McCain's angry mob

"With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign," Sarah Baxter wrote in The Sunday Times. "McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting 'pitbull in lipstick', against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of 'terrorist' and 'kill him' have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies. "Mark Salter, McCain's long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an 'honourable defeat' rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character - and likely to lose him the election." Politico reported: "Fearing the raw and at times angry emotions of his supporters may damage his campaign, John McCain on Friday urged them to tone down their increasingly personal denunciations of Barack Obama, including one woman who said she had heard that the Democrat was 'an Arab.' "Each time he tried to cool the crowd, he was rewarded with a round of boos. " 'I have to tell you. Sen Obama is a decent person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the United States,' McCain told a supporter at a town hall meeting in Minnesota who said he was 'scared' of the prospect of an Obama presidency and of who the Democrat would appoint to the Supreme Court. " 'Come on, John!' one audience member yelled out as the Republican crowd expressed dismay at their nominee. Others yelled 'liar,' and 'terrorist,' referring to Obama. In Reason, Michael Young wrote: "McCain was trying to be decent, but you would have expected him to answer in a million different ways than the way he did, instead of just focusing on Obama's personal qualities. He could have, first of all, corrected the woman's inaccuracy, the confusion of one fallacy (that Obama is an Arab) with another (that he is a Muslim), before adding: 'So what?' Substitute the name of most other ethnic groups for the word 'Arab', and the candidate would have been - and quite legitimately so - apoplectic with rage at the bigotry on display. But denouncing someone because he or she is an 'Arab' or a 'Muslim' all too often seems fair game in American popular political discourse, with little visible backlash." The Associated Press noted: "The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of 'palling around with terrorists' because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical. If less directly, McCain, too, has sought to exploit Obama's Chicago neighborhood ties to William Ayers, while trying simultaneously to steer voters' attention to his plans for the financial crisis." Politico reported: "Civil rights icon John Lewis compared Sen John McCain to George Wallace in a posting to Politico's forum 'The Arena,' accusing McCain of fostering 'an atmosphere of hate' and 'hostility' like the one that led to white supremacists' 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. "Lewis, a Democratic congressman from Georgia who has endorsed Sen Barack Obama, pointed in his posting to 'the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign,' and said the senator and his running mate, Alaska Gov Sarah Palin, 'are sowing the seeds of hatred and division.' "McCain, in a book he wrote with aide Mark Salter called Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life, had lauded the leadership of Lewis in the nonviolent civil rights movement." Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, wrote in The Washington Post: "I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama. "Never mind that this evokes - and brazenly tries to resurrect - the unsavory, cruel days of our past that we thought we had left behind. Never mind that such jeers are deeply offensive to millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim Americans who must bear the unveiled charge, made by some supporters of Sen John McCain and Gov Sarah Palin, that Obama's middle name makes him someone to distrust - and, judging by some of the crowd reactions at these rallies, someone to persecute or even kill. As a secular Muslim, I too was offended. Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name? "But never mind any of that. "The real affront is the lack of firm response from either McCain or Palin. Neither has had the moral courage, when taking the stage, to grasp the microphone, turn to the presenter and, right then and there, denounce the use of Obama's middle name as an insult. Instead, they have simply delivered their stump speeches, lacing into Obama as if nothing out-of-bounds had just happened. The McCain-Palin ticket has given toxic speeches accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorists, then released short, meek repudiations of some of the rough stuff, including McCain's call Friday to 'be respectful.' Back in February, the Arizona senator apologised for the 'disparaging remarks' from a talk-radio host who sneered repeatedly about 'Barack Hussein Obama' before a McCain rally. 'We will have a respectful debate,' McCain insisted afterward. But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk."

Pakistan on the brink of bankruptcy

"Pakistan has dispatched its top finance officials on a mission to raise billions of dollars from its closest allies in a last ditch bid to stave off bankruptcy," The Daily Telegraph reported. "Shaukat Tareen, the prime minister's finance adviser, and Shamshad Akhtar, the governor of the central bank, have travelled to Washington to secure a £6 billion American and British-backed lifeline. "Oil-rich Gulf states have been lined up to match Western funds with extra billions to ensure that the country, which until recently touted itself as the next Asian Tiger, avoids a balance of payments crisis. "Mr Tareen, a suave former banker, was appointed this week to spearhead the last ditch bid to after it was revealed that state reserves had halved since democratic elections earlier this year. He has given himself four weeks to salvage the economy. High oil prices have combined with endemic corruption and mismanagement to push Pakistan to the brink of bankruptcy." In Newsweek, Fasih Ahmed wrote: "The Zardari government is sailing into a perfect storm of political instability and economic turmoil. The economy is in a virtual freefall. International agencies have slashed its credit ratings. The rupee has hit an all-time low against the dollar. Capital flight is believed to be continuing despite efforts to stop it. Suicide attacks and kidnappings have led to the repatriation of foreign skilled labor. The bourses are a blood bath as foreign investors continue to pull out. Unable to pay its bills, the government has taken to issuing IOUs to private- and public-sector companies. Overall inflation is at a punishing 30-year high. Power shortages, the worst in at least 15 years, are disrupting businesses already hurt by higher input costs. To top it off, much-needed funding and easier terms promised by Pakistan's allies and multilateral donor agencies have yet to materialise. Foreign-exchange reserves, worth about two months of imports, are fast running out - and with the worsening economic situation, so is public patience. "For its part, the Zardari-led coalition government, already besieged by political rivals and insurgent groups, has had to take unpopular measures to prop up the economy. It has raised taxes, upsetting the business community. It has trimmed government spending, prompting bureaucrats to grumble. It has increased tariffs on power, angering consumers and businesses already fed up with outages. And it has phased out subsidies on imported fuel, leading to price increases in everything from bus rides to cooking oil and prompting small, periodic protests. 'Inflation accounts for most of the public disgruntlement,' says Mansoor Hussain, a columnist for the English-language Daily Times. 'The popular expectation seems to be that the US and world community will not allow Pakistan to fail and will foot our bills for what is still considered by us to be their war,' he told Newsweek. But an oil deal with the Saudis is yet to come through, and substantive foreign-currency inflows remain elusive despite public commitments by allies, including the United States, which is facing its own economic crisis." In The Washington Post, Sumit Ganguly wrote: "Pakistan is facing an existential crisis - on its streets and in its courts, barracks and parliament. American pundits and politicians might be hoping for the best for the country whose lawless border regions are widely thought to harbor Osama bin Laden and other al Qa'eda leaders. But I don't see much chance of a happy turnaround. If, as both John McCain and Barack Obama have claimed, a strong, dependable Pakistan is the key to winning the war in Afghanistan, then we are waging an unwinnable war. "I have studied Pakistan for nearly 20 years and have traveled throughout the country several times. Yes, I am ethnically an Indian, but I am a US citizen and harbour no animosity toward Pakistan or its citizens. After spending so much time studying the place, I've grown rather fond of it. But I worry that many Pakistanis - and Americans, for that matter - don't want to hear the bad news. "Look, for example, at the reaction to the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last month, which may well have been designed to kill Zardari and decapitate the Pakistani government. For a few days, a sense of urgency filled the airwaves; the attack was called 'Pakistan's 9/11,' a wake-up call to a society facing grave security threats from Islamists and other radicals. But like most wake-up calls in Pakistan, it was soon drowned out by nationalist bombast. Pundits began to argue that it was US pressure on Pakistan to 'do more' about al Qa'eda that had gotten the tribal militants and mullahs riled up in the first place. 'Now after helping create this chaos,' Ayaz Amir, one of the country's most influential columnists, wrote several days after the bombing, the Americans 'are expecting the battered state of Pakistan to bestir itself from the ashes and perform miracles.' Amazingly, the Marriott attack is now considered the United States' problem, as if that crater in the center of Pakistan's capital magically belonged to another world."

pwoodward@thenational.ae