful optimism in defiance of his years (and putative memory) he wrapped "whall, we'rrre just ohptimistic, though I cunn see yorrr skehptical". And then I swimmed.

So now, in the full comfort of my undergarments, allow me to share with you (a first, as this usually is a solo misery) the closing moments of my post-electoral gloom. What's now become a (probably permanent) four-yearly cycle of despair has been remarkably shorter this time around. The reasons are clear. There's no Ohio or Florida recount to prolong the hope. The alternative wasn't that alluring, and I'm a little more experienced.

So why this? Unlike the last two times, the despair requires a bit of explaining. My shower mate's presumption is in keeping with the standard distribution of assumptions. Instead of going through things repetitiously, I hope to refer those with a professed interest (you, probably) to this blog. This way I get to mope once, and live a little more.

My reservations about the Obama candidacy were threefold, and didn't change much over the latter course of the campaign:
1. The candidacy was based upon a cynical, unnecessary and harmful exploitation of race.
2. It was an empty candidacy, at its core an expression of style, with only a tactical reversion to substance.
3. It was a dishonest campaign.

The first point may need elaboration. Barack Obama was one of five people of colour on presidential tickets this season. Why were none of the others regarded as vectors to the "historic opportunity (to elect an unwhite President)" (brackets not mine.) In short, because none of them asked to be thus regarded. This in spite of the fact that one of them (Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate) offered the astonishing double whammy of being a black woman candidate.

The major/minor party distinction only partly explains the difference, but while it could account for McKinney and Matt Gonzalez (Ralph Nader's running mate), it hardly explains Alan Keys (Republican) and Bill Richardson (Democrat). The reason Obama stood out, is that he asked to. I'd encourage readers to view this article from the LA Times' Shelby Steele:

Here's a snippet:

Obama's special charisma -- since his famous 2004 convention speech -- always came much more from the racial idealism he embodied than from his political ideas. In fact, this was his only true political originality. On the level of public policy, he was quite unremarkable. His economics were the redistributive axioms of old-fashioned Keynesianism; his social thought was recycled Great Society. But all this policy boilerplate was freshened up -- given an air of 'change' -- by the dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch he dressed it in...

This was never lost on me, and as a lifelong (so far) pawn in the web of racial politics I found the use of blackness as a central bargaining chip to be particularly offensive. Steele's remarks on the deployment of the chip chime with what I've struggled to articulate in private conversation before. Steele continues:

Obama is what I have called a "bargainer" -- a black who says to whites, 'I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me.' Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer.
Bargainers relieve their anxiety about being white and, for this gift of trust, bargainers are often rewarded with a kind of halo...
Obama's post-racial idealism told whites the one thing they most wanted to hear: America had essentially contained the evil of racism to the point at which it was no longer a serious barrier to black advancement. Thus, whites became enchanted enough with Obama to become his political base. It was Iowa -- 95% white -- that made him a contender. Blacks came his way only after he won enough white voters to be a plausible candidate...

I've seen (and continue to) the operation of this halo effect in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is, without question, regarded as "a great leader", with no reference to policy and implementation under his stewardship. There's a racial element to the attribution. Black south Africans remember and recognise him as a selfless, ultimately vindicated freedom fighter. White South Africans, who generally despise the violent guerrilla movement he began, and the crippling economic sanctions campaign he endorsed, limit their attribution to a localised equivalent of the redemption bargain.

I don't wish to be drawn on a debate around the timing of Iowa. What resonates is Steele's characterisation of Obama's allure: The illusion of a quick-fix, in lieu of a programme of substance-driven change. The danger of this offer is evident. To the extent that it succeeds, the quick-fix tells the previously anxious "you have nothing left to regret, and by implication nothing left to attend to." And so, the first two issues defining my reservation morph. I've previously referred to this as the delegitimisation of radical politics; an immediate consequence of the substanceless bargain.

In this regard, I was struck by John McCain's acceptance speech. There were only two moments of sustained clapping; the second when he thanked Sara Palin, and the first when he declared

"Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth."

Put differently, "Now that (the presidential) race is behind us, race is behind us."

Without a laboured elaboration of the third reason, I recall the extent of Obama's flip-flopping. His pacifist preening to Democratic primarygoers, contrasted starkly with the later sabre rattling about Pakistan, guns, FISA and Jerusalem. The turnaround on campaign finance was clear deceit. This, in an ordinary candidate, would've skotched his credibility. How it sustained his transformative claim is beyond me.

Indeed, the cracks in the transformative facade were immediately available on election night. Even as they said "yes we can", the voters of ultra-blue California passed a ban on same-sex marriage, by the same margin as Obama's national popular vote. This mirrored the cunning of the change agent, who during the campaign endorsed the bigotry of the ban, objecting only to the effort to centralise the decision-making around the ban (i.e he wanted states, not the federal congress to decide.)

Returning to my shower mate, something else is striking. There is a racial determination of the expected response involved in all of this. Black people are expected to shirk from McCain, and embrace Obama. Anyone who looks like doing contrariwise on either count is, however tacitly, required to explain. Which can lead to rambling blogging.

Again Steele's remarks are pertinent:

But there is an inherent contradiction in all this. When whites -- especially today's younger generation -- proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer's ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.

This last line invokes something else that's weighed on me. Obama continues to benefit from what George Bush (or his speechwriter) poetically dubbed "the soft bigotry of reduced expectations". Ironically, it is Bush himself who dropped the bar for Obama, by providing as benchmkark his disastrous administration. This has allowed Obama to escape comparison with the more substantive people he actually was running against.

So much for my initial concerns. Given that Obama is president, what now? There's something like a more constructive reason for writing this blog: Sometimes I hope to be refuted. Refutation is easier when one is upfront with one's reservation. Otherwise, there is the temptation to continually change the gripe in response to parts of it being undone. Obama has the potential to come up with new ways to disappoint me. But barring that, I don't wish to add to the current crop. The onus is on him to trim it.

In the spirit of bipartisanship (and in defiance of your the temptation to forget George Bush too soon), allow me to channel Karl Rove:

What Mr. Obama and his team achieved was impressive. But in 75 days comes the hard part. We saw a glimpse of the challenge Tuesday night. The president-elect's speech, while graceful and at times uplifting, was light when it comes to an agenda. That may have been appropriate, but it also continued a pattern.
Many Americans were drawn to Mr. Obama because they saw in him what they wanted to see. He became a large vessel into which voters placed their hopes. This can lead to disappointment and regret. What of the woman who, in the closing days of the campaign, rejoiced that Mr. Obama would pay for her gas and take care of her mortgage, tasks that no president can shoulder?

Very much good will come from the Obama presidency. As they accrue, his accomplishments must be recognised and praised without reservation. The misgivings described here can be addressed by engaging his administration on specifics, as I have no doubt sections of civil society will.

Four years from now, Black America will continue to be as much of a relatively impoverished, undereducated and overimprisoned place as it is now. In fact it's likely to get worse. This is not due to Obama at all; inequality so deeply entrenched takes a long concerted effort to undo. Even if you really want to. The only way out is to define programmes of improvement. They need to betoken a radical break from the present. There's a myriad of ways that this can happen, which implies a host of possibilities for Obama. By establishing credible institutions for the improvement of Black America, he will have vindicated the claim that his was but a tactical - and pardonable - bargain.

The last debate

Still unsure if I can blog this, as the channels I have access to claim that they won't be covering it. Anyway...

Dramatis Personae
BS - Bob Shaeffer, moderator.
BS - Likely content of tonight's discussion.
BO - Barack Obama, pretender.
JM - John McCain, posttender.
TAP - The (much-venerated-never-questioned) American People

Quoting Zogby "The stagnant nature of this race comes as tonight’s final presidential debate looms. The first two presidential face-offs have been somewhat lackluster, failing to gain a television audience as large as the debate between the vice-presidential candidates, Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin. Tonight’s event is the last time Obama and McCain will stand on the same stage before the election."

McCain's last chance to talk in detail.

0:00:00 Shaefer finishes his nonsens, and they stroll on. This is a roundtable. The first question is "why's your economic plan beetter than his?"

0:01:00 McCain reprises his deathbed opening. I didn't hear who was sick this time (Kennedy in the last debate). But the prayers went up. There's a lot of eyelash flutter.

0:03:00 Obama hits the ground running with details. He's following the Palin formula of talking straight into the camera. He has won the debate in the first five minutes. Remarkable.

0:05:20 JM takes the first stab. It's the tax gambit. Incidentally, it revolves around a Joe-sixpack man whose name really is Joe. Supposedly, this man met BO at a rally. JM is doing the Palin thing too now. However belatedly.

Both of them are stressing the differences between themselves. This is JM's last chance to challenge BO's numbers.

0:07:30 BO marshalls independent studies to support his economic policies. So far, there's been nothing new, detail-wise.

0:09:00 remarkably, JM talks to the wrong camera. This is a suable offense.

0:10:30 JM has started fighting. BO looked tired in the last salvo. JM still hasn't found the camera.

0:11:30 Here's a reprise of the "what spending will you cut" question from the last debate.

0:12:50 BO defers the answer until his presidency "I want to go through the federal budget line-by-line," etc.

0:14:00 JM defeats the claim that he's an old man: "During the Depression WE had a thing called..." He gets back to his small government refrain. It's not seemed to work in the past.

0:16:40 Porky, the second debte mascot, makes a dramatic return. She's tackled the same way that BO's done in the past (perspective). So far, BO's been in control of the debate. Ironically, he looks more grandfatherly, which helps in these fragile times.


0:18:00 JM delivers his first attempt at soundbite of the evening "Senator Obama, I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

0:21:00 BO turns the soundbite around. He's forced JM to show his pen, which makes him look out of control. This debate is turning into a game changer. But not for Arizona.

0:22:30 Bob Shaeffer (should I call him BS?) asks about the campaign dirt.

0:23:30 BO sneers at the townhall idea. Potential gaffe there. He goes on to dismiss the importance of tone in the debate.

(I only just got to make this blog at the eleventh hour. So it was unprepared. None of the fanfare from the last time. So far, this seems like a more robust version of the last one. So I'm tiring of it.)

0:33:30 JM dredges up the dirt on BO. Who said that negative character portrayals are off the Ayre? Then BO dispatches elegantly. That should be the end of this issue now. BO sneers a little more. Then BS turns the corner.

0:42:00 Some droll remarks about the veeps.

Someone should have taught McCain how to speak slowly. TAP don't like no edgy folk. Even Bush knew this.

Next cycle we should have live audience tracking, to work out for how long people stay tuned into the debates. And at what points they opt out.

I don't know how JM intended to sit through ten townhall debates with such a small stock of ideas.

0:58:00 BREAKTHROUGH - BO says "zero", and JM's jaw drops. It's a long story, though. They're talking healthcare. BO is on top of the details. JM has raced through various options that he didn't seem enthused about. it sounds as if the reigning expert on the McCain healthacre plan is Barack Obama.

1:04:00 Talking judges. After telling us at Saddleback that he didn't like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, JM now proudly reveals that he voted for her.

1:13:00 Mercifully, the last question arrives.

1:24:00 "Gentleman, we have come to the close". JM lies first: "I think we have had a very healthy discussion." Finally he finds the right camera. (Or it finds him.)

Interestingly, JM focuses on his long history, and BO on his short one.

BO wins this one on a clear points decision. It's the first debate with a clear outcome.

G'night.

The WHO-DF

Herewith, Kylie's email:

It certainly is an exciting proposition, although I am so frightened of being naively optimistic like I was about the UDM in 1999. I think for me one of the many interesting questions would be if a “UDF” was formed what would the ANC do in terms of the electoral system. We have always known that a pure First-Past-the-Post electoral system would obliterate the opposition, so would the ANC now with a real threat to its power finally change the electoral system? Rather than a pure FPTP system I like the idea of a multi-member constituency system which I think combines the benefits of representivity with access and limits the power of party bosses.

Another question is, is this a split in the ANC or a splinter of the ANC? Uncle Thabo did get 40% of the vote at Polokwane – could Lekota and team attract 20 – 30% of the national vote?

My other question about the “UDF” would be who would be its core constituency and what would its political philosophy be? If Lekota’s convention happens in Cape Town or he has a consultative forum here – I will definitely be heading off there. Keen to join me?

By the way – I am now officially unemployed and happily working away at my masters dissertation. Too quickly I am becoming very used to being able to work according to my own schedule.

To Nashville!

Err... peeps!

I make no promises, but maybe I can live blog "tonight's" McCain/Obama debate. The challenges before me are:

1. Resolving the permanent barrier between my PC and the tv screen.
2. Staying awake until 4.30AM (Cape Town = UTC+1) when, thankfully, it ends.
3. writing and viewing at the same time.

Watch this space...

OK, the preliminaries:

BACKGROUND: McCain wanted one townhall meet a week (starting in June). Obama's handlers wouldn't let him come out to play. Tonight it happens at last. For the last time.

JARGON:
BLA - Body language alert.
BO -The Jim Crow term for uppity Illinois senators.
FCAn -Fact Check Alert #n.
GA - Gaffe Alert.
JM -JC for Arizona.
K5 -Keating Five (pejorative for the evening).
TM - Tom Brokaw.

STRATEGY:
Obama: - Look presidential.
McCain: - Look parental.

PREDICTIONS:
Another draw. At current levels of support, Obama wins if its a draw. This was his (successful) strategy in the tail of the primaries.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR:
- Obama scowling.
- McCain sneering.
- Obama saying "Uhhh."
- McCain looking at his watch.
- Keating cropping up.
- Obama linking McCain to "the failed policies and philosophy of Bush" for the hundredth time.

OK, so this is a strangely "studio" townhall. Gallup selected the audience. Tom Brokaw officiating. He looks suspiciously like JM. I want to protest, but can't bring myself to.

Funny how the undecideds are exalted. "Only in America." They'll keep schtum.

00:00 They come onstage. JM loos reticent. They stroke each other. I didn't know that JM is a Southpaw. The Republican inside me is stirred.

00:50 BO won the coin toss. The first Bush-McCain link is landed. The scene is set. JM's task is to be au fait with details. He should be spewing numbers. So far BO has rambled superficial.

00:03 JM lies "Senator [Obama], it's good to be with you." He plays the Palin gambit. JM looks more rehearsed here, but I suspect that BO is keeping his powder dry. "Stabilise home values" is more detailed than BO's "executive pay" ramble. He drives a wedge between himself and Bush.

00:05 Brokaw allows JM to play the non-partisan, motivating "the sage from Omaha" for the treasury. BO smiles approvingly.

00:07 BO waxes partisan on tax cuts. His wind has been stolen just a little.

00:09 JM introduces his regulation flip gambit. It's a long story. I didn't expect this. I hear the stirrings of Keating.

00:10 BO hits the detail. He sounds professorial. It should work. But now the gloves come off. "You're not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers" -after shoving JM ten of the best.

00:13 BO denies that the economy will get worse. "I am cnofident about the American economy" How's that possible if "the fundamentals are strong" is baloney?

00:14 JM asks my question above.

00:15 Not for the first time, a beau stumps BO. He says "uh" a lot. This conceals the question. It may work for him, but that woman sounded livid when she posed the question.

00:18 JM shows good ol' Southern charm. He calls the questioner a cynic. At least he's answering the question. BO sneers. But beautifully. I want to cry.

00:22 JM carries out his first outright duck. He's imbibed the Palin "I won't answer the question the way you want me to" KoolAid.

00:23 BO invokes the ghost of JFK. Where's Keating? I want more mud!

00:25 TB cracks a cute joke about deficits.

00:27 BO looks beautiful offstage. Have I said this before? Oops. Here he comes...

00:28 BLA - JM defies his inner oldman, by standing between questions. Trick is, he has a tiger-prowling reflex, which could hurt. The lanky BO prefers to slouch. Beautifully. (As I may have pointed out before.) BO has done a better job of actually answering this question.

00:34 JM is combining numeric specificity with pugilism. TB reigns in the uppity BO. I don't think it'll work, though.

00:35 FCA1 Do less than 90% of small businesses have an operating profit under $200,000? BO thinks so.

00:38 JM "Medicare is difficult." He's scowling a lot. He's landing some tax-related blows. It may have been a bad idea for BO to pick that fight.

00:40 The first anti-Palin question is asked. JM takes it on the chin. BO stumbles a bit in his fightback. He is restrained again.

Halftime assesment:
BO - He's getting the draw he wanted. The blows have been softer than they could've been. He looks better.
JM - He's doing much better in the economic section than in the first debate. He's more direct. He's been the more interesting character to watch. I feel at one with my inner Limbaugh.

00:46 JM is ducking. Now he returns artfully for a pert 10 second reply. His fighter pilot skills serve him well.

00:47 BLA - The audience is doing a great job of looking unimpressed (except the woman in blue who beams at BO.) I can't wait to see the polls.

00:48 Let's see if JM has learnt from the (recent) past. BO reprises his giveth-taketh-away tax attack from the first debate.

00:49 He hasn't.

00:52 JM infringes BO's copyright on the word "Uhm."

00:54 FCA2 Is Bo gonna fine small businesses that don't insure their staff medically? BO is doing a good job of showing that he feels the pain. You get healthcare for that.

00:55 Ding! TB calls the end to the BO-owned part of the debate. It's off to foreign policy now.

(the fat guy in blue looks like he could take a swipe at JM. I'd nudge the secret service at this point.)

00:60 BO "economizes" the foreign policy debate. Clever lad. We certainly aren't getting the argument-dominance of Biden over Palin in last week's debate.

01:02 On Rwanda and the Holocaust, BO reprises his inner Palin. When JM drops his voice to a whisper, he sounds like he's trying too hard. But if you're not too bored by the discussion you'd notice that between barbs, at least JM is saying something substantive by way of answering the question before him.

01:05 FCA3 I think that BO is wrong about the reasons that Bin Laden escaped. It had nothing to do with a shortage of resources, but a deliberate decision to leave it to Pashtun proxies. By the way, he's ducking what he called "an excellent question" about Pakistani sovereignty. (i.e. is a drone attack an invasion of sovereignty? She was asking about a Cambodia-style operation.)

01:10 "I want exactly the same, but different". JM defies his inner (and outer) old man with some GenY-speak about the surge.

01:10 BLA - JM drinks water through sips and gargles. FCA4 - Is BO's contention that Pakistanis' flagging support for America is limited to support for Musharaf true?

01:13 Palin won her McKieran question. Which of these two will win the Couper-Coles equivalent this time? (the blue lady has stopped smiling. I blame charm fatigue.)

01:15 The answer is neither. JM oversells the surge.

01:18 "Uhhhh.... For the most part I agree with Senator McCain"(Whoever accused BO of eloquence has obviously never heard Jon Kerry and Hilary Clinton.)

01:19 In the homestretch moments, BO reaches out to me by recalling the title of the underloved Jethro Tull jig "Thinking 'round corners."

All of you sit up in bed. don't think in straight lines ahead.
Can't sleep? head spin? don't think in circles, it'll do you in.
Think back to the dream you had; no sense of being good or bad.
Jump to the left, jump to the right. think round corners into night.

01:20 BREAKTHROUGH#1 - JM makes the audience laugh. They've promised not to do it. This is it. As Brokaw announces the last two questions, JM has landed the knockout for the evening. He said "Maybe".

01:22 BREAKTHROUGH#2 JM gets some love (warm smile and handshake) from a bald questioner. Even after his earlier jibe about hair transplants!

01:24 GA (just kidding - disappointingly, there weren't any tonight). Also Keating's been in hiding. The pink shirted baldie gives no love to BO. Dis some Bradley shi'!

01:26 The last question. BO has just finished his impression of talking like a robot.

01:27 BO's overweening ego makes him pass up an opportunity to self-deprecate. He channels his inner Rummy ("unkown knowns"). He decides to override the questioner's question with his own. I'm not just being an egregious redneck. This really happened.

01:29 JM won't dismiss teh question, but he's not gonna rub his nose in it entirely. More Rummy-reprise.

The verdict.
This has been much better for McCain than I'd thought. We now know why Rahm Emanuel wouldn't let Obama out to play townhall-townhall. He sucks at it.
Obama didn't loose the arguments, but this was his turf, and he bestrode it with insufficient dominance. Especially after Biden-Palin, this is net better for the Republican ticket.

It's been a pleasure staying up with you. Goodnight.