Don't Get Mad; Get Even.

by hilzoy

Having wallowed in despair over the detainee bill, I have decided to do something constructive, namely: inflict more misery on you, my gentle readers. -- I was looking at the Cook Political Report's new rankings of the most competitive Senate races, and to my horror and amazement, my own race, which I don't think of as all that competitive, was ranked ahead of the Virginia Senate race, which pits James Webb against the awful George Allen.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

If Webb wins, several wonderful things happen. First, there's one more Democrat in the Senate. Second, there's one more Democrat who is capable and confident about national security. Third, George Allen loses, and macaques everywhere breathe a sigh of relief. But here's the most important thing: George Allen's chances of ever successfully running for President become really, really remote.

This matters. We've already had an incompetent faux Cowboy with a streak of cruelty as President for eight years. I'm not sure we can withstand another. Allen's chances of becoming President have already been damaged, but losing his Senate race would drive a well-deserved hemlock stake through their heart.

However, there's a problem. To illustrate, I made a little graph in Excel:

See what I mean about misery?That's an eleven million dollar fundraising advantage. And we can't have that, can we? Of course not. So here's the link: donate.

If you require actual reasons, read on.

Webb's issue page consists of a long and (to me) extremely impressive essay on Iraq and national security, followed by a series of very, very short positions on other issues. The short positions are generally good short positions, but it's pretty clear that Webb's main area of interest is national security. That is fine with me. There are a lot of Democrats in Congress who are health care wonks, and I'm sure Webb can and will learn from them. What we badly need is people with more credibility on national security, and that he provides.

I mean: you have to love a candidate whose second paragraph on national security contains this:

"Issues in the Middle East are closely connected to matters across the globe to which we need strategic solutions. For instance, China has been developing closer ties with the exact Middle Eastern countries that pose challenges to the US. This is a dangerous and neglected alliance that we need to address."

This is true. It's very important. And it's exactly the kind of issue that the present administration has been neglecting while it concentrates on untangling the mess it has created in Iraq without violating any of its silly rules, like the one that says we won;t talk to people we don't like, however useful it might be. The Democrats need people who think this way.

Plus, do you know what his first book was called? Micronesia and U.S. Pacific Strategy, that's what. I love it.

Moreover, while the ability to write books about Micronesia is a wonderful thing, having good judgment is even better (at least, in a Senator.) And Webb actually got Iraq right before we invaded. Here's a link to an editorial he wrote in the Washington Post back in September of 2002:

"American military leaders have been trying to bring a wider focus to the band of neoconservatives that began beating the war drums on Iraq before the dust had even settled on the World Trade Center. Despite the efforts of the neocons to shut them up or to dismiss them as unqualified to deal in policy issues, these leaders, both active-duty and retired, have been nearly unanimous in their concerns. Is there an absolutely vital national interest that should lead us from containment to unilateral war and a long-term occupation of Iraq? And would such a war and its aftermath actually increase our ability to win the war against international terrorism? (...)

America's best military leaders know that they are accountable to history not only for how they fight wars, but also for how they prevent them. The greatest military victory of our time -- bringing an expansionist Soviet Union in from the cold while averting a nuclear holocaust -- was accomplished not by an invasion but through decades of intense maneuvering and continuous operations. With respect to the situation in Iraq, they are conscious of two realities that seem to have been lost in the narrow debate about Saddam Hussein himself. The first reality is that wars often have unintended consequences -- ask the Germans, who in World War I were convinced that they would defeat the French in exactly 42 days. The second is that a long-term occupation of Iraq would beyond doubt require an adjustment of force levels elsewhere, and could eventually diminish American influence in other parts of the world.

Other than the flippant criticisms of our "failure" to take Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War, one sees little discussion of an occupation of Iraq, but it is the key element of the current debate. The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay. This reality was the genesis of a rift that goes back to the Gulf War itself, when neoconservatives were vocal in their calls for "a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad." Their expectation is that the United States would not only change Iraq's regime but also remain as a long-term occupation force in an attempt to reconstruct Iraqi society itself.

The connotations of "a MacArthurian regency in Baghdad" show how inapt the comparison is. Our occupation forces never set foot inside Japan until the emperor had formally surrendered and prepared Japanese citizens for our arrival. Nor did MacArthur destroy the Japanese government when he took over as proconsul after World War II. Instead, he was careful to work his changes through it, and took pains to preserve the integrity of Japan's imperial family. Nor is Japanese culture in any way similar to Iraq's. The Japanese are a homogeneous people who place a high premium on respect, and they fully cooperated with MacArthur's forces after having been ordered to do so by the emperor. The Iraqis are a multiethnic people filled with competing factions who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam. Indeed, this very bitterness provided Osama bin Laden the grist for his recruitment efforts in Saudi Arabia when the United States kept bases on Saudi soil after the Gulf War.

In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets."

Pretty prescient, I'd say. That's the kind of judgment we need more of.

***

And then there's his opponent. Need I say more? Maybe not, but I will anyways. Before we get to the issue of race and dishonesty, note that there are reasons to worry about Allen that have nothing to do with the latest brouhaha, and will continue to exist even if, as I very much doubt, all the latest stuff turns out to be without foundation. For instance, remember this, from the day of Ben Bernanke's confirmation vote?

"Indeed, here is what Senator George Allen of Virginia, who is considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said when asked his opinion of the Bernanke nomination.

"For what?"

Told that Mr. Bernanke was up for the Fed chairman's job, Mr. Allen hedged a little, said he had not been focused on it, and wondered aloud when the hearings would be. Told that the Senate Banking Committee hearings had concluded in November, the senator responded: "You mean I missed them all? I paid no attention to them.""

It's fine for my auto mechanic not to know who the Fed chairman is. It's not fine for a US Senator.

And then there's racism. As of now, someone has come forward to confirm the most disturbing recent allegation:

"After they had killed a deer, Shelton said he remembers Allen asking Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. "He proceeded to take the doe's head and stuff it into a mailbox," Shelton said."

In addition to the three people Salon found who recalled Allen using the n-word, two more people have now come forward to say that they heard him do so, and one more says he has "very credible testimony" that the allegations are true. Allen denies the charges, but to me, at least, his position is looking less tenable by the minute.

Besides, it's not as though this is the first inkling we've ever had that Allen has, shall we say, issues with race. The classic account of this is behind TNR's subscription wall, so here are some excerpts:

"George Allen is the oldest child of legendary football coach George Herbert Allen, and, when his father was on the road, young George often acted as a surrogate dad to his siblings. According to his sister Jennifer, he was particularly strict about bedtimes. One night, his brother Bruce stayed up past his bedtime. George threw him through a sliding glass door. For the same offense, on a different occasion, George tackled his brother Gregory and broke his collarbone. When Jennifer broke her bedtime curfew, George dragged her upstairs by her hair.

George tormented Jennifer enough that, when she grew up, she wrote a memoir of what it was like living in the Allen family. In one sense, the book, Fifth Quarter, from which these details are culled, is unprecedented. No modern presidential candidate has ever had such a harsh and personal account of his life delivered to the public by a close family member. The book paints Allen as a cartoonishly sadistic older brother who holds Jennifer by her feet over Niagara Falls on a family trip (instilling in her a lifelong fear of heights) and slams a pool cue into her new boyfriend's head. "George hoped someday to become a dentist," she writes. "George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession--getting paid to make people suffer."

Whuppin' his siblings might have been a natural prelude to Confederate sympathies and noose-collecting if Allen had grown up in, say, a shack in Alabama. But what is most puzzling about Allen's interest in the old Confederacy is that he didn't grow up in the South. Like a military brat, Allen hopscotched around the country on a route set by his father's coaching career. The son was born in Whittier, California, in 1952 (Whittier College Poets), moved to the suburbs of Chicago for eight years (the Bears), and arrived in Southern California as a teenager (the Rams). In Palos Verdes, an exclusive cliffside community, he lived in a palatial home with sweeping views of downtown Los Angeles and the Santa Monica basin. It had handmade Italian tiles and staircases that his eccentric mother, Etty, designed to match those in the Louvre. "It looks like a French château," says Linda Hurt Germany, a high school classmate. (...)

In high school, Allen's "Hee Haw" persona made him a polarizing figure. "He rode a little red Mustang around with a Confederate flag plate on the front," says Patrick Campbell, an old classmate, who now works for the Public Works Department in Manhattan Beach, California. "I mean, it was absurd-looking in our neighborhood." Hurt Germany, who now lives in Paso Robles, California, explodes with anger at the mention of Allen's name. "The guy is horrible," she complains. "He drove around with a Confederate flag on his Mustang. I can't believe he's going to run for president." Another classmate, who asks that I not use her name, also remembers Allen's obsession with Dixie: "My impression is that he was a rebel. He plastered the school with Confederate flags." (...)

It was the night before a major basketball game with Morningside High. The mostly black inner-city school adjacent to Watts was coming to the almost entirely white Palos Verdes High to play. When students arrived at school on game day, they found graffiti spray-painted on the school library and other places. All five people who described the incident say the graffiti was racially tinged and meant to look like the handiwork of the black Morningside students. But it was actually put there by Allen and some of his friends. "It was something like die whitey," says Campbell. The school administrator, who says he is a Republican and would "seriously consider" voting for Allen for president, says the graffiti said, "burn, baby, burn," a reference to the race riots."

And then there's this bit, which seems relevant both to Allen's character and to his recent denials that he used racial slurs. Ryan Lizza is interviewing Allen. He's wondering what to make of all these high school stories: has he just "stepped into the middle of a revenge-of-the-nerds type spat"? And then:

"I stared closely at Allen's smirk in his photo, weighing whether his old classmates were just out to destroy him. And then I noticed something on his collar. It's hard to make out, but then it becomes obvious. Seventeen-year-old George Allen is wearing a Confederate flag pin.

Still, I wasn't sure I'd ask him about it. And then he says something that changes my mind. As a child, Allen tells me, before he even moved to California, he learned about the painful history of the South when his dad would take the kids on long drives from Chicago to New Orleans and other Southern cities for football bowl games. There was one searing memory from those trips he shares with me. "I remember," Allen says, "driving through--somehow, my father was on some back road in Mississippi one time--and we had Illinois license plates. And it was a time when some of the freedom riders had been killed, and somehow we're on this road. And you see a cross burning way off in the fields. I was young at the time. I just remember the sense of urgency as we were driving through the night, a carload of people with Illinois license plates--that this is not necessarily a safe place to be."

Now the pin seemed even worse. Why would a young man with such a sensitive understanding of Southern racial conflict and no Southern heritage wear a Confederate flag in his formal yearbook photo?

I finally ask him if he remembers the pin, explaining that another of his classmates had the same one in his photo, a guy named Deke. "No," Allen says with a laugh. "Where is this picture?" He leans forward over his desk and tightens his lip around the plug of Copenhagen in his mouth. "Hmmm." He pauses. He speaks slowly, apparently searching his memory. "Well, it's no doubt I was rebellious," he says, "a rebellious kid. I don't know. Unless we were doing something for the fun of it. Deke was from Texas. He was a good friend. Let me think." He stretches back in the chair, his boots sticking out from underneath his desk. "Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I'll have to find it myself." Another pause. "I don't know. We would probably do things to upset people from time to time.""

All sensitivity and childhood lessons, until he gets caught.

This is not a guy who should be in the Senate. Jim Webb is. Think about what it means to get into Southern memorabilia while growing up in Southern California, what it means to throw one brother through a sliding glass door and break another's collarbone, not to mention stuffing the head of a deer into someone's mailbox because that person is black. Then take a nice, long look at the horrible fundraising graph. The contribution I made is getting lonely.

And one more thing:

Comments

[Nate]

Man. I didn't realize Allen had so much extra money, though I'd long since realized he was a total asshat, since the time he visited my high school, years ago. I think I'll go donate some money to Webb, not that I can give much, as a poor college student. Ah well.

[Gary Farber]

Webb has little money; only much attention to his opponent.

I've written about Allen, sometimes with video, here, the video of Allen saying being asked if he was Jewish was an "aspersion," and here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I like to think that some of watching this idiot is even funny, if poking a moronic bigot can be so.

[hilzoy]

I wanted to make the graph have elegant slender bars, but I don't know how to use Excel, so it came out all clunky and ugly ;(

The photo of the macaque expresses my mood right now. Note: the macaque is angry, but it's predominantly a threat display.

As I have said before, civility is perfectly consistent with passionate opposition, and well-directed fury.

[hilzoy]

And Nate: thanks. Have any rich friends? (Insert grin here.)

[hilzoy]

Award for best Allen-inspired graphics to Majikthise.

[Gary Farber]

"This is not a guy who should be in the Senate."

And yet not only is he, but until weeks ago, he was the leading Republican candidate for President.

I realize this will make Slarti go "huh" and figuratively "wuh" and probably ask for links, and support for the outlandish claim, and otherwise explain that he'd never heard of Allen, and such, but: lo.

[Slartibartfast]

I see Gary and Jesurgislac are treading some common ground here. At least they're being proactive.

[Jesurgislac]

Slarti: At least they're being proactive.

Only thinking of you, Slarti.

[lily]

I gave Webb a hundred bucks right after he won the primary. I have no money now. I did tell everybody that the only present I want for my birthday in October is donations to Democrats ( I gave list and Webb is on it).

[jason]

I have a question about campaign finance - I would love to give to Webb's campaign but remember seeing somewhere that contributions in any given election cycle for an individual are limited to $2k - is that a misunderstanding? I don't want to run afoul of the law, and would appreciate any guidance you or your readers could offer. If I could tithe my income at this point I would. Despondent doesn't even begin...

[KCinDC]

Jason, you must be thinking of the $2,100 limit for an individual giving to a candidate. It means you can give $2,100 to each of as many candidates as you like (as long as you remain below limits on total donations). Also, any money given in a primary doesn't count against the limit for the general, since that's another election. And beyond that, there are higher limits for giving to PACs and parties.

So if you gave $2,100 to Webb after the primary, you can't give any more to him. But you could give up to $5,000 to a PAC that's supporting Webb (not sure which would be best), or up to $10,000 to the Democratic Party of Virginia, for example.

There is a total limit of $101,400 for donations during a two-year period, of which no more than $40,000 can be donations to candidates.

There are more details on the FEC site.

[spurwing plover]

We sure dont need a wacko like this in the senate he sound like too big arisk for this nation