Classroom Battlegrounds: Winter between the goal posts of dejection and election

Winter officially arrives on December 21, but I write this wintry report amid a dejected and storm-battered America that is living a kind of hopeful time-out between the goal posts of the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday, icons of entertainment and politics.

If Shakespeare had lived in 2008, he would have been correct to call this season "the winter of our discontent" both in America and the Middle East, where leaders seem to flounder between their past missed opportunities - George Bush, Ehud Olmert and (if we can call him a leader) Mahmoud Abbas-- and their planned photo opportunities. [But there is an optimistic note at the end of this blog, if you can get to the end.]

Because this blog has a lot of territory to cover (I've been grading exams and preparing for extra courses), let me try to pick and choose from the datelines below:

ST-LOUIS-NEW YORK-JERUSALEM-CHICAGO-ST LOUIS - NOV12-FEB3 -  For the last week, our house in St. Louis has been pummeled by telephone calls - a few from actual humans, but most from machines - demanding that we vote for this Republican or that Democrat in the Missouri primary election on Feb. 5, nicknamed Super Tuesday, when about half the country has preliminary elections. 

Other callers - sometimes human but mostly not - demand to know who we want as president.

"This is Senator...asking for your support..." begins one recorded conversation, while another begins "Hello, I'm Jenine from the University of….and we're conducting a poll..."

At the same time as my ears are being assailed by these call at hours of the day or night, the candidates themselves are assaulting our senses and our good sense with television advertisements that pretend that infallibility is a trait that has moved from the Vatican to the United States Senate: Senator Hillary Clinton, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama have pretty similar public relations tricks.

In the last few weeks Sen. Clinton has repeated her most famous error of judgment, relying on her husband Bill, the ex-president. Mr. Clinton has been campaigning in school, churches and fast-food restaurants deriding Mr. Obama as young, inexperienced and Black. And this tactic has now backfired.

Mr. Clinton's tactics, which were clearly endorsed by his wife, have served to demean her more than Obama, and the young Illinois senator, who appeared at first callow and shallow, has achieved a kind of reverse gravitas by NOT stooping to insult Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, who have acted as if America and the Democratic Party are obligated to allow them re-entry permits to the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House (which they once raffled off to Democratic contributors).

Obama, who loves to play on the Lincoln imagery, seemed strangely un-Lincoln-like, because Lincoln was an ungainly and even ugly-looking man whose spirit was beautiful. And, I must say that the only thing that Obama has that reminded me of Lincoln was his smile - as wide and as deep as the Lincoln Tunnel between New York and New Jersey, which usually invites you to come close and then has you sitting in an hour-long traffic jam.

But as the campaign has gone on, Bill and Hillary have shown their uglier side - their nasty tactics - and have succeeded in achieving something nearly impossible: they have gotten a significant portion of the Eastern liberal media and the Democratic Party elders to consider Obama to be a better choice.

The Kennedy Family - led by the sharp and good-looking Caroline in a NY Times op-ed - have publicly joined Obama, enshrining him with the mantle of Democratic hopefulness. This is a real blow for the Clintons who always tried to make themselves seem the symbolic heirs to "Camelot" Kennedy myth.

So far this has not been a good year for elections polls or political pundits. One example suffices. An Israeli "expert on America" - a professor who also moonlights as a sports commentator told Israeli radio and television listeners and viewers that Obama was clearly going to win the New Hampshire primary early last month. The day after, when Hillary won handily and surprisingly, the expert (I'll call him Professor Avi) acted as if he had gotten right all along and that Hillary was now the easy choice for the nomination. OY VEY, but then came the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary in which Obama trounced Hillary with what we Israelis can only call "Barak" - lightening. And Barak struck more than once, sticking to his minimalist message of "change, change, change" without offering too many clear signals as to how and what that would mean. 

The changes in political fortunes seem to mimic the tremendous changes in the American weather this winter - floods and fires intermittently in California and winter tornadoes in the middle of the country.

CHICAGO - JAN 16-21 - Sara and I come to Chicago to give a few guest lectures at De Paul University, a Catholic university with a sizable Jewish population at its downtown campus. The temperatures start at 15 Fahrenheit (about 8 below zero Celsius/Centigrade) as we land at O'Hare Airport, a huge airport that moves people in the same kind of impersonal way that Chicago's meat plants used to move livestock. By the time we get to the university, the temperature has begun to drop even more. By Friday night, when we are supposed to walk a mile or more to the local Hillel to give another talk, it is predicted that the temperature will be five low zero Fahrenheit, or about 20 below zero on the Centigrade scale. The wind is blowing at 30 kmh or more. No wonder they call it "The Windy City." That's an arctic wind-chill factor of 40 below zero. We cancel the Sabbath night walk and talk.

The earlier lectures go well, under the gaze of Catholic priests in picture frames on De Paul's walls.One has to give credit to the Church fathers for being forthcoming and welcoming to Jewish students and activities. More importantly, my face survives the freezing winds, and after the lectures,  we warm up in two of Chicago's best jazz parlors - Andy's, and at The Green Mill, where gangster Al Capone supposedly used to hang out. But the high-light for me is that the NY Giants have beaten the Green Bay Packers - the ultimate cold weather football team - in nearby Green Bay Wisconsin. It is so cold there that is nicknamed "The Ice Bowl." How the Giants have beaten Green Bay on the frozen home tundra of the Packers is beyond me, but it warms my heart.

ST LOUIS Jan 25-30 - Chicago's cold air fakes us out and then follows us south, as temperatures drop from 73 F to under 18 F in less than two hours. The sudden air temperature change signals the possibility of tornadoes - something that I thought was impossible in the winter. But there are sounds of thunder and dark clouds and 90-kmh gusts of wind that whistle outside our house, breaking trees like match sticks, and threatening even worse.

The temperatures heat up to only a dozen degrees below zero, and we are able to tour the local museums and architectural spots. But the political fortunes of Rudy Giuliani have frozen and sunk like a stone under the frozen tundra of Lake Michigan, as Rudy finishes a distant third in the not-so-sunny Florida Republican primary. He has bet all on Florida, and he has lost. 

NEW YORK-DEC. 24-27 - As one walks through New York's stores, the mood is somber. The average New Yorker is hoarding her or his money, fearful of hard times ahead. It is clear that the average American here - as in St. Louis and Chicago - has instinctively picked up on the fact that the American economy is about to "pull a Giuliani" - go south and get frozen. One cannot ignore the deep pessimism in the American economic market

JERUSALEM - DEC 27-JAN 12 - Israel's air is cleaner and fresher - especially in Jerusalem - than almost anywhere in America. Jerusalem also gets much more sun. One feels it on the skin, and the saddest thing about returning to Israel is that so much political corruption (both in the technical illegal sense to the more symbolic sense amazing incompetence) has escaped the sunlight. It is clear that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the most unpopular and incompetent prime minister in Israel’s history, has managed to finagle President George Bush to try to intercede with Israeli voters and politicians on his behalf. The headlines in Yediot and Maariv make it clear that Bush has tried to boost Olmert on the eve of the publication of the report of a semi-castrated commission of inquiry into the handling of the 2006 war.

Bush has three major successes:

• Neither he, Olmert nor the hapless Mahmoud Abbas falls down or gets attacked during the visit;
• No major terror attacks interfere with the regular weather patterns of steady rains of Qassam rockets and mortars on southern Israel;
• And the Syrians, Hizbullah and Iran only manage sporadic car bomb attacks inside Lebanon along with small-scale attacks on the supposedly quiet border with Israel.

As Bush tours the area, Israeli security experts are raising the question whether the sudden turn-about in America's foreign policy regarding Iran signals the very danger of relying too heavily on the US.  Bush has been bush-wacked by his own "intelligence" establishment and by his own incoherent polices - which even when well-meaning - have been communicated and explained poorly. But there is a silver lining.

More than 50 years ago a New York baseball team came from behind to win a title in baseball against all odds: then the words that rang out were "The Giants win the Pennant, The Giants win the Pennant."

A pennant is a flag, designating the winner of baseball's American or League season championship, but in 50 years, football has overtaken baseball as the national sport. And the Super Bowl has become the ultimate sports and entertainment event, and New York team has a chance to win as a "wild card" contender, a team that got a second chance.

ST LOUIS FEB 3 - As I watch on my high-definition television, the New York Giants - a football team and no longer a baseball team - are playing against very hard odds and against probably the best football team ever: The New England Patriots.

The Patriots are like a mixture of a well-oiled H-1 Hummer and a multi-national conglomerate that never loses money. They  roll over you, and they seem unstoppable. Even when the Patriots have an off-day, they destroy the opposition. They have an 18-0 record, unsurpassed in professional football history.

The Giants have already lost to the Patriots this season, first leading the game, only to succumb to the grinding power of a team that hums along like a huge electric plant.

Across the country, Americans sit down in front of their television sets to see by how many points the Patriots will defeat the Giants. The betting is that it will be at least by two touchdowns - fourteen points. The Giants jump to quick three point lead, but the Pats come back and lead 7-3. Eventually the Giants eke out a 10-7 retort, only to be taken, inexorably by Patriot pressure: 14-10.

And the Patriots look cool and calm, ready to take the cup trophy home, as their star quarterback, Tom Brady, will walk arm in arm with a gorgeous super model, leaving the Giants' somewhat awkward Eli Manning to walk dejectedly home alone, to face the taunts of the New York sportswriters. Finally, the Giant defense manages  to short-circuit the electric machine from New England. 

There are three minutes left in the game - actually two minutes and thirty five seconds for the young and ungainly  Eli to take his team nearly one hundred yards against a team that has almost never allowed an opposition score at this late point. It looks impossible.

The Pats swarm over Eli, nearly tackling him, but he squirms free and lofts an impossible pass which is caught. General Norman Schwarzkopf and the Church Fathers at De Paul University would have called it a "Hail Mary Pass."

A few second later, another pass leads to a NY touchdown. It is 17-14, with 35 seconds left. The "surge" - against all odds - has worked.

Yet, in my heart, I dread those 35 seconds, knowing that Tom Brady wants to taste champagne with that supermodel, and I fear that the Giants, those unlikely contenders in the Super Bowl, will choke, will fail, will fall, will fumble, will somehow find a way to let  New England beat NY.

But no, there is a guiding hand from Heaven, and  the magical words ring out:

"The Giants win the Super Bowl. The Giants win the Super Bowl."

Eli, may he be blessed,  has put a smile on the lips of  all underdogs, all of us who were somewhat ungainly as quarterbacks and loved to play football in cold weather.

Michael Widlanski is the Schusterman Visiting Professor of Israel Studies  at Washington University for 2007-8. An expert in Middle Eastern politics and communications, Dr. Widlanski  also served as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret  PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem. Professor Widlanski is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times ,The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, The Boston Globe, IDF Radio, IBA Television, and The Jerusalem Post, and he teaches political communication and comparative politics at the Rothberg School of Hebrew University.