Author Archive for Mary Fitzgerald

Unconventional wisdom

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on April 18, 2008
in United States
. 1 Comment

One of the most puzzling myths about the drawn-out Obama/Clinton battle is the notion that their bitter mudslinging will damage the Democrats’ chances of victory in November. While working on the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next Tuesday, I found the opposite to be the case.

Party elders may (very publicly) wring their hands about the ammunition the warring camps are supplying McCain—Obama the “elitist” snob, Clinton the amoral “monster” and so on—but few have admitted the enormous potential gains from the gripping contest.

No publicity is bad publicity, and throughout March and April the Democrats have dominated the headlines, while McCain’s agenda has slipped from the public eye. Last month alone, the two candidates raised a formidable $60m, and the ongoing campaigning means that armies of Clinton and Obama volunteers up and down Pennsylvania have been gathering reams of useful information about voters—no bad thing in a crucial swing state.

Read more here.

Libel terrorism

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on April 7, 2008
in Media
. 1 Comment

A new entry for the rapidly burgeoning war-on-terror dictionary: “libel terrorism”.

In February, the New York state senate unanimously passed a “Libel Terrorism Protection” bill which protects writers in New York from being sued under foreign libel laws.

The initiative came after a Saudi businessman, Sheikh Kalid bin Mahfouz, sued writer Rachel Ehrenfeld, on the basis of a successful action in Britain 3 years ago. Ehrenfeld’s book, Funding Evil, alleges Mafouz used charities to fund terrorism. Although never published in the UK, 23 copies found their way into the country, and the publishers were not only forced to pay substantial damages, but to shred the offending books.

The New York legislature’s move is part of a wider backlash against the “libel tourism” for which Britain has become famed. One can’t help noting the irony, however, that while the UK upholds some of the world’s the most draconian defamation laws, its tabloid press is notorious for its “lax” reporting ethics—as the aforementioned Ms Power recently discovered to her cost.

The gaffe that keeps on giving

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on April 4, 2008
in United States
. 0 Comments

As coincidence would have it, Barack Obama was wrapping up a state-wide tour of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia just as his former foreign policy advisor Samantha Power arrived in town to honour the last engagement in her worldwide book tour.

Soon after a somewhat hoarse but nonetheless eloquent Obama fired up a rapturous crowd of volunteers at the city’s convention centre, a somewhat hoarse but also eloquent Ms Power addressed a more sedentary gathering at the public library across town. The discussion focused mainly on issues related to her new book: a new direction for US foreign policy, the ethics of humanitarian intervention and possible reforms within the UN. But Ms Power was at ease discussing the incident she now drily refers to as “Monstergate.” “I used to an author of a book. Now I’m an author of a comment,” she quipped. ”I know that my blunder is fair game for life.”

In fact, ”Monstergate” was the latest in a series of potential blunders that the straight-talking Power might have caught herself in. Although it was not widely reported, just a few days before the infamous Scotsman interview was published, she told a gathering at London’s ICA in London that Obama’s 14-16 monthtime timeframe for withdrawing troops from Iraq was contingent, and might have to be revised. This largely slipped under the radar, possibly because the audience was British, but had the US media latched onto this things might have been very different.

Power, however, claims she has now learned her lesson, and will in future be the model of discretion. And she has made an exemplary start. At a recent Columbia Law School appearance, she explained she decision to quit the Obama team thus: it made sense for her to step aside, she said, “at least for a while.”

How Americans see us

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on April 4, 2008
in British politics, Elections and United States
. 2 Comments

Whatever Londoners might think of Boris Johnson at the moment, he is certainly ticking all the right boxes here in the US, where the penchant for the bumbling, foppish British stereotype is as persistent as ever. According to the New York Times, Johnson is a welcome respite from our recent slew of ”gray, chronically self-editing politicians.” Step aside Reverend Blair and Mme Thatcher, Boris is the real deal; and they’ve even found an “authentic British voice” to tell us why:

“He bumbles a lot, but he’s a lot cleverer than you think,” said Lizzie Vines, a 50-year-old Devon farmer. “It’s a very British thing to do, to pretend to be stupid when you’re not.”

Vine added that she admired his honesty. What about his adultery, in that case?

“Cheating on your wife? That’s a very British thing to do, too.”

Any ideas, candidates?

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on March 18, 2008
in Economics and United States
. 0 Comments

If Eugene Robinson’s op-ed in the Washington Post today somewhat states the obvious, it’s an obvious that needs stating: How are Obama and Clinton going to pay for universal health insurance if billions of dollars keep evaporating from the US economy? And how will old stalwart McCain fund his Hundred Years’ War in the middle east if Wall Street is in ruins? McCain recently admitted that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He is now, however, finding time to dip into Alan Greenspan’s book.

Left-wing blimps, act II

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on March 14, 2008
in Arts and culture
. 0 Comments

Michael Billington’s latest meditations on the Guardian arts blog merely underlines the case John Elsom made in this issue about British theatre’s left-wing blimps. Would Billington’s ‘concern’ for the future quality David Mamet’s work, after the dramatist’s self-declared swing to the right, have been quite so overwhelming if Mamet had instead confessed to joining the Socialist Worker’s Party?

Clinton demonology

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on March 10, 2008
in Uncategorized and United States
. 4 Comments

Andrew Sullivan’s lead piece in the Sunday Times yesterday — “The Clintons, a horror film that never ends” —picked up on an idea that has gained swift currency in the past week: that Hillary Clinton is not just cold, calculating and impersonal, but she is in fact a creature of the Undead.

It’s a view that Christopher Hitchens certainly subscribes to: (watch the great public intellectual compare the Clintons to “zombies, vampires and werewolves” on the Morning Joe talkshow).

And another youtube clip from a slick impressario who calls himself ‘Reihan’ makes the case even more watertight.

While Sullivan’s marvellous thesis deserves to be read in full, here is the crux of it:

“It’s alive! We thought it might be over but some of us never dared fully believe it. Last week was like one of those moments in a horror movie when the worst terror recedes, the screen goes blank and then reopens on green fields or a lover’s tender embrace. Drained but still naive audiences breathe a collective sigh of relief. The plot twists have all been resolved; the threat is gone; the quiet spreads. And then . . .

The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can’t escape; you can’t hide; and you can’t win.”

Of course, all this demonology will probably play straight into Clinton’s hand—it won’t be long before we’re hearing the familiar “the boys are ganging up on me” refrain. Inevitably she will try and convert this into sympathy votes—we might even expect some more tears, to prove to us that she really is human after all, and not some ghoulish host who sleeps in a grave.

Of course, this isn’t a case of the “boys ganging up on her” at all. It was Samantha Power who coined that memorable epithet: “monster.” Meanwhile Hitchens explicitly analogises the Clintons (plural) and doesn’t exactly cheerlead for Obama either (in the same interview, he said the Illinois Senator belongs to a “dumb, nasty, ethnic rock ‘n’ roll racist church”). Sullivan’s diatribe also had an emphatically dual focus—it’s the bloodlust of both Clintons that keeps him awake at night, quivering with fear.

Do not expect this, however, to temper the howling accusations of sexism which will emit from Clinton HQ. As Hitchens puts it:

“[A]nyone who, like me, when they think about Clintons, thinks about zombies, thinks about the undead, thinks about stakes through the heart, silver bullets and so on, has just received confirmation. It’s as bad as we thought it was going to be.”

Power Out

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on March 7, 2008
in United States
. 5 Comments

Without further ado, Sam Power has resigned as foreign policy advisor to Obama.

As a seasoned journalist herself, Power should have known to be more guarded in her comments, and her resignation may have been be the fair price to pay for them. However, also as a journalist, she might have have reasonably expected “off-the-record” to mean that very thing, as it usually does. Despite the explanation The Scotsman offered for printing her remarks, their reasoning leaves a lot open to question in terms of the broader ethics of reporting.

As all journalists know, off the record exchanges are an incredibly useful way to gather information. Political reporting simply wouldn’t exist without them. Unless something is pressingly in the public interest (and Power’s use of metaphor was manifestly not) it is in our collective interest not to abuse this basic rule.

Ms Power may rightly be feeling hard done by. But she is only 38 and has already had an impressive career—she is a highly successful author, academic and journalist, and will no doubt go on to achieve even greater things. On the other hand, the future looks less rosy for Scotsman hack Gerri Peev, who may soon discover that people aren’t so willing to talk to her anymore.

Monstrous errors

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on March 7, 2008
in United States
. 4 Comments

It’s been a week of collective foot-in-mouth for the once-dignified Team Obama.

Highlights have included the news – on the eve of the Ohio primary - that Austin Goolsbee, Obama’s top economic policy adviser, had told Canadian officials that Obama’s public pledge to force a renegotiation of Nafta was not sincere, and was “more about political positioning.” Cue Ohio, which has suffered huge manufacturing job losses, voting overwhelmingly for Clinton.

Then Obama’s foreign policy advisor, the usually eloquent and impressive Samantha Power (who seems to have never been able to escape a profile without being described as flame-haired), had a rather unsisterly outburst in an interview with The Scotsman:

“We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted. “In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win.

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,”

“You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’… The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”

One of the much-touted qualities of Obama’s brand was that it drew together a broad church. Now, though, with a pastor with alleged links to an ‘Islamo-facism’, an economic advisor who may well have cost him a swing state, and a diplomacy advisor who has been anything but diplomatic, it is all starting to come apart at the seams.

In the Scotsman interview, Power said: “Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too.” She was, for the record, referring to the Clinton campaign.

Super Tuesday - part III

Published
by
Mary Fitzgerald
on March 5, 2008
in United States
. 6 Comments

If the cacophony of pundits is to be believed, Hillary is now the Comeback Kid (I’ve lost count of how many times that mantle been passed between the two Democratic rivals), and we can expect a long slog, possibly stretching until the August convention. Super Tuesday Round 3 will be Pennsylvania on 22nd April, but this is only the first (or third, or sixth, depending on how you’re counting) in a series of past and future “final showdowns.”

What has tickled me most in the weeks since Super Tuesday Round 1 has been the increasingly high-pitched and, frankly, illogical noises emitted from the Clinton camp. As Obama’s 11-state streak gathered pace, Clinton HQ had even started making the baffling case that while the Illinois Senator was winning a lot of states, his victories were in states where Democrats had no hope of ever winning a real election (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, etc), and Clinton was therefore more legitimate because she could carry states “where it really mattered” - ie. where the Democrats were already likely to win in November.

Of course, this argument is absurd and I have no idea why it was not laughed at more at the time. The best candidate for the party would surely be the one who could entice the most people outside the natural Democratic constituency. But, as I will elaborate more on in a minute, logic has rarely been at the forefront of the Democratic mindset in this contest.

Now, with a convincing win in Ohio under her belt, Clinton’s electoral viability has genuinely begun to look more robust. Ohio is one of the big three swing states in US national elections —the other two are Florida and Pennsylvania. She is polling ahead in Pennsylvania (currently with a 9 point lead) and she won Florida. While her Florida victory was somewhat hollow because neither candidate campaigned there, all the data suggests she would have won in that state in a real contest too, because Obama is seen as soft on immigration, and willing to talk to foreign “despots” (not a popular stance among Florida’s vocal Cuban exile community).

But Florida is where the picture gets complicated, and where the real foolishness of the Democratic party begins to sink in. By breaking party rules, and having their state’s votes disqualified, the Democrats have made themselves very unpopular with a lot of Floridians—and this may well tip the knife-edge balance against them in the November election.

As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once quipped: “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The same could reasonably be said for the Democratic party. They have already, utterly needlessly, shot themselves in the foot in the one state that could, and has in the past, decided the national election. And while the clear message from polls is that Obama is much more likely to beat McCain in an election than Clinton (in some surveys he has a twelve point lead against McCain, while she stands to lose against him), the majority of so-called Democrats voting last night still chose Clinton to represent them.

Polls can be unreliable. But the longer this race drags on, the more the Democrats appear disorganised and divided, and the more convincing McCain’s candidacy will seem—despite the fact that his own party is riven with deep ideological fault lines, and has given the country one of the most unpopular presidents in its history.

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I’m starting to smell the whiff of deliberate self-sabotage.