The next day, President Barack Obama announced the formation of a commission to investigate the Deepwater Horizon blowout oil disaster and the safety of offshore drilling. He appointed former Florida Senator Bob Graham (D) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly to head the panel.

Flash forward ten years. It’s 2020. Will Sen. Graham and Mr. Reilly be sitting before a congressional committee, testifying that, six years after their commission completed its work, the federal government still has not acted on the key recommendations of its report? The more immediate concern is: Will the commission even make the right recommendations about America’s energy future?

“Blue ribbon” commissions are not the only things 9-11 and the BP disaster have in common. The 9-11 attacks were indirectly – but profoundly – about oil and America’s energy policy, or lack of one.

As the president took to the airwaves Tuesday, his administration was again releasing a new estimate of how much oil is actually spurting from the seabed in Mississippi Canyon 252. Now we’re told it’s as much as 60,000 barrels a day – 30 times more than BP and the government told us initially.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama was clearly a man on the horns of a dilemma. On one hand, his duty to American citizens and stewardship of our environment point clearly in one direction. On the other hand, any progress is retarded by the overwhelming political power of the oil companies. The POTUS may be the most powerful man in the world, but the world runs on an oil economy and oil logic. Beltway observers ask why Mr. Obama can’t make up his mind, but indecision is not the issue. The issue is that even a president cannot simultaneously satisfy two constituencies. Mr. Obama will have to choose and choose soon.

Which leads to the third similarity between the 9-11 attacks and the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster: in each case the sitting president found himself with significant support from the American public to take bold steps to remedy the situation. George Bush squandered his moment, using the 9-11 tragedy to launch opportunistic wars. What will Obama do with his moment?

So far, the BP Deepwater Disaster commission is off to a poor start. Two of the panel’s seven members — Mr. Reilly and Alaska’s Fran Ulmer — have strong oil industry ties.

Mr. Reilly is on the board of directors at Conoco-Phillips and has been for 12 years, three times as long as his EPA tenure. In an August 2009 sale, Conoco-Phillips finished second — right behind BP — in snapping up deepwater leases in the Gulf of Mexico. Surely, Conoco has an interest in seeing deepwater drilling continue.

Ms. Ulmer, Alaska’s former lieutenant governor and outgoing chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), has a long history of accepting campaign contributions from the oil industry, including contributions from BP going back to her 1990 candidacy for the Alaska House of Representatives. As chancellor of UAA, Ms. Ulmer presided over the stifling of marine conservationist and oil spill expert, Professor Rick Steiner, who was harassed into resigning over his warnings about the environmental hazards of offshore drilling.

As if that doesn’t cast enough doubt on the impartiality and independence of the commission, last Friday Mr. Obama’s energy and climate czar, Carol Browner, told The Hill that she hopes the administration can persuade the yet-to-be-named commissioners to curtail the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling.

As Ms. Browner was busy undermining the commission, Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu (D), Congress’s top recipient of BP campaign contributions in the 2008 election cycle ($17,000), sent a letter to the White House claiming that the six-month moratorium will mean the loss of 38,000 jobs. Which begs two questions: 1) Did Ms.. Landrieu take into account the effect of Gulf cleanup jobs? And 2) Why not just send the bill to BP?

Across the environmental movement, activists cringe with anticipation that Mr. Obama will use the catastrophe in the gulf to justify more loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. Even though the documented carelessness and incompetence of nuclear engineers rivals their oil industry counterparts, the nuclear crowd doesn’t have an active disaster up and running this week.

President Obama has a unique opportunity to have a “clean slate” discussion with Americans about energy policy. Will he bungle his chance the way Mr. Bush did? If the establishment of commissions is any guide, the outlook isn’t hopeful.

© Mark Floegel. 2010

No one seems quite sure why the first of April is called “April Fool’s Day.” The first reference to the day is in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.” In the story, a fox and rooster trick each other in turn.

So it is April Fool’s Day is an occasion for practical jokes. Some scholars believe the tradition began when the societies shifted the beginning of the calendar year from early spring (around the first of April) to January, leaving only “fools” to honor the older tradition.

However it began, it’s with us still and you may be fooled more than once today. There are several times this week when I had wished I was being fooled, but no, it seems I’m merely dealing with fools.

Yesterday is a good example. Barack Obama announced he is opening 167 million acres of the continental shelf to oil and natural gas drilling. This is something George Bush and Dick Cheney wanted to do, but didn’t have the nerve. I thought 2008 was supposed to be a “change” election. Didn’t know it was going to be change for the worse.

I know, I know, we’re going to hear from the usual pundits that this is the White House outmaneuvering the Republicans on energy issues. But it’s not. It’s caving in to the fossil fuel lobby. The reality is that the US and the rest of the world have to slash our greenhouse gas emissions and you don’t do that by expanding drilling any more than you go on a diet by launching a Twinkie binge. You’re a fool to think otherwise and any pundit that tries to convince you otherwise wants to play you for a fool.

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker is neither a fool nor played for one. He ruled yesterday that neither the Bush nor the Obama administration (what’s that about change again?) are allowed to tap the phones of Americans without warrants.

The Obamanians picked up some sort of virus from the Bushies. The Nixon Virus (“When the president does it, it’s not illegal.”), I think it’s called. I didn’t vote to live in a police state in 2000 and I sure as hell didn’t vote to live in one in 2008. A Justice Department spokesperson said no decision has been made about filing an appeal. A word of advice: Don’t.

Fools closer to home (or not) include the Vermont Energy Partnership, which is taking out full-page newspaper ads this week, chastising the Vermont public for allowing the state Senate to vote to shut the state’s only nuclear plant, Vermont Yankee.

There are multiple forms of foolishness afoot here. First, the partnership tries to fool people into thinking it has something to do with Vermont. True, there are Vermont businesses foolish enough to join this bogus trade association, but most of the money for the partnership – and thus the ads it buys – comes from Entergy Louisiana, the out-of-staters who have yet to realize they’ve been invited to leave.

That invitation is the second form of foolishness. It’s over people! It’s been over for more than a month. The Senate voted 26 to 4 in February to shut the plant on schedule in March 2012 (although the smart money says it will shut in November 2011). Entergy Louisiana and its shill, Governor Jim Douglas (R-Lame Duck) persist in calling the vote meaningless, but if you buy that pap, you’re foolish enough to be interested in some irradiated riverfront property for a vacation home.

Third, of course, is you don’t run those kind of ads the week of April 1. It’s just sticking your head in the sand, leaving 120 pounds of butt hanging out for opportunists like me to kick. It is, however, consistent with Entergy Louisiana’s incompetent bungling of the mechanics of running a nuke plant and its tone-deaf public relations policy. Getting a 20-year license extension for that plant should have been a walk in the park. Instead, the executives at Entergy Louisiana orchestrated their own death march.

And for that, I thank them. No foolin’.

© Mark Floegel, 2010

It’s not easy. Most people agree pro wrestling is at the bottom and boxing and horse racing are not far from it. Not that any sport is far from bottom any more. Repeat Super Bowl champs New England Patriots have been caught taping opponents signals, basketball referees have testified to throwing games (as if you didn’t notice for yourself), at least 100 baseball players are on the not-so-secret list of 2003 steroid users (more woe in Beantown) and we now know that Bobby Thompson was able to hit his “shot heard round the world” in 1951 because the Giants had been stealing signals all through the late summer. (Hey, they were 50 years ahead of the Pats in technology.)

Eager sports fans, dismayed by all the above and prone to saying things like “they all do it” are still tuning into ESPN as religiously as ever. We’re still mesmerized by a pitcher freezing a batter with a breaking ball or a slap shot that seems to have eyes as it flies past two defenders and a goalie. We grow a thick callous on our sense of fair play and Grantland Rice’s words about “how you played the game” seem as quaint and pointless as nursery rhymes.

Life imitates sports or vice versa, because just as sports are a reflection of our time, so are the hemispheres of business and politics soaked through with scandal. I don’t need to list for you here the Bernie Madoffs and Alan Stanfords, the Mark Sanfords and Jon Ensigns and David Vitters.

Although I don’t think scandal is part of the plan, I do think there are people in sports and business and politics cynical enough to take advantage of the sins of their peers.

“They all do it, Nixon just got caught,” my mom, a disappointed Republican said after Watergate (foreshadowing 21st century sports fans). The subsequent years were decorated by Wilbur Mills, Wayne Hays, Abscam, Iran-Contra, Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky. Every ensuing scandal brought our expectations lower and created more room for misbehavior. Should we have been surprised, after all that, when George Bush and Dick Cheney spent eight years showing contempt for the rule of law? Should we be surprised that Barack Obama would rather “look forward, not back” even if leaving those crimes unpunished leaves open the door for fresh assaults on the Constitution down the road?

A scandal is a scandal the first, perhaps the second time it occurs. When it happens again and again, it begins to recede into the background and becomes ordinary. If you’ve got a publicist and a crisis manager, you just deal with it and move on, knowing that sooner or later your sins will be forgotten, if not forgiven. Too many things crowd into the frame, jostling for our attention. Cheating is so profitable it’s practically legal and if, on the off chance you do get caught, there’s a whole redemption industry out there.

Better still if you are a corporation, rather than a person. Philip Morris covered itself in slime and became Altria. Arthur Andersen contributed to the Enron crime wave and reinvented itself as Accenture with Tiger Woods pitching from ads in every airport. (Sure, it would better if he was winning more, but at least he takes the public mind off corruption.)

A movie coming out this summer is based on the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal of the early 1990s. They play it as a comedy. Should expect a musical about the Exxon Valdez in another year or so?

The court of public opinion is blunted by fatigue from both individual and corporate misdeeds. Soon there will be no barrier to bad behavior at all. We’ve entered an age in which no one remembers your dignity, they only remember who won and as Vince Lombardi said a half century ago, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

© Mark Floegel, 2009

Adrienne and I were on the national mall Tuesday, proud to swell the ranks even if we represented just one-millionth of the crowd. We were nowhere near the presidential podium. The night before, a friend called with a chance at two tickets, for the bargain price of $60 dollars each. By the time I called back, they were gone. Good thing too, because the people who claimed them were among the four thousand ticket holders who didn’t get in – one last farewell screwup from the Bush administration.

As it was, we were 18 blocks west of the capitol, watching the whole thing on a Jumbotron screen. Yes, we could have been somewhere warm and watched it on tee vee. That was not the point. The point was to be there, to show up, an act of faith in America’s new day.

On Inauguration Day 2009, I arrived in the country I have always dreamed of. Far way as we were, we were still packed shoulder to hip with our fellow citizens. Every color of citizen was represented, although African-Americans made up half the crowd. Despite cold feet and knees stiff from standing, we laughed and danced, shared food and passed cameras around, taking photos of each other with the Washington Monument in the background. Our group included people from Maryland and Iowa, DC and New Orleans. We shouted out the names of the politicians and celebrities we recognized as they were seated on the platform, waved hello (with joy) to a new administration and goodbye (with relief) to an old one. We scratched our heads and traded puzzled looks when Chief Justice John Roberts muffed the oath of office, then shrugged and got over it. It is a season of forgiveness. (Just to be sure, Mr. Roberts administered the oath a second time at the White House Wednesday.)

On Sunday, we attended the concert at the Lincoln Memorial (back of the crowd again). It culminated with Pete Seeger leading several hundred thousand in singing “This Land is Your Land.” As the silverbacks in the crowd reminded our younger friends, Pete was banned from the US airwaves for 20 years in the middle of this century, because his politics didn’t conform to the McCarthyite slant of the day. Now here he was, 89 years old, singing Woody Guthrie’s anthem for the new president. And he sang the whole song – including three verses usually omitted. If you haven’t heard them, one verse speaks of people left behind by prosperity; another of those excluded by the power of wealth and property. The final verse reverses the two that precede it, symbolically returning the land to all the people. It felt just right.

The week before the inauguration, news was dominated by the story of the crippled USAirways flight that was successfully landed in the Hudson River by Chesley Sullenberger. After hitting a flock of geese moments after take off from LaGuardia Airport in New York, Captain Sullenberger lost power and had to make a series of life-or-death decisions – for himself and 150 others – in a matter of seconds. Each decision he made was the right one. Tragedy was averted and replaced by celebration.

That flight is an apt metaphor for what faces President Barack Obama. He’s the pilot now (I suppose George Bush and Dick Cheney were the geese) and he’s facing a series of life-and-death decisions – for himself and the rest of us – and he has the political equivalent of split seconds to make the right call. Like those passengers, we have more than a passive role to play in our own redemption. We stand on the wings of our nation, icy waters swirl around us. If we hang on together, taking particular care for our children and those who most need our assistance, we too can make it to safety.

It was a wonderful day Tuesday on the mall; the cheer that went up when Mr. Obama finished the oath will stay in my ears for a lifetime. We will not feel that good every day of the Obama administration, but that day was a glimpse of what we can achieve. It gives me strength for the work ahead.

© 2009, Mark Floegel

The US, via the CIA helped with money, weapons and training. If you watched “Charlie Wilson’s War,” it all seems like fun with a few caveats thrown in. That movie leaves one with the impression that it was the movement of millions of US tax dollars, plus some nights in Middle Eastern cafes with shady arms dealers that made the difference.

That’s not how Osama bin Laden and his friends see it. Their version of history says God – Allah – strengthened their hand and all that CIA money was just a manifestation of God’s will. The displeasure of Allah with the godless Commies was such that not only were the infidels driven from Afghanistan, but the Soviet Union collapsed soon after.

From where I sit, the collapse of the Soviets wasn’t so simple. It had to do with economics, Soviet political sclerosis, the price of oil and a dozen other factors. To Islamic fundamentalists, however, that was of a class with the CIA money in Afghanistan. Just part of the plan. To them, the Iron Curtain was torn because Insha’Allah: God wills it.

Then, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait. Osama thought Saddam should be pushed back, but he wanted only Muslims to do the pushing. The Saudi royal family disagreed and threw in with a coalition of western nations. Part of the deal allowed US military personnel to operate from bases in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi is home to the holiest of Muslim shrine at Mecca and Medina and the presence of non-believers on Saudi soil was infuriating to Mr. bin Laden and his followers, even though – in an uncharacteristic burst of cultural sensitivity – the Pentagon bent over backwards to keep from offending Muslims. Non-Muslim religious services were kept to a minimum, women were kept on base, so devout Muslims would not have to look at them, no beer, etc. etc. True, we stepped on the civil rights of our people trying not to offend their people, but we never seem to be able to get that stuff just right.

The point is, Osama thinks he and God got together and destroyed the Soviet Union and since Mr. bin Laden thinks God is an angry god, he probably felt he was speaking for Angry God when he declared that the unfaithful US must be destroyed and so the attacks on the US began and reached a high point (so far) on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, Osama has been quoted as saying he and Allah will destroy the US, just as they did the Soviets. From where he sits, it may look like the plan is working. The US is tied up in two wars, neither of which is going very well. In fact, what’s happened to the US military in the past six years looks an awful lot like what happened to the Soviet military in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Of course, what really brought down the Soviets was their economy, because you can’t be a military power and an economic weakling. And now our economy is tanking – and taking much of the global economy with it, but that’s OK with Osama and his pals because… well, they live in caves and the standard of living they’d prescribe for the rest of us wouldn’t look much different.

From our side of the world, we see that America’s current weakness (military and economic) is due to the incompetence of George Bush and the people around him. It’s odd that both Mr. Bush and Mr. bin Laden think Mr. Bush’s actions as president were ordained by God.

Mr. Bush’s time is nearly through and let’s hope Mr. bin Laden’s is too. Maybe, going forward, we can take responsibility for our own actions and dig ourselves out of this mess.

© 2009, Mark Floegel

Summer in Vermont is a short, beautiful dream from which one wakes and returns to normal. This may sound depressing to some, but here in the north country, there’s a certain comfort in long nights and cold days.

Or maybe I just welcome a return to normal – any kind of normal. A tragedy of the Internet age is that it feeds certain kinds of obsessive-compulsive behavior. I can (and do) check the status of the stock market six or eight times a day. I follow all the political polls and developments.

As with any compulsion, these activities are not particularly gratifying. If the stock market would stop careening up and down, I wouldn’t feel the need to check it so often. (Right now, it’s up 111 points for the day. But the headlines say the economy shrank in the third quarter. And ExxonMobil posted yet another record profit.) You get the picture.

I have no idea when I’ll be able to resort to again checking the market once a day, but at least there’s light at the end of the political tunnel. Five days to go and everybody – especially the candidates – wish it was over already.

I’m ready to return to normal. I’m ready to go back to America, the country I knew before this eight-year delusion set in. Even though the polls say Barack Obama is poised for a significant win on Tuesday, and the Democratic Party is poised to increase its margins in the House and Senate, there will be many Americans who will be angry at the results when they wake up on November 5th.

Anger is an emotion, not an idea, so it can be hard for people to explain. I’ve spoken with people who voted for George Bush and who intend to vote for John McCain. None of them claim to be happy with the way the country has turned out under Mr. Bush’s leadership, although they argue (without much conviction anymore) that an Al Gore or John Kerry administration would have been worse.

These folks are afraid of Sen. Obama. Fear, like anger, is an emotion not an idea, so it can be hard to describe, too. They’re afraid because the outlets where they get their news have behaved irresponsibly, filling their heads with half-truths and untruths. They’re afraid because our nation has, in the last few decades, divided itself into an ideological and cultural civil war. Each side has its own set of beliefs and statistics that wedge us apart, even though our values are similar on each side of the divide.

Fear in America is not limited to people who support Sen. McCain. Sen. Obama’s supporters are afraid, too. Everyone knows the economy is bad; no one knows how bad. We know the news will spool out in the weeks ahead. I tell myself I’m not afraid, just anxious. I’m anxious to know how much (or little) will get spent the day after Thanksgiving, that great barometer of our economic confidence. That anxiety is why I check the stock market so often. (Now it’s up 61 points for the day, so it’s lost 50 points in the last 20 minutes.)

One of the things I didn’t like about the Bush administration is that Mr. Bush acted like he was president of his half of the country and the half that didn’t agree with him could go pound salt.

Although I think the next president will need to take strong, decisive action to get us out of the various messes Mr. Bush has put us in, I hope a President Obama will – as he has repeatedly said he will – govern as the president of all Americans.

Whoever wins Tuesday will have many urgent issues on his desk. No issue, however, is more important than binding up this nation’s divisions and returning us to normal.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

I remember Nixon’s 1972 landslide over George McGovern, but I was 11, I don’t remember the details and I certainly don’t remember what the last few weeks felt like. I was only three when Lyndon Johnson swamped Barry Goldwater in 1964. It took 44 years to coax another Arizonan to run for president after Sen. Goldwater’s drubbing. What Arizonan will want to step up after this?

Two weeks ago, supporters of Barack Obama were walking a gloat/jinx tightrope. The jinx fears seem to have dissipated since. Sen. Orrin Hatch was on MSNBC yesterday bringing up Harry Truman’s 1948 come-from-behind win over Thomas Dewey. When your surrogates start comparing you to Harry Truman of 1948: worry. Later on the same network, Brian Williams and Chuck Todd more or less told Chris Matthews that the election is over and John McCain lost.

On 12 October 2000, I wrote that Al Gore would defeat George Bush. Here are a few choice quotes:

“The way the race looks from here, the election is over and Al Gore wins. The signs are all there. Polls have said that based on platform alone, more Americans prefer the Democratic plan to the Republican. Odious though he may be, people think Al Gore is more capable and better qualified to move into the Oval Office than George Junior. Finally, Bush is struggling to stay alive in Florida, a state that was supposed to be in his pocket all along.”

“All the pundits and analysts are saying this is shaping up as the closest race in 40 years, since Kennedy beat Nixon. Thing is, I remember October 1992, when Bill Clinton was bearing down on George Senior. All the pundits then said it would be the closest race since 1960, but it wasn’t close at all.”

“I’ll put my neck on the line and predict that Al Gore wins in 2000, not a landslide or a mandate, but a win.”

Turns out I was right (although that middle quote was not so good). Al Gore did win the 2000 election. And then it was stolen. There was a good deal of thievery in the 2004 election and we’re already seeing signs of it in 2008. The attempts to purge voter rolls in several states. The hue and cry over supposed “vote fraud” by ACORN.

Here’s the deal with ACORN: they hire people to register voters and they pay them – perhaps foolishly – for every voter they register. Some people give in to the temptation to submit phony names. ACORN’s professional staff catches most of these phony forms; some get through and are caught by the Board of Elections. While phony voter registration forms should not be submitted, it is not the same as voter fraud. If a voter registration form is submitted in the name of Mr. Peanut of 123 Main Street, it doesn’t mean someone is going to show up at the polls on Election Day and claim to be Mr. Peanut of 123 Main Street and try to vote. Although many studies have tried to show that fraudulent voting occurs in America, none of produced evidence of it happening in the modern era.

It’s far easier, as the Republican Party has shown, to suppress the other side’s vote, through intimidation and confusion of poor people. In Indiana, the GOP tried to get a judge to throw out early votes and close early voting polling places in largely Democratic Lake County, because someone “might” have cheated, although they could produce no evidence that anyone had. The judge dismissed the case.

In Ohio, where Sen. Obama’s taking a double-digit lead, the secretary of state, a Democrat, is receiving death threats and envelopes filled with white powder at her office.

David Iglesias, the Republican US attorney who was fired in 2006 by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales because he refused to prosecute bogus GOP voter fraud claims, says “voter fraud” is “like the boogeymen parents use to scare their children. It’s very frightening, and it doesn’t exist.”

We don’t know how this election will turn out. Maybe there will be a “Bradley effect,” in which people tell pollsters they will vote for Mr. Obama, but then don’t, due to in-dwelling racism. (The effect is named for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley – an African American – who was predicted to handily win the California governor’s race against the white George Deukmejian. Mr. Bradley lost.)

What’s important is not to get comfortable, not to give up hope, not to stop working. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

I’m sure John McCain knows how Gen. Wheeler felt. After weeks of publicly confusing Shia and Sunni, of erroneously stating that Iraq shares a border with Afghanistan and not remembering when the surge he takes credit for began; the Russian invasion of Georgia must feel like cool rain on a hot summer’s day.

It’s so much easier to fight the war of 40 years ago than today’s. We’ve already decided who the good and bad guys are and the history books tell us how it comes out. No need to worry about faceless terrorists or dance carefully around the Constitutionally guaranteed religious rights of Muslims. “We’ve got the damned Russkies on the run!”

Actually, we don’t. Truth is, the situation in Georgia (that’s Georgia on the Black Sea, not the one where Gen. Wheeler was born) is as complicated as Iraq or Afghanistan. In the real Cold War days, Georgia was forcibly integrated into the Soviet Union. The Georgians resented this and when the USSR dissolved, the Georgians pulled out, as did many other republics. Two regions of Georgia – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – are not happy being Georgian. Russia, robust once again, thanks to its oil and natural gas reserves is a) angry that the US and NATO helped Kosovo detach itself from Russia’s ally Serbia in the late ‘90s when Russia was weak and b) none too pleased about having an upstart republic on its southern border, especially one that has allied itself with the US and wants to join NATO.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and de facto autocrat has been playing a clever game of chess with the west with South Ossetia and Abkhazia as his pawns and Georgia as the opposing queen. Because the US and NATO supported Kosovo, he supports the breakaway Georgian regions. Because Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili wants to join NATO, Mr. Putin arranges a situation that makes NATO look weak.

George Bush, for his part, took a minute away from watching the Olympics to warn the Russians not to go too far in their Georgian military campaign, after which the Russians immediately went too far. They know the US cannot and will not come to Georgia’s aid. There’s been a great deal of back and forth in the press about what the US should do about Georgia, but it’s not a “should” question. It’s a “can” question and the answer is, “No, we can’t.”

We can’t because politically we encouraged Kosovo’s separatism and because we are conducting our own unjustified war of choice in Iraq. The big “can’t” – the real “can’t” – is our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched our military too far already; there’s no way we can take on Russia in the Caucuses.

Then there’s the oil issue. As I noted above, Russia is an oil giant these days. There have been plans to run an oil pipeline through Georgia, which Russia sees as the west hedging in on its turf. A few years ago when Ukraine, another former Soviet Republic, got all up in Vlad Putin’s face, he turned off the natural gas in the middle of winter – which also turned off the natural gas for much of Europe. All those European members of NATO remember that, which is why no one in Europe is rushing to send paratroops to Georgia.

This is not the Cold War. This is what happens when nations fail to learn the lessons of the Cold War. Back in the Cold War days, we engaged in the worst kind of identity politics: everything the US did was good, everything the Soviets did was bad – even when we did the same kind of things.

That kind of thinking ignored the complexities of reality then and it’s no more helpful now. We need to remember what kept the Cold War from heating up at the crucial moments was the willingness to speak to one’s opponents, to recognize their real interests and to stand up for one’s own.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

All of this year’s presidential candidates – the ones that have dropped from the race and the ones still in – promise change.

Our world is changing around us at a rapid rate. Most changes are for the worse. Even if change is for the better, it’s difficult. People don’t like change and they really don’t like rapid change.

What people don’t like about change is uncertainty. Is my job safe? Will we lose everything if someone in my family faces a medical emergency? When will this war end? When will our troops come home? What happens if my town is hit by a major storm? Will I still be able to afford insurance?

Since the major accomplishment of the Bush/Cheney administration has been to deliver this bouquet of uncertainty to each and every American, all the people who want to replace George Bush promise change. In this case, change means a return to peace and prosperity.

Don’t believe them. All the candidates mean well and are sure they are the right person to lead the nation in uncertain times, no doubt. There will be no magic on Inauguration Day next year. The messes Mr. Bush made – the war, the ruin of America’s reputation, the wrecked economy – and the messes he didn’t create but merely exacerbated – global warming, the health care crisis – will not leave us for many years, not in our lifetimes.

Here’s one piece of it. The federal Energy Information Agency reported Monday that for a year – from 1 October 2006 through 30 September 2007 (the latest date for which figures are available), the global demand for oil exceeded supply. (You can see the numbers by clicking here. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Excel spreadsheet entitled “World Oil Balance” in the lower left corner.) In the third quarter of 2007, average demand was one million barrels per day higher than supply.

Since the Oil Age began, we’ve never had a year in which demand has exceeded supply. Our global petroleum system is big enough that there’s sufficient oil “in the pipeline” to keep society running even as we run a consumption deficit, but if the situation continues, the laws of both economics and physics require that hard times are ahead.

Hard times ahead bring to mind hard times past. The most obvious comparison is the early decades of the 20th century, when the planet was ravaged by war, epidemic, famine, revolution and depression.

The citizens of the hard-hit nations of Europe, sickened by the abrupt changes in their lives, opted for certainty, even though the certainty offered was the foolish certainty of tyrants like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. They got their security – some of them did – at a terrible cost and for a very short time.

America, spared the revolutions and famine and less injured by the Great War, found its leader in Franklin Roosevelt. He promised boldness and change – and delivered both – but he did not promise certainty.

In the years of uncertainty since the terrorist attacks of 2001, we have as a nation sought the foolish certainty of a perceived strong leader – “the decider” as he styles himself – and we’ve paid for our foolishness.

If there is sensibility left in the American people, and I think there is, we will this year turn away from the glib promises of those who would trade our freedom for security and deliver neither.

As ashamed as I have been of my nation’s leaders, things could have been worse. Things may become worse yet, if we as citizens fail to take the appropriate action available to us.

The years ahead will lack certainty. They do not have to lack democracy.

© Mark Floegel, 2008

Don’t celebrate yet. The Bush/Cheney appetite for crime will likely increase, if anything, in the months ahead. This morning’s Washington Post gives good examples.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refuses to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee whether or not he thinks waterboarding is torture, although he admitted he’d think it was torture if it happened to him. Meanwhile, the other Mike, CIA Director General Michael Hayden admits his agency has done it. Three times. If the Bush administration admits waterboarding three times, no one will blame you for guessing that it happens a whole lot more than that.

The White House spokesperson corps – that bastion of credibility – confirmed the instances of torture. Spokesoid Tony Fratto said the administration is going public because of “misinformation” about waterboarding and because the White House wants to be clear about “what the benefits were” from this particular form of torture.

I guess they would know the specifics of various forms of torture. The people who run our nation, we should be proud to say, are torture connoisseurs.

Waterboarding has been used at least as far back as the Spanish Inquisition. That’s time-tested, quality torture. In fact – and isn’t this ironic? – it was in 1492 that Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain turned the Inquisition loose to torture (with some waterboarding, we presume) Muslims and Jews into converting to Catholicism. To celebrate this, Isabella and Ferdinand gave Christopher Columbus the money he needed to sail off to America; so really, waterboarding Muslims is linked to the early foundations of American society.

Little known fact: Ponce de Leon was looking for the fountain of youth, so he could use the water for waterboarding. It seems some of the older Jews and Muslims were dying – weak hearts and whatnot – before they could be successfully tortured into accepting the One True Faith. His was truly a selfless quest.

But that’s the past. This is an election year and elections are about the future.

Rudy Giuliani, who is no longer a candidate for president, may have been done in not by his inept campaign (although it truly was inept), but because Rudy, let’s face it, is a low-class torturer.

Sure, while he was in the race, he boasted that his administration would torture more than Mr. Bush’s. He’d brag at debates about all the torture of his fellow Italian-Americans he’d overseen when he was a US attorney. Tony Fratto – or anyone else in the White House – could have told him, “Rudy, it’s not quantity, it’s quality that makes the torture.”

In Rudy Giuliani’s NYPD, they’d rape you with a plunger and kick your teeth in. That’s low class. Maybe they’d shoot you 41 times while you were pulling your wallet out. That’s counter-productive. Maybe undercover cops would ask to buy drugs from you (cause you’re, y’know, a black guy) and when you tell them you don’t sell drugs, they’d shoot you dead, then Rudy would hold a press conference to bad-mouth you while your family was mourning. But now I’m digressing. Maybe Rudy’s cops would wade into crowds of peaceful demonstrators, swinging their clubs and screaming, “It’s Giuliani time!” That’s just gauche. Like I said, low-class. Voters were right to reject him.

John McCain, who leads the GOP race, is a survivor of torture. It’s unclear if there was waterboarding. He is anti-torture. Five and a half years in a POW camp will do that to you. For his anti-torture stance and other perceived sins, the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters promise to vote for the Democratic candidate instead.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have promised that, if elected, no torturing will occur on their watch.

Mitt Romney, in the extraordinarily unlikely event he beats Mr. McCain, has promised to double the size of the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. He’ll be thrilled to learn the Bush administration has a secret prison there. The Washington Post interviewed an army psychologist Col. Larry James, stationed down there. He said he knew nothing about the secret prisoners. He said, “I learned a long, long time ago, if I’m going to be successful in the intel community, I’m meticulously – in a very, very dedicated way – going to stay in my lane. So if I don’t have a specific need to know about something, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t ask about it.”

Eleven fun months to go.

Update: A few hours after this was posted, Mitt Romney dropped from the Republican race. Apparently, like Rudy Giuliani, he thought quantity torture equals quality torture and he paid for his mistake.

© Mark Floegel, 2008