On Cuba, McCain and Obama resist change

By DeWayne Wickham

As Barack Obama and John McCain crisscrossed the presidential battleground state of Florida on Wednesday, a United Nations vote challenged the idea either man is really serious about bringing meaningful change to America's foreign policy.

By an overwhelming margin of 185-3, the U.N. voted to condemn this country's 46-year-old economic embargo of Cuba. Two countries abstained and two others didn't show up.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba is a relic of the Cold War - and a foreign-policy stalking horse of politicians who shamelessly court Cuban-American voters in South Florida.

While it has failed to choke the economic life out of Cuba's communist government, the embargo has been kept in place to satisfy Cuban-American leaders who are tone deaf to the call for change that has dominated this presidential contest.

Despite the U.N. vote - and despite widespread support here at home for an end to the Bush administration's political intransigence - it doesn't seem likely either McCain or Obama would heed the world's call to end the embargo.

McCain has said he would try to get international support for a further tightening of the embargo.

Obama has said he would loosen restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba. He also would immediately permit Cuban Americans to visit the island nation once a year and send remittances to a wide range of relatives in Cuba.

Under 2004 rules imposed by the Bush administration, Cuban Americans can send $1,200 a year to immediate family members only, and are allowed to visit them just once every three years.

McCain's position represents change in the wrong direction, and Obama's stance is far from enlightened.

By allowing limited travel to Cuba for only one group - the 1.4 million Cuban Americans - this country discriminates against the other 298 million Americans who aren't allowed to travel there.

More importantly, continuing the embargo sharply restricts Cuba's ability to feed and provide medical treatment to its people, condemning untold numbers of Cubans to an early death.
Obama, the front-runner in the presidential race, has vowed to repair America's standing in the world. That won't be easy if he doesn't undo the embargo, which is opposed by virtually every other country in the world. Only Israel and Palau joined the U.S. in voting against the U.N. condemnation of the embargo.

Even Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries heavily dependent on American troops and financial aid, don't support the embargo. Afghanistan voted Wednesday to condemn it, and Iraq voted against it last year. This year Iraq didn't bother to show up for the vote.

The two presidential candidates insist some form of embargo should remain in place until Cuba gives its people more freedom. What makes that laughable is that neither man has called for similar actions against the communist countries of China or Vietnam or against other countries State Department officials say have even worse human-rights records than Cuba.

McCain and Obama have made competing claims to being agents of change, but their support for the embargo mocks those claims. It also threatens the lives of many of Cuba's 11 million people, innocent victims of the long-running tug-of-war between the Cuban government and ours.

Whatever the outcome of next week's election, neither McCain nor Obama can be counted on to do much to bring meaningful change to this lingering Cold War struggle.

Barack Obama informercial - part I

Barack Obama informercial - part II

Barack Obama informercial - part III

Can Obama change America?

By DeWayne Wickham

Long before Colin Powell proclaimed Barack Obama a “transformational figure,” the Illinois senator was already being seen as an otherworldly politician — a black man who might lead America out of the desert of its crippling racial divide.

I don’t know if Obama is a transformational figure, but I’m sure that this is a transformational time in the life of our country.

Obama’s meteoric rise from junior member of the U.S. Senate to front-runner in the presidential race has been widely viewed as a good omen. He’s arrived at the door of this nation’s highest office 60 years after another Democrat, Strom Thurmond, bolted the party to mount an anti-civil rights campaign for the presidency.

Obama is leading the White House race just 45 years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed in his historic “I Have a Dream” speech that blacks were still “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”

Obama’s on the verge of becoming this nation’s first black president only 16 years after Rodney King — the black motorist whose beating by police sparked the 1992 Los Angeles race riot — asked, “Can we get along?” Violence in that city took 54 lives and resulted in the arrests of 12,000 people.

Obama, who has run a tactically brilliant campaign, is believed by many to have moved America well beyond this ugly past, into a post-racial era. But I don’t think we’ve gone that far yet. Color issues still are too often viewed through one lens.

Back in August a headline in The New York Times asked: “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” The story talked about how the nation’s successful civil rights struggle has produced a new generation of black politicians, who do not see their job as “speaking for black Americans.”

Unanswered by that article — and generally by analysts — is whether Obama’s rise also marks an end to the white politics? In many ways, the black politics of the past 40 years was a parallel universe to the one in which white politicians dwelled.

During much of this time white politicians championed the interests of their white constituents in much the same way as black politicians. But this truth is largely ignored by those who contemplate the post-racial era an Obama presidency might produce. That’s a myopic mistake Obama shouldn’t make if he wins the election.

Obama has been pushed to the edge of victory by an amazing transformation in the political life of this nation. He is the beneficiary of a shift across racial and generational lines. He leads Republican John McCain among voters of all ages, genders and educational levels.

If he wins, Obama’s biggest challenge will be to not undermine this unusual coalition by governing as an old-line politician — either black or white. This doesn’t mean he should ignore the legitimate interests of one group to placate the other.

Instead he should remember what he told me during a July 2007 interview about how he can balance the interests of blacks and whites.

“The more we can say we’re going to fight on behalf of all working Americans and we’re going to do extra stuff for those who need the most help, that’s an argument we can win,” he said.

Now that's an approach to problem solving that can transform this country.

Not so subtle racism

By DeWayne Wickham

When you get right down to it, Diane Fedele and David Duke are kindred souls.

Fedele, the president of a California conservative Republican women’s group, resigned Wednesday after being harshly criticized for sending a racist depiction of Barack Obama to the organization’s members. Duke is the former Louisiana state legislator and Ku Klux Klan leader who makes little effort to disguise his racist contempt for the black presidential candidate.

The offensive image Fedele circulated appeared in a recent newsletter of the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated organization. It showed Obama’s face on a fake $10 food stamp bill surrounded by a slice of watermelon, a bucket of fried chicken, a rack of barbecued ribs and a pitcher of Kool-Aid.

“I do not think like a bigot, and because of that fact, I did not view this as racial, because I do not have a racially discriminating point of view,” Fedele wrote in her resignation letter, the Inland Daily Bulletin reported.

Well, then what was the point of linking Obama to food stamps and the welfare imagery which that government handout invokes? Why tie him to watermelon, fried chicken and ribs in this way? Was it because Obama has promised to give federal subsidies to hog and chicken farmers, and watermelon growers, if he makes it into the White House? Or did the newsletter’s depiction of Obama have another, more odious, connection?

In his 1986 book “Sambo: the Rise & Demise of an American Jester,” Joseph Boskin talked of how such imagery has been used to ridicule blacks, whose meals during slavery often consisted of pork scraps, chicken and watermelon. One early 20th century post card carried the picture of a black man, with a watermelon tucked under each arm, looking longingly at a chicken. This caricature of a black man struggling to choose between watermelon and chicken had the following caption: “Dis am de wurst perdickermunt ob mah life!”

More recently golfer Fuzzy Zoeller stumbled over his tongue in 1997 after Tiger Woods became the first black to win the Masters golf tournament. Winners of this prestigious sporting event get to pick the menu for the Champions Dinner the following year. Tell him not to serve fried chicken, Zoeller said to reporters following Woods’ victory. Zoeller apologized the next day, saying his comments were not meant to be racist.

Like Zoeller, Fedele should have known better. That she thought she could get away with branding Obama with such racially offensive imagery puts her in the company of Duke, who now heads a group called the European American Unity and Rights Organization. Shortly after Obama wrapped up the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Duke posted a commentary on his website in which he said the Illinois senator’s victory should be a warning sign to white Americans.

“Now the dreams of our forefathers have morphed into our own living nightmares in which anti-white racism and white self-hate dominate the political and media landscape,” Duke wrote. If elected president, Obama “will be a clear signal for millions of our people. Obama is a visual aid for white Americans who just don’t get it yet that we have lost control of our country, and unless we get it back we are heading for complete annihilation as a people.”

The warning that Duke sounded is different only in degree from that which Fedele circulated. It was only when there was a loud public outcry that Fedele pulled back – though not far – from what she did. She had tried to make an “ideological statement, not a racist one,” Fedele explained. But for all but the most naïve, the images on the phony money contradicts that assertion.

While she lacks David Duke’s shrillness, Diane Fedele was speaking in a similar voice when she tried to sound an alarm about the looming possibility that Barack Obama might become the next president of the United States.

Obama: The new "Powell doctrine"

By DeWayne Wickham

When you think about it, Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama should come as no surprise.

Not because, as some small minds reason, the former secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate are both African-American. Nor did Powell, a Republican, do it to get even with the Bush administration he once served for making him the foil for its rush to war in Iraq.

There was nothing petty about the choice Powell announced Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. It is a logical extension of his view of America's role as the world's dominant force for good. In telling moderator Tom Brokaw that Obama is his choice for president, the man who was the most respected member of the Bush administration laid out a new "Powell doctrine."

The next president, he said, should be someone who has the ability to inspire and reach out to all Americans, and has the rhetorical ability and the substance to lead the nation and the world during troubled times.

Powell's endorsement of Obama amounts to a prescription for civilian leadership at a critical time that complements the first Powell doctrine, which he articulated after the United States went to war in 1991 to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

While serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell said this country should send its troops into combat only when America's vital interests are at stake. And in such a situation, he said, we should use decisive force to achieve a clearly defined victory and exit strategy.

Back then, Powell wanted to win a war. Now he wants to secure the future of our nation. He sees Obama as "a transformational figure" among a new generation of world leaders who, more than John McCain, can lead America at the critical juncture in our history.

And so the more important question isn't why Powell endorsed Obama, but whether his endorsement will have a significant impact, coming as it did slightly more than two weeks before Election Day.

I don't think so.

The die is cast in this contest. While the outcome might not appear certain, I suspect that the vast majority of Americans — even those who claim to remain uncommitted — have decided how they'll vote Nov. 4.

If we can believe what people are telling pollsters, Obama already enjoys the backing of nearly every black voter, and he has a 14 percentage point lead over McCain among women and a 5 point edge with men. He also leads McCain among voters of every age category and education level, according a recent Gallup Poll. McCain has a 4 point lead over Obama with white voters but trails Obama by 10 points among independents.

By endorsing Obama at this late point in the campaign, Powell has just thrown some red meat to the news media's chattering class — too many of whom cover the presidential race like the hapless band of newsmen who reported on an African war in Scoop, Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel about the journalism profession. For them, Powell's endorsement is a big story, but in truth it will have more historical importance than political impact.

From a political perspective, the Obama train had already left the station and was hurtling toward the finish line when Powell got onboard. But as a matter of history, his decision to back Obama could make the second Powell doctrine as an important a prescription as the first.