[BRIGADE] PJB: Tribal Politics
Published: Tue, 10/21/08
By Patrick J. Buchanan
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.
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/10/pjb-tribal-politics/