VENICE — The latest edition of the Venice Film Festival, at which I’ve been watching new American

America's Road?

films, offers a fairly depressing vision of American society — one that the largely European audience here finds easy to accept.  It is a view of American reality as it is, was, or might be, and is equally disturbing in fact or imagination.

Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism:  A Love Story,” which had its world premiere last night, has been warmly received by the hundreds of journalists who’ve seen it so far.   It is a continuation of Moore’s polemics against Republicans and corporate America but, for once, the sympathetic response of the left-minded European Fourth Estate may precede broader approval in America as well.  As Moore catalogs the past year’s headlines and the ruinous management of America’s banking system, his indignation is likely to be shared by an increasing number of Americans, on various parts of the political spectrum, who now agree that things are in a worrisome state, even if they don’t share Moore’s view that “capitalism is evil…” and must be replaced by “democracy.”

Moore follows his heroes and his villains, heroes like Ohio Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Vermont “democratic socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders, and progressive Catholic priests in Detroit and Chicago.  His villains are not just George W. Bush, but also Goldman Sachs, Democratic Senator Chris Dodd (and other beneficiaries of Countrywide Mortgage’s “VIP” mortgages), Ronald Reagan’s Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff Don Regan, those who evict delinquent home and farm owners, and leading banks and businesses (e.g., Wal-Mart) that secretly took out life insurance policies on their “associates,” with the companies naming themselves as beneficiaries.  (Although not implicated in any employee deaths, these corporations realized a windfall whenever an employee died — or so Moore alleges.)

Moore may not be a model journalist (on economic matters, he interviews a friend of his, actor Wallace Shawn, but no economists), nor wildly popular at home in the U.S., but he is vastly

Man on a Mission

influential.  His Fahrenheit 9/11 was shown in schools throughout Germany during the George W. Bush presidency to explain the “why” of the Iraq War.  His books (such as “Stupid White Men”) are widely translated and on sale at the Festival.

It may also be that Moore’s documentaries, which document his viewpoints more than the facts he proclaims, also influence feature film directors to “document” their own take on reality.  Oliver Stone, who wanders frequently between fact-based fiction and fictional reality, has an out-of-competition film in Venice, called “South of the Border,” a hagiographic look at how Hugo Chavez has affected Central and South American politics.  Moore, who likes Cuban health care, would likely approve.

If you think Moore’s documentary version of present-day America is scary, just wait.  John Hillcoat’s “The Road,” based on Cormac McCarthy’s best seller about survival in a post-apocalyptic world, is a frighteningly plausible view of the United States after ecological or nuclear catastrophe.   The unrelieved gray and barren landscape is strewn by the detritus of catastrophe and populated by scavenging bands that for an instant resemble extras from a George A. Romero horror film.  But this is reality as horror, not horror as farce.  The few humans left are desperate, starving and barely able to comprehend their fate.  It is one of the cinematic standouts of the Festival so far.

Another catastrophe, real but in the past, leads to personal disaster in Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant:  Port of Call New Orleans,” inspired by a 1992 movie but now set in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  For Herzog and his star, Nicholas Cage, the setting of New Orleans is not just appropriate for a detective film noir, but a tale of Katrina leading to human disaster.  Cage’s character, a police sargeant, starts off with good moral instincts that are deadened after an accident leaves him drug dependent.  Cage’s character ultimately recovers from all manner of risky behavior that by rights should land him jailtime instead of promotions.   Yet, for Herzog there is always a touch of the bizarre in human behavior, yielding literal tales that cannot be taken literally.  A Bavarian who now lives in Los Angeles, Herzog told a press conference that America has a “mysterious ability” to recover from political near collapse, exemplified for him by the McCarthyite period of the 1950s yielding to JFK’s New Frontier or the years of George W. Bush being followed by Obama.  The ending of his film seems similarly inexplicable.  If there is an actual point of view from Herzog, it is seen in the old-school outburst from Cage when a nurse and her elderly charge refuse to get involved to help solve a multiple homicide:  “Its people like you who are running this country into the ground!”  He forces them to help and the house of cards he builds miraculously stays standing.

This trio of films is not the only cinematic version of America in Venice this year — a less than serious film from George Clooney and a Steven Sonderberg feature with Matt Damon are also on tap — but they do say something about the ability of film and other art to reflect our current anxieties and anticipate where we are headed.  Like the early 60s when films like “On the Beach” and “Fail Safe” conveyed our worries about nuclear disaster, a slough of recent films project a fear of some sort of apocalypse.  Much like Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 film “Children of Men,” set in a Britain of the future, where a baby must be saved and delivered to waterborne safety, for the propagation of the species, “The Road” has a dark vision where a child must survive for us to believe that good stands a chance of retaking root in a barren land.  Surrounded by evil and desolation, the son of Viggo Mortensen’s character has been taught that there are “good guys” still left who “carry the fire.”  But will he find them?

Herzog, the flag waver

In different ways, these dire visions can only be reversed through commitment and trust.  “Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event,” Moore told a news conference. “If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him.”  This may not be exactly what fearful and angry Americans want to hear this summer, but for some directors in Venice this week, it’s exactly what they must be told.

Our media were obsessed with President Obama's first day in office.  Rightly so.  Everything until now was prelude.  Until now, everything was conditional or future tense:  if I am elected, when I become president, after I’m sworn in.  That made today different.  Today was present tense.

So how did he do?

Before my own comment, a digression.  Like many readers, I’m old enough to remember presidents who left office in disgrace or under a cloud.  Lyndon Johnson, so unpopular from his conduct of a foreign war that he withdrew from public life; Richard Nixon, who resigned in the face of impeachment; Jimmy Carter, a good man but scorned for years after he left the White House; and Bill Clinton, brilliant but infamous for his lapses in self-discipline.  George W. Bush left Washington yesterday in similar bad odor, crowds booing and most commentators shouting good riddance.  Like other ex-presidents, Bush will eventually seek or be granted some measure of rehabilitation.  He may not deserve it.  But, equally, he did not deserve the gleeful disrespect that he was accorded as he left the capital.  The only one who seemed to sound the right grace note was Obama himself, when he began his Inaugural Address by thanking Bush for his “service to his country.”

This ability to have a broader perspective is one of Obama's remarkable traits.  Like most presidents in their first day on the job, Obama showed energy and purposefulness.  He kept promises (the Executive Order on Guantanamo) and displayed priorities (meetings with his economic and national security teams).  But he also reached out and called the head of the Palestinian Authority and the leaders of Israel, Jordan and Egypt.  This did more than his Inaugural declaration (that “America was ready to lead”) to demonstrate the return of the United States to the forefront of diplomacy.

But the most heartening step of the day was Obama's Presidential Memorandum on transparency in government.  It is the secrecy of governments, their disregard for the press’ and public's right to know, that most often gets them (and us) in trouble.  Whether it is Israel keeping foreign cameras out of Gaza while they bomb villages or Bush's Defense Department keeping cameras away from shooting images of flag-draped coffins returning to Dover, government secrecy of this sort is an effort to manipulate, not protect.  It appears that Obama may have understood that the most important step to reduce the risk of repeating failed policies and failed administrations, is to ensure that the press and the public can see what's going on.

And that made it a very good first day.

I thought you might be interested in the post I’ve put up at the FPA Climate Change blog on Gov. Palin and the Republicans and some of the media coverage.

The cover story to the March 27 issue of the Economist is titled “All change?”. After it's extensive analysis and polling, the magazine clearly does not foresee any significant or sudden changes to American foreign policy come January ‘09. (If you haven't yet read bits of the “special report,” I do encourage it.)

At its core, the piece offers a dose of realism to its non-American readers:

in a world that is still Hobbesian, the country that is for now still the world's sole superpower is going to continue to put its own interests first….America relies on itself. The instinct of the next president will be no different.

Deep down, even American Democrats recognize this. Senate passage of an internationally-popular Kyoto Treaty or an ICC signatory in recent political climates seems unlikely. Even given Democratic majorities in both Houses since January of last year, with the exception of a timed withdrawal from Iraq, Pelosi and Reid have not brought many internationally-minded initiatives to the forefront of the docket. While one may argue the Democratic Leadership avoided such risk knowing that President Bush would strike down the legislation with his veto, chances are that any bold legislation would have difficulty passing both Houses–the Senate in particular–nonetheless.

That said, with full White House support and Republican majorities in Congress, CAFTA was passed and signed in 2004, though polling showed that only a slim majority of Americans supported the legislation. Bush and his allies worked the bill through the system of Congress. Practices for a new President would have to be similar; it's unlikely that American public opinion will be largely in favor of policies that international counterparts favor.

Writing at the New York Times, Andrew Kohut reports on new Pew Center data that Americans, while voicing clear domestic priorities, are unsure about the direction foreign policy should take after Bush.

Opinion surveys show that American views about the world will not only challenge the presidential candidates of both parties in the general election, but will force the winner in November to deal with a citizenry that is downbeat about the world and fractured along partisan lines.

Disillusionment with the Iraq war has ushered in a rise in isolationist sentiment comparable to that of the mid-1970's following the Vietnam war. Pew surveys have found as many as four in 10 Americans saying the United States "should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own."…

A rise in isolationism has signaled a diminished public appetite for the assertive national security policy of the Bush years and, in general, a less internationalist outlook.

Did Bush, inadvertently, bring about a new era of isolationism? As the economy looks to be on the verge of recession and the dollar at record-breaking lows, are Americans realizing the cost of the Iraq war–as the Economist writes, what economists like Joseph Stiglitz estimate to be 3 trillion dollars?

Great powers almost never pay for their wars up front. Even in America's war of independence, the revolutionaries printed money to finance their campaign.

But the Pew figures point to a populace that is starting to experience the effects of the war expenditures. If the news continues to worsen, the candidates will have little choice but to draw upon isolationist sentiments. Whether the U.S. can afford such a lack of foreign policy remains an open question.

Barack Obama seeks to usher in a new kind of politics. His stump speech calls on supporters to help him “end the politics of fear,” and borrowing from John F. Kennedy, “that we should never fear to negotiate.” Now in a one-on-one battle with Hillary Clinton for the nomination, Obama has been forced to the defensive, searching for an effective way to fight back.

Hillary Clinton has persisted with her claim that Obama is less prepared than she and John McCain for the “3am phone call” that will come as President. But the Obama campaign is built upon positive ideals–the candidate could tarnish his image, should he go negative. The answer: send out the surrogates, particularly those who can vouch for national security credentials, to convey the message.

The Obama campaign had two of its most high-profile foreign policy advisors, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, grant a series of interviews with the press. They tried to send the message that, in their views, Senator Obama was equally, if not more qualified for that middle-of-the-night phone call than his opponents.

In one of these interviews, Samantha Power let it slip in what she thought was an off-the-record comment to The Scotsman that she thought Hillary Clinton had been a “monster” during the campaign. Ms. Power, a prominent scholar and advocate for US involvement in Darfur, quickly apologized and resigned from her post with the campaign. She issued a number of apologies to Senator Clinton, most of them equally as poignant as this:

Susan Rice took her turn speaking with the press this week, as she responded to Senator Clinton's characterization of Obama's in ability to handle the 3am phone call. On Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC, Ms. Rice announced that she believed neither Clinton nor Obama have substantial national security experience.

As Samantha Power pointed out, she is a relative novice to the tires of a political campaign. Ms. Rice, while not new to the Washington and foreign policy arenas, also made a slight error in her comments on television. Both have created nominal headaches for the Obama campaign, and failed to accomplish their objective. Instead, they made the candidate seem to be just what he had intended to combat: inexperienced.

The New Republic has established a blog for the 2008 Election, The Stump, that deserves your attention. Naturally TNR is a center/left-of-center journal, but the contributors are pretty serious folks and they play it straight.

• Barack Obama has come out strong, announcing that he believes Senator Clinton has been dishonest with Democratic voters on many positions, namely her stances on social security and Iran.  The offensive marks Obama's first major foray into attacking Clinton, answering calls of many of his supporters to engage with her.  Obama remains points behind Clinton in national and New Hampshire polls, though he is competitive in Iowa.  His campaign is trying to balance his message of “a politics of hope” with the requisite debate with his clear competitor.  Democrats may not be thrilled that he has raised the social security issue, but his supporters, financial supporters in particular, will view this new approach as long overdue.
• Meanwhile, Clinton has announced she will be hiring upwards of one hundred paid staff in Iowa.
• Candidates from right to left are stating their policies on Iran.  The NYTimes.com today has a bit of context.
• In case you missed it, Giuliani is a Sox fan.  Coincidence that most of New Hampshire is too?

• Ds The latest rendition of what TPM calls the “dueling memos” phenomenon between the Obama and Clinton camps has to do with the newsy case of Iran, upon which the Bush Administration designated serious sanctions today. They are some of the harshest imposed on the country since 1979. If the Administration continues to move in this direction, not only will there be a 2003 Iraq-like discussion in the international community, but the campaign front-runners will be forced to take stances they may not be prepared to take.
• Rs The New York Times, Alex Massie and The New Republic call out Rudy Giuliani's response to a question raised at a town hall meeting in Iowa regarding torture. Christopher Orr calls it “what may be the mot honest defense of torture I’ve seen from an American politician.”
• Rs Iowa papers are abuzz with John McCain's statements on the Middle East, which include hints at long-term American involvement in Iraq and the construction of military “lily pads” in the region, similar to those currently in Eastern Europe, in case of “crisis.”

• Immigration It's likely that the Senate won't be passing any immigration legislation after this move today before the ‘08 election.  This leaves the wedge issue out for discussion among the candidates, some of whom (most recently Fred Thompson), already have come out with statements.
• Rs John McCain's campaign released this ad, highlighting his remark at the Fox News debate this weekend about Clinton's former support for the Woodstock museum in up-state New York.  His “I was tied up at the time” comment serves multiple purposes: not only does it allow his team to use colorful tied-eyed backgrounds in the ad, but it also highlights, yet again, his service and capture during Vietnam.
• Rs Mitt Romney released a new ad today, featuring his plans to bring change and spending accountability to Washington.  Per The Caucus, the campaign says it will air in South Carolina.
• Ds The folks at DailyKos are pushing for a stronger response from the Clinton campaign and Senate office re her stance on the FISA legislation.  This as Politico's Ben Smith reports on possible threats to Clinton's campaign from the left.

• Rs and Trade Romney proposes opening markets in his “Reagan Zone of Economic Freedom” plan. He suggests opening markets and helping American workers “succeed,” claiming it would be the largest free trade zone “ever.” By raising the trade issue, not only does Romney get policy points (which he may be in even more need of after this rough morning), but he would renew a dialogue about the issue in Republican circles. Democratic candidates have taken stances on NAFTA and Doha before, but broadened debate could propel this issue to the fore.
• Ds and FISA Obama and Clinton offered “conditional support” for filibustering the FISA bill, which has yet to make it through Committee. They join Dodd and Biden in their distaste for the measure, which liberal bloggers are touting as “defending the Constitution against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.”
• Rs and Immigration Mark Krikorian over at The Corner is a fan of Fred Thompson's recently announced platform on immigration.
• Endorsing Rs Mitt Romney lost an endorsement today from Pastor Don Wilton of South Carolina today, the pretty heavy-handed state Baptist Convention President. If nothing else, the loss of Wilton's support signals the continued hesitation on the part of social conservatives to back the candidate. Does it all come down to his Mormon faith, or is there something more political going on here?
• Ads Bill Richardson (D) released this ad yesterday, highlighting his role in negotiating the release of hostages out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1995. He has made his experience the focus of his spots in the past; this new ad drills down onto the finer points of his CV.

Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, is back this week guest blogging for The Economist's Democracy in America blog. In announcing his return, the paper recalls quite the stir he caused in the blogosphere when he equated the netroots to neocons.

This spawned quite a debacle, especially among liberal bloggers who claimed that too few scholars in the foreign policy community had spoken out against the Iraq war. Atrios at Eschaton and Glenn Greenwald at Salon started things off; like-minded commentators like Matthew Yglesias jumped in the mix, and a few back-and-forths with the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, Gideon Rose followed. The bloggers’ point: careerism motivates the foreign policy community, and therefore its members are "politicians rather than scholars or analysts." Rose didn't take too kindly to that.

Thus far, he's been reading Arthur Schlesinger's recently published journals. I'm eager to see what he has in store for us this week.

Amid today's Family Research Council straw polls and conference speeches, the blogs are a bit preoccupied. Here's a round-up what little foreign policy commentary is out there.

• From the Right Michelle Malkin discovers why Ahmadinejad visited Ground Zero last month.
• Somewhere near Center Andrew Sullivan points to Kupchan and Trubowitz's piece in this fall's issue of International Security. They assert that the Bush era has led to the “unraveling of the liberal internationalist compact,” of Twentieth Century U.S. foreign policy.
• From the Left Dan Drezner hits Clinton on her revised stance on economic policy and her hesitation on foreign trade agreements, which, he says, are key components of a foreign policy that would restore America's place in the world.

Oh, and a major candidate declared that the U.N. is no longer relevant. More on that to come.

Way back when, campaigns started around the winter before Election Day. Now, still over a year prior to the 2008 contest, I'm wondering where to begin discussion; there's so much to catch up on. For now, let's stick to some points of interest from this week.

Ivory Tower American Interest launches a series among top public intellectuals on foreign affairs in the 2008 election. Barry Posen starts off the exchange, with comments from heavyweights like Fukuyama, Ferguson, Joffe, and Ikenberry following. This first debate, at least, seems to commence a worthwhile academic dialogue on post-November '08 foreign policy. A must-read, indeed.

In the Journals John McCain and Hillary Clinton are the latest contributors to the Foreign Affairs Election '08 segment. CFR.org puts their pieces in context. Clinton and McCain's essays, like those of the other candidates', prove adequate in conveying worldviews and issues of interest.

Rs Kathryn Jean Lopez contemplates John McCain's call to serve at National Review Online. Kate O’Brien thinks he might be a better option than Giuliani. Is the conservative commentariat coming around on McCain?

Ds Bloggers on the left are happy that Chris Dodd announced he would place a hold on the Senate FISA legislation, though as the Washington Post notes, the bill has yet to come to the Senate floor and is still in mark-up. According to Dodd, the bill would grant immunity to telecommunications companies who cooperated with the president's terrorist surveillance program. Dodd has fared poorly in recent polls and the move is seen as a means of courting, among others, liberal bloggers.