On Monday, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley ordered all flags at government agencies throughout the state to be flow at half staff in honor of former Sen. Jesse Helms, and L.F. Eason III — a laboratory manager in the state Department of Agriculture — refused to comply with the directive at the facility he supervised.
His superiors then gave him a choice: Eason could change his mind or he could retire from the only job he’d ever held, effective immediately. Eason chose to resign:

The brouhaha began late Sunday night, when Eason e-mailed eight of his employees in the state standards lab, which calibrates measuring equipment used on things as widely varied as gasoline and hamburgers.
“Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week,” Eason wrote just after midnight, according to e-mail messages released in response to a public records request.
He told his staff that he did not think it was appropriate to honor Helms because of his “doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice” and his opposition to civil rights bills and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

While I have a hard time bringing myself to say something bad about the dead, I appreciate a certain degree of symmetry here. For 16 days, Helms — standing alone — manage to thwart the passage of a holiday honoring the memory of Dr. King. For most of the time that it mattered, Eason managed to delay an action honoring Helms. How’s that for a tribute to Senator No?

Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent has been writing an extensive series of articles about counterinsurgency theory, a relatively new defense “movement” that is rapidly gaining adherents throughout the military (viz. Gen. David Petraeus) and in policy and political circles. His installment yesterday focused on an interesting phenomenon: the striking number of women among counterinsurgency theory’s leading lights.

While women are still underrepresented in the national-security apparatus — and at the Pentagon specifically — counterinsurgency, more than any other previous movement in defense circles, features women not just as equal partners, but leaders.
There’s no one answer for why that is. In a series of interviews, leading woman counterinsurgents, and some of their male colleagues, discussed how the unconventional approach to military operations calls for skills in academic and military fields that have become open to women in recent decades. Others contend that counterinsurgency’s impulse for collaborative leadership speaks to women’s “emotional IQ,” in the words of one prominent woman counterinsurgent. Another explanation has to do with coincidence: the military’s post-Vietnam outreach to women has matured at the same time as counterinsurgency became an unexpected national imperative.

Ackerman introduces us non-defense-experts to such luminaries of counterinsurgency theory as Erin Simpson of the Marine Corps University at Quantico; Janine Davidson, until recently at the Pentagon’s Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and Special Capabilities unit; Sarah Sewall of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights (and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense); Michele Flournoy and Tammy Schulz of the Center for a New American Security; and Montgomery “Mitzi” McFate, who’s worked at the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Office of Naval Research.
Though much of Ackerman’s piece involves discussion of why women are so prominent in this particular field, there’s no question it’s a very welcome trend. As Erin Simpson said to Ackerman:

The reason we need women working national security is the same reason we need women in medicine and engineering: this stuff is really hard. And we aren’t going to win by telling half the population they can’t play. It’s always important that we have the sharpest, most creative minds working on defense and security issues as possible.

In a rare occasion, John McCain and Barack Obama both appeared today before the United League of Latin American Citizens’ convention in Washington. Here’s Dana Goldstein’s take on their speeches over at TAP:

John McCain enjoyed a friendly reception here at the Washington Hilton, but the crowd went absolutely wild for Obama, who greeted them with an enthusiastic “Si se puede!” and shouted out his “homies” from LULAC’s Illinois chapter. And unlike McCain, who gave a tired speech on conservative tax policy, Obama focused on civil rights, frequently leaning into the microphone and shouting with passion. This was one of the best deliveries I’ve seen from Obama since early in the primaries. Toward the end of the speech, he even did a bit of call and response with the audience of states where Latino votes can make a difference in November.

Sounds like McCain and Obama were equally befriended by the audience, but Obama wound up a lot more equal.

(Note: this is cross-posted from Salon.com’s War Room site, where I am guest-blogging this week).
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s startling call yesterday for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country has been slow to draw the kind of attention here that it deserves. Perhaps that’s because his announcement was made in the context of complex negotiations over a temporary authorization for the continued U.S. presence in Iraq, and perhaps it’s because the precise meaning of “timetable” isn’t yet clear.
Still, as Juan Cole explains today, Maliki’s announcement reflects the widespread feeling in Iraq that demands by the Bush administration in the course of Status of Forces negotiations represent an offensive infringement of Iraqi sovereignty, requiring a reminder that U.S. troops aren’t necessarily indispensible. Maliki may also be signalling his understanding that he may be dealing with a new president next year named Barack Obama.
In terms of the implications for U.S. politics, Maliki’s timetable gambit exposes the vulnerability of George W. Bush, John McCain, and other “surge” enthusiasts to the argument that conditions in Iraq have improved enough that U.S. combat troops can soon be pulled out. After all, if the political leadership of that surge-blessed country seems to think it’s time to contemplate a withdrawal timetable for U.S. troops, why should Americans resist?
This illustrates the double-bind that Bush, McCain, and the conservative commentariat have created for themselves with their relentless surge-o-mania. If they’re wrong and the surge has failed to significantly change the fundamental realities of Iraq, then it’s time to get out. If they’re right and the surge is succeeding brilliantly, it’s also time to get out. Moreover, if Iraqis agree with either assessment, it’s definitely time to get out.
Theoretically McCain, if not Bush, could get out of the box by agreeing with Maliki that things are going so well that a withdrawal timetable is in order. But having staked a lot on the argument that Barack Obama is flip-flopping on the terms of withdrawal, McCain’s not in a great position to change his tune now.

Adam Doster’s Alternet/In These Times post “How Obama Could Radically Alter the Election Map This Fall” sheds light on the Obama campaign’s “grow the pie” voter registration mobilization.
Peter Nicholas’s “David Plouffe is the man steering Obama’s campaign” in today’s LA Times profiles Obama’s strategy wizard.
On a related topic, Peter Dreier has a Dissent article, “Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers?“, which explores how Obama’s activist experience informs his candidacy.
Oppo Alert: Those following the book buzz about “How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam should check out Matthew Continetti’s Weekly Standard review article “Here’s My Plan: Winning blue-collar votes in red states.”
The Economist post “White Men Can Vote” ponders several theories as to why Dems’ don’t get more traction with a pivotal constituency.
George Lakoff’s HuffPo article “The Mind and the Obama Magic” makes the cognitive/brain sciences case that Obama should resist “nuanced” adjustments of his policies that drift toward the center.
Well, they’re at it again, the National Black Republican Association. This time it’s billboards, at least 7 in FL and one in SC, claiming against all reason and evidence that MLK was a Republican. You can see the grotesque things right here and read about the controversy here. What did MLK really think about Republicans? Read what he actually said here.

Today Virginia Sen. Jim Webb joined Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland as much-discussed running-mate possibilities for Barack Obama who have formally taken themselves out of consideration.
This may have come as something of a relief to Team Obama. Webb was second only to Hillary Clinton as a galvanizing veep prospect, considered the obvious choice by a lot of people and “unacceptable” by others. But even some of his fans (viz. Ezra Klein) thought he was ill-suited for the vice presidency.
So Barack Obama’s “short list” for a running-mate just got a bit shorter. And Webb will stay, for the present, in the Senate, where (as the above Klein article reports) he’s making quite an impression.

(Note: this is a cross-post from Salon’s War Room, where I am guest-blogging this week).
John McCain’s campaign has released a repackaged “economic plan,” which will be the focus of a series of events this week.
I put the term in quotes because it’s not so much a “plan” as a hodge-podge of McCain’s domestic policy agenda, and it’s less about the economy than about the candidate’s decision to re-embrace a pledge–abandoned in April–to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term.
In fact, the economic and fiscal implications of McCain’s “plan” are inextricably entwined, since most of his concrete budget savings depend on highly dubious and very ideological assumptions about the impact of tax cuts on growth, of pro-oil-and-nuke policies on energy costs, and most of all, of subsidies for individual health insurance purchases on health care costs. Moreover, even a cursory glance at the fiscal math of McCain’s plan shows a vast number of “magic asterisks”–vague but savings-rich goals trucked up as proposals, ranging from nondefense budget freezes and “comprehensive reviews” of federal programs to some sort of latter-day peace dividend contingent on “victory” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But there’s one fundamental aspect of McCain’s “plan” that ought to be drawing the most immediate attention: nearly all of it would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Congress that he will definitely face should he be elected president. Barring some wildly unlikely change in the political winds, Democrats will increase their margins in both Houses of Congress, perhaps significantly, as even the most spin-happy Republicans admit. The idea that congressional Democrats are going to even consider health care, energy, or “entitlement reform” policies that are increasingly hard to distinguish from those of George W. Bush is laughable.
And that simple reality illustrates the enduring dilemma of the McCain candidacy. He needs an “economic plan” right now in order to deal with the strong impression that his national-security-and-character focused message thinly disguises Bush-style cluelessness or indifference about Americans’ economic anxieties. But the overarching thrust of his “plan,” and most of the details, appear focused on pleasing conservatives who have convinced themselves that the political disaster of the Bush presidency is mainly attributable to the incumbent’s insufficient fidelity to The True Cause, particularly in terms of fiscal policy.
So here we are in July of 2008, and John McCain’s still struggling to consolidate his electoral “base,” and devoting much of his domestic policy agenda to that effort. Should he somehow win in November, his administration would provide an acid test of the theory that Americans love gridlock.

Traditionally, it was thought that presidential general elections didn’t really start until Labor Day, or perhaps the two national political conventions. This year the September holiday is in very close proximity to the Democratic and Republican conventions. And the Republican campaign, at least, still seems to be going through all sorts of preparatory shake-down cruises.
But some aspects of the general election landscape become more or less established long before the official opening gun sounds. And according to Roll Call‘s electoral handicapper Stu Rothenberg, the fundamental lay of the land isn’t likely to change between now and November:

With just about four months to go until Election Day, the national political landscape continues to favor Democrats strongly. Indeed, almost every bit of national- level data reflects problems for the Republicans….
For months, even for years, the national news has been bad, so it’s not surprising that voters want change. All of the numbers strongly suggest that Americans see the Democratic Party as the better vehicle for bringing about change than the Republican Party.
In spite of some better news from Iraq, most Americans think the war was a mistake and the administration’s performance inept. Perhaps it’s a sign of Republicans’ problems that most GOP officeholders and strategists would rather talk about the war than about domestic issues.
The economy has sputtered along for a while, but the most recent news has been much worse. Increased unemployment, continuing problems in the nation’s financial sector and much higher fuel costs and commodity prices (and therefore inflationary pressures) have further eroded consumer confidence and pulled the rug out from under stocks.
There is simply no reason to believe that the news will improve measurably between now and late October, which means that there is no reason to believe that the American public’s underlying mood will turn up dramatically.

Horse-race coverage of the presidential contest tends to obscure the underlying partisan dynamics. But as Rothenberg–in no way a Democratic partisan–concludes, the horse bearing the unfortunate colors of the GOP has an exceptionally rough track ahead.

Thomas F. Schaller’s July 1 New York Times article “The South Will Fall Again” makes a strong case that the Obama campaign would be wise not to invest much time and resources into winning electoral votes in “the 11 states of the former Confederacy.” Schaller admits that Virginia and Florida are exceptional cases that Obama can hope to win on November 4th. But he pretty much disses the idea that the electoral votes of other southern states are in play.
Schaller relies on ’04 election data to prove his point. Only in 3 of the 11 southern states , FL, AR and VA, did Kerry cut Bush’s margin of victory below 10 percent. And only in FL did Kerry come within 5 percent of winning. Demographics have changed somewhat during the last 4 years, with a large Hispanic influx into the region and northern job-seekers emigrating south. But it’s unclear how much this would benefit Democrats.
Schaller cites aggregate statistics indicating the Black voter turnout in the 11 southern states is proportional to the population, “17.9 percent of the age-eligible population and 17.9 percent of actual voters in 2004.” He offers the example of Mississippi to illustrate that “the more blacks there are in a Southern state, the more likely the white voters are to vote Republican.”
In their May 16 NYT article “In the South, a Force to Challenge the G.O.P.,” Adam Nossitor and Janny Scott point out:

In one black precinct in the town of Amory, Miss., the number of voters nearly doubled, to 413, from the Congressional election in 2006, and this for a special election with nothing else on the ballot. Meanwhile, in a nearby white precinct, the number of voters dropped by nearly half.
A similar increase has been evident in Southern states with presidential primaries this year. In South Carolina, the black vote in the primary more than doubled from 2004, to 295,000, according to exit poll estimates. In Georgia, it rose to 536,000 from 289,000.
One expert on African-American politics, David A. Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, called those numbers “almost astounding.” Black turnout also shot up in states like Maryland, Virginia and Louisiana, even after Hurricane Katrina had driven many Louisianians out of state.

Schaller argues that even the most optimistic projections of Black turnout will not be enough to overcome the GOP advantage in the south. However, Schaller’s analysis doesn’t take recent polling trends into account. According to recent poll averages cited by Pollster.com, Obama is behind McCain 3.2 percent in FL, 5.3 percent in GA and 2.9 percent in NC, and Obama leads McCain by 1.4 percent in VA. Granted, early horse race polls are lousy predictors of what will happen in November, but they do give candidates some idea of how they are running. In light of these numbers, it doesn’t make much sense for Obama to “write off” NC or GA just yet, especially if he choses Sam Nunn as a running mate. It appears that his investment in those two states is good strategy at this stage.
Obama is not Kerry, who may have been the ideal candidate from the point of view of southern Republicans. Another consideration is that Republicans have a lot more to answer for this time around. And how well does Obama’s demonstrated ability to connect with young white voters play in the south? These are just a few of the issues Obama must consider in tweaking his southern strategy in the months ahead.

Colbert I. King, one of WaPo‘s Pulitzer Prize winners (2003), has an article commenting on the difference between Senator Obama’s speech this week at the Truman Memorial Building in Independence, MO and Frederick Douglass’s “4th of July Oration,” which was actually delivered on July 5th 1852 to Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. King is interested in the difference between the two speeches as a measure of America’s progress in race relations and the meaning of patriotism in this context.
Douglass’s speech, delivered 156 years ago today, is one of the masterpieces of American oratory and one of the most eloquent speeches ever delivered in the English language. Indeed, there is nothing Winston Churchill, Henry Clay or Martin Luther King, Jr. could have taught Douglass about tapping the power of the mother tongue. It is routinely included in ‘Great Speeches’ collections, usually in the ‘social criticism’ category, and it really has no peer as an educational tool for teaching people what slavery was like and how it corrupted America’s nobler ideals. You can read the whole dazzling thing right here.
King’s article cites interesting similarities between Senator Obama and Douglass:

Although generations apart, Douglass and Obama have common characteristics. Both are of mixed race. Like Douglass, Obama grew up without the steadying hand of a father…Both men sought life’s fortunes far from their places of birth.

King explains the similarities — and differences — between Obama’s speech and Douglass’s oration, among them:

And in their speeches on independence and patriotism, both cited the courage and wisdom of the men who sought total separation of the colonies from the crown…Obama’s speech, “The America We Love,” lauded the men of Lexington and Concord who launched the American Revolution. Obama also agreed with Douglass on the significance of the founding documents and the idea of liberty as a God-given right worth dying for.
But while Douglass noted his estrangement from America’s experiment with democracy, Obama claimed America as his own and the Fourth of July as a time to rejoice.

To be fair, Douglass concluded his remarkable speech on a stirring note of hope, and there is a sense in which Senator Obama’s nomination represents a giant step forward toward the fulfillment of Douglass’s hope and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream. All Americans should be proud that one of our major political parties has advanced to this patriotic milestone, and Democrats can take special pride that our Party has taken the lead. We can also be proud that our nominee apparent has the speech-making skills to illuminate the historic moment. The patriotic challenge before us now is to bring it home on November 4th.