Thoughts on the Rolling Stone cover with alleged Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh, there's just so much righteous outrage over Rolling Stone's supposedly controversial, supposedly inappropriate cover photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. How dare they? It glamorized him, it glorifies him, it disrespects the victims, it's so very, very wrong, the shame!

Please.

Here are some comments before I turn to Frank Rich:

First, this is a "selfie," a photo the young Tsarnaev took of himself. Yes, he looks a bit like a rock star, but that's the point of the article. This isn't the sort of guy you'd expect to find at an al Qaeda training camp in some remote part of some hellish part of the world. He seemed "normal," and most of those around him, most of those close to him, talk of how wonderful he was, of how promising his life was, how he seemed to be your basic American kid.

But that's too complicated, apparently. People want to vilify him, to find him evil incarnate, refusing to acknowledge that there was, and likely still is, much more to him than that, that even if he's guilty, as he likely is, it's not as easy as saying he's a good-for-nothing killer.

This troubled me at the time and troubles me even more now. Did he do horrendous things? Does he have innocent blood on his hands? Yes, it appears so. But why did he do those things? Why did he -- this promising young man -- follow his brother into an act of terrorism and the additional bloodshed that followed? This outstanding article by Janet Reitman tries to answer that question, or at least tries to get us closer to the person, to see him for what he was, and is, the human being instead of the evil psychopath who is held up in the media and by those who have no interest in understanding anything.

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It's Hillary, stupid!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

James Carville may not always seem to have his political wits about him, but I suspect he's pretty much right about what he said about Hillary Clinton's 2016 prospects yesterday on This Week: 

I don't know what she's going to do, but I do know this: The Democrats want her to run. And I don't just mean a lot of Democrats. I mean a whole lot of Democrats, like 90 percent across the country. We just want to win. We think she's the best person and shut it down. And that's across the board.

Which reminds me of something Richard and I were talking about recently, as he recounted in a "Hillary Watch" post last week:

Michael and I were... speculating about what will become of the Obama campaign machine, including personnel, in 2016 and who else might run for the Democrats if Hillary does. Would anyone of significance bother, and would it be a bad thing if no one did? Parties sometime say that so-called "coronations" for presidential nominations are unhealthy, but given how badly the Republican contenders beat each other up, it may not be an awful idea for the Democrats to know who their candidate is early on. 

Normally I'm against such coronations. I'd much rather let the democratic process play itself out. But presidential primaries these days aren't so much democratic processes as exercises in self-immolation exposing various establishment and base fault lines.

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Kerry to the Pentagon, Rice to Foggy Bottom?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

WaPo:

President Obama is considering asking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to serve as his next defense secretary, part of an extensive rearrangement of his national security team that will include a permanent replacement for former CIA director David H. Petraeus.

Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with the transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

I have enormous respect for Senator Kerry and would love to see him get a senior post in the Obama Administration. He'd be a fine SecDef. (And Rice would a fine successor to Hillary.)

But I have two big concerns:

First, Democrats would lose a key voice in the Senate, particularly on foreign and military policy. Then again, he's almost 69 years old. How much longer does he want to serve as a senator? Maybe four years at the Pentagon -- with the Afghan War drawing to a close, the U.S. continuing to face nebulous threats around the world (and requiring new strategies for dealing witht them), and the military in need of major reform -- would allow him to leave a greater mark.

Second, Democrats could lose Kerry's seat in the Senate, reducing their majority. Because while Scott Brown, still a credible figure (or at least still a big name) even after his big loss to Elizabeth Warren last week, may run for the Republicans, it's not clear who the Democrats have even in solidly Democratic Massachusetts to compete for the seat in a snap election. Sure, they'd find someone, but what if that someone turned out to be as incompetent as Martha Coakley (who ran a terrible campaign and lost to Brown in 2010)? Other than Kerry, the biggest Democratic figure in the state is Gov. Deval Patrick, who proved to be something of a superstar this year supporting Obama's re-election (particularly his outstanding speech at the DNC), and he's already in his second term (having won re-election in 2010), but he's already signalled he'd rather stay where he is. But maybe. Because if not, Scott Brown might very well be a senator again.

So basically I'm fine with Kerry leaving the Senate for the Pentagon, but I'd be a lot happier about it if the Democrats found a strong candidate to replace him.

Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention

By Michael J.W. Stickings

We probably won't be doing any live-blogging of the proceedings in Charlotte, but we'll be doing a lot of writing about the convention. (I was on vacation during the Republican one, which is why Richard was handling lead-blogger duties. In Prince Edward Island, my favorite place in the world, I just didn't want all the Republican lies and distortions, all the ugliness and brutality, to ruin the wonderful time I was having.)

So stay tuned, and keep coming back, for a lot of new posts from us. Already Wednesday is lining up to be a very busy day.

Having just watched much of what happened this evening, here are some quick thoughts:

-- Ted Strickland is hilarious, and amazingly quotable. More on that tomorrow.

-- Deval Patrick gave a remarkably eloquent and moving speech. Here are some highlights:

The list of accomplishments is long, impressive, and barely told... With a record like that and a vision that powerful and hopeful, I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office -- and neither should you.

And:

We believe that government has a role to play, not in solving every problem in everybody's life, but in helping people help themselves to the American Dream. That's what Democrats believe. That's what Americans believe. And if we want to win elections in November and keep our country moving forward, if we want to earn the privilege to lead, it's time for Democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe.

Republicans are already twisting this to mean that Democrat think it's all about government and more government, but of course that's not what Patrick said. What he said -- and this was echoed later by Julian Castro (more on that in a moment) -- was that government (the government of "We the People," let us not forget, a democratic government, not the authoritarian one Republicans seem to think rules the country with an iron fist) has a key role to play in helping those who can't help themselves, those who, for example, lack the fortune and privilege into which someone like Mitt Romney was born, that it can help level the playing field and provide opportunity to those who simply would not otherwise have any.

That is indeed what we believe, and we should not shy away from expressing it.

-- Julian Castro is being called a rising star, but to me he's already there. It's just a matter of how high he can go. He was outstanding in giving the keynote speech tonight. A great speech, a great performance. Clearly, the point was to reach out to Latinos, who are already overwhelmingly supportive of Obama, but more broadly he effectively drew the sharp contrast between Obama and Romney, between the Democrats and the Republicans. On the one side, the president's side, is hope and opportunity, and indeed Castro's success, along with that of his twin brother Joaquin, who introduced him, is a story of opportunity and making the most of it. On the other side, the Romney-Ryan side, is privilege and, I would add, brutality, a celebration of Hobbes's state of nature as channelled through Ayn Rand.

Very, very well done.

-- Michelle Obama. What can I say? She was amazing. (Wolf Blitzer said something like, "She didn't hit a home run... uh, she hit a grand slam." I agree with the assessment, and appreciate the sentiment, though his knowledge of baseball is embarrassingly limited, it would seem.) It was the most powerful speech, and quite possibly the best speech, I've ever seen (or heard) by a first lady or would-be first lady, but really it stood on its own as one of the best convention speeches ever delivered by anyone, far superior to the "we're not really a couple o' rich douchebags" speech by Ann Romney last week in Tampa, reaching out to women, with whom Republicans are at war, but more generally making a truly compelling case not just for her husband but for what he stands for, what he fights for, for what they stand and fight for together, alongside their fellow Democrats.

Michelle can make an awesome case for Barack. And that's just what she did tonight, capping off an exceptional day for the Democrats.

What a way to get the convention rolling.

Kirk (D-MA)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has tapped Paul Kirk, not Michael Dukakis, to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat until a special election can be held on Jan. 19.

Fine (although I would have preferred Dukakis, who deserves some respect for his significant contributions both to the Democratic Party and to Massachusetts, as well as to liberal-progressive public policy, over the years -- wouldn't it have been so fitting for a Sen. Dukakis to cast a vote in support of health-care reform?)

It's not like Kirk lacks credentials, after all. He was even chairman of the DNC once upon a time. And he may very well be a solid pick.

But did Patrick really have to fill Kennedy's seat with a long-time Kennedy friend and aide, a candidate seemingly being pushed by the entire Kennedy clan? It's like the Kennedys think they have some sort of dynastic right to the seat, and that it's in their power to bequeath the seat to whomsoever they annoint.

Sure, it's just a temporary thing, but something about the whole thing irritates me. Not because I'm anti-Kennedy, which I'm not, but because I object to anything that smacks of dynastic control. Let's hope the selection process to name a Democratic candidate for the special election is less of an insider job, that is, that the Kennedys don't control that process. (A Kennedy won't be running, but they could still wield their enormous influence to control the process.)