Recently, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine who, though a progressive Democrat and not a Green, is some one I've worked with politically in the past in the anti-war movement, in collecting signatures for the minimum wage ballot initiative, and elsewhere. I'm not naming names here, because this is some one I continue to like and respect, whatever our disagreement on this issue.

In any case, the subject had to do with the Jim Marcinkowski campaign for Congress in our district (Michigan's 8th). Marcinkowski is (while no one has been formally nominated yet) clearly going to be the Democratic candidate, since he's gotten national attention and is considered a big catch by his party. He's considered a great catch for the same reasons I wouldn't break for him if I saw him crossing the street--his history in the CIA, etc.

I replied, fairly icily, that I would just as soon vote for Mike Rogers (the Republican incumbent), citing Marcinkowski's bio--he was a Republican until a couple of years ago, when he switched parties in protest over the Valery Plame affair, he was a Bush supporter in 2000 and (most appallingly) he was a CIA "operations officer" in Latin America in the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration was illegally supporting the Contra terrorists against the democratically elected Sandanista government of Nicaragua. It would be one thing if he was deeply ashamed of this, made amends to the widows and orphans of Ollie North's operations against Nicarguan "soft targets," etc., but far from it, Marcinkowski proudly and constantly references his former involvement in the CIA.

My correspondent replied that his understanding is that Marcinkowski was involved in monitoring Soviet and Cuban activity in Nicaragua, and not in the direct operations in support of the Contras.

Now, kids....

Even if this is true (and there's probably no way to tell, since the CIA pretty much by definition does its business in secret), this would be the conceptual equivalent of saying that some one was an Italian intelligence officer in the Mussolini period, stationed in Spain during the civil war, but it's not a big deal because they were "just" monitoring Russian assistance to the Spanish Republic and not directly supporting Franco.

The most ridiculous part of all this is that the 8th District was a couple of elections back gerrymandered to essentially make it a permanent Republican seat. As such, any Democratic campaign is essentially a symbolic gesture.

Now, there's nothing wrong with symbolic gestures (I did vote for Nader twice), but in this case the symbolism sucks.

As always, I tend to think of "the Simpsons" election year Halloween episode way back when, when alien monsters Kang and Kodos replace Clinton and Dole with themselves in disguise. When the ruse is exposed, Kang (or is it Kodos?) triumphantly crows, "it doesn't matter. You have to vote for one of us. It's a two-party system!' (Ross Perot is clearly seen in the crowd punching a hole through his hat in frustration.) At the end of the episode, all the humans are enslaved by Emperor Kang, working in chains as the aliens whip them. Marge says, "I don't understand why we have to build a missile to attack a planet I've never even heard of" and Homer responds, pricelessly, "don't blame me, I voted for Kodos."