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This past Saturday and Sunday marked the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore, which occurred towards the end of the War of 1812. Tomorrow will be the bicentennial of Francis Scott Key completing the now-immortal lyrics he titled: "The Defence Of Fort M'Henry" -- later more famously known as America's national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Back in 2007, I thought it would be a good idea to write congressional Democrats a memo, in the hopes they could begin to learn a skill Republicans seem to be born with: the ability to stay on-topic and present your political ideas and agenda items succinctly and memorably to the public. I had grown tired of watching the Sunday political shows where Republicans all sang off the same songsheet while Democrats were easily led into the weeds with long rambling tangents to what they should have been saying that particular week. This early effort grew, in the following weeks and months, into the format we now use weekly: a quick rundown of amusing items in the political news of the week, the awarding of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week and the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, and then seven numerated talking points suggested for all Democrats to use to explain the Democratic position to all and sundry (especially on Sundry morning talk shows... so to speak...).
OK, with that out of the way, let's take a look at how President Obama did in job approval polling last month. The results were mixed, but overall fairly positive. Here's the new chart:
President Barack Obama has always been a reluctant warrior. It is, in fact, one of the big reasons he was elected, since America had turned away from the cowboy swagger of Bush and Cheney by 2008. Tonight, President Obama laid out the case for escalating a war we've already begun, in Iraq and Syria. He presented his plan to the public, and gave his reasons for why America should become more involved in the fight against the Islamic State (or, variously, ISIS or ISIL), and explained what America would and would not be doing in the coming months.
President Obama gave a press conference recently, and -- since it is still the political Silly Season -- got a lot of media attention. For what he was wearing. No, seriously. Washington was all a-twitter (or even a-Twitter) because Obama wore a suit that was not dark blue or black. While some may smack their heads over the idiocy of what passes as the Washington press corps, the right thing to do is to celebrate how males have finally reached sartorial equality with women, when viewed by political "journalists." This is not a backhanded compliment, I hasten to point out, it is meant as a backhanded insult. Because it is always insulting to a politician to focus on what she (or, now, he) is wearing, instead of reporting on the substance of her words and actions. This has been going on for women in politics for exactly as long as women have been in American politics, right up to Hillary Clinton's pantsuits and Sarah Palin's shopping spree. All women know this -- they will be judged on what they wear, sometimes more than what they say or do. Especially female politicians. President Obama is just getting a tiny taste of what women have had to put up with in the political arena since Day One. So I choose to celebrate this new equality (of the idiocy of the political press), and the closing of this particular part of the gender gap.
It was reported today that the Islamic terrorist group which just murdered an American journalist -- by brutally cutting his head off while cameras were rolling -- has also waterboarded their American prisoners. Unfortunately, while every civilized person is understandably shocked and outraged over the murder, the moral high road is unavailable to America on the question of waterboarding prisoners. This is precisely the scenario many have been warning about for years: If America tortures prisoners, what will we say when others torture American prisoners?
A lot happened in the world of politics this week. People are still dumping buckets of ice water over their heads, for instance. There are actually multiple scandals happening to various governors right now, but since none of them involve sex, the media is mostly ignoring them (with the exception of Rick Perry, perhaps, since the media has been swooning over him ever since he put on a pair of glasses). But we're going to ignore most of it all this week, to focus instead on the aftermath and ramifications of what has been happening in Ferguson, Missouri for the past few weeks.
Welcome to the "Dog Days" of summer, at the height of the political Silly Season. This year, one dog did indeed have his day in August, as 7-year-old "Duke" just won a rather bizarre election to become mayor of Cormorant, Minnesota. The strangest thing (to us) was that the "12 people in the village each paid $1 to cast a vote." Um, didn't we make poll taxes illegal quite a while back? The job (and the election) are assumably only "ceremonial" (at least we hope so), but still "Dog Elected Mayor," as a headline, is right up there with "Man Bites Dog." As for Duke's mayoralty, well, it's a "Ruff!" job but someone's got to do it, we suppose. So to speak (or roll over, or shake... good boy!)
I realize that to call this column "premature" would indeed even be an understatement. But you'll have to forgive me, since it's one of those lazy summer days where all of Washington is off on vacation (President Obama is taking two weeks at the beach, and Congress is taking the entire freakin' month off, as usual). So it seems like a good time for some unadulterated speculation of the sheerest sort. And I'm not even going to get drawn in to all the 2016 election speculation today. I'm going to skip over it all and just jump forward to January, 2017, as we all watch the first woman inaugurated to the presidency.
American aircraft are once again waging war over the skies of Iraq. President Obama, as many have pointed out, is now the fourth United States president in a row to order some form of military offensive in Iraq. As always, plenty of critics immediately popped up to loudly explain what the president was doing wrong. The usual characters on the right demanded a much more intensive military action, the ones on the left warned darkly about slippery slopes and possible blowback, and the American people seemed to heave a sigh of resignation, in a "here we go again" moment.