Latest installment of the Partisan Wars series
In this episode, we take a step back and begin to look at the larger electoral context, and how the events in Chapel Hill and elsewhere affect the race.
For the Democrats, the choice was made after years of failed wars, wars that kill and maim and send home bitter veterans, sometimes living ones that tell a far different story than the cheery, optimistic victory-speak that prevails in the "Quack media".
For the Republicans, the plan is to run Jeb Bush, and retain Condoleeza Rice as Vice-President, perhaps perpetually. After all, there is no limit to how long a person can be VP.
It is only now starting to occur to the country what an insidious loophole to tyranny this is.
If the political climate had been tense in 2007, it was coiled like a rattlesnake in 2008. There were many veterans back from wars that had become increasingly futile and disliked at home. There had been no new major terrorist attacks, which justified a split of public opinion -- either the wars were unnecessary, and bankrupting the country per Al-Qaida's explicit game plan, or the wars were doing the job of keeping the terrorists 'over there'.
Then the Ivory Tower attacks came, with footage of the burned-out Oberlin campus and, despite exacting efforts to purge the Web, video of the Conservatory mutilations, which the Deliverers had circulated themselves; they were not interested at all in keeping their acts silent. The purpose was to terrorize liberalas and galvanize conservatives to action.
While not quite what the Deliverer terrorists wanted, Homeland Security had acted, by taking a high profile role in the security of public universities. It could be argued that HomeSec required invitations from the several states for this action, but in the first month not one state had objected.
The complicity shown by university administrations and states, and partnering with understaffed HomeSec, had given conservative campus groups unprecedented opportunity to change the nature of university life to their liking; the Student Security Initative was begun, with ample HomeSec funding and sponsorship.
SII immediately began to assist in the outing and containment of 'radical and terrorist' influences on public campuses. The two words were married together; they were never uttered separated. That the only attacks (prior to the second Chapel Hill riot) were perpetrated by conservatives was overlooked for the moment. After all, who could question the happening of a tragedy that had precipitated so much good?
The Clark candidacy
The succession of wars had made national defense experience a valuable trait in the presidential race; the successive rollback of American interests in the Islamic World and the build-up in Eastern Europe had played into the candidacy of Wesley Clark. After all, it had been a long time since a war had produced lasting positive change for American influence, and General Clark had been there. All of the Bush wars were inconclusive or, in the case of both Afghanistan and Iraq, expensive reversals of fortune; both were now affiliated with Iran, who was forming a regional alliance with both Turkey and Pakistan.
The last thing the incumbent Republicans had going for them was a strong foreign policy; the edifice of neoconservatism was falling apart, the contradiction between American dominion and freedom for all exposed the moment the Iraqis issued their January 2006 eviction notice. Prudent management of American strategic power would have kept the USA in exclusive dominance through 2025, with detente vis a vis the Asian superpowers going forward into the distant future. That simply had not occurred under Republican tutelage; America was going down, and quickly. In the Old World, American superpowerdom was a shade away from a ghost.
Introducing Vice-President Rice
The lightning-rod for the criticism was the last woman standing from the old guard of the first Bush presidency, Condoleeza Rice, now the Vice-President of the United States, enjoying powerful rein over both State and Defense. Cheney had drawn hostility, had been characterized as the agent of a corporate takeover of the Presidency. White House advisor Karl Rove had been given similar credit, but his realm was electoral politics. Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the neoconservative brigade were excoriated for setting the country on the path of global warmongering. But at the end of the day, there was Condi, and Condi's friends.
Quite a lot of people had underestimated the only real genius in the room. Perhaps the only person who consistently overestimated her was Condi herself...as if someone should apologize for optimism.
That was the core of her being -- optimism. Having almost no limitations in talent, what she wished to do, occurred. It was almost impossible for Rice to grasp her own exceptionalism as anything but a reflection of superlative self-motivation and character. She judged all others accordingly; she recognized well enough that few people could hold a candle to her intellect, but found any expression of limit, disqualification, obstruction, no matter what the topic as intolerable.
It is interesting that she chose perhaps the most unsolvable problem of the 20th century as her ticket to success -- how to win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Did she find the answer? She certainly felt that she was on the way, with the Strategic Defense Intitiative adding new terms to the unsolvable(?) equation every day.
Then the Cold War had ended, and the geopolitical blackboard, covered in exquisite and deadly calculations, washed clean by the troublemakers and ne'er-do-wells who had to stay after school.
And much later, the new unsolvable problem emerged -- how to obtain military victory over a widespread network of many different terrorist groups, espousing a cause that was superfically popular across much of the Earth -- the elimination of the United States as a superpower.
There was one thing that Vice-President Rice knew for certain -- the most certain way to win a nuclear war was to eliminate the threat before it emerged. It was she, more than any other person in the Bush administration, that had pushed most for pre-emptive war, who had elaborated by logic and emotional appeal to the President why this course was the "one, or none" of American destiny.
It had never been the Bush Doctrine; it had always been the Rice Doctrine.
The problem for the Vice-President was that this was about to be used against her, to pave the way for a dynastic succession.
The Republican Primary -- Over Before Begun
There were no serious challengers to Jeb Bush as the top GOP contender in 2008; to maintain continuity, Condi Rice would remain as Vice-President -- there was no limit to how long anyone could hold that position.
Though the GOP primaries would be a victory lap for Jeb, the exercise would introduce him (again) to a national audience and, far more valuable, serve the function of boosting the Bush picks in all races down to dog catcher; there had been increasing dissent in the ranks in the last four years; Rove planned to put many incumbent Republicans out to pasture.
Finally, the GOP primaries would provide an opportunity to distance the Bushes from the Rice Doctrine.
One of the most enthiastic participants in this exercise was Senator John McCain, who bristled at the idea of Jeb Bush having a running-mate waiting for him at the altar. He called it presumptuous; the counter-charge was that McCain was acting like a jilted girl. Drudge Report blasted the moniker "Jilt McCain", and it stuck. Despite loyal service to the Bushes and to party, at great personal expense, McCain, used, was now useless, had been used one more time.
Regardless, the charge stuck; people began to question the propriety of having a VP appointed, given that in the event of presidential demise or incapacity, she would become president. Then there was the separate objection: she had never held public office, or even run for one.
Bush, the standing president, scoffed at the idea. Gore didn't run against Clinton, he fired off; it was not the case, he was told by a friendly and supportive media. The President did not feel like pursuing this, and declared there is a first time for everything, and this was the right choice for the country and the candidacy at the time.
Elsewhere, when pressed for comment, candidate Jeb Bush was less convinced. No one asked me about it.
It would be the shot heard round the GOP world. More on this momentarily
Reaction from the Governor
This is early April 2008, when these events are unfolding. State governors have had HomeSec descend upon them. There are demonstrations and riots everywhere. Local and national talk shows, radio and cable, are full of a clamor of voices either calling for vengeance for The Six Hundred or calling it a 'really good start'. Sporadic violence connected to disputes between partisans, in many cases bar conversations gone bad, has appeared everywhere.
Governor Easley of North Carolina has just signed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled state legislature requesting the removal of Homeland Security and United Stated armed forces units from the public universities of his state; he was loudly refused; the media did its utmost to humiliate 'Democrat governor Easley' for having the nerve to even ask. Death threats against elected Democratic leaders were made; a few were carried out.
Easley countered by going on the airwaves (the local stations could not refuse him; the cable networks did) and pointing out how at the moment 9 out of 10 North Carolinians in college were currently under Federal occupation. He showed a map, marked where the various units were. There are more U.S. troops out of base in North Carolina than in Syria, he declared. Further, as far official figures are concerned, more civilians had died in North Carolina than in Syria, as well.
Then other state governors began to weigh in; the 'occupation', as the HomeSec university program came to be called, was highly controversial. In three instances, the request precipitated assassinations, in one, of the governor himself. Apparently, quite a few constituents not only approved of the Six Hundred episode, and the sense of victory in arms against the oft-repeated 'radical and terrorist' menace. It had been a long time since conservatives had a victory to cheer; the wars abroad had not gone well. They were determined to hold the line at all costs.
Had the violence been contained to the universities and their communities, perhaps that would have been the end; a few grand stands made in protest, then the Federal government getting its way, regardless.
Alas, the genie was out of the bottle, and it was a bloodthirsy one.