Beyond Opinion

Well now it looks like Cindy Sheehan has pulled out of the anti-war movement. She says the movement has not gotten any results and it has cost her her savings, her husband, and her health. She is definitely right about the results. As of late, she has found the Democratic leadership wanting. They don't want to hear her. They call her names. They distance themselves from her.

She says they have been lying about the war effort. She's right about that. The nation is plagued with liars. Our laws are made by a Senate of Liars and by the House of Mendacity. Our Presidents have been liars for some time. There were WMDs in Iraq. Clinton never had sex with that woman. Read my lips, maybe but plenty of taxes were passed while George H. W. Bush was in office. Morning in America was no such morning, but rather a start of the unraveling of our society. Maybe Carter was truthful. Maybe.

It is not only the war effort that draws lies out of our nation's leaders. Not a single candidate for President in 2008, not a single one, has warned us about the danger to our future caused by peak oil. Either they say that business will solve everything, or they say the big danger is global warming, when really we don't have the fossil fuels needed to cause major global warming catastrophes. Bush probably invaded Iraq because of impending peak oil, then he lied to us about the reason for the war. The only politicians who has brought our attention to this problem are Repr. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Repr. Tom Udall, and I hear almost nothing about them.

Several Democratic candidates, including Hillary and Obama, and one Republican, namely Ron Paul, say they will halt the Iraq war when they take office. Or will they? There is a good chance the Democrats will win election in 2008. If so, then on 2009 January 20, either the Iraq War stops immediately, or some other candidate other than Hillary and Obama has been elected, or else we have just elected a liar for President.

We are now about one and a half years from the 2008 Presidential Elections. To me, this is the most important Presidential election in our nation's history. According to Strauss and Howe's generational and turning theory, we are about to hit a period of crisis, if we haven't already. They call such a crisis a Fourth Turning. A derivative of this theory is my Periodic Presidents. According to the Periodic President pattern, the next President of the United States should be a Crisis President, with the same stature as Washington, Lincoln, and FD Roosevelt. Further, this crisis may be bigger than those that these presidents had to handle, since the future of our civilization, challenged by peak oil and global warming, may be at stake.

Further, it is the biggest election in history so far. Over 20 candidates have announced for the Presidency, more than I can remember in past elections. More money will be spent on this election than in any past election. The primaries get earlier and earlier and earlier, as states vie to become the decision maker for this Election of all Elections.

So the question is, who is going to win it? It looks like the Democrats. One way of seeing this is to look at Allen Lichtman's Keys to the White House. I had earlier reviewed the keys and found that the Democrats were most likely to win, especially if peak oil strikes before the election. Now I think the Democrats will win no matter what the supply of oil does.

Let's look first at those keys that by status quo will stand; i.e., be true. These are keys 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, and 13. Of these, I now expect that Key 4 (third party) and Key 10 (foreign or military failure) will fall.

2. There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.

Some people expect that this key will fall, because of so many Republicans in the race - 10-12, depending on the criteria for a candidate. However, the historical and statistical pattern has been that one candidate will run away from the rest, and that candidate will win by more than 2/3 of the vote, the criterion for this key. So I expect this key to stand. However, the presence of Giuliani in the race could cause conservative Republicans to come up with their candidate, resulting in a race between these two candidates. This is about the only way I can see that this key will fall. But it bears watching.

4. There is no significant third party or independent campaign.

Up to now I have seen absolutely no serious threat of an independent or third-party campaign. That has now changed. This is because of the entry of Michael Bloomberg into the race as an independent. I have heard from some sources that he is likely to enter the race. If he does, he is likely to offer things the others don't, such as an attitude of getting things done and a disdain for pleasing the hypermedia. It would be like Ross Perot. He could even take some states. I think this means he is likely to get at least 5% of the vote, the criterion for this key. So now I expect the key to fall.

8. There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

Anti-war protests don't qualify as social unrest. The Virginia Tech massacre was an isolated incident perpetrated by a single individual. This key will stand.

9. The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

There have been lots of mini-scandals, such as Libby, Gonzalez, and so forth, but to take down this key, President Bush has to be implicated, or there has to be a lot of serious charges against his staff, causing several jail terms. This has not happened, and I don't expect it will. This one will stand.

10. The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

This one falls. Bush had his success glory in 2003-2004, when he invaded Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein. However, the war, or rather, occupation of a civil war, has dragged on and on and on with no end in sight and a series of massacres going over there and coffins of US soldiers coming home. To me this is a failure.

13. The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

I am assuming for now that this one stands. It depends on who is running. I think that John Edwards and Barack Obama have some charisma, but whether it will be enough to cause this key to fall remains to be seen.

The second group of keys are the default fall keys. If the usual state of circumstances occurs, these keys can be expected to fall. For 2008, I think indeed all of them will indeed fall:

7. The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

I have not seen any real changes in administration policy. The Department of Homeland Security is simply more bureaucracy. This one falls.

11. The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

I haven't seen any. Threatening Iran or North Korea, capturing secondary Al Qaeda lieutenants, and the like don't qualify. I don't expect he will come up with any, either. This one falls.

12. The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

The situation is similar to that of Key 13. I am assuming this one falls. Giuliani shows some charisma, but the other Republicans don't.

This leaves 4 keys. Two of them are what I call decision keys. They are a constant for a presidential campaign and there is no opinion about them; however, they differ for each election:

1. After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.

All the Democrats needed was a gain of 4 in the House. They actually gained about 30 and took control. This one falls.

3. The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.

This one falls. Only an extraordinary set of circumstances, such as Bush getting impeached and Cheney running for President, will cause this one to stand.

That leaves the two economy keys. I think one of them will stand.

5. The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

That remains to be seen. It is possible that the effects of peak oil will happen in 2008. However, if this does not happen, then Harry Dent's theory (somewhat based on Fourth Turning theory) predicts a boom until the middle of 2009. Therefore, this key looks like it will stand, but we will have to wait until 2008 to find out for sure.

6. Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

The past few years have been boom years. This year has seen considerable growth in the stock averages, for instance. I therefore regard this key as standing.

So lets summarize. Initially, the challengers (Democrats) need 3 out of 4 of the decision and economy keys to win. Two of the default stand keys fall, so now it is 1 out of 4. No default stand keys fall; it is still 1 out of 4. Both decision keys fall. So now it is -1 out of 4, meaning if the Democrats don't get either economy key, they will still win. That is the significance of Bloomberg's upcoming independent candidacy for President. It means that the Democrats don't need either a charismatic candidate or a bad economy to win. That did not used to be the case. If the Republicans had nominated a charismatic candidates and the Democrats don't, the Democrats could lose. Now it doesn't matter. The Republicans will lose. Another way of putting it is that the Republicans now have already lost six keys: 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 11. There is no way they can win.

But there could be a change this year. I note that Allan Lichtman takes his key system only back to 1860. Further, his system does not allow for third party wins, mainly because none has even come close. That is because something dramatic happened that year - a four-candidate election for a crisis president. If you try the keys on the 1856 election, you get 7 keys down, but still the incumbent party (Democrats) won. Likewise, in 2008, there will be a three-way election for a crisis president, with one candidate resembling Lincoln. The keys could break down. How so? With a party that has not been around long. This means the independent. Yes, if Bloomberg runs, he could very well win. Such a win would be in accord with Fourth Turning theory, as his motto is simply to get things done.

So it should be an interesting campaign. The Democrats will win, that is if not…

Today I found that Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Virginia, died (2007 May 15). A lot of people revered him, judging from comments by Pat Robertson, Virginia governor Tim Kaine, and others. But what type of legacy does he leave?

A rather misleading one, I would believe. He became a leader of the Christian religion, which believes that a man 2000 years ago somehow rose into the sky, and that you must believe in him as a savior or you will get damnation. Many Christian scholars believe in this only metaphorically, but this character believed in it as literal truth, with absolutely no evidence to support it. Falwell set up a "University" in Lynchburg, in which some truth is mixed with the falsities of Falwell's beliefs, for example, that somehow we were "created" thousands of years ago, that homosexuals are immoral and sinful, and so forth. After 2001 September 11, he blamed feminists for the attacks. Boy, he really wanted to set women back in their place. I saw absolutely no feminists take part in any way shape or form the attacks of that day. He advocated assassinating Hugo Chávez of Venezuela; although this leader is a big blowhard, this is not the way we should be carrying out our foreign policy. He tried to influence politics with his "Moral Majority" which sought to send our nation back to the age of the Holy Roman Empire, especially considering that like that empire, Moral Majority is not any of the terms in it.

To me he was not really that different from some of the mullahs in the Middle East that call for Salmon Rushdie's and Danish cartoonists' deaths. He promoted a radical, fundamental religion which sought to denigrate people and divide them into two halves, good and evil. Such people are severely exacerbating the crises of our time. So well it is sad that he died, just like it is sad when any of us departs. But his passing gives the students and faculty of Liberty University an opportunity to seek truth, not the misogynist and Christianist propaganda that he promulgated.