Global Paradigms

Business Times - 04 Jul 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT THERE is nothing new about the notion of American politicians running for local, state and national office, including the White House, spending some time in their campaign visiting foreign locales, including those countries with which their voters maintain close cultural, religious and family ties. After all, America is a country made up of immigrants whose descendants continue to care about the Old Country. Hence, it's not surprising that politicians representing New York tend to travel quite frequently to the three I's - Ireland, Italy and Israel. If you want to get elected in Chicago, make sure to take a trip to Warsaw; while the favourite travel destination of politicians seeking votes in Florida is Latin America. And guess why many members of Congress from New England love to spend some time in Portugal? You're right. Many immigrants from that country had settled in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and ...

Business Times - 01 Jul 2008 Yes, he could! And that may happen if there's a new conflict in the Gulf before the November election By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT IT IS not surprising that Barack Obama's supporters, who seem to believe that their candidate can walk on water, greet each other with a winning fist bump these days. After all, according to the recent opinion polls, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Obama is now the clear front runner in the race for the White House. He is leading in most polls by an average of 6 percentage points. And new polls released last week suggest that he has now a double-digit lead over his rival, Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Hence a new Newsweek poll puts Mr Obama 15 per cent ahead of Senator McCain while according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, in a two-man contest, 49 per cent of respondents favour Mr Obama while 37 per cent would vote for Mr McCain. If the two leading independent presidential cand...

Please read my What if We Leave the Middle East? (We Won’t Be Missed in Taki's magazine . Also my review of Scott McClellan's book in The American Conservative is available online. And more words of wisdom here and here.

Business Times - 24 Jun 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT +THE New York Times, in a front-page story last week, reported that against the backdrop of the American housing and financial crises and the continuing economic boom in China, Chinese officials have been projecting a new sense of self-confidence in their dealings with their US counterparts. The Chinese, it seems, are less willing to put up with the typical American bashing of their management of their economy while expressing their own criticism of American economic policies. But what The New York Times didn't report is that the new Chinese attitude is a mirror-image of the American stance, with US officials and lawmakers exhibiting a certain humility during their exchanges with the Chinese these days. Indeed, in the aftermath of Iraq and Katrina, the sub-prime mortgage mess and the financial crunch, Americans are recognising that they are not in a position to lecture the Chinese on how to manage their economic sy...

Business Times - 17 Jun 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AT first, the US Federal Reserve chairman was criticised for his slow response to the housing crisis and credit crunch, with critics arguing that he should have started cutting interest earlier on and more frequently. In this narrative, in which Americans are losing their homes, going bankrupt and are in fear of losing their jobs, the boss of the US central bank emerged as the villain who is partly responsible for the ensuing economic downturn aka 'recession'. But now, Mr Bernanke is being criticised for the fact that he has been cutting interest rates too often and by too much. In this other narrative, dominated by rising energy and commodity prices, the Fed chairman is the villain who should be held accountable in one way or another for what looks to some observers as inflation. While economists continue to debate whether we are now in a recession or are under the threat of inflation, or whether that old arch...

Checkout my TAC posts on politics, the election, and the Middle East. And on Takimag.com a review of Pat Buchanan's new book on WWII and a review of a new film with Adam Sandler.

Business Times - 12 Jun 2008 Most polls show that American voters believe the Democratic candidate will be more effective in managing economic policies By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AS THE US presidential campaign enters its final and crucial six-month round, the conventional wisdom is that the electoral strengths of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, lie in his relative youth (46), personal charisma and energy, and his image as an agent of 'change'. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, is disadvantaged in the race because of his age (72), his poor oratorical skills, his disappointing performance as a campaigner, and his identification with the failed domestic and foreign policies of President George W Bush and the political status-quo in Washington. Mr Obama's strengths and Mr McCain's weaknesses were clearly evident last week when Mr Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination before close to 35,000 supp...

Has been published in the new issue of The American Conservative. It's pasted here. To read, click on the pics and print them.

Business Times - 05 Jun 2008 He needs the support of critical voting groups that traditionally vote for the Democratic presidential candidate By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT SENATOR Hillary Clinton won the Puerto Rico Democratic primary on Sunday in a landslide, beating Senator Barrack Obama - her rival for the party's presidential nomination - by a huge margin of 68 per cent to 32 per cent. Unfortunately for the former first lady, her victory in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico - a semi-autonomous colony of the US and whose residents do not get to vote in presidential elections - is not going to make it more likely that she will be returning to 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue any time soon. In fact, after the last Democratic primaries of the season in South Dakota and Montana - which together send 31 delegates to the Democratic convention - Mr Obama was able to claim during an address before more than 20,000 supporters in St Paul, Minnesota, that he had amassed enough pledged ...

See my latest film review and political posts here and here and here and here.

Business Times - 03 Jun 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT WATCHING the pro-Bush administration television talking heads bashing Scott McClellan, the former Bush White House press secretary, who has just published a book bashing his ex-boss, you would think that Mr McClellan has been brainwashed by a bunch of left-wing anti-war activists, if not by Al-Qaeda experts on psychological conditioning techniques. To say that President George W Bush, his aides, the neocons and the many operators who belong to the media outlets and front organisations affiliated with the Republican Party are angry at their former colleague would be an understatement. And you can feel their rage, as they describe Mr McClellan as a 'turncoat' who had sold his Republican soul to the anti-Bush devil, in exchange for...what? Was it money (perhaps a huge advance on his book)? Publicity (after all, Mr McClellan has been interviewed by every major media organisation)? Revenge (disgruntled employee gett...

Business Times - 30 May 2008 At the centre of her campaign's message is the notion that she is tough and aggressive HEY, guys, I think that the time has come for us to take collective action and to resist the onslaught on our gender, on our rights and identity as Men. There is no place for anti-man(ism) in public life. And I'm not talking here about such issues as child custody and domestic violence where men in most Western societies are finding themselves now on the losing side (like who is going to believe that a Big Guy was beaten-up by his wife? Is he 'girlie' or something?). No. My main concern has to do with 'sexism' that according to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has raised its 'ugly head' during the current presidential campaign. 'Hillary' (is it sexist to refer to her by her first name?) has been 'whining' (oops . . . again . . . does this sound sexist?) that the press (here she and her aides provide a long l...

Business Times - 27 May 2008 By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT AFTER the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong won the civil war in China in 1949 and forced Chiang Kai-shek and his pro-American Chinese Nationalists to flee to Taiwan, US Congress and the press started to debate the question: 'Who Lost China?' Conservatives blamed the 'China Hands' in the US State Department, who were accused of exhibiting pro-communist sympathies, while liberal critics argued that Washington's long-time support for the corrupt Nationalists ended up producing an anti-American blowback in China. Considering the continuing decline in US influence in the Middle East - from the Persian Gulf, through the Levant and to the Holy Land - is it possible that sometime during the first or second term of the next occupant of the White House, when Iran, perhaps armed with nuclear weapons and supported by its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, emerges as a dominant regional power, lawmakers...

As he was drowning politically and personally in scandals that would lead eventually to a humiliating resignation from office, in June 1974 President Richard Nixon took a triumphant seven-day trip to four Arab states and Israel, where, as Time put it, “the huzzas and the hosannas fell like sweet rain.” The magazine suggested that, “coming out of the parched Watergate wasteland of Washington, the praise and the cheers of multitudes were welcome indeed, particularly since each stop, each spectacle, was beamed in living color back to the living rooms of the U.S.” Following on the flight-route of another unpopular and disgraced Republican White House occupant, President George W. Bush decided that since it was raining in the Midwest, in the form of his falling approval ratings, it was time to seek the sunshine of the Middle East, hoping that the television images of his five-day excursion to the region would help salvage his personal and political legacy in the Midwest and the rest of the ...

Please see my recent movie review ("Smart People" and "Redbelt")

The International Affairs Forum published several commentaries on the situation in the Middle East including yours truly. Also checkout my deep thoughts on appeasement and tea, cyclones and sympathy.

Let's liberate Burma American-Jews and Israel Robert Kagan's brain Obama.

Business Times - 13 May 2008 Primaries have highlighted many issues that Republicans will try to use against Obama By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT A NOTE to all you political junkies out there: You thought that the presidential primaries were a lot of fun and you seemed to be enjoying the many televised debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and having great time watching all the nasty campaign commercials on television and YouTube ('It's 3:00am . . .'). And now that we are reaching the finish of the Hillary-Obama race, you feel a certain let-down, a post-primaries depression. Well, not to worry, folks! The Main Event - Barack Obama vs John McCain is about to start, and it would make the primaries look like a campaign for the student government in first grade. Indeed, we still have to endure a few more Democratic primaries this month, but we can already get a sense of the shape of things to come. After a Hamas spokesman suggested that his group 'loves...

Read my review of The Visitor on Takimag.com and my post and post on @TAC.

Business Times - 08 May 2008 Democratic presidential endgame is in sight After a rock-solid victory in the North Carolina primary, Obama looks set to win By LEON HADAR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT SENATOR Barack Obama, the frontrunner in the Democratic race for party's presidential nomination, is back in business, and after a rock-solid victory in the North Carolina primary and a narrow loss in Indiana, he could be on his way to winning the Big Prize. 'Tonight we stand less than 200 delegates away from winning the Democratic nomination for President of the United States,' Mr Obama told his supporters in North Carolina, promising to lead the Democrats towards victory against presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the general election on November. During several weeks of gruelling election campaigning, Mr Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, had suffered major electoral set-backs and public relations fiascos, and seemed to be ...