Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Gerard Kennedy appointed Stephane Dion as Liberal leader when he threw his support behind him during the closely fought leadership race last year. At the time, I called Gerard up and told him he blew it for the party. I said, quite passionately, that his intrigues and maneuverings just stabbed the party in the Caesarian back; that Michael Ignatieff should be the one leading the Libs into the next election and not Dion. Ignatieff should be Caesar; that the Liberals should be rendered unto him.

Ignatieff is elegant and proficient in both official languages; unlike former PM Jean Chrétien, Dion’s bad English just seems lazy and inappropriate. It just dumbs him down. And Canadians know his bad English is his choice — Dion just doesn’t care enough.

Chrétien’s inarticulateness was a different story. We assumed a lack of slickness; a lack of polish that could gloss over politician lies and disingenuousness. He was perceived as unadorned and a straight talker. Chrétien’s physical impediment, in terms of his mouth, was seen as an unfortunate, imposed ailment that he overcame on a daily basis.

Dion is an academic, a gentleman — not a contrasting street fighter from Shawinagan that served as the hammer to the most elegant dandy in Canadian history, Trudeau. Dion was also environment Minister.

Apparently, the environment is a problem these days — something about Global warming. Well, the Liberals did not have much of a track record for years on the environment. The idea now is that Dion has had a “come to Jesus” — a green “road to Damascus” — whereas, he tells us, Harper is blinded by oil patch sensibilities (and Harper is, relatively speaking); Dion, no less spectacularly, approaches green issues with all the conviction of a new convert. But what, exactly, did the Liberals do with the environment when they were in power all those years?

Now, we are told, the enlightened Liberals are born again environmental virgins, with no baggage, having just discovered air, and as pure as the driven snow that they wish so much to drive. Neither main stream party has much moral authority with regard to the environment (something different, again, from environmental politics).

Dion does not own this issue, and the issue is not big enough to sway voters who perceive, rightly, or wrongly, that Harper has gotten it, and is getting up to green speed

As an issue, Afghanistan can be manipulated by Harper according to the polls (he can defer his combat role proclivities to a Common’s vote, or just have an about face when he wins like Trudeau did in ’74 over wage and price controls) so there’s no danger there either of The Liberals and the Bloc in Quebec outmaneuvering Harper.

Dion is also perceived in Quebec as a ham-fisted, Federalist suck-up — an Anglo “Uncle Tom.” In
Quebec, Harper actually is the real thing; he doesn’t have to play at it.

The result: Stephane Dion’s Quebec new CROP poll numbers are C.R.A. P. The by-election was a disaster. Popular astronaut Marc Garneau has left; Young Trudeau was mishandled, and conspiratorial whispers can be heard in Ottawa hallways — all portents of ruinous-ness.

Am I the only one who saw Gerard Kennedy on the grassy knoll, or did you see him too?

And in Texas back then they didn’t like Liberals that much either.

The Iranian President’s visit to the UN and Columbia University today has sparked outrage by Jewish groups and others who feel that hatred is his only contribution. He has been demonized in the American media as a fire-breathing anti-Semite (which he seems to be) and a terrorist leader (which, by those same criteria, Bush would be too).

Here we go again. It is now, officially, 2003 all over again as the U.S. prepares for war with Iran; selling it to us — again — as a necessary destruction of an “evil-doer”. The difference this time is that Iran really does have a nuclear program and will, eventually, have the technology in place to deliver it.

Iran claims nuclear energy is for peaceful purposes. Actually, nuclear fuel would help because the Iranian economy is inefficient. Nuclear power, utilized peacefully, would free up more oil exports as well as provide valuable energy for Iranian industry. It is, however, inconceivable that Iran would not build nuclear weapons too. When Iranian leaders say they won’t, they are liars.

Iran is a centuries-old civilization that would like to have its own regional hegemony. Presently, Iran is surrounded by American forces in the Persian Gulf (Kuwait,Qatar, Bahrain and the 5^th Fleet in the gulf itself), as well as in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, and Turkey.

This huge deployment of U.S. forces and projection of military might is intended to cow Iran, and this is nothing new. Historically, Iran has seen the British and CIA overthrow its democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed  Mosaddeq in 1953 and insert the dictatorship of the Shah, who, himself, was finally overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The Shah was instated by Britain and The U.S. to keep the oil fields open to Western interests – and to keep the prices cheap.

When Iran started winning its war against Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, the U.S. helped guide chemical munitions on Iranian military lines. These weapons are unconventional, inhumane, and illegal. In 2004, in Iraq, the U.S. used chemical white phosphorus on the civilian population of Fallujeh – not playing nice at all.

The U.S. has supported terrorist groups around the world when it has suited them to counter-balance the power of other rivals – think of the U.S. funding of Osama Bin Laden via Pakistan against the secular, non-fundamentalist, Soviet puppet regime in Kabul in the 1980’s. Just as the U.S. sewed the seeds of Afghan fundamentalism, so support for repressive and cruel dictators (not just in the Middle East and there are far too many for me to list), has also exacerbated tensions in the region, a region where young, urbanized males are without work and are now resisting their authoritarian overlords.

Simply put, the U.S., when it comes to the use of violence, covert and overt, has no moral authority in the modern world. An honest argument based on American self-interest, fine. But to say the U.S. claims a moral high ground in the rough and tumble world of competing states, just does not stand up to serious scrutiny.

The fact remains however, that I could not write this blog in either Iran or China; for all of the Arab criticism of Israel, it is an extremely open, successful, pluralistic society and a model of democracy in a region that has no history of it.

Allowing the Iranian President to speak to the students of Columbia and address the West, not just at the United Nations, is open and democratic. There are no “ideas” that should make anyone afraid or overly challenged.

Exposing sly anti-Semitism today when Ahmadinejad called for the continuing “study” of “the truth” of the holocaust is patently transparent and ludicrous.

But the West is also responsible, and must itself account for much of the radicalization and hatred in the region. For the most part, U.S. policies have been violent, anti-democratic and self serving.

Even today, the Iraqi puppet government, that is allegedly democratic, cannot have its way when it tries to protect its citizens by asking for the private security firm “Blackwater” to be kicked out after it killed 20 civilians in a big daylight shootout. In fact, “Blackwater”, and other private security firms, cannot be prosecuted by either military law or Iraqi law. Iraq is a lawless, humiliated, conquered, victim state.

Iraq is an American rape victim.

The fact that Iran is assisting Iraqi resistance movements, supplying arms and expertise and money, is not any different than American support for guerilla and U.S. resistance movements against competitive states elsewhere.

What Columbia University was about today was political grandstanding for the Iranian President. Domestically, many in Iran cannot stand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Real power rests with the Mullahs in that country anyway. Many young people in Iran actually like America.

What is happening is that Ahmadinejad would love a fight with America which would cement hardliner power there. The talk of the Holocaust is classic baiting.

The coming war will consist of aerial bombing and cruise missile strikes after which the dust will settle, the U.S. would look like an even worse imperial power, and Iran’s nuclear program will resume.

Of course having the United States and her allies bluster along while Iran endures sanctions would be easier, but is not the only outcome desired; and playing rope-a-dope with a punched-out America that takes its best shot and loses would make Ahmadinejad an Islamic hero.

Strong elements of the U.S. government, U.S. government lobbies, the American military, Israel, and other allies in NATO would also love a war — and they can attack with military impunity. Oil prices will shoot up, some ships might take silkworm missile hits in the straight of Hormuz, but, otherwise, you can kick Iran and run away. 

And America wants to demonize Ahmadinejad and Ahmadinejad wants to be a devil.

Everybody wins. 

The response to my last two articles here “Afghanistan Paths of Glory” and “The Hollow Valley and Self-Redemption” has been unbelievable. Many of you just e-mail me directly instead of posting responses online. I would encourage you to do both.

Canadian foreign policy is a hot topic and with Canadian casualties, as well as an impending election, the Afghanistan debate will continue to get even hotter.

Sadly, this week, the news cycles fixated on O.J. Simpson and not the secret Israeli air strike on Syria Sept. 6, revealed a few days ago. The whole Middle East is ready to explode; with the U.S. military enircling Iran and with Israel ready to pounce, the clock is ticking – and this will not end well for either perceived aggressor. There will not be any “soft landings.”

On Monday I will examine the worsening crisis in the Middle East and the possible war with Iran with author Kevin Pollack and other fellows from the Sabon Centre for Middle Eastern Policy at The Brookings Institution.

Also on Monday, my look at Marriage under Siege: Sarah Hampson of the Globe and Mail doesn’t think that it’s prudent for a woman to take a man’s name and I’ll also talk to her about the notion that the marriage contract itself should only be for seven years with a renewable option! The idea is to off-set divorce costs in a cynicism-out-of-control society.

See you Monday. If you haven’t gotten a chance to read my last two articles, please do so.

Afghan leader Hamid Karzai met with Canadian reporters this week as part of his PR campaign. A similar campaign exists concurrently to “sell” the Afghanistan mission to the Canadian public by politicos and members of the military.

The military has the highest political and social and budgetary (economic) status when it is engaged in a combat role. Bureaucracies crave both power and expansion. The military is no different; having troops die and killing is sexier, and more sensational, than the traditional Care Bear, blue-bereted Peacekeeper — unfortunately. General Hillier and the rest of the military brass may hate casualties, but they love the status achieved by combat (their peace protestations notwithstanding). 

Ironically, what we witnessed in the United States in 2003 was a civilian leadership that whipped both the State Department and the Generals to war and humiliated them when they exhibited either military prudence or caution — punished for being conservative, in other words.

It is in this environment of gross strategic Whitehouse failure that we see the Western appointed Karzai holding court in his Kabul palace; and with symmetrically placed flags by his shoulders, and with a manicured grey bearded face, Karzai projected concern and solemnity as he explained how great we are and how useful Canada is in protecting his rule and the other warlords who confect the “new” Afghanistan.

“If Canada leaves, we will be attacked,” Karzai shock-cautioned.

Actually, he is wrong: Canada risks being a target the longer we are there, not the other way around. Besides, 2,500 Canadian troops does not centuries-old, tribal reformation make. If so, Afghanistan would have been reformed dozens of times, and it would have evolved differently – it wouldn’t even be Afghanistan.

If 2,500 Canadian troops are all that stand between Karzai and chaos, why bother? Chaos is coming anyway.

By contrast, General Colin Powell’s doctrine was to avoid “wars of choice,” in favor of employing massive force in strategic and combined arms warfare in order to totally dominate with full (but understandably limited) political backing back home. Wars would be fast, lethal, and short with massive manpower and ordnance employed.

On the other side of this military equation lies the Former Secretary of Defense and celebrated stand-up comic Donald Rumsfeld. He quickly facilitated what was/is termed the “revolution in military affairs,” which called for smaller, more mobile, high tech, special teams. The reduced manpower footprint meant less of a political footprint because fewer folks would come home in body bags. Voters don’t like body bags for some reason.

Well, high tech, smaller teams are okay for deconstruction, but you still have to hold territory — something the U.S. failed to do in Iraq because they didn’t have enough men (and then they stupidly disbanded The Iraqi army), and something that the U.S. really failed to do in Afghanistan. The American force now is only a token force. Sadly, Afghanistan, for America, is a sideshow.

Here’s my question: why should Afghanistan be Canada’s number one military priority when it is not Americas?

Many in the world were also very confused when the U.S., attacked on 9/11 from a plot cooked in Khandahar, was extremely reluctant to commit manpower to the Afghanistan invasion from the outset. Why not put boots on the ground and lots of them? Instead, smaller CIA teams and Special Forces and warlord proxies were utilized. But why? Insanely, and recklessly, America was already planning for Iraq – a country that never attacked them on 9/11, and with a state dictator, Saddam Hussein, who hated fundamentalists like Osama.

That’s how Osama Bin Laden escaped. No American manpower in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2002, and now, only a token force in Afghanistan.

Let us now examine this whole idea of “progress” in Afghanistan. This is the pillar of the “Afghan mission sale.”

Simply put, there is no progress. The emperor has no clothes. Even crusty Christie Blatchford, a Conservative army cheerleader if ever there was one, who was there and who reported from the field, characterized the Canadian military effort in Afghanistan as “Sisyphean”– a reference to philosopher/novelist Albert Camus’ allegory of futility (the man who pushes the rock up the hill only to have it always roll back down).

But futility is not the issue here; it is military power, and budgets, and prestige.

The generals that benefit the most from the photo ops, and the drivers, and the buffets, and the cocktail parties, and the meetings with the important politicians, and the nice salaries, never come home in body bags.

And they always give the orders.

I met a person today who almost killed herself — a neighbour. She heard my broadcast today on bi-polarity and a new cure and it reminded her of the past. Her melancholy and remembered and reflected sadness made me think of novelists and poets.

In Darkness Visible, A Memoir Of Madness, William Styron of Sophie’s Choice fame, talks about his descent into the maelstrom of self-contempt and abject despair, what I call the black hole of depression where no light escapes; an alone and an unyielding suffering; a lack of meaning and love, and purpose, and worth. Self-inflicted homicide is an escape from the pain of living and feeling; it is the stopping of it, a cessation of taking in the same poison breaths of empty existence. The visibility of darkness is the stuff of living (to varying degrees let us hope) and the inspiration of much art and artfulness too.

In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot’s magnificent poem opens with this same vision of immobility, despair, and helplessness:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets…

In the poem The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot again proclaims:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar 
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Former President Bill Clinton spoke with me about this theme a few years ago, and how he read, during his own tough times, Darkness Visible — Styron’s ultimately uplifting autobiography.

Clinton has had his own battles with depression as I have, and, as many do. I want to add that there is, however, a big difference between my mild, sub-clinical depression that is common and requires no medication except excercise, rest, supplements and the love of my family, and full blown depression. Bipolarity itself is a whole other area of mental illness entirely.

For me, having stared down my own version of the black hole has though, in some respects, made me fearless as a broadcaster. I know that there can be an upside to the hollow valley –  it is called survival for its own sake even when you don’t want to. 

One such survivor in my studio today is a woman whose name is Autumn Stringam. Her husband Dana also accompanied her. Married 16 years, Autumn tormented herself and her family while suffering from Bipolar disorder until finally finding a cure in the form of mood stabilizing mineral supplements (more on that later). 

What shocked me the most was how full of love were her husband’s eyes.  Sitting in the studio, as he looked at her, it was as if he was seeing her for the first time; about him was the urgency of anticipation tempered by an understanding and a closeness that you could feel and that was humbling to witness –- and inspiring; a man who had endured so much simply loved her that much more — and she him. 

What of “the cure,” the mood stabilizer nutritional supplement? Perhaps it is my most revolutionary product encounter in my broadcasting career to date. The discussion of it is on the website www.apromiseofhope.ca and in Autumn Stringam’s book, A Promise of Hope, or you can google Empower Plus and read about it yourself. I will warn you there is controversy and opposition. But I do not wholly trust the pyscho-pharmaceutical industry or “Big Pharma,” as it’s called, either who seem inclined to generally oppose natural remedies of any kind.

All I know now was what, in my studio today, I had witnessed: a woman with strong personal and anecdotal experience who overcame bilpolar disorder and a husband and a family that bore witness to her transformation.

But the love in her husband’s eyes is also a cure. He would still look at her the same way no matter what. I bet he had those same eyes all the while she was ill. And when he smiles at her with his eyes today they seem to mist over into almost different colors because they shine so; they shine at her; they shine for her.

Now that is worth living for.  

Earlier this week, I spoke to you about the new 2006 census numbers for the family. The numbers indicate that the institution of marriage, not just the middle class itself, is under siege. I believe that there is a relationship to these phenomena — that they are not separate.

For years, the indices are that more and more money is flowing into fewer and fewer hands. The attenuation of the middle class and the cost of education, health care, homes, and cars have greatly increased; as a percentage of income, these items of life are simply unrecognizable from the family budgets and economics of the past. Moreover, a condition characterized as “imposed affluence” exacerbates the effect of wealth diminishment – people have to go out and buy computers, cell phones, blackberries, electronic games, etc. as a result of cultural/business expectations.

Other items, such as electronic gear, keep getting updated — and we buy them. One father, with whom I have spoken, purchased a composite hockey stick for his son that cost $300.

What is occurring is an entrenchment of conditions and an increasing of economic effects that reinforce a status quo of middle-class and nuclear family deterioration. I wonder if some of our personal choices are a reaction to all of this. Are the demands of daily living, and the expectations of daily living — the drip, drip, drip, of the costs of daily living — simply applying too many strains on couple hood?

If so, these personal choices have a collective wallop – more common law relationships, fewer marriages, more single parents, and increased child poverty — it all means, in the end, just plain, fewer people. Fewer people ultimately means a smaller tax base, this, at a time of looming greater public demands as all those hippies age. The offspring of the free-love hippies have deified consumerism, treated marriage as a commodity, while fraternizing on Facebook.

Quebec has the lowest birth rate in the country, and it also has the highest acceptance and adoption of common-law marriages, coincidence? The general statistics say that common-law couples don’t stay together as long as married couples. That means a bigger household income for a longer period with married couples. Married men (before divorce, I might add) also earn, on average, 18 per cent more than single men. Moreover, more women are choosing to raise kids by themselves if the marriage becomes difficult (women’s own lives are plagued by child-rearing, career and cleaning – more work, on average, than the man). And women’s lives, and men’s roles, are more difficult these days. 

Very few young women from affluent families, statistically, choose to have families out of wedlock. More and more young women from poorer families are passing up on marriage. This, according to me, is a hardening of the socio-economic arteries.

Rich people rarely work against their own best interests. Poor people usually do. And they each reinforce their own respective class origins and self-perception.

Peter Bergen, who joined me on the anniversary of September 11, is, besides being CNN’s terrorism analyst, the author of Holy War Inc. and The Osama Bin Laden I Know. In 1997 Peter scrambled up a dark, dusty trail in Afghanistan to a mud hut where Osama Bin Laden was holding court.

At the time, bin Laden’s declaration of war on the U.S. seemed like the ravings of a crank, but soon the reality of the African embassy bombings and the USS Cole attack changed all that – or should have. Osama was for real and his organization had real capability and reach. For some reason the 1993 World Trade Centre attack still seemed forgotten, a one-off, unconnected, and insignificant.

Pearl Harbor was proof that despite WW2 Japanese decryption techniques and technology (“Magic” and “Purple”), bulk, raw information still needs to be processed properly and interpreted. Americans, at that time, presumed a Japanese attack first at Clarke Field in the Philippines – not Hawaii. Germany then was America’s preference. If, as some would have it, Pearl Harbor was willed and encouraged by FDR because the U.S. President wanted to fight, why not create a German Pearl harbor instead? Germany first, was America’s stated policy in WW2. Hitler’s declaration of War on the U.S. was not anticipated by anyone – including Hitler’s high command.

America did not want to lose its fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the losses there left the West Coast highly vulnerable to the Japanese. The fact that the U.S. aircraft carriers were not at Pearl at the time of the attack was sheer luck. The fact that Japan caught America napping is aptly characterized by the phrase “shit happens”.  

That’s what 9/11 was: The planes struck. The fuel ignited. The buildings burned. But the conspiracy boys will tell you that Bush dynamited the buildings after the planes hit and held the air force back.

Why weren’t there Iraqi highjackers among the 19? Why weren’t weapons of mass destruction planted in Baghdad? Why did the Iraq war go so badly if the U.S. is so efficient? After all, they won the war and lost the peace. Isn’t “peace” easier? Why hasn’t Osama been caught? Even if you say Bush created 9/11, shouldn’t someone have caught him for something?

Why did Nixon get caught for Watergate and Reagan with Iran/Contra? Why did the CIA fail to assess the fall of the Shah in 1979 or the implosion of the Soviet Union when it happened?

While JFK was targeted by more than Oswald that doesn’t mean that everything is not as it appears.

The conspiracy clowns are, in the end, very American – they dismiss Osama been Laden.

The reality is that we all have very little control in the world – the obverse world-view to the conspiracy boys. That is just too scary for some.

Brian Mulroney’s anti-Trudeau outburst preceding the launch of his new biography follows the same trajectory of bitterness and recrimination that we have heard so many times before.

Trudeau, perceived by many to be the great spoiler of the Mulroney constitutional accords, has been attacked by Mulroney in interviews as being anti-Semitic, a fascist flirt, and a lazy, indolent, globe-trotting rich kid. Surprisingly, given Mulroney’s hard-scrabble roots, it was the class issue regarding Trudeau that probably irked him the most.

The attempt to diminish Trudeau through his youthful flights of fascist fancy has fallen upon deaf ears. How Trudeau governed himself and led the country as an adult is what counts. No one gives a damn if he inhaled either.

With Mulroney it is style over substance; while his substance is substantial and transformational: free trade (which many view to be economically positive), the GST (proven to be a federal coffers cash cow), the failed Meech Lake accords (seen retrospectively to be not much of a Quebec compromise at all and something that maybe even should have passed), his style was not positive: grating, phony, condescending, over-controlled, stilted, and considered by many to be too much of an American boot-kisser.

The public’s Mulroney disdain seemed to be almost incommensurate with the man himself. It is almost as if the style of the man meant more somehow. Maybe it always does. But with Mulroney there was something people really didn’t like.

Chrétien is best remembered for lying about the GST, same sex marriage, and saying no to Bush on Iraq — not very impressive for so many years in power. But Chrétien is hated less.

The reason, I suspect, has more to with Mulroney’s continentalism – a connectedness to the U.S. both in terms of trade and in terms of a cultural affinity adorned by his well-worn coziness with Regan and George H. W. Bush.

Canadians just don’t like Presidents, Republican ones especially, to be too comfy with our PMs. We fear a sell out.

And while free trade has been positive in the short term, we still may find it hard to keep our fresh water under the terms of the agreement.

History has yet to judge on the real impact of free trade yet. But it seems to have made up its mind on Mulroney. He was successful, despite himself.

Does the sex life/personal life of your politician really matter to you? Should it?

Last summer, the province of Nova Scotia obsessed over the marriage difficulties of Premier Rodney Macdonald. Some voters complained that he ran on “family values” and therefore should have been above reproach when it comes to the conduct of his own nuclear family. But is that really true? Afterwards, the Premier challenged me to “define a family” in this day and age. He was correct.

Sadly, people that elect people to have power over them often expect behavior which is uncommon. Just like their “uncommon” power. But how high should these personal standards be, even if you subscribe to that notion?

Within hours of the disclosure of U.S. Senator Larry E. Craig’s arrest and conviction after an undercover sex sting in an airport washroom, Republican Senate leaders wanted him out. Although Craig had only pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor infraction of disorderly conduct, this was too much of a scandal for U.S. Republicans. There were allegations of homosexuality – and this from a politician that had railed against gays as he played to his base in Idaho. Senator Craig had even gloated over the Clinton/Lewisnky scandal that Bill “was a naughty boy, a very naughty boy.”

But where is the morality in undercover operations that involve consenting adults and end up destroying lives – including Craig’s and, even more tragically, his long-suffering wife and daughter?

How can America, or Canada, for that matter, countenance all the sex and violence in movies, music, TV, and advertising, and then censure those most visible and vulnerable for playing the angles?

The personal lives of Peter Mackay and Belinda Stronach were such that CTV national news ran the breakup as a lead story with Lloyd Robertson, culminating in Mackay’s fabulous self-pitying-potato-patch-digging camera opportunity. The fact that Belinda had crossed the floor to the Liberals was secondary to the breakup with the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives. Peter was sincere in his plight and pain. He played for the cameras because, heck, that’s what we wanted/expected. Why fight it?

I think we should fight it. How someone administrates, and leads, not if they are gay or straight or married or philandering, should matter.

Leadership does not mean a total command of personal virtue anymore than a doctor can operate on his own foot. Strangely, we seem to feel that leaders who are alcoholics are still morally better than those that lack sexual restraint.

The truth is we only need those skill-sets that affect leadership, management, and policy development and administration. But we seem to value notions of virtue more than educational background or intellectual capacity – the very things we really do need in a politican. Bush was ultimately more competitive from an electoral perspective because he represented a party that prioritized “moral standards” (read sex) over the Democrats scandal-ridden Bill Clinton.

Voters often make a decision that is populist — whom would I “have a beer with.”

Democracy, like a family, is as imperfect as the human beings that comprise it; and while we get the politicians that we deserve, they often get a hypocritical electorate that they don’t.