An open letter to CNN: Stop letting Republicans play you like fools

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CNN: "Biden stands by Obama on 'hot mic' controversy."

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Dear CNN,

Please excuse the language, but there is no fucking controversy. All Obama told President Medvedev was that he'd have more flexibility to work on a nuclear arms deal after the election.

And so Biden was completely right: "The idea that in this election year we're going to be able to deal with an agreement with the Russians on further reducing our nuclear arsenals... is difficult.

Actually, I'd say that's an understatement. It's next to impossible.

Republicans are trying to score political points off the president's remark -- including Romney, who used it, pathetically, to try to deflect attention away from releasing his tax returns.

They're trying to turn this into a controversy. Do you not see that?

And you, like so many in the mainstream media, are playing right along. Or, rather, right into their hands, making something out of nothing and being the mouthpiece for their anti-Obama narratives.

And it really is nothing. All the president was acknowledging was a pretty obvious political reality. In any election season, you just can't get things done, particularly important things like an arms agreement.

I explained all this in a post I wrote in response to how Republicans were making a big deal of it, using it to smear the president as anti-American, as prepared to sell America out after the election:

Winning an election means pandering, at least to some degree, to the electorate, and on national security issues, particularly complicated international ones, Americans are, by and large, deeply ignorant and prone to prolonged spasms of jingoism. Particularly on the national state, you need to be "tough," or at least to appear to be, and for the jingoistically ignorant that means saber-rattling. Republicans have been successful on the national state in large part by playing directly to this jingoistic ignorance and so by appearing to be tough (e.g., torture detainees! bomb Iran! flaunt America's nukes like a massive national hard-on!). All President Obama is doing is recognizing this unfortunate political reality...

President Obama, far more than pretty much every Republican, understands the complexity of international relations. What he is saying is not that he will capitulate, that he will give Russia whatever it wants, but that he will work with Russia on long-term solutions to these challenging problems, that he will treat Russia as a partner for peace.

Republicans are just vomiting up their usual partisan outrage. If they don't believe it, they're cynical. If they do, they're just plain stupid.

As for you and the rest of the media, you'd do well to stop letting them play you for fools.

Enough already.

Somewhat less than best regards,

Michael Stickings

A desperate, pathetic Romney smears Obama for supposedly selling out America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In response to the Obama campaign's call for Romney to release his tax returns going back to the 1980s, the Romney campaign has made a counter-proposal of its own:

"The Obama campaign is playing politics, just as he's doing in his conduct of foreign policy," Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul wrote. "Obama should release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders so the American people can be satisfied that he's not promising to sell out the country's interests after the election is over."

This is, of course, ridiculous. As Politico's Alexander Burns notes:

Releasing tax returns is a standard thing for a presidential candidate to have to do, which is not so much the case for releasing the transcripts of every conversation an incumbent president has had with a foreign leader. But of course the Romney campaign knows that, and the decision to answer with a non sequitur is a deliberate one. And the effectiveness of the tactic will hinge on voters are as prepared to believe that Barack Obama is bargaining away the country as they are willing to buy the idea that Mitt Romney is a secretive rich guy.

That's right. Basically, Romney is hoping that his completely baseless accusation that Obama is trying to sell out America, as if the president is basically a traitor, will stick. With the economy improving and his own approval ratings tanking, it's pretty much all he's got, this and his various other anti-Obama smears.

The selling out argument, such as it is an argument at all, has picked up speed after Obama was caught telling Russian President Medvedev that he'll have more flexibility after the election. Of course, he didn't mean that he'd sell out to Russia, just that politics limits one's viable options, particularly in the middle of an election season, but Republicans, as stupid and opportunistic as ever, jumped all over the remark as if it were the smoking gun they'd been waiting for.

The Romney campaign's "non sequitur," comparing apples to oranges, reflects just how pathetic it is, how desperate it is to smear Obama as a way to deflect from its own candidate's massive weakness.

And suggsting that "the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders" is fair game for public consumption isn't just ridiculous but reflective of a dangerously ignorant understanding of how the world works and of how diplomacy must be conducted. Simply put, the president, like any world leader, must be able to have private conversations, out of the public eye, with his fellow leaders. If it were all to be made public, no world leader would say anything of substance to the president, and the president would have to make every statement with an eye to how it would play, unfiltered, in the public arena. In other words, it would severely handcuff America's ability to communicate with, and make deals with, other countries. What the Romney campaign is suggesting, simply, is that the U.S. should willingly weaken itself on the international stage. If anyone is willing to sell out America, then, it's Romney. He would effectively disempower his own country.

It's unlikely, of course, that Romney and his people actually think this should be done. In addition to smearing Obama with the "selling out" charge, they're just using it for immediate political purposes as a self-defensive way to deflect attention away from Romney's tax returns, which should certainly be released for public consumption.

But the Romney campaign's ridiculous response can nonetheless be seen as an indication of how it intends to wage its battle with Obama -- that is, by lying and smearing and doing everying possible to keep the real Mitt Romney, whatever there is left now that he's a soul-less political automaton, from public view. That's really his only hope.

Obama to Medvedev: "After my election I have more flexibility." (Cue ignorant, jingoistic conservative outrage!)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Conservatives are outraged -- outraged!!! -- by President Obama's comment to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin should give him "space" on controversial issues like missile defence because... and I quote... "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." (Watch it below.)

Oh no! Obama was caught by an open microphone admitting that... well, what?

That he'll capitulate once the election is over... that he'll sell out America... that he's got some traitorous secret plan for his second term... that he's lying to the American people?

Here's a quiz. Conservatives are:

a) faux outraged;

b) politically ignorant;

c) dumb-ass jingoists;

d) fucking stupid; or

e) all of the above.

Allowing for an exception or two, I'm going with (e).

First, of course Obama would have more flexibility in a second term. Every politician has more flexibility when he or she doesn't face re-election. It was certainly true of Bush after 2004.

Second, winning an election means pandering, at least to some degree, to the electorate, and on national security issues, particularly complicated international ones, Americans are, by and large, deeply ignorant and prone to prolonged spasms of jingoism. Particularly on the national state, you need to be "tough," or at least to appear to be, and for the jingoistically ignorant that means saber-rattling. Republicans have been successful on the national state in large part by playing directly to this jingoistic ignorance and so by appearing to be tough (e.g., torture detainees! bomb Iran! flaunt America's nukes like a massive national hard-on!). All President Obama is doing is recognizing this unfortunate political reality. It's a reality realists like Medvedev, like most sensible political figures, understand all too well. ("I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir." This is how diplomacy works.)

Third, President Obama, far more than pretty much every Republican, understands the complexity of international relations. What he is saying is not that he will capitulate, that he will give Russia whatever it wants, but that he will work with Russia on long-term solutions to these challenging problems, that he will treat Russia as a partner for peace, not, as Romney would have it, as America's #1 enemy (not just a counter-productive but completely reckless position to take, though I suspect Romney is just flopping around like usual).

Fourth, the White House clarified the issue: "[T]his is a political year in which the Russians just had an election, we're about to have a presidential and congressional elections — this is not the kind of year in which we're going to resolve incredibly complicated issue like this. So there's an advantage to pulling back and letting the technical experts work on this as the president has been saying." Makes sense, no? I mean, we all know this, don't we? It's politics versus policy, the latter of which is often sacrificed by the former. Alas, conservatives are so blinded by their relentless partisan outrage that they can't -- and won't -- make sense of anything.

Fifth, did I mention that conservatives are, by and large, fucking stupid?