There are lessons to be learned from the Obama victory in Ohio, but those lessons aren't necessarily clear-cut or obvious

The 40-mile strip of I-75 visited by Michael Massing in October

"If President-elect Obama can find a way to win over Deb Erford as well as some of the regulars at the Gathering who may have stayed home on Election Day, the Democrats might succeed in winning Ohio, and the rest of the Rust Belt, for many years to come."

-- the conclusion of Michael Massing's "Obama: In the
Divided Heartland," in the Dec. 18 New York Review of Books

by Ken

"How many Joe the Plumbers are there out there in Middle America?" Rush Limbaugh fumed on my car radio as I drove down Interstate 75 from the Detroit airport toward Toledo. "How many of you are tired of people running down the country?" For the last six years, he declared, the "drive-by media"—his term for the mainstream press—has tried to convince people "that this is a rotten country." States like Ohio, he went on, were so foreign to elite journalists that they needed a visa to visit them.

It was mid-October, and Massing was on his way "to see if I could uncover some of the deeper, underlying currents in the body politic, using as his "laboratory" "a forty-mile strip of I-75 in northwestern Ohio,"which "offered a good cross-section of this key battleground state, stretching from an aging industrial city (Toledo), south to a college town (Bowling Green), down to a classic small town (Findlay)."

It's a long piece, but a terrific one. When it comes to reporting, you have to decide for yourself who you trust, and I've developed a high comfort level with Massing, knowing that: (a) his personal views are at least as leftish as mine, and (b) his personal views don't affect his powers of observation as a reporter. Since the entire piece is available free online, I encourage you to read it. I've been picking it up and setting it down for a couple of weeks now, and was especially intrigued by its conclusions now with all the controversies swirling around the president-elect's appointments and general positioning during the "transition."

The part that I just read concerns Massing's final destination in Ohio, Findlay. Let's focus on that.

A town of 39,000, Findlay has long been a conservative stronghold. Hancock County, of which it is the seat, gave George Bush 68.5 percent of its vote in 2000 and 71 percent in 2004. In 1968, Congress, in recognition of Findlay's patriotic displays, officially designated it Flag City USA, and on national holidays the town is a sea of red, white, and blue. Its esprit derives in part from its affluence. Though surrounded by farmland, it has a strong industrial presence. Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. is headquartered here. Marathon Oil, a part of the original Standard Oil, was headquartered here, too, until 1990, when USX, which had bought it, moved its corporate headquarters to Houston; its refining and marketing division remains in Findlay. Whirlpool, Consolidated Biscuit, Procter & Gamble, and American Standard all have plants in or around Findlay.

To his surprise, he quickly found not one but two Obama voters. A retired truck driver, fed up with the area's economic decline, told him that Findlay "isn't the Republican town it used to be."

As I discovered, Findlay is indeed changing. The Obama campaign had opened a very visible office on Main Street, the largest in memory by a Democratic candidate. Driving through town, I saw many Obama-Biden yard signs. There were many McCain-Palin ones as well, of course, but in my interviews I was struck by the number of people whose long-standing attitudes and attachments were being tested and shaken up by the region's changing fortunes. In department stores and parking lots, restaurants and churches, I kept hearing angry complaints about the endless march of mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, and plant closings. People denounced NAFTA, cursed China and Mexico, and inveighed against the corporations that were so blithely turning their backs on their communities. It was not just the decline in living standards that people were deploring but the resulting disruption of local life, with the loss of tax revenues reducing the support available for essential services. As a result, Main Streets across the Upper Midwest are declining and dying.

"Economics has shaken people out of their traditional patterns," Manning was told by Melissa Spirek, a professor of communication at Wright State University in Dayton, "drawing on the surveys her students regularly make of local residents." And yet, he writes, "The engrained belief in self-reliance and small government remains as well. These two strains -- resentment and traditionalism—seem today to coexist in uneasy and unpredictable competition."

At the Gathering, "an unpretentious but inviting bar and restaurant in the heart of town, where local notables and ordinary citizens mix," Massing had "a two-hour marathon conversation with a rotating array of factory workers, contractors, teachers, a reporter for the Courier, and the two women who owned the place." "As always, the loss of jobs loomed over all else." A lot of people, he discovered, were undecided about who they would vote for.

In the national press and the blogosphere, the category of "undecideds" was routinely ridiculed. With the choice between the candidates so clear, how could anyone remain up in the air? While in Ohio, however, I met many undecideds. Quite a few were Republicans trying to come to terms with a number of discomfiting realities: McCain's uninspired campaign; his choice of an unqualified running mate; the failures of George Bush; the promise of Barack Obama. A number seemed prepared to make the leap into the Democratic camp. Just as many, however, seemed hesitant. They objected to Obama's support for abortion rights. Or feared he was going to raise their taxes. Or thought he might be a Muslim. And, as an examination of the election returns shows, this group proved to be an important factor on election day.

Obama won Ohio, of course, "by 2,784,000 to 2,582,000 votes (51 to 47 percent)." Obama "got only about 45,000 more votes than John Kerry did in 2004," but McCain "got about 275,000 fewer than George Bush did." The turnout was only 67 percent. ("Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner had predicted a turnout rate of 80 percent.") The only plausible explanation, writes Manning: "Many Republicans stayed home on election day." And while "few other states had a fall-off comparable to Ohio's," "the huge surge in national turnout that had been so loudly forecast failed to materialize." Breaking down the numbers, he concludes, "Obama's margin of victory may have owed nearly as much to white Republican voters who failed to turn out as to black, Latino, and young voters who did." ("From both my interviews and press accounts," Massing writes, "it seems clear that the selection of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate did more than anything else to discourage potential McCain supporters.")

The Republican stay-at-homes amount to a huge disaffected and alienated population whose political loyalties remain up for grabs. Winning them over would seem critical to cementing the type of political realignment the Democrats so ardently crave. The key to achieving that, of course, rests with getting the economy moving again. Obama has proposed spending $50 billion to help states speed the construction of roads and other infrastructure. At a time of soaring deficits, two wars, and a $700 billion bailout, it's unclear where that money is going to come from—especially in view of Obama's promise of broad tax relief. The challenge is especially daunting in Ohio and other Rust Belt states, which are suffering from not only a cyclical downturn but also a long-term structural decline. Reversing this would probably require a bold public-works program on the scale of the WPA. With many Americans still opposed to the idea of activist government, Obama will have to draw fully on his extraordinary political and persuasive skills to pull this off.

Two days after the election Massing called Deb Erford, one of the owners of the Gathering, the bar he had visited in Findlay. Erford, a self-styled "conservative Republican," had been undecided. He wanted to see what her decision was.

"Right up to the last couple of days, I was not sure how I was going to go," she told me. In the end, though, she had decided to go "with policy over character." On such matters as taxes and small business, McCain's views largely coincided with her own, and so she had decided to back him. But, she was quick to add, she was not at all unhappy with the outcome. Obama "might be better for the country—and the world," she said, noting that with his character, charisma, and intelligence, he might be able to move the country forward. In fact, she said, she was very excited: "I thought the younger generation was apathetic, but I was proved wrong. So many young people got involved. That makes me happy."

You've already read Obama's conclusion, which follows immediately from the above. Here it is again:

If President-elect Obama can find a way to win over Deb Erford as well as some of the regulars at the Gathering who may have stayed home on Election Day, the Democrats might succeed in winning Ohio, and the rest of the Rust Belt, for many years to come.

Right now I have more questions than answers, and so for once I'm not going to sound off any more. I'll just say that there are perhaps a number of ways that a political leader might respond to the lessons Massing proposes here.

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Can either of the presidential candidates get us out of Iraq? And as long as we're asking, will either presidential candidate KEEP us out of IRAN?

"Of all the unintended consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, surely the most paradoxical is the way it has boosted Iran's position in the region. . . .

"With America's Iraqi allies urging the United States to negotiate with Iran, and with the Iranians themselves eager for such contacts, the Bush administration's resistance seems puzzling. Indeed, Washington's refusal to engage in vigorous regional diplomacy may be its most serious political blunder of all. If the United States is ever to withdraw from Iraq, reaching some accommodation with Iran would seem essential."

-- Michael Massing, in "Embedded in Iraq," in the
July 17 New York Review of Books

"It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon."

-- Thomas Powers, in "Iran: The Threat," in the same NYRB

Much to absorb in the new New York Review of Books, starting with -- yes! -- a new book review by Russell Baker, which is where I went first, and which I want to talk about later. The next most grabbing piece for me is the one I've quoted from above, and to appreciate why, you need to know that Michael Massing has been one of the most relentless and uncompromising journalistic opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And now here he is, embedded in Iraq?

His daylong embed took him to the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, a once "solidly middle-class district full of ex-Baathists," which was "taken over by al-Qaeda in Iraq," imposing "an Islamic reign of terror," against which Shiite militiamen "waged their own bloody war on the population, with mutilated bodies regularly turning up on the street. More than two hundred US soldiers had died there in the first half of 2007 alone." The neighborhood has been brought back, however, thanks to "the Sunni backlash against al-Qaeda and the parallel adoption of counterinsurgency tactics by the US military," and is now "a showcase for visiting journalists and pundits."

It's a fascinating experience, the embed proper, but for that you'll have to read Massing's own account. Back in safe quarters, here's how he sums up the experience:

As I'd expected, my embed had provided little opportunity to hear the Iraqi point of view. Rather, it offered a look at the war through the eyes of the US military, and in that respect it had been very revealing. On the one hand, it had left me with little doubt about the very real gains the surge had brought about, and about the effectiveness of the Petraeus-led counterinsurgency strategy. The situation in Dora had obviously improved, and the combination of aggressive raids, large-scale detentions, and mixing with the community (together with the Sunni Awakening) had had a big hand in achieving that.

At the same time, I'd gotten a look at the crushing effect the war is having on the troops. The breakdown in the Army has advanced so far that in a mere thirteen hours, I could see the rising dissatisfaction, anger, and rebellion within it. The message from the soldiers themselves was that keeping so large a force in the field over the long term seemed unsustainable.

With virtually no opportunity to get genuine Iraqi perspectives, Massing sought out "Iraq specialists at American and British universities and think tanks who, traveling into and out of the country, are less beholden to government dogma."

He learned, for example, about a heavily funded but little-publicized major U.S. initiative, a "political surge" -- "a huge state-building campaign, spearheaded by a sharp expansion in the US advisory effort."

The campaign got under way last summer. Specialists from Treasury and Justice, Commerce and Agriculture were assigned to government ministries to help draw up budgets and weed out sectarian elements. The Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers set up projects to boost nutrition and reinforce dams. Provincial Reconstruction Teams were stationed in Baghdad and elsewhere to help repair infrastructure, improve water and electrical systems, and stimulate the economy. One main goal was to use some of Iraq's new oil wealth ($41 billion in 2007 alone) to create jobs that would help occupy the legions of aimless young men who might otherwise join the country's many militias.

About a year has passed since the campaign began. And from talks with several Green Zone visitors who are familiar with it, I learned that, by and large, it has been an utter failure. "Dysfunctional" is how one visiting adviser described it, citing bitter interagency battles, micromanagement from Washington, and an acute mismatch between the skills of the advisers and the needs of the Iraqi government. "What we have," he said, "are cattle calls -- a bunch of random people sent over with widely varying skills who can't speak the language, who've never worked in this type of environment, and whom the Iraqis didn't even ask for."

But more than anything, Massing learned that the influence of Iran, which he went to Iraq thinking was exaggerated by U.S. officials, is wildly understated.

He meets with CNN's man in Baghdad, Michael Ware:

[A]ll he wanted to talk about was Iran. "Iran's agents of influence go to the top of the Iraqi government," he said. "Twenty-three members of the Iraqi Parliament are permanent members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard." Hezbollah operatives, he said, were training JAM members in guerrilla warfare, while a senior member of al-Qaeda was being sheltered in Iran. Even the Kurds were in deep with the Iranians, he said. Under Saddam, for instance, Jalal Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan who is now president of Iraq, ran weapons and communications lines through Iran. Finally, there was Ahmad Chalabi, the influential former exile who had urged the Americans to invade and then fallen out with them, allegedly over his ties to Tehran. "All the time, he was working for Iran!" Ware told me.

This leads Massing to the observation I quoted at the outset:

"Of all the unintended consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, surely the most paradoxical is the way it has boosted Iran's position in the region."

Of course the Bush regime has not only declared itself unwilling to negotaiate with Iran, but has aggressively primed the primitive nativist element of American "thought" with the idea that negotiation is evil -- or, worse, wimpy.

With America's Iraqi allies urging the United States to negotiate with Iran, and with the Iranians themselves eager for such contacts, the Bush administration's resistance seems puzzling. Indeed, Washington's refusal to engage in vigorous regional diplomacy may be its most serious political blunder of all. If the United States is ever to withdraw from Iraq, reaching some accommodation with Iran would seem essential.

Trying to make sense of this, I recalled something [British Iraq specialist] Toby Dodge had told me: "When the Americans go home, the Iranians will inherit the earth." Iranian hegemony over Iraq: that is the Bush administration's worst nightmare. The Iraq invasion was designed to project American power in the region at Iran's expense; instead, it has done the exact opposite. And so it dawned on me: no matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush administration doesn't want to leave, since if it does, Iran, in one way or another, will take over. That helps explain recent reports that Washington, in negotiating a long-term status of forces agreement with Iraq, is determined to maintain nearly sixty bases there indefinitely -- a position the government of Prime Minister al-Maliki is strongly resisting.

At this point, a short paragraph (dealing with the Obama and McCranky positions as stated so far) from the end, Massing inserts a footnote:

In his new book War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq (Simon and Schuster, 2008), NBC correspondent Richard Engel relates a fascinating hour-and-a-half interview he had with George Bush in 2007 in which he urged the President to undertake a major diplomatic initiative in the Middle East—the only way, Engel argued, some degree of stability could be achieved in Iraq. Bush dismissed the idea, telling Engel that the war in Iraq "is going to take forty years." Engel also writes that Bush "seemed genuinely surprised" at the suggestion that US actions in Iraq are helping Iran.

Now is that our Chimpy all over, or what? He's the one who'd go to war with Iran in a heartbeat, the one who tells us that everything that happens in Iraq is Iran's fault, and he's "genuinely surprised" that anyone might think that Iran has been empowered beyond imagining, and at virtually no cost, by Chimpy's excellent adventure in Iraq.

There is, by the way, a separate piece in this issue of NYRB by Thomas Powers, whom we last encountered deep in gloom over the prospects of our extracting ourselves from Iraq anytime in the near (or not-so-near) future. The new piece is called "Iran: The Threat," or at least I assume this is the title Powers intended for the piece. This is how it appears on the contents page and on the piece itself. The cover line has it differently, though: "The Threat to Iran." And indeed, after carefully weighing the threat from Iraq, he pursues the question of why -- if not for offensive might -- Iran might want nuclear weapons.

The seriousness of American threats is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them. Americans may count on the President to think twice, but why would leaders in Tehran, responsible for the lives of 70 million citizens, want to depend on President Bush's restraint for their survival and safety? Bush has a history. On his own authority, without the sanction of any international body, he attacked Iraq five years ago and precipitated a bloody chain of events that shows no sign of ending. It would be natural, indeed inevitable, for any government in Tehran, seeing what has happened next door, to ask what could save Iran from a similar fate. An answer is not far to seek: nuclear weapons with a reliable delivery system could do that.

As Powers pointed out in the earlier piece mentioned above, by going military with Iraq, the brain-dead American neocons created a hellish situation that can't be ended except with a military solution, of which there is none available. And yet it's clear that both Chimpy the Prez and his puppetmaster, "Big Dick" Cheney, really want to add a war in Iran to the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, an idea that Powers demonstrates nicely is just about insane any way you look at it.

And yet, as Powers points out, "It is a strange fact that the locus of opposition to attack on Iran is not in Congress but in the Pentagon."

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