The OVP

[H2O Man]

The discussions about Sarah Palin’s qualifications to serve as Vice President are a good thing. It is important for us to be fully aware of the implications of John McCain’s selecting her for this position on the republican ticket. Let’s take a closer look at the Office of the Vice President.

In modern times, the role of the vice presidency has evolved. The first example is found in Richard Nixon’s years as Eisenhower’s administration. Nixon was, in fact, in charge of all of the US intelligence operations in Central and South America. The most obvious example of this was his role in planning what is known as the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, which actually took place in the early Kennedy administration. But as all DU historians know, Nixon left his fingerprints on numerous other operations in Central and South America.

The process of evolution does not follow a straight line; rather, there are starts and stops, and occasional "dead end," such as Daniel Quayle. But, for sake of this discussion, we can move from Nixon to Cheney. In selecting himself to serve as George W. Bush’s vice president, Cheney’s justification was his vast experience in two branches of the federal government.

Vice President Cheney has been in charge of the most powerful OVP in our nation’s history. Like Nixon, Cheney has used the office to avoid Congressional oversight. More, he has run his own "intelligence operations" – again, without Congressional oversight – from the OVP. We can name two important issues that Cheney’s OVP has been involved with: (1) the Plame scandal, which involves the lies that brought our nation to the illegal and immoral war of occupation in Iraq; and (2) the neocon/AIPAC espionage scandal, which involved operations to share the most highly classified military intelligence secrets regarding Iran, with intelligence officers of a foreign nation.

I think that DUers are wise to question Sarah Palin’s qualifications to serve as the head of the OVP. We should compare her qualifications with those of Joseph Biden. It is unfortunately true that the corporate media has largely failed to report accurately on the role that VP Cheney has played in this administration. The media has betrayed their public trust.

Thus, it is difficult to have a national discussion that makes sense to those citizens who rely primarily on the corporate media as their source of information. The media has instead focused their attention on non-issues and nonsense. And the result is that the national discussion on Sarah Palin too often involves issues that are, at best, of secondary importance.

When we try to communicate with another person, we must be able to speak the language that they understand. Malcolm X used to say that if a person speaks French, you can’t communicate with him/her by speaking Chinese. You have to speak French. Hence, there are a number of threads on DU, where in the OP, our friends mention things that strike others as being of, at best, secondary importance. I would be pleased if our culture was at a point where the national discussion focused on the most important issues. But we are not there yet.

I think that one of the strengths of the DU community is our ability to creatively identify issues that are of both primary and secondary importance in election contests. The truth is that we need to be able to communicate on a wide range of issues as we approach election day. We do not have to be able to fight in a manner limited to any one front, but rather, on all fronts. It’s in uniting these efforts that we will achieve victory in November.

And then the real fight begins.

Sincerely,
H2O Man

[sfwriter]

1. Yup.. they are more alien to me all the time.

We need a new dialog. It will take some, dare I say it, community organizing.

[H2O Man]

2. Community organizing

is essential.