What Colin Powell's Endorsement "Means"

As has been predicted for several days, the former Secretary of State, Ret. Gen. Colin Powell, announced on today's Meet the Press that he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama in this year's presidential election. Powell, who has been repeatedly and lavishly praised by Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain, over the last eight years, claimed to be "disappointed" with both McCain's campaign tactics and his choice of running-mate (Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin). He cited Obama as a "transformational" candidate.

So, what, exactly, does this mean for the candidates' campaigns? Pundits on the left(ish) side of the political spectrum are predictably enthusiastic about this turn of events- Powell has always been perceived by many as a statesman-like figure whose military and foreign policy background are unassailable. More importantly, he is a Republican who served Pres. G.W. Bush, and thus his endorsement appears to be another piece of evidence supporting the idea that the Republican "brand" is so damaged that its own followers are "seeing the light." Expressions like "the final nail in McCain's coffin" have been used by some with glee. There's no question that this is not a good thing for McCain.

This particular image of Powell, however, is not necessarily an accurate one- people with short memories on the Left might want to remind themselves of Powell's complicity, even cowardice, in promoting the Bush administration's Iraq War. If Powell's own dishonesty in endorsing that war isn't directly responsible for the thousands of American and Iraqi lives (and billions of taxpayer dollars) that have been unnecessarily lost in the last several years, then it is certainly a major factor. It is valid to ask why Obama supporters should even be PROUD of this endorsement- and to wonder why Powell is considered "credible" in a way that other Bush administration figures are not. Most people learn at a very early age that it helps to be popular with the big men on campus, but that popularity doesn't always speak well of us or our goals. Would we be this excited if the endorsement had come from Donald Rumsfeld? How would that endorsement be any different, really?

The fact is, Powell's endorsement doesn't actually "mean" much- at least not to Obama supporters. It is important to keep in mind that Obama already had a clear lead in both polls and in the Electoral College tally that various news and punditry organizations maintain. If one looked at the CNN map last night, things already seemed pretty dire for the McCain camp.

If we take as a given the "solid" Democratic and Republican states in the current map, and also assume that the current analysis of which states are "leaning" one way or another is accurate (we should do neither, of course- the election is not won or lost, yet, and complacency can ONLY be a bad thing), then the current conventional wisdom is that there are only six states that can not already be "called" for one candidate or another. In order to capture the 270 electoral votes he would need to win or tie, McCain would need to win ALL SIX of those states, AND, in the next two weeks, change the minds of at least one and possibly two of the states that are currently considered "blue" or "blue-leaning." Obama needs (according to CNN) only to "hang in" for the next two weeks to capture the presidency. Considering the financial and logistical resources it will take to vigorously campaign in that many states- resources the McCain campaign does not have- McCain's chances look slim. This is a fact that McCain himself has already acknowledged, saying that "Obama is already measuring the drapes" for the White House. As usual, McCain's attempt to be snide (he would say "funny") backfires- as with most of McCain's quips, his sarcasm instead reveals McCain's own inner mind- even HE doesn't really think he can win at this point.

So really, a Powell endorsement of Obama only "hurts" the McCain campaign in the same way that a pin-up girl painted on the Enola Gay would have "hurt" Hiroshima- it's not the injury- it's the insult.

However, Powell's endorsement may still have MEANING, even if it doesn't actually affect things much- and that meaning will come from the inevitable reaction of those on the Right whose egos are assuredly bruised by this endorsement. It will become very interesting to parse the words of prominent McCain officials and supporters in the next few days, because they will undoubtedly reveal a great deal about the Republican mind. I predict three separate reactions. The first two are easy to guess, if we look at what happened to Scott McLellan, Richard Clarke, and Anthony Zinni, among other former Bush administration staffers who have since criticized their former employers. The somewhat more politic among Republican die-hards will sadly shrug and shake their heads (or provide a written equivalent) and claim that Powell is "out-of-touch," "misinformed," or "deluded." The more bellicose (severe blond women with prominent adam's apples and Fox News blowhards among them) will have no qualms about calling Powell a "traitor" or otherwise impugning his motives (perhaps suggesting that he's "auditioning for a spot in the next administration," as they did of Clarke.) They will do this despite eight years of statements praising Powell and treating him as a Republican hero, and they will do it without irony, because they are convinced that Americans can only remember back as far as last week.

The third, and most pernicious, response will be overtly stated by only a few, but "subtly" alluded to by many more. Those people will point out a fact about Powell that is obvious on the surface- he is a black man. Then, they will remind people that the presidential candidate he is supporting is a black man, too (or at least not white- concepts like mixed-race backgrounds tend to be a bit 'nuanced" for a lot of people). And they will go on to say that Powell's endorsement doesn't matter because, after all, that one commonality is the only reason he is endorsing Obama. Powell's previous political convictions will have little bearing on their statements of "fact." After all, to many, black people who support the Republican party, like Powell, Clarence Thomas, and Condoleezza Rice, tend to be regarded as independent thinkers only as long as they stay "in house" and parrot the party line. Once they cross that line they fall into the category of all those other black people who traditionally vote as Democrats- narrowly self-interested and racist.
If you think I'm being cynical (or "playing the race card") you can be excused and forgiven- but only if you haven't been paying attention to what's been going on around the country in the last several months. Obama's campaign has been an eye-opener in that it has shown just how far America has come with regards to civil rights- in the grand scheme of things, forty years from Jim Crow to a possible black president is astounding, and something the country should be proud of. It has also shown how much farther many people still have to go. One needn't even argue that references to Obama as being "different from us," and as "having different values" are subtly racist when we have plenty of examples of good, old-fashioned, OVERT racism to choose from in the last several weeks- from the mock-up Food Stamps picturing a watermelon-eating Obama to videos of people making statements like "I'm afraid the blacks will take over." In an environment like that, do I think Powell's endorsement will believed by many people to be reflective only of his racial interests rather than by any reasoned understanding of his policy goals? Of course I do.

In order to see what Powell's endorsement "means," we are going to have to watch and see what it "means" about Republicans, because it, frankly, means little for Democrats. I am curious to see how accurate my predictions are, and intend to post with a follow-up in the next few days. I'm feeling pretty confident, having predicted to my friends and family both the references to "Joe the Plumber" and the use of the phrase "class warfare" in the last debate. But don't confuse "confident," with "happy." That will only come if, in two weeks, CNN's electoral map proves to be prescient.

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Don Imus: Did The Punishment Fit the Crime?

(This entry was adapted from a letter sent to the television show Countdown With Keith Olbermann while the controversy was still at the top of the news cycle. It has been altered so as to be more meaningful to a general audience.)

As I write this, it is the end of a week during which the Don Imus controversy has been the focal point of every television news and opinion show on the air, not to mention countless magazines, newspapers and blogs. Now that the man has been fired and the proverbial pound of flesh has been shaved off the corpse of his career, I wonder whether it isn’t beneath all of us to keep this story going. In fact, continuing to attack Imus is both petty and unfair. If Don Imus’s statements are now to be considered the pinnacle of racism, a huge segment of our population needs to start getting fitted for white sheets.

I am no fan of Don Imus- in fact, I can’t recall ever having listened to his radio show, as the whole concept of “shock” radio is unappealing to me. Like many others, I found the comments that led to his downfall abhorrent, and, after learning of some of the other things he has said throughout his career, I have no doubt that the man is a bigot. It is right and just that Mr. Imus should have to take responsibility for his statements, and it is right and just that there be consequences for those statements. That said, shouldn’t punishment at all times be appropriate to the crime at hand? Shouldn’t they be appropriately timed? While it is clear that Don Imus has engaged in a pattern of racially and sexually insensitive remarks, and that there has been outrage from the public on those occasions, it is not at all clear that Imus was ever officially warned by his employers, MSNBC and CBS Radio, that he would lose his job if he didn’t stop making such remarks. Without a warning, why on Earth wouldn’t Imus feel he could just go on as he had for years? It was apparent that few cared, and that the few who did didn’t represent a loss of income for the man or his employers. It is perfectly reasonably that Imus would not edit himself- nobody has ever attempted to edit him.

Adults are not much different from children- if they are not given effective and concrete warnings about their behavior, they have little incentive to stop that behavior. If little Tommy kicks little Peggy in the shins, he will keep kicking her until he’s told not to. In the same vein, punishment for adults works best when it’ threatened in the same manner punishment for children is. If a child talks back to his mother, it is not right that he be sent to his room for two weeks unless he has already been warned that such is the consequence of his behavior. When a broadcaster says offensive things, it is not right that he should be fired when he has never been warned that such are the consequence of those statements.

Suspending Don Imus was a perfectly reasonable response to his remarks, and Imus should additionally have been made to promise that he would never make such remarks again, lest he lose his job. If he refused to make that promise, or broke that promise in the future, firing would be perfectly reasonable- but not until then. One might feel that that is too lenient; that any proof that one is bigoted is enough to justify taking away his livelihood and publicly raking him across the coals. Reasonable people, on the other hand, who can follow that line of thought to its inevitable conclusion, feel that actions and words may be punishable in a free society, but thoughts are not. Perhaps the man is a bigot, but it is not his bigoted mind that should be punished: it is his bigoted words. And the punishment he received for those words was unjust. It is a convenient way for his employers to look like heroes without ever admitting that they could have put an end to his behavior years ago and did so only after they received uncomfortable attention.

I am well aware, as is anyone familiar with the way broadcast media works, that broadcasters have the ability to employ a time delay when material goes out live. If Imus has a history of making these inappropriate statements, why wasn’t he forced to work with a delay? And if there was, in fact, a delay, how can MSNBC and CBS Radio pretend to have been so offended by Imus’s words when that delay was never utilized? Imus had a certain degree of power as a celebrity, but his ex-employers had the power of the paycheck, and are thus far more powerful than Don Imus ever was. Where was the admission of guilt on the part of MSNBC and CBS Radio? “Liberal media” shows such as The Daily Show and Countdown With Keith Olbermann frequently (and correctly) lambaste President Bush for throwing his subordinates “under the bus” when his misdeeds and mistakes are discovered. How is this situation any different?
I have to question the smirking condescension and mock indignation that are invariably employed by commentators in response to Imus’s own defense: that this condemnation of him is an example of rank hypocrisy. Imus was wrong to speak as he did, but he is not wrong that something stinks about the way he has been treated. The fact that the Rev. Al Sharpton was the one person who was most stridently and vocally called for Imus’s firing, no matter what apologies or promises the latter offered, underscores this hypocrisy. Sharpton is a man who, to this day, refuses to offer any apology to the many people who were hurt by his manipulation of the Tawana Brawley case, his support of the anti-Semitic orchestrators of the Million Man March (and his own well-documented history of making anti-Semitic remarks), or his own history of divisive and inflammatory behavior. How can Sharpton possibly take the moral high-ground here? Even if Imus’s apologies were disingenuous, the fact that they were offered at all still beats Sharpton’s record by a mile.

Without a doubt, the media needs to continue to explore the issue of race- and not just when high-profile white men say obnoxious and hateful things. I would hope the media could do so without employing Imus as a convenient whipping boy. The man’s career is dead- throw some dirt over it and walk away. There is real racism to fight, racism that exists in governmental policy and human actions, not just in words. There is also other news out there- news that I daresay is more important than the incoherent “humor” of a man whose entire act was based on the fact that he was angry and misanthropic.

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