When Russia invaded Georgia several months ago, ratings for presidential hopeful John McCain went up since he’s running as a national security candidate.

Now that the fight between Russia and Georgia is over and the financial market has crashed, ratings for presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose platform is the economy, have been topping McCain’s.

National security, economy, energy, health, and education are considered the five most important priorities in America. The order of these priorities, however, does shift according to the current events. Of these five, health and education are the least powerful forces in terms of swaying voters and influencing real policy change today.

In the age of globalization and real-time Internet speed, even a medium-level crisis of economics, national security, or energy could easily have an immediate impact that reaches all levels of society.

For health care, on the other hand, it would take a calamity of global proportion like the Black Plague in the past or the AIDS epidemic for our nation and its institutions to react briskly. Why? It’s because the American health care and educational systems have been limping for so long that in absence of any fear or urgency, the dire situations have been accepted as a norm.

With no set national standards, state and local school districts are empowered to create their own programs and benchmarks. As a result, the American public educational system is chopped up into so many different models and options that the teaching and learning parts have become muddy in many parts of the country.

By and large, just about everybody—educators, policy makers, researchers, business leaders, and parents—is not happy and wanted to make changes. At the same time there’s sense of helplessness since the problem has festered for too long with no clear-cut solutions.

Unifying the American public on issues of reforming education and health care is often difficult because the urgency is not there and the impacts are felt unevenly. In Santa Clara County (California), where it’s home to many high-tech firms like Intel and Apple, some of its public schools’ API (Academic Performance Index) scores are near the maximum 1,000 points but roughly 60 percent of the district’s other schools’ scores are below the minimum 800.

Nationally about 16 percent of American population does not have health insurance coverage in 2006, according a U.S. Census Bureau study released in August 2007. The same report shows that “the number of uninsured rose 2.2 million between 2005 and 2006 and has increased by almost 9 million people since 2000.” This trend is particularly alarming since this study was focused on the working adults aged from 18 to 64. If they don’t have health insurance, chances are their families are also un-insured.

In Canada and a number of European countries that provide universal health care coverage and public education, their approach is based more on social values and less on economics.

When Bill Clinton tried to reform the health care system from the consumers’ perspective in his first term, the pharmaceutical and insurance sectors defeated the effort on economic grounds.

Free enterprise is the backbone of the American system. But this system also has a built-in feature that for the good of the general public, the government has a “moral” obligation to intervene and to regulate the system as well as to initiate social programs on behalf of its people. That’s how rural America is electrified and connected with the national telephone grid and precious natures are preserved under the National Park System.

Health care and education certainly fit in this category of social programs that required government’s strong intervention from the moral perspective.

But more than that. In the age of globalization, the future of America is also depended on what we do today about our health care and educational systems. In essence, they pose a formidable economic problem that we need to consider.

In the 21st Century, the future is less about manufacturing and agriculture but more on high-value information and high technologies. This means the more educated our society is, the better prepared we would be to maintain our top position this increasingly competitive global economy.

American universities and colleges are still considered the best the country but increasingly their graduates of science and medicine are non-citizens who would head back home (RAND’s Science and Technology – Issue Paper 241 (2003)). The National Defense University’s April 2004 Report also highlights that while the pace of producing science and engineering workforce in China, India, Japan, and South Korea is accelerating, the opposite is true in America.

Bill Gates, America’s best-known technologist, had recently testified in Congress in March of this year that our country has endangered itself by not improving our educational system for more science and math to foster a larger home-grown high-tech workforce and maintain the lead in innovation.

An investment in our educational system today is therefore not just a “moral” obligation but also a necessity for the future.

On health care, in additional to the rising number of the un-insured, demographic change trends suggest a dramatic alteration in our economy in the near future. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in 2003 shows that the proportion of American population older than 65 is “projected to increase from 12.4 percent (35 million) in 2000 to 19.6 percent (estimated at 71 million) in 2030.

Already we have seen nursing home and home health-care expenditures in the U.S. “doubled during 1990-2001 period, reaching approximately $132 billion,” according to the same report. Public financing for long-term caring of the elders during 2000-2020 is projected to increase about 20 to 21 percent. All these trends show if we don’t work on this now, the impact would constitute an enormous strain on our economy.

Our top five priorities are actually inter-connected. In fact, they are rested upon how we solve the educational and health care problems in the short and long runs. A sick and poorly educated population would not be able to compete globally to maintain a strong economy, perpetuate national security, and achieve energy independence with green technologies.

It’s vital that by the 2012 presidential election, America should have candidates running on foresighted platforms of health care and educational reforms.

Julian Do

It’s no fluke that John McCain has gotten this far. He is a tough and talented politician with a streak of independent actions that has generated respects from his peers from both sides of the isle. Along the way, McCain has weathered many storms from being a prisoner of war in Vietnam to the Saving & Loan scandal and his wife Cindy’s drugs addiction. His presidential campaign was nearly obliterated back in July 2007 when his campaign’s war chest was almost empty and key staffers like campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver resigned. But one crisis after another, John McCain has overcome many odds to become one of the more successful U.S. Senators in history and now the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential candidate.

At 72 years old, McCain knows this 2008 presidential election is his last chance to attain his ultimate ambition: to serve America at the highest office. But once again several hurricanes have risen in his path, threatening to become a perfect storm to thwart his ambition.

The first hurricane is a real one named Gustav, which has pounded the gulf coast right when the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul was about to start. Given the fiasco of Hurricane Katrina, the Republican Party and the McCain campaign have decided that they cannot afford to proceed with the convention’s celebratory activities, which in turns has dampened the mood. Concurrently, another challenge for McCain at this event is how to project a strong image on national security while distancing from President Bush, whose approval ratings have been in the low 30% for two years now.

The second hurricane is a metaphor with a real person’s name of Palin. Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, was announced as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate the day after the Democratic National Convention ended to “wow” the country to deflate any bounce his rival Barack Obama may gain. Unfortunately, Palin, the Republican Party’s first-ever female vice-presidential nominee, has been anything but a constant crisis management for the McCain campaign from the defense of her experience to the “troopergate” investigation and her teenage daughter’s pregnancy. All within 72 hours.

History has shown rarely a vice presidential nominee would make a difference in any presidential elections. On the other hand, a bad pick could hurt a campaign or become a drag in an administration (one thinks of Dan Quayle). With Sarah Palin, the media and the blogosphere have been having a field day.

At first everyone’s focus was on her qualifications. Robert Elisberg proclaims in the Huffington Post that the selection of Palin is “the worse in the U.S. history.” The blogosphere is filled with comments about she’s no comparison to Hilary Clinton or even Geraldine Ferraro. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report facetiously defends Palin’s time length of experience by factoring in the long daylight hours in Alaska.

On the other hand, in the conservative Weekly Standard, William Kristol advocates that “Palin will be a compelling and mold-breaking example for lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect, Palin can become an inspirational figure and powerful symbol.”

Clearly with the selection of Palin, the McCain campaign wants to attract the independent and women voters who are unhappy with Hilary Clinton’s failed presidential bid and pass over as Obama’s running mate. Her choice is also supposed to symbolize an agent of change who came from outside of the political establishment.

Five days after the announcement of Sarah Palin, the scrutiny is now less about her qualifications and what she represents but on her alleged abuse of political office and pregnant teenage daughter. When asked for comments about rumors spread by his campaign on Palin’s family, Barack Obama declared that his campaign did not play any role and added that families should be off-limits. He also mentioned that his mother was 18 years old when she was pregnant with him.

Effectively, the introduction of Sarah Palin has drowned out the expected media buzz for the Obama-Biden ticket at the end of the DNC event over the Labor Day weekend. Perversely, if Palin’s “troopergate” and family issue continue to fester (not to mention whatever else might be unearthed by the hordes of media currently in Alaska), her nomination may fall apart and thus the crisis might sap all the energy at the Republican National Convention, which has already been diminished by Hurricane Gustav.

But again don’t count out John McCain. He has overcome all types of challenges and political storms before. The difference this time is that the 2008 presidential election culminates the highest stake of his political career.

Julian Do

The presidential election is now at the phase of how the quality of vice-presidential running mates should compliment the short falls (i.e., age, link to key states, experience in international affairs and economics) of both presumptive presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama.

The deletion of Hilary Clinton from Obama’s short list (according to Obama campaign, Bill Clinton’s business activities may pose a Pandora box) has the media speculating on Senators like Joseph Biden, Evan Bayh, (John Edwards was mentioned early on but is now out of the picture with his extra marital affair scandal) and even Republican Chuck Hagel.

Comparing Obama’s current emergence and challenges with those of John Kennedy during the 1960 presidential election, there are two most outstanding similarities: a talented politician but whose youth and short track records pose a question of whether he is qualified for the job; the other is how the selection of a vice-presidential running mate could off set the experience issue.

As the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Kennedy’s selection of Lyndon Johnson was controversial. Jonson was a bitter rival and there was a fear that he may overshadow the younger and less experienced Kennedy. In the end, Kennedy had decided getting votes was more important than compatibility. The ensuing history would show that Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon, proved to be a world leader during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Johnson, as vice president, could never compete with Kennedy for the public limelight.

Hilary Clinton, like Johnson, has solid senatorial records and national stature (though controversial at times) and has proven to be a tremendous vote getter. But her failed primary campaign has clearly inflicted some damages to Obama’s image and left some lingering bitterness in Obama’s camp. On the other hand, judging from the “realpolitik” angle, Clinton – with her political talents and capability of mobilizing women and Latino votes – has no rivals among Obama’s current short list.

The mood of the country is clearly for a change. However, the seed of doubt of whether Barack Obama is qualified for president has been sowed. This means although he is the non-incumbent Democratic candidate during this period of a Republican administration whose rating has been at the low 30% in almost two years, his election is not a sure thing. Improving his ascent seems to lie with Obama’s bitter rival Hilary Clinton.

“The ‘A’ is before the ‘O’, as in Oprah,” exclaims Bessy Lee-Oh, the CEO/Publisher of the new Asian American magazine called The Big A. “We plan to be big with an initial print of 700,000 copies for distribution nationwide”.

Launching a new publication at this time seems going against the grain because traditional media, as we know it, has been declining around the country. The four major TV networks have been losing millions of viewers and venerable newspapers like L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, and Baltimore Sun have watched their circulations down sloping in horror. Thousands of reporter jobs are slashed across newsrooms, large and small alike. The Internet age and the emergence of ethnic populations in America have changed the media industry dramatically.

Lee-Oh, the former ad executive at Greenspun Media Group in Las Vegas, and her diverse team of Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai-Laotian, Korean, and Mexican ancestries, believe Asian Americans, who are among the most educated and highest income earners, are underserved. They are almost invisible especially during this presidential election, she adds, because they, though accomplished in their careers, are both modest and unaccustomed to speaking out. “Our Big A magazine will be loud with role models, top executives, athletes, writers and Hollywood stars”. Traditional print media maybe down but the Asian demographic is up as a viable economic group to target, according to Lee-Oh.

Came out of the ‘60s civil rights movement, Asian-American was a term coined as an alternative to Oriental, which was perceived to be derogatory and colonialist (Wikipedia). “The ‘Orientals’ don’t value life the same way we do” was a controversial remark made by General Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam during the war (Hearts & Minds documentary 1974). Today Asian Americans, 13.5 millions according to U.S. Census 2005, are defined as Americans whose ancestors originated from the regions of South Asia (i.e., India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), East Asia (i.e., China, Japan, Vietnam), and islands in the Pacific (i.e., Samoa, Polynesia, Micronesia).

Despite efforts to build a cohesive Asian American group over the years by many social and political organizations, interaction between Asian communities is still not at the desired level. One of the barriers is language, as many foreign-born Asians (52% of total Asian Americans, U.S. Census 2005) are still more comfortable with their native tongues of Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Khmer. While other ethnic groups have at least one common cultural language like Spanish in the Latino community, Arabic among Arab Americans, and English within the African American population.

The Big A is not treading on a new path of serving the younger and higher income sets of Asian Americans. There are publications like A Magazine, Audrey, Giant Robot, Asia – The Journal of Culture and Commerce, Hyphen, Thirteen Minutes; online magazines like Asians In America and Asiance Magazine; and TV networks like ImaginAsian TV and AZN TV. All have been targeting the emerging English speaking Asian demographic for years. The success rate, however, is mixed.

Most notable was A Magazine, founded in 1989 by Jeff Yang, which reached its peak with 200,000 in circulation and expanded into the dotcom business with Click2Asia. Thirteen years and $4.5 millions later, both the publication and the Internet venture were folded in 2002 (Wikipedia). When news that AZN, an Asian American TV Cable network was being cancelled by its owner, Comcast, late last year, it caused a small earthquake in the Asian community. Comcast cited that ad revenues were not enough to support it.

“But the most troubling concern may be the chilling effect this could have on current and future media for Asian American audiences. After all, if a giant like Comcast can’t make a business out of providing Asian Americans with original programming, investors and advertisers might have a hard time believing that anyone can,” writes Jeff Yang in the SF Chronicle’s online SF Gate. Yang is the same former publisher of A Magazine who is now a book author and columnist.

But Bessy Lee-Oh is undaunted by of all of that history. She is planning a giant launch of The Big A in Beijing, China, on the same date that the 2008 Olympics is set to open on August 8.
—By Julian Do

The Big A Magazine is headquartered in Las Vegas.

Ever wondering why Arab Americans are indifferent and invisible in presidential elections? According to Rashad Al-Dabbagh who writes for The Independent Monitor, the reason is Americans of Arab descent usually feel alienated from these events since “most candidates prefer to distance themselves from Arabs.”

In post 9/11, Arab Americans have become “infamously” a visible group. There was a paranoid about having “Arabs in our midst” in America since the 19 terrorists were all Arab Muslims. They are singled out at airports, schools, and public gathering events. Ironically, the U.S. Census categorizes Arabs as “white,” as supposed to a separate check box for other ethnic groups like Vietnamese, Mexican, and Puerto Rican.

Of the estimated 3.5 million Arabs in the U.S., most are actually native-born Americans whose original homelands included 22 Arab countries. The majority, however, came from Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. The largest communities of Arab Americans currently reside in Los Angeles, Orange County, Detroit, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Furthermore, Arab Americans are largely Christians, which is consistent with the fact that only 12% of the world’s Muslims are Arabs. The largest Muslim population in the world is in Asia, not the Middle East and North Africa.

Barack Obama’s background of having a Muslim father and spending part of his childhood in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim nation, has been a connection point with many American Muslims. But not necessary all Arabs since the majority are actually Christians. To Arab Americans, their top issues are the situation in the Middle East (i.e., Iraq, Palestine-Israeli conflict, Lebanon) and their civil liberties since the tragedy of 9/11.

When Obama recently remarked his supporting of President Bush’s position against holding talks with Hamas, the political party elected by Palestinians in 2006, many Arab Americans saw their hope for “change” from the candidate—whom once shared a table with their icon, the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said—vanished once again.

But Al-Dabbagh argues that he would be pleased if Obama wins the presidency. Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel may have sympathetic stance favorable to Arab Americans, but the reality is these candidates don’t have a shot. He has hope with Obama; he credits him for speaking out against the Iraq invasion since the beginning and has announced that he would “call for a summit meeting with the Arab and Muslim countries to improve America’s relationship with the Muslim world.”

“The case for Obama
Rashad Al-Dabbagh | The Independent Monitor | February 2008

The Independent Monitor, based in Orange County, is a national English monthly covering Arab American affairs and the Middle East.