Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Blog

The Ups and Downs of Ending Affirmative Action Preferences

By Carol Allen

In their highly readable book on the California Civil Rights Initiative, co-authors Harry Glynn Custred, M. Aliz Raza, and A. Janell Anderson describe the Ups and Downs of Affirmative Action Preferences. Were they to write a sequel today, they might aptly title it The Ups and Downs of Ending Affirmative Action Preferences. With the decision this month to close down the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative campaign and last month’s similar decision in Oklahoma, it would seem that the battle to end race preferences is facing some major setbacks. Has there, perhaps, been a downturn in the popular support for this quest?

A good place to start in answering that question is with a brief review of the ten-year history of efforts to end affirmative action preferences (by voter initiative or legislation). In 1996, Californians voted decisively to end the use of such preferences in public contracting, education and employment. But, it is worth remembering that the progenitors of the California Civil Rights Initiative (Tom Wood and Harry Glynn Custred) had first tried and failed to place the question before voters in 1994. The setback that year did not deter their renewed efforts in 1996, which – with the added support of many other leaders (including Ward Connerly) – were met with success.

The CCRI victory inspired citizens and legislators in many states to emulate that success. Ballot drives were launched in Colorado, Florida and Illinois in 1997, but each failed. That same year, legislation to end or curtail affirmative action preferences was introduced in eleven states (Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina). Although these efforts also failed, the idea that preferences based on race, gender or ethnicity have no place in our democratic republic was embraced by a growing number of adherents.

The defeat of the Houston Civil Rights Initiative in 1997 (and earlier legislative failures in Washington state) did not discourage state representative Scott Smith and businessman Tim Eyman from launching a petition drive that year, modeled on the CCRI. With substantial support from Ward Connerly and the American Civil Rights Coalition, their campaign led 58 percent of the state’s voters to pass the Washington State Civil Rights Initiative in November 1998.

From 1994 through 2001, a series of appellate court decisions (including Podberesky v. Kirwan, Hopwood v. Texas, Smith v. University of Washington Law School, and Johnson v. Board of Regents of University of Georgia) began to curtail the practice of affirmative action preferences in college admissions and scholarships – at least in the regions directly affected by the rulings. Many colleges and universities outside those regions also chose to moderate their use of preferences in an effort to limit potential exposure to legal challenges. Opponents of race preferences saw some hope that the practice would be eliminated through the court system.

But, the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 23, 2003 split decision on the Gratz and Grutter cases made it clear that the courts seem unlikely to take a firm position on the constitutionality of affirmative action preferences in the near future. On the one hand, the Gratz ruling declared that the outright, systematic, and heavy-handed practice of race preferences in college admissions is unconstitutional. On the other hand, the contradictory ruling in Grutter left open the possibility that colleges and universities could continue to give preferences and make decisions on the basis of race – so long as it was done in a subtle manner. The nation’s institutions of higher education seized this opening and re-invigorated (and cloaked in layers of subtlety) their practice of granting preferential treatment based on race and ethnicity (and sometimes gender – but with the gender-based preferences in admissions now going to men).

Within weeks after the Grutter-Gratz decisions, state legislators Leon Drolet and Jack Brandenberg launched the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, with the support of Ward Connerly. Eventually – and under the leadership of Jennifer Gratz – their campaign led to a 16-point margin of victory at the polls in November 2006. But, that campaign had many setbacks also; in fact, the original plan was to place the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative on the November 2004 ballot.

What is the lesson to learn from this history? The clear pattern is that persistence will pay off. Popular support for ending preferences based on race and gender is widespread and it is growing. The American people have not lost their belief in the premise upon which this nation is founded: that all men are created equal. In the short term, activist groups on the left such as BAMN and ACORN can – through tactics of fear-mongering and deceit – temporarily thwart efforts to end the unconstitutional practice by the state of preferring one individual over another on the basis of that person’s skin color, gender, or ethnicity. But history plainly shows the long-term and progressive movement of the American people toward the goal of creating laws and adopting practices that entrench our commitment to the moral equality of all individuals.

Carol Allen is a research specialist in the Political Science Department of Michigan State University and the author of Ending Racial Preferences: The Michigan Story.

Book Review of Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes's The Three Trillion Dollar War

By Gerald L. Houseman

Truth is an inevitable casualty of war, and the war of choice undertaken in Iraq is no exception. Lawrence Lindsey, an economic adviser to Bush in 2002, was fired for giving the press his estimate of an overall cost of $200 billion for the this war; Defense Secretary Rumsfeld oracularly declared this to be “baloney.” At the moment the total expenditure is in the neighborhood of $800 billion, but Stiglitz and Bilmes, as their title indicates, say a conservative estimate of the final cost will be $3 trillion. Any reader of their discouraging tome would be justified, all the same, in concluding that the tab, for a wide assortment of reasons, will be considerably higher.

Few will be surprised to know that the Bush Administration hides the figures. The “emergency” funding system adopted in place of a regular appropriation escapes normal scrutiny or budget caps. The “Decider’s” government also mocks the truth with its secrecy assault on the number of casualties, including those occurring during non-combat operations, even though these are vital for budgeting; and it works hard to insure that its expenditures for those infamous mercenaries, the 140,000 or so contractors and sub-contractors, must be the subject of guesswork as well. Then there are the endemic problems of Pentagon accounting, which has been in need of an overhaul for several generations. And cost estimates are also made impossible by being hidden in other parts of the Pentagon budget and in other agencies of the government.

Such obstacles do not leave these co-authors clueless, however. They provide a list of considerations far too long to set out here, but these include the cost of replacing equipment, the inefficiencies of relying so much on the National Guard, the full costs of health care and disability payments for thousands of returning veterans, restoring and re-structuring the Army, inflation, interest (because the war is largely debt-financed), and of course the macro-economic effects felt and endured by the populace. Stiglitz and Bilmes do not go into detail on that king of boondoggles, the Vatican-sized embassy now under construction in Baghdad, and they have little to say about the complex of bases Bush has proposed to build — and is now building — to protect Iraq’s (and our Texas-led and-centered) oil domain.

All of this can seem a peripheral concern when one remembers the massive numbers of horrors and deaths visited upon the people of that unfortunate country; and it goes without saying that the budgetary and accounting horrors pale for anyone who, like myself, has visited a VA facility and has observed a maimed young person trying to cope with a new and unfamiliar kind of existence.

Despite such obvious considerations, we must salute Stiglitz and Bilmes for performing a yeoman service. This is a time in which information blanks appear to be far more abundant than facts, when knowledge is thwarted by secrecy and executive orders, and laws are made up to serve expediency without benefit of much or even any review. Pentagon budgetary affairs are addressed on occasions too few and far between, and these hard researchers (and good websites like the Center for Defense Information) strive to give us some kind of a handle on what is going on.

Stiglitz and Bilmes can in no way be regarded as coldly detached. They point out that most Americans have failed to realize the costs of the Iraq war unless they are family members involved with the voluntary military. Their taxes have not been raised to pay for the war, and the rich have actually enjoyed tax cuts, a previously unheard-of benefit in wartime. But deficit spending cannot be ignored forever, and the nation’s gas pumps now display the cost of the weakened dollar, which in its turn is one of the costs of deficits and the war. And that’s not “baloney.”

Gerald L. Houseman is the author of Economics in a Changed Universe: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization, and the Death of "Free Enterprise".

Immigration and the 2008 Presidential Campaigns

by Margaret Sands Orchowski

Washington DC. Democratic leaders don’t want to talk about immigration issues right now. Neither do Republican leaders. Unfortunately for them all, however, immigration hot buttons underlie almost all the big issues in this election from universal health care to national and economic insecurity. Once the Democrats choose their Presidential nominee, candidates’ stances on immigration will become an election issue, like it or not.

Why do both parties’ leaders treat the immigration issue like the plague?

The truth is that both parties are split over immigration. Or rather, they are split over one major point in the immigration reform debate: whether or not Congress should legalize millions of foreign nationals currently living and working in the country illegally, and allow them to earn U.S. citizenship if they meet certain conditions. In other words, the split is over conditional amnesty (is there any other kind?).

Throughout 2006 and 2007, Republican President Bush urged Congress to support his Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) bills which included “a pathway to citizenship”/amnesty. The bills were co-sponsored by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Teddy Kennedy (D-MA). But the majority of Republicans (and some Democrats) insisted that existing and enhanced immigration laws should be enforced first, before deciding what to do with the estimated 12-20 million illegal immigrants who came and stayed in the U.S. after the last amnesty bill of 1986. The CIR failed in Congress. So McCain (the presumptive Republican Presidential candidate) changed his mind. “I get it, I get it,” he repeats constantly. “Enforcement first. Legalization later.”

Now the Democratic split over immigration is becoming more visible. On the one side are the “Blue-dog, moderate Reagan-Democrats”. Congressman Heath Schuler (NC), a 2006 “Blue-Pup”, has introduced the SAVE Act -- an “immigration enforcement only” bill. But Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader Luis Gutierrez (Il) insists that there can be no Democratic immigration bill that is not “comprehensive” (the buzz word for “includes amnesty”). Democratic leaders are scheduling hearings for these bills in eight! different committees – enough time to probably stall any floor vote until after the election, if then.

So far both Democratic Presidential candidates have ignored immigration questions unless asked directly. Then, differences appear. While both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have admitted that they do NOT include illegal aliens in their universal health care plans, Barack favors giving drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants while Hillary is against it. But Barack also told a Texas audience of Latinos that “the first bill I will sign as President is the DREAM Act” – a proposal to give instate college tuition and public scholarships to young adults illegally in the country who have graduated from an American high school. Hillary has not made so public a stance for the DREAM Act, which has never passed a Congressional committee nor a chamber vote, and which many states’ laws prohibit.

Barack’s stances on immigration place him on the most “libertarian” end of the immigration political horseshoe. It puts him at odds with many moderate middle class blue collar workers -- voters he already is struggling to win over.

For Democrats hopes in 09, however, McCain is their biggest danger on immigration. The Arizona Senator manages to straddle firmly both sides of the immigration amnesty line-in-the-sand.

Margaret Sands Orchowski is the Vice President of Programs of the Woman's National Democratic Club and the Washington correspondent and columnist for the Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education and is author of Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria.

Make Them Answer the Tough Questions: The Realities of Political Debate and Health Care in 2008

By Carey Kriz

The elephant is in the room, and it is time that the political parties seeking to run the U.S. government start acting like they understand the issues of U.S. health care in 2008. First a couple of questions that we need to start asking: Will universal health insurance fix our health care system? The answer is easy: absolutely not. A bumper sticker approach to solving problems means identifying one big emotional issue and suggesting an obvious solution. For health care there a number of these, with the big story being the unfeeling administrator denying benefits to a patient with real needs. Ultimately, this story comes back to the failure of our insurance industry to be portable, to be with you throughout your lifetime and generally to be fair.

And yes, this is a great cause. But it is not the answer.

Will more doctors bring more health care to our communities? The answer to this one is also easy: absolutely not. The U.S. system of educating and branding physicians is arguably the best in the world. Yet we have an imbalance in knowledge and need to think about why our neighbors are getting so fat, or indulging in behaviors that are obviously bad for them. Do any of us understand that we are actually in charge of our bodies?

Will blockbuster science and new drugs cure disease? Dreaming is good for us, and we do have a number of major scientific advances that impact the world of health care – and how that health care can lead to improved longevity and a better quality of life. But science alone is not the answer here. We have a problem in health care that cuts across treatments, diagnosis and infrastructures.

So what will fix our health care system? For the answer to this question start asking your political leaders where all the money is going – and whether we have any idea of the cost/benefits of our investments. When we think of spending money on health care what we fail to also mention is that we spend more than anyone else in the world, that we have declining productivity in our quality of life indices, and are making a “business” out of something that comes close to being a survival requirement. Guess who pays the highest cost for drugs in the world? Yes: we do. Not your neighbors in Australia and Singapore – or Europe.

Imagine how stupid we would look as a society if we charged for the right to breathe air. Now imagine denying someone access to care because they slipped through the coverage cracks – or discriminating against them because they already had a disease. Now add to this reality that a ton of people were making money from this mess, including big investment funds, management, professionals and shareholders. Yes we have cancer and it has metastasized into every corner of the health system. The fix will not be pleasant and will definitely be painful. But it is a requirement and it will be hard on all of us.

So it’s time to put some real debate into health care and start looking at the elephant of big business, profits and motivation. Hiding from a problem, or misleading the public about how bad it is, will not solve it.

Carey Kriz is the author of The Patient Will See You Now (Rowman and Littlefield).

The Paradoxes of Turkish Democracy

By Meltem Muftuler-Bac and Yannis Stivachtis

For the foreign observer, Turkey is a highly interesting country where European and Islamic cultures live in an integrated fashion. Its uniqueness stems from its imperial past, and the development of a secular democracy in a country where the population is predominantly Muslim. Turkey’s position in the European order has been firmly established since the end of the Second World War as Turkey joined the Council of Europe in 1948, the OECD in 1949 and NATO in 1952. It is interesting to point out that Turkey was an integral part of Europe and the Western order while, for example, Spain and Portugal were not.

Turkey’s political destiny has changed with the end of the Cold War in 1989. Even though it was still part of the European architecture, its position as an integral part of Europe became under serious scrutiny. The Turkish candidacy and the subsequent opening of accession negotiations with the EU in 2005 were important milestones in the Turkish endeavor to fully belong to Europe. The EU accession process has brought significant pressures into the Turkish political system as the Turkish political norms and rules are different than the European norms. These differences are most visible when the Turkish norms on the ‘supremacy of the state’ and ‘the national identity’ are being challenged by the norms of liberal democracy such as freedom of expression and individual rights and liberties. These differences become highly controversial when the Turkish governments since 1999 began to adopt political reforms that would enable Turkey to meet the political aspects of the Copenhagen criteria.

When the European Commission declared in its 2004 Progress Report for Turkey that “Turkey sufficiently fulfills the Copenhagen criteria’; this was in response to the vast political changes in Turkey adopted in order for accession negotiations for EU membership to begin. Nonetheless, Turkey still had serious problems in its political system stemming from the restrictions on freedom of expression, most notably the Article 301 which foresees legal action against those who insult ‘Turkishness.’ The very vague implication of Article 301 has enabled the ultra-nationalists in Turkey who are skeptical of the EU accession process to petition for cases against the political reformers or intellectuals. Even though most of these cases are dismissed and never come to court, as long as such articles remain in place, Turkey’s democracy is criticized by the EU as falling behind the European standards. As long as such legal changes are not adopted, Turkey’s EU accession might be problematic. However, an equally important aspect of political change is that the norms on freedom of expression and individual rights need to be internalized by the Turkish public. In other words, only changing or amending the Constitution will not suffice. The process of norm diffusion is a much longer process that needs to involve the different segments of the Turkish society.

Meltem Muftuler-Bac is a professor of international relations and the Jean Monnet Chair at Sabanci University in Istanbul. Yannis Stivachtis is an associate professor of international relations and director of the International Studies Program at Virginia Tech. They are co-editors of Turkey-European Union Relations (Lexington Books, 2008).

Operation Condor’s Lessons for the “War on Terror”

By J. Patrice McSherry

International attention is focusing again on Operation Condor, the Cold War-era covert network of U.S.-backed military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru. The anticommunist Condor apparatus carried out a program of transnational political repression against exiled political opponents during the 1970s. Multinational Condor squads crossed into one another’s territory to carry out hundreds of disappearances, illegal cross-border transfers, tortures, and assassinations, including one in Washington, D.C. Condor’s targets included pro-democracy activists, unionists, Christian Democrat leaders, constitutionalist military officers, former ministers, and critics of the military regimes as well as guerrillas. Today in Latin America and Europe several trials of former Condor commanders and operatives are underway. One Italian judge recently called for the extradition of some 140 military and intelligence officers from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and elsewhere for cross-border Condor crimes.

One recent news report highlighted the 1980 abductions of Noemi Gianetti de Molfino, a former Mother of the Plaza de Mayo of Argentina, and three other Argentines in Peru. U.S. officials knew of their capture by a joint Peruvian-Argentine commando, and one had advance knowledge of Condor's plan for the “permanent disappearance” of the Argentines. I discovered this document in the course of my research for a book published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2005, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. No steps were taken to avert the murder of the four.

In the course of my research on the repressive Condor system over the last fourteen years I have spoken to a number of survivors. They tell of abductions in the middle of the night, sadistic tortures they suffered at the hands of Condor teams, and the despair they endured in squalid secret prisons. Today, as we witness our own government using extralegal means such as abductions and cross-border transfers (“extraordinary rendition”), “waterboarding,” and incommunicado detention in Guantánamo and other secret “black sites,” their stories are painfully relevant.

In fact, I uncovered significant evidence of secret U.S. support for, and collaboration with, Operation Condor in the 1970s. During the Cold War, anticommunism often overrode human rights in Washington’s policy calculus. U.S. policy-makers feared that progressive or nationalist movements in the developing world were communist-inspired, and cultivated anticommunist allies who shared U.S. strategic interests. Declassified documents suggest that U.S. military and intelligence officials considered the Condor system to be an effective weapon in the hemispheric anticommunist crusade. It seems that a similar mentality prevails today among some of those in government.

In the 1970s Defense Department and CIA personnel had up-to-the-minute knowledge of Condor operations. One Defense Intelligence Agency report of October 1976 discussed a secret Argentine-Uruguayan intelligence operation in which members of an opposition organization of Uruguayans in Buenos Aires were abducted. The report noted that “a very secret phase of ‘Operation Condor’ involves the formation of special teams from member countries who are to carry out operations including assassinations….A special team has apparently been organized in Argentina…structured much like a U.S. Special Forces Team.”

Perhaps the most significant document I uncovered in my research was a report indicating that Condor was granted authorized access to the U.S. continental communications system housed in the Panama Canal Zone. The 1978 cable, from U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay Robert White to the Secretary of State, reported that the commander of Paraguay’s armed forces had told him that intelligence chiefs from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay used “an encrypted system within the U.S. telecommunications net[work],” which covered all of Latin America, to communicate and coordinate intelligence—and presumably operations against Condor targets. Essentially, U.S. military and/or intelligence forces put the official U.S. communications channel at the disposal of Operation Condor. The conclusion was unavoidable: such collaboration reflected high-level approval of the Condor apparatus.

Why did Washington support the military dictatorships of the Cold War era and collaborate with Condor? Clearly, top U.S. policy-makers considered such support to be in the U.S. interest. But that time of terror resulted in the destruction of democracy and widespread human rights atrocities that still reverberate in Latin America. Today there are many disturbing echoes of Operation Condor in the so-called war on terror. Again it is argued that the ends justify the means. But Operation Condor should have made clear that egregious violations of human rights and the rule of law are not the means to any good end.

J. Patrice McSherry, author of Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, is professor of political science and director of the Latin American & Caribbean Studies program at Long Island University.

From Silence to Prominence; The Story of Women is Evident in Their Television Images

by Nichola D. Gutgold

Being First Lady seems like a dread for any woman who wishes to be known for her own achievements. Louisa Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams was so unhappy and desperate that most of the time she could be found indulging in chocolate and penning a biography titled  Adventures of a Nobody.  Eleanor Roosevelt carved out a life for herself as first lady, though the press pounced on her unorthodox role as she traveled around the country serving as the legs of her husband. But at least she had a voice. To see the progress that women have made in society we need only to turn on our televisions and see that women are not only major figures in the news, they are major figures reporting the news, too. Hillary Clinton as a viable presidential candidate is major progress over the symbolic presidential aspirations of Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Pat Schroeder, Elizabeth Dole and Carol Moseley Braun. As she said, she is “in, and in it to win.” Being a front runner, even if she doesn’t win the nomination, is closer than any woman in American history. And she was first lady. To be seen and heard is progress for women in politics and in broadcasting. From curvaceous weather forecasters hired more for their looks than their understanding of meteorology, women have become forces in television news. Women like Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley and Dana Bash, who are front and center reporting on the latest political developments. Crowley has become a presence on CNN, reporting on Washington politics. She has distinguished herself with witty, yet serious and intelligent coverage of the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, George Bush, Pat Buchanan, Paul Tsongas, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Since the nomination of Jimmy Carter, she has reported from all but one of the national political conventions. Her strong, confident voice and insightful questions and commentary make her a fixture on the political scene. She is a self described “political junkie” who revels in participating in the campaigns and the other political rituals that she covers. Dana Bash represents the younger broadcast journalist who grew up with role models, including her own father, who had long and productive careers. Though her career trajectory demonstrates her strong work ethic and persistence—she started out labeling archival tapes--she recognizes that several women in broadcasting who went before her have paved the way for her to be successful at the most difficult and prestigious levels of journalism. She recalls telling Judy Woodward one day as she prepared for a stand up report from the White House, “I’m standing here on the North Lawn of the White House because you stood here before me.” She told me that though both her mother and father graduated from one of the top journalism schools in the country, her father immediately landed a good job in television, while the best job her mother could find was as a secretary. And we should remember some of the trailblazing women in journalism – women like NBC’s Nancy Dickerson whose son, John Dickerson is chief political correspondent of Slate.com. Dickerson was the first woman to cover the White House for television on a regular basis. She tenaciously studied speech at Catholic University while she was a producer at CBS with the hope that she could become a correspondent, though the idea of that was outrageous at the time. In 1965 Liz Trotta was television’s first woman assigned full-time as a foreign correspondent. She stayed with NBC for thirteen years, covering major stories in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In 1962 Barbara Walters became a reporter for NBC’s Today show and is still a major presence—with a Star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame-- she has interviewed every American president and first lady since Richard and Pat Nixon. Many of the most controversial world leaders have sat down to tell their stories to her including Menachen Begin, Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, Anwar Sadat, Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, King Hussein of Jordan and Premier Jiang Zemin. Her tenacity and hard work were especially evident she was the first of the three big network news anchors to conduct a joint interview with Egypt’s President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Something that Walter Cronkite noted in his autobiography he “did not count on.” Lesley Stahl joined CBS as a correspondent in 1972 and was the first woman to co-anchor election night coverage.  And of course, Katie Couric is making history as the first sole anchor of CBS Evening News. So, yes, we are seeing women make gains not only as major figures in the news, but as major figures reporting the news.

 

Nichola D. Gutgold is associate professor or communication arts and sciences at Penn State University at Lehigh Valley and is author of Paving the Way for Madam President  (Lexington Books) and Seen and Heard: The Women of Television News (Lexington Book, forthcoming, March 2008)

 

Questions and Answers about Fidel Castro’s Resignation

by Philip Brenner

I answered many questions for reporters on February 19th about Fidel Castro’s statement that he will not be a candidate when the Cuban National Assembly chooses Cuba's president on Sunday. Readers of Rowman and Littlefield’s blog -– and of its recently published anthology, A Contemporary Cuba Reader, of which I am a co-editor –- also deserve to know the answers to these questions. So here are a few of the Frequently Asked Questions about Castro, and my answers.

Question: Is Fidel Castro finally stepping down from power?

Answer: Not quite. He holds three key offices: President, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and Commander-in-Chief. When he became gravely ill on July 31, 2006, he temporarily turned over these positions to his brother, Raúl Castro. It appears that he may continue to hold the titles of First Secretary and Commander-in-Chief. Those are not at issue in Sunday’s election. Raúl Castro is the Minister of the Armed Forces, and in effect heads the military. If Fidel Castro remains as First Secretary of the Communist Party, it is likely that he will essentially serve as Cuba’s titular leader. Raúl Castro, if he is elected President on Sunday, will be the official head of state and operational head of the government.

Question: Well, this still seems like a pretty big change. What kind of transformation in Cuba can we expect from this?

Answer: The transition in Cuba has been underway already for more than 18 months. Contrary to expectations in Washington, there was not a huge explosion when Fidel Castro gave up the reigns of power in 2006. Instead, there was extraordinary calm, and daily life for Cubans continued without a blip. Fidel Castro actually had stopped running the daily affairs of the Cuban government several years earlier, and the people he designated as the collective leadership in his absence had been the very people who were already doing those jobs. And so, we have a fairly good picture of what is likely to happen in the near future. Raúl Castro tends to prefer working in a team, and to delegate considerable responsibility to others. The values of the group of men in the collective leadership – which includes Vice President Carlos Lagé, Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, Central Bank President Francisco Soberon Valdés – very much resemble those of Fidel Castro. These officials are determined to maintain as much social equity as possible in the country, and to avoid plans that will increase inequality. They are also very wary about economic or political reforms that they believe will make Cuba more vulnerable.

Question: So, does this mean that there will be very little political change in Cuba?

Answer: No, and yes. There already has been some change. Notably, Raúl Castro’s daughter initiated a round of criticism about the government in a public statement that was printed one of Cuba’s major papers. Raúl himself has attacked corruption and poor services. Recently, the president of Cuba’s national assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, had an open meeting with university students in which he discussed some very harsh critiques they made about current affairs. Last week, several dissidents were released from prison, well short of their full sentences. There may well be some relaxation of the stringent requirements imposed on those who want to open small businesses. The number of such operations has declined 50% in the last 10 years, but there is a great clamor for more to open. On the other hand, there is not likely to be a major restructuring of the economy that would permit Cubans to invest in large enterprises, that would allow foreign capitalists to operate without much restraint, or that would establish political liberalization – with a free press and elections. Apart from concerns about equality, the Cuban leaders fear that the United States would seize the opportunity that such openings provide, to intervene covertly, in order to destabilize the regime.

 

Question: Aren’t such paranoid rantings simply a show -– do Cubans really believe the stuff they say about the United States?

Answer: They do believe it, and not without reason. The official U.S. policy calls for regime change in Cuba. The main law governing the U.S. embargo against Cuba–- the Helms-Burton law –- stipulates in its first paragraph that the law’s purpose is to bring about regime change in Cuba. The United States government has spent more than $100 million in the last four years to support opponents of the Cuban government, to fund studies on how to bring about a change in the Cuban regime, and even to fund an office in the State Department for a U.S. government official named the Cuban Transition Coordinator – much like the position Paul Bremer held as transition coordinator in Iraq after the U.S. occupation there. Moreover, the United States has a sorry history of abusing democratic processes in countries where it disapproves of the policies. Latin Americans readily recall, for example, how the Central Intelligence Agency paid newspapers in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua, to print lies that discredited leftist governments. Cubans are astounded that the United States has not prosecuted Luis Posada Carriles, an acknowledged international terrorist who entered the United States openly and remains free. He was convicted in Venezuela –- well before Hugo Chavez became president –- of planning the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 people in 1976.

 

Question: But now that Fidel Castro will no longer be Cuba’s president, and George W. Bush will soon be out of the White House, isn’t it likely that relations between Cuba and the United States could improve?

Answer: Sadly, no. Cubans view the three remaining U.S. presidential candidates as having essentially similar policies towards Cuba. John McCain has called for toughening the already draconian economic sanctions against Cuba. Hillary Clinton has said that she favors continuing the policy of the Bush Administration. Barack Obama advocates relaxing the embargo so that Cuban-Americans would be able to travel to Cuba without restrictions. (In 2004 the Bush Administration tightened regulations so that Cuban-Americans are now permitted to visit immediate family members, for emergencies, only once in three years.) Sen. Obama also has said he would be willing to meet with Cuban leaders during his first year in office. But unless the United States is willing to renounce its ambition to overthrow the Cuban government, negotiations are not likely to accomplish much. In fact, unless the Helm-Burton law were changed, the next U.S. president would not be permitted to have normal relations with Cuba Helms-Burton stipulates that its sanctions can be lifted only if the Cuban government "does not include Fidel Castro or Raúl Castro." Moreover, Cuba has much more self-confidence now that it did sixteen years ago, when the Cold War ended and its economy went into a free fall without Soviet support. It needs the United States much less than it once did. The U.S. embargo was intended to strangle Cuba and isolate it. Instead it has isolated the United States. The U.N. General Assembly, by a vote in November of 184 - 4, condemned the U.S. embargo for the sixteenth year in a row. In January, Brazil and Cuba negotiated a major agreement under which the South American giant will explore Cuba’s coastal waters for oil, where there may be vast reserves. China is modernizing Cuba's nickel mines, which hold the third largest reserves in the world of that critical metal. And throughout Latin America, as the presidents of Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Nicaragua attempt to chart new directions that depart from the dictates of the United States, they appreciate that they are the children of Fidel Castro. They are taking a path that is different from the one on which he led Cuba. But they believe that his success has made their dreams attainable.

 

Philip Brenner is professor of international relations and director of the Inter-Disciplinary Council on Latin America at American University. He is co-editor of A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution with Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk, William M. LeoGrande, and Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis with James G. Blight.

The Fresh Face in American Politics

By Gary A. Donaldson

This election cycle has exhibited an important American political phenomenon: the fresh face, the political outsider, the candidate who is the antidote to politics as usual. Accompanying the fresh face is the rhetoric of renewal, change and the implied promises of new ideas and attitudes and solutions toward old problems.

Since the end of World War II both parties have looked in the direction of the political outsider and the fresh face to bring renewed excitement and victory to their parties. Sometimes it has worked, sometimes not.

Perhaps one of the best examples of a political fresh face was Eisenhower. Ike had been in the public eye for some time, but he had only been discussed seriously as a politician since the end of the war. He was always perceived in the American mind as someone outside the political spectrum; and in fact, Ike worked hard to show his disdain for politics by insisting often that he would not run for office, that he had no intention of getting down into the mud and slugging it out with politicos like Truman. At one point, he even admitted that he had never found a need to cast a ballot, and he often let it be known that he had no party affiliation (although behind the scenes he told those close to him that he was a life-long Republican.) In 1953, when Ike became President, he brought to Washington the new outlook he promised—perhaps the fulfillment of the fresh face in politics.

In 1960 the Democrats tapped John Kennedy, the freshest of all fresh political faces. Although Kennedy had been in national politics since the end of the war, he campaigned in 1960 as a political outsider who would bring a new atmosphere to Washington, take the nation in a new direction, and change the old rhetoric—then portrayed by the eight years of the now stale Eisenhower administration. He worked hard to cast Nixon, the presumptive successor to Ike and the Republican nominee that year, as the keeper of the ancien regime, the man who would carry on the old Eisenhower policies.

This placed Nixon in an awful position as the 1960 election approached. Kennedy was winning points (and presumably votes) with his “let’s get American moving again” slogan. If Nixon tried to step out on his own by proposing new ideas he appeared to be criticizing Eisenhower and his policies, even ungrateful to his mentor. If he simply parroted the Eisenhower line, he appeared to have no new ideas, and was little more than Ike’s “lapdog with a five o’clock shadow,” as one pundit described Nixon in this period. So, Nixon fought the 1960 campaign mostly with one hand tied behind his back.

By portraying himself as an outsider and a new comer with new ideas, Kennedy also placed himself at a disadvantage—although he did not have nearly the problems Nixon had. Kennedy found himself answering claims that he was too inexperienced to be president. Clearly, Kennedy could not have it both ways. He could not be the new young fresh face in politics and an experienced politician as well. He spent much of the campaign defending his record in Congress and making such statements that he was older than Christopher Columbus when he came to American, and older than Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Kennedy spent much of the 1960 primary season trying to show that he was experienced enough to attract votes. In office, JFK’s promises and hopes translated into very little legislation, despite a Democratic Congress.

In 1976 the Democrats turned to another outsider, Jimmy Carter. The nation was clearly fed up with the antics of Washington insiders in those years. The conduct of the war in Vietnam and then finally the Watergate scandal had turned the nation away from Washington insider politics. Carter stepped into the breach. A Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Carter actually prided himself on not understanding the workings of Washington—and that seemed to endear him to voters. He was a wonderful campaigner. He spoke good words; he energized the Democratic Party and the nation. But when Carter got to Washington he could not work his will, and to most observers it was because he did not know the nuances of Washington politics. And he foundered. Four years later he was vulnerable to attacks from a Republican outsider, a new fresh face with new ideas from the other side of the political spectrum, Ronald Reagan. Carter went from the outsider to the insider, from the new fresh face to the old politico who needed to be bumped from office.

That brings us back to the current election cycle and Barak Obama, the new fresh face, the candidate with the charisma and the good words. He has energized the Democrats with talk of new ideas and change. Democrats have to ask, will that translate into a good president?

 

Gary A. Donaldson is professor of history at Xavier University of Louisiana. He is the author of many books on American history in the 20th century, including The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960.

Hillary Clinton's Tears

by Nichola Gutgold

I was feeling smug about my book Paving the Way for Madam President  because Hillary Clinton's "femaleness" wasn't getting much attention in the press all summer long and into the fall. UNTIL IOWA. It was her nomination to lose and it looks like she could be losing it.  CNN just featured a segment titled The Woman Question. And now, the former front runner Hillary Clinton has been cast as the aging, exhausted female who has worked harder and longer than anyone else for this promotion, only to see the rug pulled from under her by the young upstart male who seemed to come from nowhere with a message -– both visual and verbal -- that resonates better than hers.

When she was asked "how do you do it" at cafe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, she choked and teared up when she explained:

"It's not easy, and I couldn't do it if I didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country just don't want to see us fall backwards," she said. Her voice breaking and tears in her eyes, she said, "You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it." "Some people think elections are a game, lot's of who's up or who's down, [but] it's about our country, it's about our kids' futures, and it's really about all of us together," she said.

Do Clinton's tears help or hurt her? Pat Schroeder was railed in the press in 1988 for shedding tears when she withdrew from the presidential race. Before her, Ed Muskie's steady image crumbled when he cried in New Hampshire in 1972 after mean spirited remarks were made about his family. Hillary's crying humanized her and can only help her in this emotionally charged race for the White House. Already, she won the first primary, when all the polls predicted she wouldn’t win.

For eight years as first lady, as a candidate for senate and in her presidential election race so far, Hillary Clinton was comfortable communicating in her usual masculine style. It is a style that I thought would work well for her because America is a surprisingly masculine country. Dutch communication scholar Geert Hofstede’s observation of feminine and masculine cultures is especially important to the prospects of a woman American president. Hofstede notes that “femininity stands for a society in which social gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.” Masculinity, on the other hand, “stands for a society in which social gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough and focused on material success.”

Then Barack Obama brought in Oprah Winfrey to endorse him and all bets were off. The nation became swept up with the pathos of a young, smart visual of everything American should be. And Hillary Clinton changed her communication style. Her emotional response to the woman in the diner showed that she is human--a working woman--ike so many of us. Before that, she responded very naturally in a debate that the impression of her that she isn’t likable, “hurts my feelings.” A peevish Barack Obama muttered, almost under his breath, “You’re likable enough.”

This is an emotional race. America needs a leader with heart and brains. Looks like Hillary Clinton is coming into her own to express why she wants to be president. It is her emotional communication style, tempered with her usual cerebral plan for the country that combined, may win her the prize.