And another thing…

LABOUR could do far worse in the run-up to the general election than to emulate the phenomenally effective Ronald Reagan commercial from 1984, “It’s morning again in America”.

Positive, upbeat, optimistic, standing on your record in government. That’s how elections are won.

YOU know those cardboard cut-outs of US presidents that tourists can have their photos taken with? Well, this video makes it look as if the 44th incumbent has been making more use of his than is traditional.

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

DEPRESSING though this montage is, it’s at least comforting to know that the American Rabid Right aren’t quite up to the challenge of writing anti-Obama placards.

Click the image to see the full display.

WHENEVER I’ve been in Washington, DC, I’ve always paid close attention to whatever protests are taking place near the Whitehouse at the time.

I say “whatever protests”; what I really mean is “whatever protests against income tax”. Americans like to boast they are a “low tax” economy. That is achieved through classifying large health insurance bills as separate from taxation – “voluntary contributions”, if you will. But there’s still a huge amount of resentment by some who see anything the federal government does as an intrusion into their lives. And that usually includes federal income tax.

One protest march I witnessed cast doubt on the government’s constitutional right to impose income tax in the first place. To a certain type of American, there really is only one subject that merits an effort to travel to the national capital and march holding a placard, and it’s not war or poverty or minority rights or homelessness or unemployment. It’s tax, specifically protesting against paying any of it.

Tory Bear (whose excellent blog I read regularly, incidentally) has a report about an alleged “two million march” on the capital by (it seems from the picture) some very nice respectable white collar workers. Tory Bear seems to want to draw some kind of parallel with the UK.

There are quite a few Tory politicians these days who seem to believe that importing American political traditions into Britain would be a good thing, and I don’t just mean the idea of primaries. Making abortion a party political issue, for example, or denigrating state-provided healthcare as evil. Or protesting at the (in European terms) relatively low levels of tax we pay here in the UK. Because tax, after all, is A Bad Thing that should be resisted, right?

Wrong.

Next we’ll be asked to approve a right to bear arms. Now, arming bears, that would be fine…

PRESENTING the second in a short series of guest posts.

David Cairns is the Labour MP for Inverclyde and a former Scotland Office minister. He’s also an American civil war nut and is dead brainy when it comes to all things American. Over to you, Dave…

———————————————————————————

Tom has asked me to contribute a guest article for his on-line newsletter. As a neophyte in this niche, I looked around to see what the popular bloggists do. So here is the result: a pointless list. It was either that or a fresh call for a Labour leadership contest, which would provoke renewed internecine war within the Party, but I thought you would rather have the list.

So, a propos of nothing at all, here is my considered opinion as to the five best and worst American presidents. From my extensive studies of the blogosphere it seems to matter what other people “reckon”, so please feel free to leave your reckonings in the usual place and Tom will paste them onto the newsletter as he sees fit. Or if you prefer you can write to me c/o the House of Commons, SW1A 0AA.

David Cairns MP

THE TOP FIVE U.S.PRESIDENTS

5. Thomas Jefferson

We all know the JFK quote, delivered to a room full of Nobel Laureates:

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

So Jefferson was brainy, (and Kennedy had good writers).  But Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter were brainy too and look how that turned out.  Brains alone don’t make you a good President, (though they are kinda important, Sarah).  His authorship of the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase and his espousal of fine republican ideals ultimately outweigh his slave-owning and troubling relationship with Sally Hemmings.

4. Harry Truman

The patron saint of every unpopular politician; the man who left office more despised than Fred Goodwin with swine-flu, has been rehabilitated into one of America’s best ever leaders; (never going to happen, George).  He specialised in taking incredibly difficult decisions – the bomb, recognising Israel, de-segregating the Army, spending billions to re-build former enemies, sacking General MacArthur – that were almost calculated to lose him popularity.  Yet he trusted his mid-West instincts and his life-long study of human nature.  He could have been dwarfed by the memory of his beloved predecessor but he had enough confidence is his own judgement and beliefs not to let that worry him.  In the end, character matters, and “Give ‘em hell, Harry” had it by the bucket-full.

3. George Washington

Much though I admired Donald Dewar, the title “Father of the Nation” really ought to be preserved for a tiny elite, (Mandela, I’ll let you have it. You too, Gandhi).  General Washington wears the designation like he wore his old dress uniform: with under-stated but undeniable authority. He established the uniquely American quasi-office of “nation’s favourite General”, (subsequently filled, inter alia, by Grant, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Schwarzkopf, Powell, Petraeus et al). Though better appreciated by the Americans than us – he did kick our butts after all – it can be hard to separate out the facts from the hagiography.  But he was clearly an inspiring military leader who eschewed the trappings of monarchy and set the pattern for a citizen presidency that lasted well into the 20th century, but really exists in name only today. Shame.

2. Franklin Roosevelt

The revisionists are busy putting it about that FDR’s stimulus package, the New Deal, actually prolonged the great depression, which is utter tripe, but handy for those do-nothingers – is that right Tom? – who oppose Obama’s contemporary version, (a little bit of politics, ladies and gentlemen). From his wheelchair FDR towers over other 20th century presidents, the only Chief Magistrate to serve more than two terms. Under Roosevelt the Democrats came to be associated with the progressive wing of politics, having been on the wrong side of most issues up to this point. He came to office in the worst possible economic climate and with an activist Supreme Court opposing him from the right, yet his vision, compassion and astonishing triumph over personal adversity make him the prime candidate for that un-sculpted bit of Mount Rushmore between cousin Teddy and Honest Abe.

1. Abraham Lincoln

No surprise here. My personal political hero. Over the years, I have journeyed from Hodgenville, Kentucky, via Springfield, Illinois to Washington’s Ford Theatre and the Petersen Boarding House trying to figure out this astounding, enigmatic man. Born in abject poverty to a semi-literate, subsistence farming father, a largely unschooled and lonely boy, he was driven by a ferocious ambition that ticked away like a little motor in his stove-pipe hat, as one contemporary put it. There is no doubt that under a lesser person (and we are all lesser people), the United States of America would have split in two. Enduring constant sniping from within his own cabinet, countless military set-backs, a hostile press, incompetent generals, and a wife driven to the brink of insanity through grief, he never wavered from his belief that the American experiment in popular democracy should not be allowed to fail. He is the perfect marriage of high moral principle and low political cunning.  On the downside, as a fan of Robert Burns, Lincoln would often recite Burns’s long poems in “a Scotch accent” (I know!). But he did free the slaves, so on balance we can forgive him.

THE BOTTOM FIVE U.S. PRESIDENTS

5. Warren G. Harding

On the plus side, Harding died after just two years in office. The negative side is rather longer. A newspaper magnate, he secured the Republican nomination after ten rounds of voting on the grounds that he was “the best of the second-raters”. His election was the first in which all women could vote, and they are believed to have supported him in large numbers partly on the grounds of his good looks (honestly, ladies). His corruption-ridden administration led the flight back to American isolationism after Wilson’s noble, yet doomed, attempt to engage the country in the League of Nations. He died suddenly while on a nation-wide “Voyage of Understanding”, undertaken to re-connect the political classes with the general public. A lesson to us all.

4. Jimmy Carter

A Brazilian priest friend of mine once told me that when Jimmy Carter was elected, the army stopped killing people on the streets of Sao Paulo. That in itself should give pause for thought when listing the plain man from Plains, Georgia, as among the worst presidents. His post-presidency also stands out as the exemplar of how to use the prestige and moral authority of the office for good. Yet, in truth, he was never up to the job. Elected for his honest demeanour in the wake of the long national nightmare of Watergate, he made such heavy weather of governing that many believed that the job had simply become too big for any one person to do, until a certain B movie actor proved otherwise. Once he was attacked by that giant rabbit, it was all over really.

3. Ulysses S. Grant

A painful inclusion for me; Grant was the tactical genius who finally secured the Union triumph in the Civil War, after a run of generals who were amazingly reluctant to fight (Lincoln asked once if he could borrow the army if the generals weren’t intending to use it).  Grant almost stumbled into the presidency and was as hopeless at it as he had been at every other job he ever had outside the military. His administration became a by-word for corruption and incompetence, and though a few optimistic modern historians have had a bash at revisionism, it is unlikely that old Unconditional Surrender’s occupancy of the White House will be remembered as anything other than a sad post-script to a towering military career.

2. Franklin Pierce

Historians like to debate whether the American Civil War was avoidable. On the one hand the sordid compromise over slavery in the Constitution was never going to hold, and sooner or later was bound to come to a head. On the other hand a whole series of terrible decisions were taken in the years leading up to the war that surely could have moved things in the right direction had they been taken differently. Pierce was the penultimate pre-war president and on his watch the Missouri Compromise was abandoned and the Kansas-Nebraska Act came into being, which made a bad situation very, very much worse. A drunk who sided with the Confederacy during the war, he will be remembered as the first president to come from New Hampshire; the other being Josiah Bartlett (can you check this, Tom? Ta).

1. James Buchanan

The nation’s only confirmed bachelor-president, Buchanan became the Democrat candidate for the 1856 election when the party decided that no-one could be any worse than Franklin Pierce, thereby establishing the Democrats’ uncanny touch in candidate selection. He won the election against a divided opposition and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing for four years whilst the country fell apart around him. The concept of leadership, ie, actually leading, was lost on Buchanan, who knew that disaster was looming but felt powerless to do anything to prevent it. He may even have had a hand in the worst decision ever handed down by the Supreme Court, the Dredd Scott judgment (certainly Lincoln suspected that he did), as he sought to avoid taking difficult decisions by having the court take them for him. By demonstrating a total abdication of responsibility in a time of unprecedented national peril, Buchanan runs away with the title of Worst Ever President.

JUSTIN Webb is coming home to the UK after seven years as the BBC’s America correspondent.

I’ve found Justin’s despatches from the Land of the Free/Home of the Brave compulsive and illuminating and I will miss them. He reveals a genuine love of the place while not pulling his punches in reporting America’s often sordid and irrational underbelly, acknowledging them as an indispensable part of what makes America America.

His latest book, Have a Nice Day, was reviewed on this blog here.

You can read his valedictory thoughts on his adopted home and his return to Blighty here.

CONTINUING my lone crusade to convince someone — anyone, in fact — that David Cameron’s detoxification strategy has been 100 per cent cosmetic and zero per cent substance, here’s the latest piece of evidence.

Louise Bagshawe, the novelist and Tory candidate for Corby, has Twittered that Sarah Palin is her "heroine". And no, I don’t think she was being ironic, judging from some of her subsequent Tweets.

Bagshawe is one of the Tories’ most high profile candidates, frequently appearing, presumably at the request of Central Office, in media articles profiling the Tories’ "next generation".

And Sarah Palin is her heroine.

Sarah Palin, who made an international, as well as a national, laughing stock of last year’s Republican presidential campaign.

Sarah Palin, who the Alaskan state legislature concluded had abused her powers as governor by persecuting her sister’s ex-husband.

Sarah Palin, who actually believes  that dinosaurs and humans co-existed because she believes in the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Sarah Palin, whose good ol’ fashioned folksy charm just wasn’t enough to hide the fact that she was one of the least qualified vice-presidential candidates in modern political history. You betcha!

John McCain, by all accounts a decent and principled man, holed his own bid for the Whitehouse below the waterline by appointing her as his running mate, while simultaneously prompting the world to reassess whether he had the political judgment after all to be elected to his country’s highest office. After all, someone who thinks it a good idea to put Sarah Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency can hardly be trusted to make other, less important decisions in government.

As an Obama supporter, I obviously would like to see Palin become her party’s standard bearer in 2012. But even the Republican Party, I strongly suspect, don’t have that much of a death wish. They might opt for her if Obama looks like being unbeatable by then, in which case she’ll be rendered as harmless as Bob Dole was against Clinton in 1996. But if Obama’s looking remotely vulnerable, I expect the party will want to nominate a credible candidate instead.

The interesting question is: how many other Tory candidates and MPs actually take Palin seriously and want her to become president (other than Nadine, obviously)? An interesting survey of Tory candidates today at ConservativeHome reveals that as many supported Obama as opposed him. We know that Dave himself supported McCain (although his endorsement came before Palin’s nomination for VP).

Bagshawe has since Twittered that she doesn’t agree with Palin on gay rights but she does on abortion. Well, throw a stick into any Southern Baptist church in America and you’ll hit someone with the same views — surely Palin’s got more going for her than that? Apart from the glasses, of course, which I admit are very fetching.

Palin is an extremist. She is also a fool. I would question the political judgment, therefore, of anyone who describes her as their "heroine". 

UPDATE at 11.00 am, 4th July: Louise herself has replied by Twitter, suggesting that the accusation that Palin thinks dinosaurs and people walked the earth at the same time is a smear. If what I wrote above is untrue, then I apologise. But again, most people don’t believe this either and it doesn’t qualify them to be president. Can anyone provide a link to a direct quote by Palin denying the whole One Million years BC scenario?

ONE OF the most popular of the left-wing blogs in America is The Huffington Post, so imagine my delight when I got word they had posted a link to my own modest efforts here at And another thing…

It was the day of the reshuffle three weeks ago and, because I had a busy day on, I simply posted a headline without any text — the first time I’ve ever done that, though Guido tends to do it more often.

So why they chose to link to a mere headline rather than a more substantive post is a mystery. Still, I’m not complaining: sometimes less is more, I suppose.

AFTER many weeks of seemingly fruitless argument, I’ve finally managed to persuade Carolyn that we should start watching The West Wing again from the very start.

We watched the pilot and second episodes earlier this week. I was surprised at how low-quality the sound and picture were in the pilot, but the script and acting were every bit as wonderful as I remembered. One of the best things about watching programmes like this on DVD is being able to switch on subtitles. When I watched these episodes originally when they were broadcast I missed a lot of the dialogue because it was so fast and contained some references I just didn’t catch. Quick-fire, smart alec quips are all very well, but only if you catch every word.

I first came across The West Wing on Sky, where it was first shown here in the UK. I had been channel-hopping and came in half way through an episode I later discovered to be entitled “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”. I was immediately fascinated and made sure I tuned in a week later for the next episode, not realising the season was about to finish with a breathtaking and nerve-wracking finale. I was hooked and couldn’t wait for the start of the next season.

Shortly after I was first elected I was invited to watch a special preview at Channel 4 of the first episode of season three. Word spread of this exciting event and so many other MPs and researchers managed to get themselves invited that Channel 4 had to lay on a special overflow room. John Spencer, who played Leo in the series, introduced the episode, which takes place immediately after President Bartlett has rejected advice not to run for a second term. 

Spencer died during filming of the series’ seventh and final season, which makes me regret even more that when I had the opportunity to speak to him that night, I didn’t take it.

When the creator and writer of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin, left the series at the end of season four, it went downhill a bit. Season five was good — still better than everything else on TV at the time — but the drama had lost an edge, a spark. Season six started off in the same vein and I wondered whether I should bother watching the rest of the series. Then, suddenly, about three or four episodes into the season, The West Wing somehow rediscovered its mojo. The fight by Democrat Congressman Matt Santos and Republican Senator Arnold Vinnick, played respectively by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda, for their parties’ presidential nominations was engrossing and brought a much-need injection of new blood into the drama.

And we all know what happened at the end of the seventh season: Obama Santos won.

I used to bore on about how the Americans are good at producing dramas that show their politicians in a positive light whereas British writers aren’t just unwilling, but unable, to do the same with British politicians. After the events of the last three or four weeks, I won’t bother wasting my breath on that one.

And so it’s back to the season one box set. What’s next…?

POLITICS is all about timing: when to speak, when not to speak, when to announce you’re a candidate for some position or other.

So pity poor Mark Shurtleff, the Utah state attorney general, who thought he was responding to an individual when he texted, “I’m announcing I’m running at 12″, a reference to his imminent entry to the race for the Republican nomination for the US senate. 

Except it turns out he wasn’t actually texting. Oh no, no, no…

He was Twittering.

So instead of passing a juicy morcel of political gossip to a friend, Mr Shurtleff actaually gave a scoop to no less than 1600 followers of his Twitter feed. I wonder what local colloquialism might be used in Utah for “oops”?

The full story is here.