Meals From The Marketplace

            With three different candidates winning the first three contests, the Republicans have established that the race to their party’s presidential nomination will not be decided early in the process.  While the lesser lights (Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry) have all bowed out, four intrepid souls are still very much in the game as the first big-state primary in Florida is set to occur next week.

            One of them will most probably end up as the party’s nominee, but any number of scenarios might lead to that result.  Or, someone not even in the current field could emerge with the party’s nomination.  Here are a few possible scenarios that could develop, unlikely though they might currently appear:

            Scenario A

            Newt Gingrich again loses favor with the voters, the result of a steady barrage of anti-Gingrich ads (mostly from Romney and his Super-PACs) and his own “grandiosity,” as when he says something like, “Social Security enslaves more people today than the South did in the pre-Civil War years.” 

            Looking desperately for an alternative to Romney, the rank-and-file coalesces around Rick Santorum, who manages to avoid speaking his mind on social issues and instead sounds like an economic populist.  His campaign picks up steam and Romney continues to get no more than 30 percent of the vote in primaries and caucuses.  Ultimately, Gingrich, unable to pull off yet another Lazarus act, drops out, endorsing Santorum as he does. 

            Santorum locks up the nomination with a big win in California, where, ironically, wild-eyed Republicans reject Romney as too much a product of Hollywood packaging.

            Scenario B

            Santorum, handicapped by a lack of funds, runs poorly in Florida, finishing a distant fourth.  He reluctantly “suspends” his campaign, never to be heard from again.  In his absence, Gingrich builds a sizeable anti-Romney following.  He continues to score well with the voters by attacking the liberal media and the socialist Obama while claiming that Romney is a liar and a fraud. 

            Romney responds by parading a dozen current and former members of Congress before the press.  They all claim that Gingrich was an incompetent Speaker and that he would be a dangerous president because of his lack of leadership skills and his massive ego. 

            As the two battle viciously against each other, Ron Paul gets more attention from the voters.  He softens his positions ever so slightly (sounding a little less like a pacifist and a little more like an economic centrist), and thereby begins to gain traction in the mainstream media.

            The three arrive at the convention in August with Romney and Gingrich each holding about 40 percent of the pledged delegates and Paul holding the other 20 percent.  Paul makes a backroom deal with Romney, securing the VP slot for his son Rand, and Romney gets the nomination.

            Scenario C

            Gingrich pokes Romney in the eye again in Florida, leading the Republican establishment, which has to this point been firmly in Romney’s camp, to reassess his “electability.”  But, still disdainful of Gingrich, and believing him to be a certain loser who would drag down the party’s House and Senate prospects, the party’s leaders seek to get a late entry into the race.  As a result, a sudden “draft-Christie” movement materializes that presents the New Jersey Governor with yet another opportunity to weigh his “interest and readiness” for a national campaign.

            Christie has been firmly in the Romney camp, but political alliances can shift quickly, especially when one of the allies is suddenly imbued with “presidential fever.”  In this scenario, Christie stays out at first, waiting to see if Romney can recover. 

            But when Romney, despite his massive financial war chest, is unable to rebound by the end of the February contests, Christie starts putting out subtle messages about his willingness to “accept a draft.”  With establishment support pushing for him to announce his candidacy, Christie finally does jump in.

            Despite his late entry into the race, Christie wins the primaries and caucuses he gets into.  As the nominating contests come to a close, he has 20-25 percent of the committed delegates, as do Paul, Gingrich, and Romney.  Santorum has the rest, and he throws his support to Gingrich. 

            The convention goes through four ballots before Romney loses his delegates to Christie, who then gains enough additional votes to secure the nomination on the sixth ballot.

            Scenario D

            Romney rebounds from his South Carolina defeat by winning decisively in Florida.  He then prevails in the super-Tuesday contests and is declared the presumptive nominee by the media.  Following a few more contests with similar results, Santorum first and then Gingrich drop out, throwing their support to Romney.

            Paul announces that he will not abandon his cause and will instead accept the mantle of presidential candidate on the Americans Elect ticket.  Americans Elect has by then succeeded in gaining a spot on all 50 state ballots and, at its convention, nominates Paul as its candidate.  Paul selects South Carolina’s junior Senator, Jim DeMint, as his running mate, planning a Southern/tea party strategy for the fall campaign.

            That last scenario may not be as bizarre as it sounds.  Americans Elect is a serious grass-roots movement (funded primarily by a wealthy individual named Peter Ackerman) that is planning an Internet convention whereby everyone will be able to vote for a presidential ticket to run as a third party in all fifty states.  To date, the organization has gained official ballot status in 15 states, but it appears on track to secure that status in most, if not all, of the remaining states. 

            Assuming it does, someone will be its standard-bearer.  Ron Paul hasn’t shown any overt interest yet, but Paul is the kind of ideologue who will easily eschew his party label if he believes he can gain a viable platform to air his views.  Americans Elect could well be that platform.

            Which of these scenarios will ultimately lead to the fall campaign?  Maybe none of them; but if one of them does unfold more or less as I’ve suggested, please remember where you first saw it mentioned as a possibility.

            At the end of the long opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film, “Saving Private Ryan,” American troops gun down German soldiers who have attempted to surrender.  The Germans had earlier in the long scene (depicting the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach) killed hundreds of the American GIs as they began their assault.

            I watched that movie with my father, a World War II vet who had been a battalion surgeon in the D-Day operation and who devoted his entire professional life to saving, not taking, lives.  He was not at all chagrined at seeing the Americans kill the surrendering Germans.  In fact, he chuckled when I questioned his sense of it.

            “Perfectly understandable,” he said.

            And, of course, it was, if human nature is the gauge for such actions. 

            Human nature is complex, as if you didn’t know.  The same being who can love passionately can also kill wantonly, and often for “perfectly understandable,” even justifiable reasons.

            But the wanton side of the species usually lies dormant, at least in those who conform their behavior to what might be considered the societal norm.  But that wanton side can and will express itself when pressed by circumstances, or put another way, everyone has a breaking point, and that breaking point had been reached by the GIs who succeeded in overtaking the Germans’ encampment in the D-Day assault.

            Sam Peckinpah brilliantly captured that side of human nature in his 1971 film, “Straw Dogs,” in which a meek and unassuming husband (Dustin Hoffman) discovers superhuman strength in defending his home from invading townsfolk intent on raping his wife (Susan George) and pillaging his home.  In the climactic scene, Hoffman’s character, previously a timid and mild-mannered mathematician, embodies human savagery in killing the invading village brutes.

            Both films present otherwise barbaric acts as acceptable reactions to events thrust upon the individuals.  The GIs in Spielberg’s film and Hoffman’s character in Peckinpah’s are no less human in acting as they do, even though we (meaning the rest of humanity) would condemn those same acts in different circumstances.

            War is such an event, as the recent news of the four marines who urinated on dead Taliban fighters more than amply reveals.  The marines were doing nothing more, indeed, considerably less, than Spielberg’s GIs were depicted as doing. 

            They were expressing their unrestrained rage in a ritualistic exaltation of victory not dissimilar to Achilles’ desecration of Hector’s corpse in Homer’s “The Iliad.”  The insult, there to the defeated Trojans, and in Afghanistan to the enemy Taliban, was fully intended and no doubt fully felt.

            Of course, the fiction of the Greeks’ war with the Trojans is one matter, while the United States’ counter-insurgency against the Taliban in Afghanistan is quite another.  And it is that aspect of the perils of war that makes the marines’ urination desecration especially noteworthy.  Stated bluntly, the reaction of the Afghan populace to the news is not likely to be favorable.  As counter-insurgency, the marines’ actions probably violated just a few of the rules in the “book.”

            U.S. military and administration officials were quick to condemn the marines, who are now facing criminal charges.  A full-fledged investigation into broader leadership issues within the command structure is also underway, but we all know how that will end.  (A mid-level commander will get slapped on the wrist, and everyone else up the chain of command will be exonerated.  Duh.)

            Have we seen this movie before?  Yes, we have, all too frequently, and not just courtesy of Hollywood.  This scene has been replayed countless times as young men (principally, but not exclusively; recall Lynndie England’s active participation in the Abu Ghraib torture of Iraqi prisoners) have engaged in wanton acts of barbarity or worse in the heat of battle. 

            The My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam during that war is the classic example.  There, a battalion of U.S. Army forces, led by a Second Lieutenant (William Calley) executed an entire village of wholly innocent South Vietnamese civilians.  The action, in which as many as 26 U.S. soldiers were involved (all members of the “Charlie Company” that Calley commanded), was brought to light by three members of the company who tried to protect the villagers from the onslaught.

            Calley was eventually convicted of 22 counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison.  But he only served three and a half years under “house arrest” before he filed a successful habeas corpus petition (claiming his trial had been prejudiced by pre-trial publicity) and was released.

            As with Abu Ghraib, superior officers in Calley’s chain of command were initially investigated before being exonerated of wrong-doing.  The same result will occur in this latest incident.  It is almost certain that no one ordered or even encouraged these marines to do what they did.  It’s also almost certain that behind closed doors, senior NCOs are saying something very similar to what my father said when watching that scene in “Saving Private Ryan”: “Perfectly understandable.”

            And so it is.  War is a lever that can unleash the worst instincts in the human species.  That it does so as rarely as it seemingly does is more a product of keeping a tight lid on what really goes on than on superhuman exemplary behavior.

            But the real issue that needs to be explored is the decision to send troops into battle in the first place.  It is that initial decision, which can only be made by a nation’s leaders, that sets in motion the subsequent circumstances that lead to a My Lai or an Abu Ghraib or the marines relieving themselves on the bodies of their vanquished foes.

            The decision-making calculus needs to include something akin to Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn warning, issued to then-President Bush in the prelude to the Bush-Cheney decision to invade Iraq back in 2003.  “If you break it, you’ll own it,” Powell is reported to have counseled his commander-in-chief.

            Predictably, he did break it, because “breaking it” in war is as inevitable as the scene of wanton murder was in the Spielberg film.  It’s a side of human nature and is “perfectly understandable.”

                In baseball talk, the presidential campaign is in the spring training part of the season.  That part of the year follows the “hot stove league,” when teams make trades and sign players while fans and reporters have fun assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each team. 

                We’re well past the campaign “hot stove league” now, and are instead in the equivalent of the exhibition games that ball clubs play to determine what rosters they are going to take into the regular season.  In the presidential campaign, it’s the caucuses and primaries that serve that purpose.

                Real voters are now in the process of picking their rosters for the general election (the “real” season) that will start later in the year, in late spring, give or take a few months, when the parties ultimately settle on their final rosters, those being the presidential tickets that will vie for the right to lead the nation for the next four years.

                The Democrats, unless something highly unusual should transpire, have their team in place.  They will run Barack Obama for re-election for president with Joe Biden again filling the role of next-in-line as the nominee for vice-president.  In that respect they are like the major league team that has won the previous World Series and has its roster set for the coming season.

                But they are an injured team, having taken any number of hits over the almost three years of their reign, and they are hardly pre-season favorites heading into the coming campaign, dragged down by an economy that is sputtering and with the equivalent of a .240 team batting average (a sub-50% national approval rating).

                Team Obama is, in other words, ripe for the plucking, if the opponents can field even a reasonably competitive ticket.  Such a ticket would need, first and foremost, a strong fan-base, but therein lies the rub.

                The obvious pick to head the ticket, Mitt Romney, is insufficiently attractive to the party’s base, which is the dominant force in the nomination process.  The concerns about him principally turn on the perception that he is not a true conservative.  And that perception flows from the fact that he has been a self-declared moderate/progressive in the past and, as governor of Massachusetts, signed a health care reform act that is very much the model for the federal health care reform law that Obama and the Democrats pushed through.

                The irony (one of many, actually) is that Romney’s positions then were far closer to the mainstream of what used to be the Republican base.  But, oh, how times have changed.

                Now, the party is where its fringe used to be, and where the base used to be is pretty close to where Obama is on many issues.  Health care reform is certainly prominent among the evidence of that fact, as the Affordable Care Act that he signed into law looks very much like the plan proposed by the Republicans in 1993 when Bill and Hillary Clinton were pushing for a far more radical adjustment to the health care needs of the country.

                But now, what used to be orthodoxy in the GOP is anathema to the Tea-Party dominated party of Lincoln.  Not that the rest of the country, or even the bulk of those who are registered Republicans, is aligned with the anti-government views that have become the accepted dogma for the primary- and caucus-voters who are currently determining the party’s fate.

                Romney has been unable to poll much above 25% of registered Republicans in almost every national poll in this cycle, and he wasn’t able to break through that barrier in his prior run in 2008.  In other words, he isn’t cutting it within his own party, even though he may be the only candidate calling himself a Republican with a legitimate chance of defeating the incumbent.

                Instead, the party faithful have rallied, in turn, around a succession of pretenders (in the sense that all of them are so badly limited and/or flawed as to be totally unrealistic options). 

                And so we have seen the likes of Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum inspected and found wanting (and, in the case of Gingrich, re-inspected a couple of times and still, ultimately, found wanting), either because their deficiencies quickly became readily apparent (Perry), their pasts caught up with them (Gingrich), or their un-electability became obvious (Cain).  (Jon Huntsman was deemed “not-conservative-enough,” having committed the unforgivable sin of serving as Obama’s Ambassador to China.)

                And so, amazingly, the party faces the very real possibility at this relatively early stage of the campaign season of blowing a sure thing. 

                Not that anything is guaranteed, but under normal circumstances, the likelihood that a sitting president would be re-elected with unemployment north of eight percent is minimal at best.  The last incumbent to do it was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won because he had brought the rate down from the high teens when he took office at the outset of the Great Depression.

                Obama came into office just as unemployment had begun to soar, and he then made the ill-advised comment to the effect that if unemployment was still over 8 percent in three years, he would be looking at a one-term presidency.  And, as might be expected, Mr. Romney is using that comment in his campaign stump speech.

                It could be a line he lives to regret, assuming he does get the nomination, which, sure thing that it has appeared to be, is not a sure thing (especially after his trouncing in South Carolina).  If recent trends (over the last six months) continue, the unemployment rate might well be at or a tad below eight percent by the time voters actually cast their ballots later this year. 

                Or, failing that possibility, it may be in the low eight-point something range, allowing Obama to make a Trumanesque anti-Congress pitch that would go something like this – “If the Republicans hadn’t been so obstreperous, we’d be doing even better at cleaning up the mess their party created in the first place.”

                And so, as the exhibition games get rolling, and the Republicans continue to struggle with the ABR (Anybody-But-Romney) field, the unlikely possibility becomes ever more probable: Obama will win.

                Every year at about this time, movie-goers are bombarded with ads promoting supposed Oscar-worthy films.  At least a dozen are now getting significant attention in the press as possible nominees for the major awards.  It’s enough to make a person seeking an evening’s entertainment at a movie theater wonder how to choose, especially with many of these films playing at the same multiplex.

                And so, to help that selection process just a tad, here are our thoughts on two films that might be on your “maybe” list.  One is an absolute “don’t miss”; the other is a definite “don’t waste your time.”

                The “don’t miss” film is “The Descendants,” which is one of those movies that combine light humor with meaningful drama.  It is, in other words, one of those “you’ll-laugh-and-you’ll-cry” films that make movie-going such a universally appreciated experience.

                The story is just complicated enough to avoid being trivial.  It concerns a father whose wife is in a terminal coma (resulting from a water-skiing accident), who had largely ignored their relationship and his two daughters (one 17, the other 10) as a busy real estate attorney.  Now thrust into the position of a single parent, he is also the trustee of a major estate for his large extended family, with a critical decision about the disposition of the estate looming on his desk.

                The setting for this family drama is Hawaii.  The family lives in Honolulu (on the island of Oahu), but during the course of the film, the father and his daughters spend time on the big island (Hawaii) and on Kauai (where the massive acreage that constitutes the estate is located).  Thus, in addition to an engrossing story, the film provides a cinematographer’s feast of gorgeous vistas.  (The entire film was shot on location.)

                The film was directed by Alexander Payne (“Sideways”) and co-written by Mr. Payne and Nat Faxon.  It benefits greatly from another terrific performance by George Clooney as the father.  (Look for him to nab an Oscar nomination.)  He gets great support from a cast that includes Shailene Woodley and Amara KIng as his daughters and Nick Krause as the older daughter’s friend.  Clooney and Krause have a particularly powerful scene that just sneaks up on you and really cements the uniquely poignant impact of the film.

                In this era of computer-generated graphics and action-packed thrillers, “Descendants” is a small film.  As such, it’s a film to cherish, and of those we’ve seen, is our pick for the best of the year.

                The “never-mind” entry in the Oscar race is “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” the newest version of John le Carre’s book (made famous by the BBC series that starred Alec Guinness as the book’s protagonist, George Smiley).  Fans of the TV series may be mystified by what director Tomas Alfredson (from a script by Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan) has done with the tale, which concerns the intricacies of Cold War espionage and was always complicated and demanding.

                But in this re-telling, the intrigue and suspense that le Carre intended in his book are lost in a maze of chronological shuffling.  And since the relative importance of the events themselves is never entirely clear, those unfamiliar with the plot will very likely be lost.

                Why for example is Smiley shown in one brief scene getting into a car or in another walking down a hallway?  Are these scenes supposed to be significant?  If not, why show them?  The film contains many such scenes, none of which have any clear relevance to the development of the plot, such as it is.  And who are all the secondary characters who appear once or twice as if seemingly important, never to be seen again?

                And, perhaps most irritating of all, although the obligatory killings (some grizzly and graphic) are shown at various points, the film is otherwise painfully slow and boring, in a British kind of way (with some dialogue made difficult to appreciate by thick accents), which is not exactly how to maximize audience accessibility.

                Gary Oldman, as George Smiley, heads a large cast of notables, including Colin Firth, John Hurt, Toby Jones, and Ciaran Hinds.  They all have their moments, but none of the characters register sufficiently to make the film’s denouement, in which the double agent is finally revealed, especially memorable.  An additional scene, showing his demise seemed, to us at least, wholly unnecessary and oddly staged.

                “Tinker, Tailor” has received the kind of reviews that might lead an unwary filmgoer to give it a chance.  The advice here is to avoid the temptation.  Instead, look for “The Descendants.”  It’s a movie that fully warrants the great reviews, including this one, it is receiving.