US Diary: two articles Hillary and Obama should read if they want to offer Democrats more than inspiring say-nothing rhetoric

(Note: The first article is about how Hillary and Obama could take a leaf out of Senator Jim Webb's rebuttal to Bush's State of the Union address. You'll find the full text of this rebuttal after the two articles.)

1. Jim Webb Offers the Democratic Response ... to Hillary and Obama -- by Jeff Cohen

If you watched freshman Virginia Sen. Jim Webb deliver the Democratic response to Bush’s State of the Union speech, you witnessed something historic -- a Democrat on national TV unabashedly ripping into six years of Bush rule for an uninterrupted 10 minutes.

With no O’Reilly or Hannity to disrupt or out-shout him.

Webb offered a populist, anti-corporate stand on economics and a blunt attack on Bush for “recklessly” dragging our country into the Iraq war – a sharply-worded address that must have startled millions of TV viewers accustomed to Democrat vacillation.

It was the kind of stirring appeal, both progressive and patriotic, that could win over voters at election time -- including swing voters, NASCAR dads, soccer moms, even Republican leaners. The new Senator – a novelist and former Secretary of the Navy -- reportedly discarded the speech handed him by Democratic leaders, and wrote his own.

But Webb’s speech was not just a rebuttal to Bush. It was also a pointed response to the tepid pablum that comes out of the mouths of mainstream media-anointed Democratic presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

TV viewers could easily see the contrast between Webb’s words and those of Clinton and Obama, since the two candidates were featured one after another on TV network after network soon after Bush and Webb. Yet they said so little.

Clinton and Obama were the only two Democrats so heavily spotlighted last night – which is how corporate media shape and bias the Democratic race while pretending to just be covering it. John Edwards appeared on a couple shows last night, and was more forceful.

Dennis Kucinich was invisible, though Webb seemed to be channeling Kucinich on economics.

In case you missed it, here’s a bit of what Webb said .

“When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

“Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. . .

“In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy: that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.”

And Webb, a Marine in Vietnam, offered a blistering attack on the Iraq adventure:

“The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command. . .and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed.”

Webb called for reversing direction in Iraq: “an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.”

Webb ended his speech with references to two Republican presidents. He praised Dwight Eisenhower for recognizing the Korean War as a “bloody stalemate” and quickly bringing that war to an end.

And Webb invoked Teddy Roosevelt for standing up to “improper corporate influence” at the beginning of the 20th century:

“America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt.”

Whether intended or not, Webb was offering a way for Democrats to win elections -- a script for any presidential candidate who wants to distinguish him or herself in the primaries, and then defeat the Republicans in Nov. 2008.

And if taken from the realm of mere rhetoric to actual policy, a means to reform our country in a way that would give Democrats majority support for years to come.

(Jeff Cohen is a media critic, recovering TV pundit and author of “ Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media”. He consults for Progressive Democrats of America)


2. Toward a New Moral Majority -- by Stephen Dick/ Herald Bulletin (Anderson, Indiana)

Let’s face it: America is very nearly bankrupt morally. We live in a polarized society of haves and have nots, and the gap is growing wider. The elites in Washington launch vanity wars that, for the most part, have to be fought by the have nots and the have littles.

As a society, we’ve turned a blind eye from an administration that tortures people, locks them up for years without even the most perfunctory of legal rights, spies on its citizens and bequeaths the world — through tax cuts and subsidies — to the rich few. This statistic always sticks in my craw: The top 10 percent of Americans have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. That’s staggering, and it’s immoral.

No person who uses religion as a guide in their lives can tolerate such inequities and barbaric behavior. Yet, we do.

A recent USA Today editorial castigated Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for providing cheap fuel for poor Americans through his state-owned Citgo oil company. How could the editorial board of a major newspaper be against that, especially since finding someone in America to offer discount fuel is laughable? Because, USA Today argued, Chavez does it to embarrass the Bush administration. So we can surmise that maintaining face on the corrupt and banal Bush administration is more important than helping people out.

The recently ousted CEO of Home Depot, Robert Nardelli, presided over his company losing sales and stock rates. He left his job with a $200 million severance package. It’s farcical reading defenders of such thievery. I don’t know what Home Depot employees make, but if the company has this much money to throw away on one loser, I’m sure the employees would’ve liked having the money split between them. CEOs now earn more than their employees at a ratio of more than 400 to 1.

The rise of conservatism and its sibling, greed, 30 years ago has now been entrenched in the mainstream. The result has been to make America a secondary nation where power and money are protected by the few who offer bribes to lawmakers. The rest of us get by as best we can, but we no longer live in a country that values its citizens. The lure of the anarchic free market and the competition for a shrinking pie keeps everyone in a hypnotized state of dollar signs.

One of our best journalists, Bill Moyers, recently spoke at a forum sponsored by The Nation on this subject. He reminded everyone of what President Lincoln believed: That government should be not only of and by the people, but for the people. That would be a government of accepting the fundamental morality of serving all its citizens, not just the few who contribute to political campaigns.

In the past generation, Moyers said, “the individual, greed-driven, free-market ideology is at odds with our history and with what most Americans really care about.”

It doesn’t have to continue this way. There are already signs that the newly elected Democratic-controlled Congress will be tackling some of the inequities that make Americans seem like throwaways in their own country.

The House Democrats have passed a law to raise the minimum wage a paltry couple of dollars over the next two years. These representatives make $165,000 a year. The House also wants to end subsidies for the oil industry and make the companies pay what they owe in royalties to the government for taking oil from the land.

Good luck. As Newsweek put it, the House can do all it wants, but without the Senate and White House on board, all bills will be symbolic. We all need to look elsewhere.

In a recent The New Republic article, Jonathan Cohn writes about the Denmark system of social balance, which includes health care for all and generous unemployment benefits. Of course, this takes tax money and free-market economists routinely condemn the European model. These economists claim the model stifles productivity and investment. But that hasn’t happened in Denmark, a country actually putting its citizens first.

Congress needs to pursue such programs to ease the economic burden of free-market free for all. Health care reform, for example, is doomed to failure if insurance companies are in the picture. They are for profit and therefore inefficient and indifferent to those who have to use them. The globalization policy of putting people last has to be reversed.

Finally, harking back to the Depression era, the government needs a new Works Progress Administration to actively put people to work for the betterment of the country. It’s an old idea, but if private corporations continue to lay off and rip off American citizens, setting up a works program is the moral thing to do. The alternative, the rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, is a recipe for national disaster.

(Stephen Dick writes for The Herald Bulletin in Anderson, Ind.)


3. Democratic Response of Senator Jim Webb to the President’s State of the Union Address

Good evening.

I'm Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, where this year we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown -- an event that marked the first step in the long journey that has made us the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth.

It would not be possible in this short amount of time to actually rebut the President's message, nor would it be useful. Let me simply say that we in the Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving education and healthcare for all Americans, and addressing such domestic priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans.

Further, this is the seventh time the President has mentioned energy independence in his state of the union message, but for the first time this exchange is taking place in a Congress led by the Democratic Party. We are looking for affirmative solutions that will strengthen our nation by freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil, and spurring a wave of entrepreneurial growth in the form of alternate energy programs. We look forward to working with the President and his party to bring about these changes.

There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The first relates to how we see the health of our economy -- how we measure it, and how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The second regards our foreign policy -- how we might bring the war in Iraq to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that our country faces around the world.

When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them.

In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy -- that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.

And under the leadership of the new Democratic Congress, we are on our way to doing so. The House just passed a minimum wage increase, the first in ten years, and the Senate will soon follow. We've introduced a broad legislative package designed to regain the trust of the American people. We've established a tone of cooperation and consensus that extends beyond party lines. We're working to get the right things done, for the right people and for the right reasons.

With respect to foreign policy, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world.

I want to share with all of you a picture that I have carried with me for more than 50 years. This is my father, when he was a young Air Force captain, flying cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. He sent us the picture from Germany, as we waited for him, back here at home. When I was a small boy, I used to take the picture to bed with me every night, because for more than three years my father was deployed, unable to live with us full-time, serving overseas or in bases where there was no family housing. I still keep it, to remind me of the sacrifices that my mother and others had to make, over and over again, as my father gladly served our country. I was proud to follow in his footsteps, serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry Marine in Iraq.

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues -- those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death -- we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.

We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us -- sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable -- and predicted -- disarray that has followed.

The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism. And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally-based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

On both of these vital issues, our economy and our national security, it falls upon those of us in elected office to take action.

Regarding the economic imbalance in our country, I am reminded of the situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt.

Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions. He told his fellow Republicans that they must set themselves "as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other." And he did something about it.

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the General who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War Two. And as soon as he became President, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These Presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this President to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

Thank you for listening. And God bless America.