Week of August 18, 2008

Why is it a real race now, with John McCain rising in the polls and Barack Obama falling? There are many answers, but here I think is an essential one: The American people have begun paying attention.

It's hard for our political class to remember that Mr. Obama has been famous in America only since the winter of '08. America met him barely six months ago! The political class first interviewed him, or read the interview, in 2003 or '04, when he was a rising star. They know him. Everyone else is still absorbing.

This is what they see:

An attractive, intelligent man, interesting, but—he's hard to categorize. Is he Gen. Obama? No, no military background. Brilliant Businessman Obama? No, he never worked in business. Famous Name Obama? No, it's a new name, an unusual one. Longtime Southern Governor Obama? No. He's a community organizer (what's that?), then a lawyer (boo), then a state legislator (so what, so's my cousin), then U.S. senator (less than four years!).

There is no pre-existing category for him.

Add to that the wear and tear of Jeremiah Wright, secret Muslim rumors, media darling and, this week, abortion.p It took a toll, which led to a readjustment. His uniqueness, once his great power, is now his great problem.

And over there is Mr. McCain, and—well, we know him. He's POW/senator/prickly, irritating John McCain.

The Shiite government of al-Maliki is mounting a campaign to arrest hundreds of leaders in the Awakening Council movement among Sunni Arabs, which the US military created and paid for as a way of getting Iraqis to fight fundamentalist radicals ("al-Qaeda"). Although the McCain camp confuses the temporary troop escalation of 2007-2008 and the Awakening Council policy, in fact they were two different tracks. Other observers have argued that neither was as important as the massive ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere, in leading to a reduction of civilian deaths (no one left to kill of the other sect in a lot of neighborhoods). The big question is whether al-Maliki can keep the peace in Sunni Arab neighborhoods without the assistance of the Awakening Councils.

We have been living in the age of 1989--an age of democratic revolution. The damage is to those revolutions and their legacy.

The democratic revolutions came in three waves, each new wave weaker than the last. The earliest of revolutions, the velvet revolutions of 1989 itself, were a mighty tide, but the second wave needed a push. This turned out to be U.S. military action in the Balkans, which led to the Serbian overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, followed by, after a while, the color revolutions: Georgia's"Rose" in 2003, Ukraine's"Orange" in 2004, and a variety of smaller, failed upsurges, and even fiascos, in what used to be the Soviet zone.

The third wave, in the Middle East in 2005, proved to be feebler yet--set off once again by U.S. military action, though also by inspirations from the Rose and Orange revolutions. The so-called"Arab Spring," viewed on a regional scale, was easily contained. Its biggest event was the Iraqi election of 2005, which succeeded in returning the sectarian and extremist parties to power. A disastrous result. And yet the Iraqi election, in its contradictory fashion, also expressed something of a democratic aspiration on the part of millions of very brave voters. An ambiguity. And the Arab Spring produced the Cedar Revolution of March 2005 in Lebanon, inspired directly by the joint example of the Orange revolution and the Iraqi election.

The Cedar Revolution has undergone any number of setbacks since 2005, but one of the worst took place earlier this month. Hezbollah's militia won an official recognition within Lebanon, accepted as legitimate even by the semi-defeated champions of the Cedar Revolution. August 2008 therefore marks a simultaneous setback to both the Rose and Cedar Revolutions, central events of the second wave and the third.

And the tide rolls out.

In May, the Fulton County school board planned to cast its final vote approving the name Lake Forrest Elementary. Before the board meeting, officials were asked if anybody checked to see whether Lake Forrest Drive was named for a Confederate general.

As a noun, “forest” is defined as “a thick growth of trees and underbrush …” according to Webster’s New World College Dictionary. On the other hand, as a proper noun, “Forrest” — as in Nathan Bedford Forrest — is the last name of a controversial Confederate general.

“To some, Forrest was a brilliant and heroic military tactician, but to others, he was the leader of a horrific 1864 war crime and embodied fear and hatred from his ties to the Ku Klux Klan,” according to material from a Civil War symposium at Kennesaw State University.

In a follow-up meeting, on May 16, the board voted to make Lake Forest the school name, with no mention of the dropped letter.

When asked, officials said the school wanted “an environmental focus,” and declined to say if Forrest and his controversial past had anything to do with it.

American voters nearly always elect a president who responds to the flaws they have found in his predecessor. Jimmy Carter was more honest than Richard Nixon; Ronald Reagan tougher than Carter; George H.W. Bush “kinder and gentler” than Reagan; Bill Clinton more in touch than Bush; George W. Bush more morally upright in his personal life than Clinton. In November, whether most voters pull the lever for John McCain or for Barack Obama, they’re likely to get a president who’s more competent than Bush. What’s less certain—but equally important—is whether they’ll get one who can be the uniter that Bush promised to be, rather than the divider he has been.