Tribal Politics
Was race a factor in the decision of Colin Powell to repudiate his party's nominee and friend of 25 years, Sen. John McCain, two weeks before Election Day, and to endorse Barack Obama?
Gen. Powell does not deny it, contending only that race was not the only or decisive factor. "If I had only that fact in mind," he told Tom Brokaw, "I could have done this six, eight, ten months ago."
Yet, in hailing Barack as a "transformational figure" whose election would "electrify our country ... (and) the world," Powell seems to testify to the centrality of Barack's ethnicity to his decision.
For what else is there about this freshman senator, who has no significant legislative accomplishment, to transform our politics and to electrify the world, other than the fact that he would be the nation's first African-American president?
Powell's endorsement follows that of another African-American icon, Congressman John Lewis of Selma Bridge fame, who switched allegiance from Hillary to Barack, while Clinton still had a fighting chance to win.
When Lewis deserted her in February, he, too, claimed a Road-to-Damascus experience, to have seen a transformational figure:
"Something's happening in America, something some of us did not see coming ... Barack Obama has tapped into something that is extraordinary. ... It's a movement. It's a spiritual event."
Lewis' desertion, however, was not unrelated to a primary challenge in his Atlanta district and angry constituent demands to know why he was not backing the first black with a real chance at winning the White House.
Powell was under no such pressure. Hence, what he did, and why, are subjects of media and political speculation.
Understandably, Powell is being hailed by the Obama media as a profile in courage. Equally understandably, his endorsement of Obama is said by Republicans to smack of ingratitude, opportunism, and even vindictiveness toward a party to which he owes his fame and career.
Here was a man who was rendered extraordinary honors by three Republican presidents. Reagan raised him from Army colonel to national security adviser, the first African-American in the post. George H. W. Bush named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs, over hundreds of more senior officers. George W. Bush made him the first African-American secretary of state.
While he may have gotten well with the capital elite with this decision, Powell has wounded his party's nominee at a point of maximum vulnerability, a friend who supported him on the war, and agreed with Powell on the need for a larger invasion force. And Powell has embraced a liberal Democrat who owes his nomination to his fierce opposition to the war Powell sold the nation, a war Obama calls the worst blunder in U.S. history and a manifestation of a lack of judgment by those, like Colin Powell, who launched it.
Joe Biden, who voted to authorize the war, now calls his vote a mistake. Yet, Powell endorses him, too, while repudiating a McCain-Palin ticket that continues to defend his war.
And the scatter-gun attack Powell launched on the GOP ticket—hitting McCain for fumbling the financial crisis, choosing Sarah Palin, pressing Barack's association with William Ayers, and not defending Obama's Christianity—suggests a man with scores to settle with the party of George W. Bush.
Yet, what kind of Republican can Powell be when he professes deep concern that McCain might choose Supreme Court justices like John Roberts and Sam Alito? Every Republican in the Senate voted for Roberts. All but one voted for Alito.
Does Colin Powell have a problem with Antonin Scalia? Is the general a Ruth Bader Ginsberg Republican?
There is speculation Powell feels badly used by the neocons who cherry-picked and hyped the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction he presented at the U.N., and that he harbors a distrust of the neocons now reassembling around McCain.
If so, he surely has a case, and should have made it.
But in the last analysis, one comes back to the forbidden issue of ethnicity. For example, would Powell have endorsed Hillary, had she won the nomination? After all, her views on Iraq—having supported the war and never apologized—are even closer to Powell's than Obama's.
The issue cannot be avoided.
After all, we are in a year where Obama defeated the wife of "our first black president," Bill Clinton, 90-10 in the black wards of Philly, and African-Americans, in one poll, are going 94-1 for Barack. And a Republican ticket that is hammering Barack on his ties to William Ayers fears to bring up his far closer ties to the Afro-racist anti-American Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Organizing a fundraiser last year for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, an Hispanic Democrat, Lionel Sosa of San Antonio, a political strategist for Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, said, "Blood runs thicker than politics."
Mr. Sosa is perhaps more candid about his motives than folks in D.C.
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The ironies abound regarding the latest episode of American racial politics. As Pat Buchanan notes, Colin Powell was put on the fast-track by Republican politicians, the first being the conservative icon Ronald Reagan. Serving Republican administrations, Powell became a popular figure, so popular that the neo-conservatives wished to make Powell their transformation figure in 1996, Bill Kristol and company pleading for Powell to run and make America's first black president a Republican. In more recent times, it was the neo-conservative project in Iraq that made the first black Secretary of State, Colin Powell, look so foolish and impotent. Neo-conservatives laughed in collective derision after the 2004 election as Powell was shown the door and replaced by the second black Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. But Powell is now getting the last laugh on the neo-conservatives and the Republican Party, turning his back on each in support of his fellow African-American Barack Obama, whose African heritage is so radically dissimilar to the historic African-American community.
Birds of a feather...
Predictable,deserved(even if noy very edifying),inevitable.
Stupid, WASPY. faineant Republicans are beginning to savor some of the consequences of their degeneracy and arrogance.This is only the beginning.
Kind of reminds me of Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR:
JULIUS CAESAR: The Ides of March are come.
SOOTHSAYER: AY,Caesar,but not gone.
Any Mark Antonys out there want to bury Caesar and not praise him?
What frightens me is the projection of the savior complex onto Obama. This is way beyond public adoration of FDR or Ronald Reagan. Carl Jung warned about such personalities that can animate archetypal forces deep within the collective unconscious, such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. I have a premonition of disaster.
Derek Leaberry wrote: "it was the neo-conservative project in Iraq that made the first black Secretary of State, Colin Powell, look so foolish and impotent. Neo-conservatives laughed in collective derision after the 2004 election as Powell was shown the door and replaced by the second black Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. But Powell is now getting the last laugh on the neo-conservatives and the Republican Party"
Oh, please... Powell IS a neo-con.
And he wasn't "shown the door", he made it clear the minute the Iraq campaign started to bog down that he wanted out of the administration. He seemed to think he was still a General and the president was supposed to obey him
So, Mr. Buchanan, are you supporting McCain because he's white like your "tribe" ?
"Yet, in hailing Barack as a “transformational figure” whose election would “electrify our country … (and) the world,” Powell seems to testify to the centrality of Barack’s ethnicity to his decision."
Well, as bad as he is, at least we see the enemy in front of us, not masquerading as our "friend" as happens with the hideously flawed John McCain.
"Here was a man who was rendered extraordinary honors by three Republican presidents. Reagan raised him from Army colonel to national security adviser, the first African-American in the post. George H. W. Bush named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs, over hundreds of more senior officers. George W. Bush made him the first African-American secretary of state."
On the other hand, John McCain will appreciate that Powell's a maverick who puts his country before his party.
"And the scatter-gun attack Powell launched on the GOP ticket—hitting McCain for fumbling the financial crisis, choosing Sarah Palin, pressing Barack’s association with William Ayers, and not defending Obama’s Christianity—suggests a man with scores to settle with the party of George W. Bush."
However, there remain few real conservatives who don't have scores to settle with what has now effectively become The Bush Party.
"There is speculation Powell feels badly used by the neocons who cherry-picked and hyped the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction he presented at the U.N., and that he harbors a distrust of the neocons now reassembling around McCain."
Critical thinkers recognize that there are two enemies now threatening our nation's liberty: The Marxists on our left and the Neocons on our right. I fear the Marxists less than the Neocons. They're out in the open. The Neocons are not.
"But in the last analysis, one comes back to the forbidden issue of ethnicity."
Actually, it's been a non-issue for a long time. If it's permissible for "members of the tribe" to support other "members of the tribe" based on shared heritage alone without criticism, why should we worry so much about an African American giving preferential treatment to other African Americans? Good heaven. Up until now I had thought that the only people who couldn't support their own ethnic group without charges of racism were whites.
Poor Pat. He so wants to come home to the warm bosom of The Bush Party.
Obama, despite his opposition to the Iraq War, is in no way a change of track for American politics. Indeed, to me he represents the very culmination of the psychological tumult that has been brewing in America ever since Bill Clinton initiated the multicultural bombing of Serbia, ever since George Bush claimed said "Freedom is God's Gift to All" and that America has a special mission to spread freedom to the whole world by socially engineering a progressive "democracy" in the heart of Muslim Mesopotamia.
With the above in mind, Barack Obama--the personification of multiculturalism--is the "One" America has been "waiting for", he is America incarnate: the new American spirit made flesh.
It's too early to say for sure what is going to happen, but I think Barack Obama will be the peculiarly American fascist dictator: nationalised banks, Cultural Marxism (which the NeoCons more than share), ideology, militarism, belligerence, complete with personality cult and youth movement.
Powell has always been a sleazy, under-talented, opportunist and while I don't doubt that there was a racial element in his endorsement of Obama, I think there was a lot more opportunism. He's angling for his next job and for rehabilitation and Obama has apparently made some sort of commitment to him for that. The real question (and the one that dedicated Republican PJB will never ask) is why three Republican presidents elevated this treacherous non-entity to such high positions in the first place. The answer of course is that he was black but appeared to have the makings of a good Uncle Tom. Having clutched this viper to their bosoms, they richly deserve to be bitten.
Touche, Mr. Higdon!
As I asked on Taki's Magazine, Why is this neocon Buchanan on a paleocon website. Shouldn’t he be at the Weekly Standard with his co-believer Bill Kristol? They can then double-team on behalf of the neocon McCain-Palin ticket.
As far as justices, we were one justice away from losing Habeas Corpus this summer. The only genuine conservative justice on this Court is Kennedy; not those who think the the Revolution was fought so that we could have "one man rule" here in America, just like King George had. Legal proponents of unitary executive theory like Roberts and Alito are not American conservatives; in Prussia or the Soviet Union they would be conservatives.
So? We in flyover country expect to be sold down the river even if at times some small fit is thrown over some outrage, and Powell is small potatoes it seems. What should really worry the scorekeepers of the Beltway is that a figure comes along and says to the pharisees of Poltical Correctness is that whites will no longer have to serve as the whipping boy in this drama of degeneracy.
What do you call a black 4 star general after he leaves the room?
A. A joke.
Cast you minds back, dear readers, to Gulf War One -- the George Herbert Hoover Bush war fought to make the world safe for Aramco. The "brilliant" Gen Powell chose a strategy of re-fighting World War I complete with trenches. What a safe way to plan an attack. The Mainstream gutter press billed and cooed over this victim of affirmative action as a military genius, but Norman Schwartzkopf would have none of it, and instead reenacted the Battle of Cannae on a larger scale, and mopped up the desert with Saddam's army, the fourth largest in the world at the time.
Powell is simply another liberal who figured out how to game the system and he slickly played the Stupid Party's guilt over perceived racism. Now we know who the real racialist is.
If I can quote Chris Rock .. we live in strange times, the three most important men in the world are named Bush, Dick, and Colin.
I don't give a damn what Colin Powell does.
Hmmm . . .? Another Senator from Illinois is about to be elected President.
@10 Patrick
Because Buchanan has his own magazine -- The American Conservative.
@ 11 D
Right on!
Raven @ 6
I do. tribe supersedes ideology. Besides, the Obamas of this world hardly live their ideologies.
All you progressives, if t weren't for P.J.B. paleocons would have become as iinsignificant in the body politic as smurfs.
"So, Mr. Buchanan, are you supporting McCain because he’s white like your “tribe” ?"
Pat is no racist; he had a black (female) running mate in his 2000 campaign. He will vote for McCain because McCain is the Republican candidate. Not because he is white.
@Etienne Gervaise, when I first saw the order of battle for Bush The Elder's attack on the Iraqis, I started to laugh so hard that I choked on my coffee. It was the classic formation to attack with allies that you did not really trust. The main armored might of the Brits and the Americans was right behind the Syrians and the Egyptians. The latter were equipped like the Iraqis and looked very similar, so if they turned to run away... I almost expected them to dig trenches behind the Arab phalanx. Battle of Cannae, indeed! Colin Powell is the archetypal political general. He was most fortunate to have competent, combat tested people covering for him there in the battles.
Everyone knew that Powell was a closet democrat post Gulf War I. He stated his policy positions foreign and domestic even before a possible presidential run was even being fronted by the press. Nobody should think Powell endorsed Obama just because he is black. Buchanan is starting to lose that steel trap mind of his. Race might have helped in the endorsement, but it wasn't a major factor. Simple fact is Powell was a RINO, who was both used and user with his relationship to the GOP.
You can't blame Powell for getting duped into lying by the Neocons. They are most persuasive. In fact, I watched Mr. Frum castigate McCain this evening while subtly lauding Obama.
Don't worry, the Neocons will jump the isle and dupe Obama just as easily as they did to his newfound friend.
Hell, they will dupe America again, too.
We all get what we deserve.
Powell wasn't much of anything in Gulf War I. Neither was Shwartzkopf. All they did was a rehash of the Schiefflen Plan of WW I. Hard not to win when you have total air superiority, up against 40 year old tanks( 90% of the Iraqi tank force were the much outdated T-54/55s), and fighting against a bunch of guys that didn't want to fight for an asshole. Given those factors, any arm chair general could have done just as well.
Oops forgot to mention the mid Jan-early March 1991 "blitz" which went on virtually unopposed, unless of course you count those rather ineffectual SCUD attacks. Hard to lose a ground war when any significant miltary hardware is incinerated before your troops cross the border. Whoever did the staff work for the air war were the real geniuses.
Neocons are cons alright.
"Raven @ 6
I do. tribe supersedes ideology. Besides, the Obamas of this world hardly live their ideologies.
All you progressives, if t weren’t for P.J.B. paleocons would have become as iinsignificant in the body politic as smurfs."
Interesting, your characterization of "insignificant".
In Modern Demotic Greek, paleo is palio, with the accent on the last vowel, not the first, and used every day depending on the circumstances, to mean:
old, insignificant, anachronistic, spent, washed-up, has-been, obsolete, ancient, depleted, irrelevant, etc.
Wise people those ancient Greek wordsmiths, even leaving words like "smurfs" to the Ameri-cuns, (accent on the last vowel).
@ 23 raven
The word smurf was invented by Belgian cartoonist Payo, not by the Ameri-cuns.
Raven's BS only poses a problem if you are a Republican partisan. But fear not an Obama victory. There is no way he will ever pull the troops out of Iraq, the alternative (a Sharia terrorist Iraq) is much worse (for political partisans only of course). Do you think Obama will want go down in history as the man who threw away the gains of the "surge" and let Iraq become a Sharia state? Not that this would be without precedent however, not since Kosovo proclaimed independence with American approval.
Fear of an Obama victory has nothing to do with what happens to Iraq and everything to do with what happens to the USA.
Regardless of whether a predisent Obama would stay in Iraq, or cut & run, he still plans on confiscatory taxes, state-run health care, pack the imperial courts with hard core leftist judges, and spend, baby, spend.
I hope "duped into lying" at the UN was said ironically above. Please read Ray McGovern's recent Letter to Colin Powell, and research Powell's aide Greg Thielmann who resigned because of Powell's purposeful lying thereabouts.
Moreover, I don't believe it is politic for a non-interventionist to use the terminology "cut and running" from Iraq, if Obama is honest enough or is forced by economic and other circumstances to do what amounts to that, finalizing a well-deserved political defeat for an immoral and illegal war.
@17 Steve
OK my mind is fuzzy after all these years, having seen the battle plan you definitely know more about it than I do.
But to keep you up to date with pop culture, see if you all can scare up a copy of last night's Mind of Mencia. It was really funny from a comedian I consider to be marginal, but his routine almost makes me relish an Obama victory.
In the near future lazy minorities will no longer be able to holler "Racism!" to cover for their own shortcomings. Unqualified applicants will be rejected because there is no F in Truth, and so it goes.
“So, Mr. Buchanan, are you supporting McCain because he’s white like your “tribe” ?”
Pat is no racist; he had a black (female) running mate in his 2000 campaign. He will vote for McCain because McCain is the Republican candidate. Not because he is white.
Michael Ezzo, aren't you just playing the Left's game when you give that sort of response? You're desperately trying to deny the racist tag with reference to a token black appointment. Who cares whether Pat is or isn't racist? It's hardly the crime of the century.
It's also quite normal to vote for someone because he is from your tribe. That's why democracy doesn't work in multi-racial societies, it merely becomes a tribal head count.
Mr. Chris I am playing nobody's game, sir. And I hate the left and everything it stands for. What I was trying to do was to shut down raven's race-baiting of Pat. From the looks of what followed, I did a good job.
He probably knew as well as anyone else that Pat's tribe in this case is not skin color; it's party politics and loyalty to that party. That is the inference of everything in Pat's essay (and it's the reason for his disgust at Powell). If McCain was black and Obama was white, he would still be voting for McCain; not Obama. And that is the point I tried to make.
I don't think Obama and Powell support each other because they are black.
I think the fact that Powell is black gives him the mythology of the good guy in the Bush administration they initially did the same with Rice.
I don’t buy the fact that he was mislead into believing that his UN presentation was true.
Artist renditions of mobile chemical and biological weapons labs in trucks was laughable and that Saddam was secretly planning to attempt to build nuclear weapons was a joke.
Worst was the links to Al Quada when he made out that Zarquawi had links to Iraqi intelligence and was trained in using chemical and biological weapons linked to Abu Hafs (Golden chain backers) in the Panski Gorge to use against Russian soldiers in the Caucus. Which was true minus Iraq.
Surprised know one has mentioned or made a big deal of the fact that the Neocon’s created a department specifically to gather bogus evidence against Iraq prior to the war.
Would you not want Obama to win?
Who ever gets elected is going to screw it up the US is the worst shape its ever been in and neither candidate has a clue of how to fix the economy probably because there economic advisors are the same breed as these mega banks that got us into trouble in the first place.
So it might as well be someone who encompasses all the negative things like affirmative action that Chronicles and others have been writing about.
@16Michael Ezzo
Pat should vote for Chuck Baldwin.
McCain supports things Pat has written against for year’s mass immigration, foreign wars, etc.
@28Chris
Ron Paul is a Republican but won't support McCain.
What happens when the third-world rabble we've allowed to cross our borders becomes the majority in the United States of America?
A. There will no longer be any room for Western Man in this once but no longer great country.
And here Pat displays the inherent dishonesty of his argument.
Powell of course did NOT contend "that race was not the only or decisive factor" in his decision. He made it clear it wasn't a factor at all.
Powell laid out a detailed and thorough case for his decision.
The fact that, in direct response to a question, he acknowledged the obvious, that he "can't deny that that it will be a historic event for an African-American to become president ... [and would] also not only electrify our country, I think it'll electrify the world," is NOT "testifying to the centrailty of Barack's ethnicity to his decision." It is acknowledging the obvious.
If a white man were making this acknowledgment during an endorsement, would Pat insist that he was "testifying to the centrality of Barack's ethnicity to his decision" ? Why not?
Shame on you, Pat. Shame on you.
As dim a bulb as Colin-Powell is, he probably realizes that republicans have a history of installing black men into offices for which they are unqualified and undeserving. That was done on a large scale by the occupation governments of the Southern states after Lincoln's war, when illiterate, recently freed black men were installed as judges, state senators and state delegates/representatives while the former confederates were stripped f the privilege of voting and of the rights to bear arms and to confront accusers in court. These appointees and the rest of the former slaves were abandoned to face the wrath of their fellow Southerners who remembered their betrayal for generations after the occupiers departed.
Republican politicians use black appointees as proof that their party hierarchy is not racist, but they refuse to appoint any truly qualified black person to any office that has the power and prestige of the offices they use to display their "colorblindness". Look at their most visible appointees, Rice, Colin-Powell, Keyes and Thomas, none of whom are qualified to hold even the most minor positions in the departments to which they were handed exalted offices.
The republicans will point proudly to these appointees while allowing them to make utter fools of themselves with their incompetence. They will also turn on them in a minute and leave them to twist in the wind when it suits the party's purposes.
Why any black American would trust the republicans is a mystery to me, on par with the mystery of why any black American would trust today's democrats.
#31 EE Roberts
It's equally a mystery to me why any American of any hue who is not a coupon-clipper would trust the Republicans, and why an American of any hue who does not make his living sucking from the public teat would support the Democrats.
But then, as P.T.Barnum said, there's one born every minute.
I'm don't quite understand Buchanan's argument. Is he criticizing Powell supporting Obama because he's black or celebrating the fact that tribal politics is still with us? After all, we're the ones who brought the term "Scots-Irish" into the political lexicon because we were willing to see them as a distinct people or "tribe" rather than just a generic "white" label. If McCain carries the Scots-Irish heartland on Nov. 4 which he probably will, how is that any different than Obama carrying every black neighborhood in every city in the country? There's no reason to be cynical about it, it's perfectly understandable.
And the reality such an endorsement means little either way. Most leftists think Powell is a liar, which he is. Most on the right think Powell is a disloyal opportunist which he also is. If anything, onen would have thought Powell would have been jealous of Obama as being the one who could accomplish what Powell could not. Jesse Jackson certainly is.
From now on please refer to neocons as "Mossad."
To George (34) : Of course I completely agree with you that Pat should vote for Baldwin. I was simply explaining -- not agreeing with -- his (likely) choice. I thought that was clear, since I mentioned he will probably support McCain simply because of the party connection; in other words NOT because of any shared political convictions. And not because of race. I apologize if it wasn't clear.
Mike Ezzo@19 wrote: "He [Buchanan] will vote for McCain because McCain is the Republican candidate. Not because he is white."
Or could it be that in times of duress Buchanan's lizard brain kicks in, overides his higher cerebral functions and forces him to finally act reflexively? In other words, despite his self-proclaimed high elect, Pat salivates at the ring of the bell as readily as any of Pavlov's dogs.
@41Michael Ezzo
Actually I saw a clip of Chuck Baldwin on Youtube of the C-Span 2 third party debate answering a question about Israel and he asserted that the UN tells the US what to do.
Does anyone seriously believe this?
No country or organisation tells the US what to do. The US tells everyone else what to do.
The UN did not sanction bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999 or the Iraq invasion yet the US did it anyway.
Richard Pearle wants the UN eliminated and NATO and the US to control world affairs which they do anyway.
There’s also the issue of him being affiliated somewhat to the late Jerry Falwell.
It seems Ralph Nadar is the only viable candidate as the others didn't even bother to show up for the debate.
Others have suggested note voting for any of the candidates and writing in Ron Paul.
"Or could it be that in times of duress Buchanan’s lizard brain kicks in, overides his higher cerebral functions and forces him to finally act reflexively? In other words, despite his self-proclaimed high elect, Pat salivates at the ring of the bell as readily as any of Pavlov’s dogs."
This sort of remark sometimes appears on these posts. But it is purely ad hominem fallacy. Compared to such remarks Pat's analysis is profound philosophy.
@43 george
"No country or organisation tells the US what to do."
Israel tells the US what to do on a regular basis. If they need to go through the UN in order to get their way, it's not usually much of a problem -- since all that counts in that body is the security council.
In 1992 I met an Arab Christian who not supported Pat, but also volunteered on his campaign on the grounds that he was the only candidate willing to cut off foreign aid to Israel. By the way she was both pro-gay and pro-choice. Her house in Ramallah had been bulldozed by the Israeli army.
@45Etienne Gervaise
You right of course I don't know how I forgot about that as both candidates grovel in front of AIPAC and praise is Israel to the point it seems that running for the leadership of that country.
Then there the fact that a number people in government are dual citizens especially the Neocon’s making America’s foreign policy.
Also no one discusses the numerous Jewish political think tanks and affiliated officials setting US domestic and foreign policy like PNAC and its "new Pearl Harbour" statement before 9/11.
Remember the US criticising Russia about violating the UN charter although Georgia is the one who broke international law by firing on peacekeepers and civilians.
Well the US has recently launched air strikes inside Syrian territory.
@46 george
I had not heard about US bombing Syria. It's a shame. Syria does not persecute Christians, in fact moslems with no tradition of the miraculous visit Orthodox Christian monastries to seek answered prayer. On December 25 their state-run TV stations air Christmas programming with no complaints from the mullahs. Let the Big 4 here try that without getting complaints from the vile Abe Foxman and the insanely twisted fundraiser Morris Dees.