Ron Paul

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/arguments-vs-associations.html

John Boehner

John & Cindy McCain

The Daily Beast has a bunch of choice excerpts from the new book Game Change, an inside history of the 2008 presidential election. This description of John McCain letting loose on his wife in front of a bunch of embarrassed staffers was so vivid I felt compelled to visually dramatize it.

I sort of wish I had a cross-country bus trip in my future, so I could read the whole thing.

Gates & Karzai

The Doddfather

Sen. Max Baucus

Michele Bachmann

The Huffington Post loves to run photos of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Invariably those photos are of her gesticulating and making a crazy face, and are always coupled with some kind of out-of-context batshit-sounding quote. Because their job is to make Republicans look bad, they love to portray Bachmann as an abject loon, wildly unhinged, with no sense of shame or personal limits. But see, here's the thing, those all happen to be qualities that I find tremendously appealing in a... candidate. Yeah. Yeah, "candidate", let's go with that.

While I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, I can imagine a darkly fascinating scenario where Palin runs in 2012 and picks this woman as her running mate. The combined level of focused, determined wingnut insanity on that ticket would be nearly impossible to resist. If that were to happen I might just end up pulling the lever for the Republicans this time around. And I'm not talking about voting.

Al & Franni Franken

Maybe it's because of all the scandals in the news lately, but when I saw this picture of the Frankens celebrating his senate win, I thought to myself: this woman's on borrowed time. How long till she and Al are doing that walk of shame because he got caught with an intern.

But the more I think about it, I'd trust Al Franken not to get seduced by power more than just about anyone. This guy started on Saturday Night Live in the seventies. He was going to the after-parties since the Belushi era. If he can get through that and still stay married, what's left? Anything they try to tempt him with on the Hill is going to be child's play to him. He's seen it all and it's probably boring to him at this point. If you were to lock him in a hotel room with a bunch of hookers and blow, he'd probably just start knocking on the door asking how long does he have to be in here, and can you please slide the Times crossword under the door.

Arlen Specter

(Deep, booming voice of God)

Attention Republicans: Some things have come to My attention that we need to discuss. Though I am a vengeful God who demands absolute loyalty, perhaps it wasn't such a hot idea to chase a moderate like Arlen Specter out of the party of Me. You hounded and threatened him and called him a Democrat and, guess what, he decided he may as well be a Democrat. Nice going, fellas. You just handed this Obama character a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I don't know if you even want to bother showing up for work for the next couple of years. That is all.

(Pause)

Okay, I was just told that they don't have the 60 seats yet. They still have to seat Al Franken. Maybe God jumped the gun a little on that. Let's not make a big deal out of it. And please don't make Me bring up Al Franken ever again. I can't stand that little troll. I let him coast as an unfunny SNL writer for about 20 seasons and this is how he repays Me.

Blago

I wasn't planning on doing a political caricature today, but damn, that is one handsome man.

Bush's legacy: two views

"Though a smaller band, Bush's defenders parry that he will look to history more like Harry Truman, a president whose achievements took decades to appreciate."

-Jonathan Rauch

"Even if you're a Republican, at this point you gotta admit, for eight goddamn years we've been watching a monkey fuck a football."

-Ron Bennington

Bush, reconsidered

Now that Bush is safely in the rear view, it's easier to dispassionately reassess him. For one thing, my hatred of him was exhausted a long time ago, and as far as I could tell it wasn't actually accomplishing anything. In fact I'm pretty sure it was somehow feeding him.

But you know, you can call George W. Bush a failure all you want, but I think he succeeded by the yardstick that really mattered to him. I think that all that Bush Jr. ever wanted was to overshadow his dad's legacy. Remember, he was going to succeed where his Dad failed. His Dad invaded Iraq, but he didn't get Saddam Hussein. If you think about it, Bush Sr.'s lasting legacy was really just a PR achievement: he only succeeded in making the name Hussein synonymous with Hitler in the minds of the public. By contrast, Bush Jr's legacy was to get someone named Hussein elected President of the United States.

Bush Sr. is remembered for having won an election by painting his opponent as somebody who might be in favor of letting black guys out of jail. Bush Jr. got a black guy elected President of the United States.

So when you look again at the record, I think you'll see that George W. Bush could really be treating himself to a victory lap around the rose garden right about now.

Caroline Kennedy

This face got overworked, and I think we're at a point where we're going to have to agree to disagree. It's so hard to caricature a woman without losing what makes her attractive. But the more you try to try to make it "right", you lose the creative expression of what your mind's eye is seeing. It's a high-wire act. Nothing to do but keep practicing.

Image from Leland.

Putin

UPDATE: Being fairly new at blogging, it turns out that I have not mastered the art of taking negative comments in stride. It also turns out that when I unintentionally offend someone, I feel pretty guilty about it. I'm leaving this post up, but I wish to point out that it's not a statement of opinion, it's me summarizing something I read from a mainstream source. I further wish to point out that I am a guy who draws cartoons. I'm not a pundit with a specialty in contemporary Russian politics. That is all.

In keeping with the Bond theme: my wife looked up from her Vanity Fair the other day and said, "Did you know that Vladimir Putin rides around in a car with '007' on the license plate?" I said, "Doesn't he know that he's the guy who ends up shot at the end of the James Bond film?" After reading the article ("Dead Soul", October 2008, sorry can't find a link), I can believe both: that he's vain enough to fancy himself a dashing secret agent (as a child he already dreamt of joining the KGB), and is unreflective enough not to see the irony.

Putin was created as a Presidential candidate in 1999 by Yeltsin's embattled inner circle, who saw him as their ideal creature: a small bland bureaucrat, inoffensive enough to be sold to the public, with no accomplishments of his own, lacking the will or imagination to do anything but what they told him. They may have been right about him being undistinguished and small-minded. They soon found out how drastically wrong they were about everything else. Many of the very people who supported him for President-- and almost everyone who knew him and could tell much of anything about him--are now either working close to him, or dead, or living in exile. To this day he remains something of a blank slate. Nonetheless, the VF piece presents a fascinating picture of an accidental tyrant.

Election Day

9am-- Drop the kids off at preschool. The teachers in Irina's class tell me how they did a mock Presidential election yesterday. My daughter and her best pal ran on a platform of "more snacks". The winning ticket ran for more visits from community members like firemen (my wife maintains the teachers must have heavily influenced that win). Even though she lost, I'm proud of my little girl for the way she shamelessly pandered to the voters' basest instincts. I'll have to teach her about character assassination in time for 2012.

10am-- Settle in to work at my favorite wifi cafe. It's hard not to just hang on CNN.com all day. I put on Howard Stern to take my mind off things, but he's talking election too. For some reason the old coot is angry that Obama carries a pocketful of good-luck charms, most infuriatingly a "monkey god". Monkey God? I find a picture, and sure enough, Hanuman. Hindu spirit of sacrifice and selfless service, defender of the poor and forgotten throughout Asia. I visited Hanuman temples all over North India, and I once contributed a Hanuman painting to a popular CD of yoga chanting. For some reason I've been getting emails lately from people who want to turn it into a tattoo. I realize I stopped believing in good omens at some point.



5pm-- We were hoping to go out to watch the results tonight, but our sitter was booked--one of her clients was once a Presidential primary candidate. So our "date" consists of voting, picking the kids up and taking them out for Mexican.

8pm-- The restaurant is deserted. Faith thinks that everyone's glued to their TV's. Or battening down the hatches? The first polls are closing and we spend the meal craning our necks to see the TV. I talk to a couple of older guys at the bar, extras right out of a Scorcese movie. They're enraged that CNN is still posting results state-by-state, because it tends to affect the vote in places that are still open. I can't tell for sure which side these guys are pulling for. Eventually they switch to a basketball game, then leave it on AMC. Sylvester Stallone in a tux-- Rocky II. Did they want to watch something where they're sure the black guy is going to lose?

9:30pm-- Home. It looks to be breaking the right way. I take the baby upstairs to walk her around on the roof, a surefire way to get her to sleep. Usually the white noise of the traffic does the trick, but immediately I notice that there's hardly any. Almost no one's out on the street.

10pm-- The kids went down without a fight. Some clients of mine in D.C. are trading emails with their colleagues in India, trying to pin down a location for an event in New Delhi. I suggest a couple of places I visited. How can anyone be thinking about work right now? I haven't thought much about that India trip post-2001. It was a magical time, it's nice to be reminded of it twice in one day.

10:30pm-- Obama has 202 electoral votes--it's looking good. We go up to the roof for a cautiously celebratory drink before the next round of polls come in. Still very little street traffic. The city holds its collective breath. Faith wonders if there'll be a sudden surge of noise. I don't think so--different networks call it at different times. It's not a Giants game.

10:55pm-- I'm wrong. I don't know what was just announced, but suddenly an enormous roar is building all over the city. Cars are honking their horns, we see fireworks across some rooftops. We forget all about CNN-- this is what we want to be watching. The cab drivers at the gas station are high-fiving each other. People are running through the streets chanting "Obama". We stand and watch the impromptu celebration from on high for another hour. This is the spot where I stood and watched the second tower collapse. Today, a good day to be in New York.

Change

"For one shining moment, let's call a halt to our red-blue bickering and predicting. Rather than glancing back at our racist past or peering into our uncertain future, we'll allow ourselves a brief celebration of now. We'll be brave and reckless enough to be happily surprised by one undeniable change:

Against all sensible odds and reasoned predictions, untold numbers of Americans of every persuasion have opened their hearts, minds and souls to the possibility that a black man is the best choice to lead them. Whatever happens, an immeasurable amount of light has illuminated our darkness."

-Donna Britt, Washington Post

Obama in 16:9

Considering that the line on Obama used to be that he "doesn't give any details", it's been gratifying to see him putting out serious policy proposals lately. Good or bad, you can't accuse him of not having a plan. In these last desperate days, with the McCain side flinging retarded talking points like so much monkey shit, Obama's very much assumed the role of the adult in the room.

Obama has displayed a clear-eyed willingness to be honest about the mess the country's in, and to ask more of us than to wave a flag or take another fucking trip to the mall. Personally, I'm willing to sign off on his tax plan even if I end up on the wrong end of it. If the broader economy keeps imploding it won't be long before there's nothing to tax anyway. The idea of a New Deal-style program, putting people to work rebuilding the infrastructure and converting the power grid, makes my little liberal heart do backflips.

Maybe it's all a bunch of happy horseshit he's selling, maybe the money just isn't there, burned up over the last five years in a faraway desert. But I'm willing to throw in with the guy who wants to see the United States excel again at something besides fear and messianic delusion.

Obama-Nation

As Barack Obama seems to be cruising to victory, it crossed my mind the other day that he is spectacularly positioned for what is referred to in the wrestling business as a "heel turn." I'm not trying to suggest that on day one he's going to smash Nancy Pelosi in the face with a folding chair. But from a storytelling standpoint, if you were going to have a character morph unexpectedly into a tyrannical despot, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a better setup than what seems to be developing.

There's an almost mystical sense of convergence between this man and this moment in history. He's a transformational figure without even doing anything. The mere fact of his skin color represents a tectonic shift in American society. There's not a few people who are already looking at the dude to be some kind of Messiah. He's looking to ride into office with a big majority, cruising a tidal wave of economic anxiety. The Democrats might pick up enough seats to not only crush the Republicans in any vote, but to prevent them from even blocking a vote. It would only add dramatic irony that he's following on a President who made jabs at seizing dictatorial power, but ultimately proved hapless at everything. 

I'm not speculating that something like this might happen, I'm just speaking as someone who likes to invent compelling storylines using the available components. I personally find it hilarious that the Republicans are spinning apocalyptic visions of a popular Democratic mandate. They ask us to imagine a nightmare scenario where a single party controls both the executive and legislative branches, its power unchecked, running roughshod over the constitution, remaking the country in its image, emptying the treasury in the service of its long-held obsessions and mad utopian fantasies, all the while funneling obscene amounts of cash to its friends and cronies. I mean come on. It's a compelling argument, but I can't see anything like that ever happening in reality. 

Ask me about Sarah Palin!

Say Hello to Senor Wences

I listened to the V.P. debate on radio, so I didn't get the benefit of the arsenal of winks, eye-batting, hair-flipping and whatever else was deployed on that stage. But it must have been really something to have distracted anyone from the horseshit that was coming out of her mouth. 

It's been interesting to watch this woman blazing her beautiful arc across the political landscape like a patronizing, brain-damaged comet, firing up the base from coast to coast. I can't help but be reminded of eight years ago when a lot of us looked at George W. Bush and thought, "well, there's a guy I wouldn't trust to park my car." Not to say I told you so, but I feel that at this point I've demonstrated a certain ability to read character. If anybody wanted to know, I'd be happy to tell them that my heightened sensors are flashing red reading "INSANE" and "WILLING TO DO OR SAY ANYTHING". (As a biological male, I'm proud to say that "somewhat doable" falls considerably farther down the list.)

Perhaps there should be some kind of volunteer corps made up of people who saw through Bush the first time around. I'd be more than willing to wear some kind of badge or sticker, so that anyone who's getting weak in the knees over the winking stuff can walk right up and know that I'm a friend, and I'm here to help.

Palin & McCain

Inspired by this post on Bob Cesca's blog.