Not all of my writing is virtual...

Some of my (incomplete) work is now in book form, spanning the “Bush to Bush” era that shaped the United States that Barack Obama now leads. A look back, from the hopes of the end of the cold war, the promises of the Clinton years, to the three catastrophies (9/11, the invasion of Iraq and Katrina) that define the fourty-third president’s legacy and set the scene for the most unlikely candidate to emerge as the savior of the American dream.

Find out more here

and yes, by all means, buy the book!

So this was the worst week for Wall Street. It was also the worst week on the campaign trail.

As the Dow plunged on Monday, John McCain and Sarah Palin unveiled what would become the theme of their week: a series of attacks wrapped in one overarching question, “Who is Barack Obama?”

Barack Obama is the man who kept moving up in the polls, in spite of attack ads, of McCain supporters calling him “Barack Hussein Obama”, and of an effort to link him to a “terrorist”.

The debate, Wednesday night, was devoid of any trace of that theme. Six million questions had been submitted. Yet, that second debate mostly reprised the first encounter, albeit in front of a bigger audience.  John McCain haphazardly announced a new plan to buy off 300 billion dollars worth of bad mortgage but, essentially, no news was made. Barack Obama “won” the night merely by appearing steady and articulate.

The next day, John McCain gave more details about his mortgage plan; he was greeted with criticism from the left (Obama’s claim that it would mostly help the financial firms responsible for the mess) and the right (another massive bailout that would push the country towards “socialist” policies).

The campaign took off again on two separate tracks: McCain/Palin questioning “who is Barack Obama” and insisting that he is “too risky”; Obama/Biden questioning McCain’s “erratic” performance and his ability to reverse the economy’s down trend.

At the end of the week, it became apparent that McCain’s effort to link Barack Obama to Bill Ayers was not producing any noticeable results in the polls. It was producing plenty of anger, though, and John McCain could not ignore it any longer when it spilled into questions posed directly in his “town hall” meetings. He tried to tone down his supporter’s rage, with variable degrees of success.

Friday, as the week was about to close with some of the worst economic data ever, George Bush addressed the nation. No news, no point, no effect. The other news, on Friday, was the evening release of the report on the “troopergate” affair. Sarah Palin, according to the bipartisan investigation’s conclusions, abused her power and violated Alaska ethics laws. It seems that in this instance she ran the government as a family business (Todd Palin helping) to solve a family issue (the on-going feud with the governor’s sister ex husband).

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READ THIS WEEK (a little extra from the French viewpoints)

In other news, this was the week the Nobel for literature was attributed – not to an American, everyone had been right in predicting that, but to a French writer who is also a resident of New Mexico. An article in “Le Monde” explores how JMG Le Clézion is “misunderstood” in the United States, creating discomfort for the way he’s perceived both as a nomad and an “exotic-ist”. here. I was lamenting, in passing, the lack of translations of contemporary novels on the American market; once again, “Le Monde” gives the sad details – 3% only of all novels published in the United States are foreign literature. Complete article here.

And since there was so much news about “domestic terrorist” this week, I can not resist this little piece in “Libération”, about the visit Carla Bruni-Sarkozy paid to Marina Petrella. Once a member of the Brigade Rosse, a radical violent group in the seventies, Marina Petrella had lived peacefully in France, granted the asylum president Mitterrand offered all those who would lay down their arms. Italy’s current government wanted Marina Petrella extradited so that she could serve a life sentence for murder. She went on a hunger strike. The First Lady of France was bearing a message from her husband: the extradition request has been denied. The story: here.

In other “domestic terrorist news”, Jean-Marc Rouillan (of “Action Directe”, a French revolutionary armed movement) was sent back to jail after he failed to publicly “regret” the 1986 assassination of George Besse, the former CEO of Renault, when talking to the French weekly “L’Express”. The facts, here. That gives Mathieu Lindon an opportunity for a nice little riff on the general hypocrisy of the “regrets” protocole. Full text here.

TheTwitterPicture

“Just” a pretty picture of the words most used by people commenting the Nashville debate on Twitter. It’s “like” we twitter “just like” we chat.

…I was interested to read more information about the man.

It’s on Slate, today – here.

I can only imagine what the apoplectic right will do with the fact that Bill Ayers taught poetry to juvenile offenders. Maybe they’ll notice too that Chicago made him “citizen of the year” in 1997? Betcha they won’t.

During the crescendo of Palin’s “palling around” comments, I kept wondering: where are the other people who served on boards with Bill Ayers, who attended this now famous party?

Mayor Daley did come to the defense of Bill Ayers… but that was Mayor Daley, “Chicago machine” politician and thus presumably not the perfect witness for some.

I found this commentary by Stanley Fish, about guilt-by-association and his own interaction with Bill Ayers, much more interesting. Written for his New York Times blog when the topic was first raised during the primaries, it gives a sense of who Bill Ayers is, and of the place he occupies in political and intellectual circles in Chicago better than anything I read on the topic.

And while we’re looking at the article (mis)quoted by Sarah Palin, it mentions that Bill Ayers wrote the New York Times regarding the now famous presentation of his book on September 11, 2001. He was clearly not pleased with the way he had been quoted. As the New York Times notes (without referring to the fact that the newspaper printed a few sentences from this letter on September 16, 2001), Bill Ayers posted the entire text on his blog.

I can understand that the Obama campaign does not want to spend time discussing this issue, or engaging in the tit-for-tat of exposing McCain’s “domestic terrorist” friends, as some bloggers have thought useful, referring to Gordon Liddy*, or the senator’s votes against laws to protect clinics and doctors targeted by the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement. But I find amazing that the sixties are still such fodder for political anger. Of course, the United States are not alone in that, as we recently found out during the French presidential election and the “commemorations” of May 68.

* You have to love the fact that his biography starts with… a glowing quote from the French media, in the defunct “Le Matin”, launched in 1987 and folded in 1987.

This was bailout week, with only a bit of light entertainment: the vice-presidential debate, Thursday night.

On Monday, the bailout was re-branded the “buy-in”. It had inflated from 3 to 110 pages. Nobody seemed to like the plan, yet the leadership of the House (as well as both presidential candidates and the Bush administration) thought it would pass. John McCain was so hopeful that he took credit for it Monday morning.

Then it all crashed. The plan was voted down. The blame game started quickly, with republicans pointing to the House Speaker’s partisan speech. Barney Frank, chairman of the Finance Committee, fired back: republicans were refusing to rescue the nation’s economy “because their feelings were hurt?” At the end of the day, the markets had sunk with historical velocity. 12 missing votes translated to 777 points vanishing from the Dow. Barack Obama pleaded for calm; John McCain blamed the day’s fiasco on Barack Obama… for blaming him.

Tuesday, George Bush appealed to the nation: the situation is grave. Talks would be on-going between his administration and Congress.

Wednesday, both presidential candidates toned down their rhetoric. It also became quickly apparent that Barack Obama was benefiting from the crisis. The economy has become the paramount worry amongst Americans, and, on that issue, they trust him more than they do John McCain. The first elements of a new version of the plan started to emerge. A vote was scheduled Thursday evening. Both candidates told their supporters why they would support this bitter pill of a bill, and talked about restoring the national economy – acting “for you”, in McCain’s case; “with you”, in Obama’s case. Briefly back in Washington, both senators (and Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden) approved the plan that passed the Senate 75 votes to 24. By now, it was a 450 page document, loaded with an extra 150 billions dose of sweeteners.

Thursday, as the House came back to work, the attention shifted to the vice-presidential debate. The usual expectations game was played; some conservative attacked the referee, the debate’s host Gwenn Ifill. They just discovered she was writing a book about the new African-American leaders “in the age of Obama”. The debate turned into an exercise in parallel reality in which a somewhat restrained Joe Biden answered the moderator’s questions while a petulant Sarah Palin decided to cheerfully ignore them. In the end, the public liked Sarah Palin’s TV-friendly performance but trusted Joe Biden much more to be “a heartbeat away from the presidency”.

Friday, the House passed the economic rescue plan, and George Bush signed it immediately. The markets were not as exuberant as one might have thought. Another number casts a dark pall on the national economy: 159 000 jobs lost in September, bringing the total after 9 months of consistently bad news to 750 000 jobs lost since the beginning of the year. The approval trend for John McCain kept edging lower as Americans worried about their future.

By the weekend, with polls indicating a steady improvement for Barack Obama, the McCain team had already given up in the battleground state of Michigan. That retreat was not to be confused with a lack of fighting spirit; the republican candidate had declared he would “take off the gloves” (not that anyone noticed that he was being particularly delicate). Sarah Palin made good on his promise. She accused Barack Obama of “palling with terrorists”, a clear distortion of the examination of the future senator’s real but tenuous relation with William Ayers, a Weatherman in the sixties, now a University of Illinois professor.

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READ THIS WEEK: (a little extra from the French viewpoints)

1. Obama’s planned negociations with Russia? Vincent Jauvert, on his blog, speculates on the possibility of the US and Russia concluding an arms reduction and arms control agreement in 2009. He quotes a Russian affairs adviser to the Obama campaign, on his way to Moscow.

2. What’s the impact of the financial crisis on Hollywood? Françoise Benhamou weighs the dangers of the current financial crisis for the American movie industry (finding financing on their domestic market was already challenging; it will be worse) and the potential effect of the $ 470 million dollars sweetener inserted in the final version of the Paulson plan (it will support “small” productions and help preserve local employment).

A quick recap of last week…

By Monday, after a full-alarm weekend, Americans – and the rest of the world – were trying to grasp the idea that the financial crisis would require a 700 billion dollars bailout. There are price tags that freeze the brain, and it does not help that this problem involves complicated instruments that numb the mind – even that of the Wall-Streeters and regulators that were supposed to deal with them.

Tuesday, after many short acts previews, New York was the venue for the international launch of a new contemporary silent movie, “Sarah goes to the UN”.

Wednesday, John McCain decided to stop the music. With polls plunging, revelations ramped up about the lobbyists who run his campaign, and the impending disaster of Sarah Palin’s CBS interview, he suddenly sensed the financial crisis was a major disaster; it required "putting politics" aside. He announced he was "suspending" his campaign, and called on Barack Obama to do the same. In the evening, the president delivered one his fixed-gaze address that signals major doom.

Thursday, the McCain campaign did not seem quite “suspended” when news came of a bipartisan agreement on the principles of the bailout in Washington, on the basis of the Paulin plan. Worrisome: Senate republicans were in the picture, but House republicans were nowhere to be seen. McCain to the rescue? The senator rushed to the Hill, and visited with them. The immediate effect seemed only to embolden the conservatives, thus ensuring the fiasco of an afternoon meeting at the White House that had been initially designed to end with a happy photo op.

Friday, the fake suspense of the “suspension” was lifted. John McCain backed down from his threat of not appearing at the debate. He had given an chance to the forgotten presidential candidates to remind Americans of their existence, when some of them suggested they could fill in for the republican. Somehow, this year, the exclusion of the smaller parties has not provoked any major… debate. Yet it was a good opportunity to explain to a foreign audience (that is used to public airwaves actually being public, with access to all) the “privatization” of the electoral debate in the US.

The debate itself seem to generate nearly as much interest overseas than in the US, as well as the perceived “win” by Barack Obama. It remains the main news this weekend… up to the breaking news of the late afternoon, that an "new and improved" bailout plan has been outlined, and put on line for all to read.

And because Sarah Palin can’t be responsible alone to entertain the world, Sarah Silverman also does her best.

Nearly lost in all this? Texans, asking for a “mere” 16 billion dollars to start recovering from hurricane Ike.

So what have I discovered this summer? That I can not do the things I do, plus keep up a blog in French and keep up a blog in English, all at once. “Americana” had a feast; “Nathalieblogs”, famine. I’m trying something new: posting a digest of my musings in French on a regular basis and add a bit about how the rest of the world (at least my little window on the world, through the French-speaking blosgosphere) is reacting to the events I write about… which would be mostly that one event – the presidential election.

Other favorites on that “Americana” blog: the rebuilding of New Orleans; French culture in the US, and any and all uniquely American phenomenons.

So I’m not exactly sure where this blog is going. I might as well be clear about this upfront.

I have been blogging in French for eight months now, and I had told myself I would not touch politics. Everyone’s blogging about it; I’ve written about politics for years – so I would stick to great, or bad, or strange ,or exhilarating things I’d see in this country. That’s why that blog is called Americana. Well, it turns out that the greatest/worst/strangest/most exhilarating thing since October has been the election, so I wrote mostly about politics.

This time, I will knowingly let myself go where the blog goes. We will see where it takes us. I hope we’ll like it – me, and whomever you are.