The Opinion Pages

The buzz of the week is that John Edwards was carrying on with the cute little blonde videographer wanna-be who was trailing his campaign for a while. Some commentators affected surprise. Not, of course, the irrepressible Alexander Cockburn, who’s been avidly repeating the National Enquirer’s breathless reports about the affair for months. -more-

There have been many false accusations leveled at Barack Obama during this never-ending campaign season—from the malicious, such as being a Muslim or a follower of black liberation theology, whichever you choose—to the mostly benign, like being derided as an appeaser. But there is one aspersion in particular that has so far struggled to gain momentum, though as he becomes his party’s presumptive nominee it will be very potent indeed. The charge is that Obama is some kind of liberal Trojan Horse, ready to unleash a barrage of leftist measures as soon as he steps into the Oval Office. -more-

Unless the earth reverses its rotation or gravity fails, future historians will look back and see in the Bush II presidency the start of a new America. Or, from the historian Arnold Toynbee’s point of view, America today is in its senescent stage. A simpler view is that the government presided over by the 43rd president has almost nothing in common with the original government. To be sure, the country has never fully realized those ideals on which its government was founded even though from time to time there have been sincere attempts to do so. The experiment launched in 1789 has produced interesting, exciting, unintended and sometimes admirable results as well as tragedies. Congressional representatives, for example, are not representative; “close to half” are millionaires (Associated Press, December 2002). The ship of state, once sturdy, is lost at sea like the “Flying Dutchman.” The American dream, for at least 99 out of 100, has morphed from an aspiration to an inspiration into a hallucination. The links “of,” “by” and “for” between government and people have been permanently severed. -more-

Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series from BAPAC. -more-