Just like (yet, by definition, not at all like) in Iraq, the key is counterinsurgency.
An absolutely essential read over at Foreign Policy shows how General David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy can lead to victory, including these so-called “paradoxes:”
There’s no denying the man above had a failed presidency.
& while a case could be made that the blame rests upon his party’s principles, such an argument will likely cause Bush’s supporters to close their ears to a fatal flaw I’m highlighting below.
Part of the purpose of this blog is to demonstrate which qualities President Bush didn’t live up to, so we never make the same mistake again.
& I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many areas where party didn’t figure into it one bit.
Newsweeks’ Jacob Weisberg presents Exhibit A, Bush’s ‘loyalty’ problem:
“I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a 10 trillion dollar debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration? If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change I think went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.”
-Sarah Palin, to the Anchorage Daily News
That’s her take. I’m more in the school of these essential reads:
The most fascinating discourse of this election cycle, for me, has been those in the conservative movement who recognize that their movement is adrift without a rudder, in this nearly-post-Bush era.
I’ve already touched on this here, here, here, & here (& many other places - click on “The GOP” over on the right, in the categories, to get the full list)
Over the course of the next 10 days - & beyond - I hope to highlight some of this fascinating discussion.
The questions that remains to be answered: how long will it be before conservatives regain power in American government again? & who will be the standard-bearer to take the conservative movement in a new direction?
I agree with blogger L’Hote who says he is tired of what he sees, which is an unhealthy preponderance of the implementation of the phrase President Bush used in the days after 9/11: “you’re either with us or against us:”
“There’s been a lot of talk in reformist conservative circles about what the litmus test for conservatism is these days. It’s simple: the willingness to participate in dividing the country between worthy people and rotten people. There’s no ideology or policy preference or philosophy or method of intellectual comportment that holds a candle to hatred of the other, in today’s American conservatism. To that extent, a reformist conservative is no conservative at all. Some will deny this. But they only have to look around to see the absurdity of this claim. Spend a few moments on Red State. Cruise around the Corner. Follow Instapundit’s links. Check out Drudge. Watch Fox News. Attend a McCain/Palin rally. Tell me what you see. You can certainly question the right of these culturally conservative institutions to expel anyone from the ranks of conservatism, but if we recognize that they represent a kind of conservative center, we should acknowledge that this center seeks to define conservatism by its willingness to exclude others from real America.
This isn’t fair to many conservatives. But there simply exists a conservative movement, a conservative center of gravity, that has moral content. And that mainstream of conservative thought insists on cleaving these bright lines. So while I have sympathy for those who come under criticism here unfairly, to an extent this is an inevitable consequence of exactly the “big sort” that the Republican mainstream has been engaging in.
…
There comes a time when a reformer has to realize that what he is reforming is beyond saving. At what point does the conservative zeal for punishing the wicked Blue become such a dominant narrative on your side that principle demands you abandon the designation? Conservatism is not going to give up on dividing the nation into camps of the worthy and the unworthy. It is not going to stop questioning the patriotism of those who disagree with it. It’s the engine that powers the ideology. It’s possible that conservatism can be saved from pure other-hatred. But I am beyond skeptical. Those who question this allegiance to pure identity politics are quickly smacked down by the conservative message-discipline machine. (A machine which has no liberal analog.) What’s more, those conservatives who do pose these kinds of questions then become twice as likely to traffic in apologetics for the same kind of behavior, as their professional lives depend on not going too far off the reservation. (Pick your favorite CW-questioning conservative blogger. Wait for them to post something critical of conservative hatred of unreal America. Now see how long it takes them to turn around and excuse a similar but less intense argument. I think you’ll find it happens with almost mathematical precision.)
So look, conservatives– if you’re going to engage in tribalism, here is your party. Here’s your tribe. It’s at an extreme place. I can’t continue to take stock of conservatism as it currently stands and deny that the only meaningful criteria for designation as a conservative is willingness to cast your opponents out of the American experience. (Which is an act of extreme intellectual violence.)”
Well said.
Yes, I know this is an election year, but this whole “whose side are you on” mentality is really what’s contributed to driving this country into a ditch.
I believe more pluralism is what’s called for. That’s the system of government the founding fathers believed in. Pluralism is when various groups who share a common interest band together to bring about change.
Pluralism has never failed to exist in this country; it’s just that these days it is often groups with corporate or lobbying interests (Wall Street, anyone?) that have really been able to exploit pluralism’s power.
There is no problem that we can’t come together to solve - even if it’s only for that one problem.
I believe that deep down in my soul.
So let’s stop the bickering, & caring about sides or teams, stop the discussions about what constitutes the “real America” et al, & roll up our sleeves & get to work - no matter who wins the presidency.
Please? For the country?
[note: this post 1st appeared on September 19th, & has since been one of the most popular on the Vote08 blog. This weekend, I will add what I think is another 'quality of great presidents' to consider.]
Thanks & credit go to NewsChannel 9’s Marcia Kling , who told me about this story.
Presidential historian Doris Kearnes Goodwin writes in Parade Magazine about the secrets to a great president. This is worth your time & careful consideration when applying these guidelines to Barack Obama, John McCain, & perhaps most importantly, President George W. Bush.
After the jump, I’ve expanded on the piece with images & relevant links for further reading.
If you plan to vote for president this year, please read this article.
(above: McCain as a baby)
On NewsChannel9.com’s main page: a new web poll that asks “who would make a better president?”
Go vote!
“McCain had at least one good line last night: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush you should’ve run four years ago.” But one good line isn’t a lifeline.
BUT
The Arizona senator finally mentioned Bill Ayers and ACORN to his opponent’s face. But he can’t link Obama to Ayers and domestic terrorism, or to the controversial community group called Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, as tightly as Obama can link McCain to Bush. And that remains one of Obama’s biggest advantages in this race.”
“The general feeling on the right side of the blogosphere is that this was McCain’s best debate and he did himself a lot of good. I think people on the Right were so relieved that the debate finally turned to matters of ideological and partisan moment — abortion, ACORN, Ayers, trade, spending — that, perhaps for the first time in his political career, they graded him on a curve. The problem, in my view, is that the shorthand in which McCain spoke about these matters made them comprehensible only to those of us who are already schooled in them. In almost every case, Obama answered McCain’s shorthand with longhand — with detailed, even long-winded answers that gave the distinct impression he was more in command of the details of these charges than the man who was trying to go after him on them.
We’re not the audience for these debates. Undecided voters are, and undecided voters are, or so studies tell us, often astonishingly ill-informed. You can only bring up new issues if you’re able pithily to explain the context and meaning of them. It is not a rap on McCain to say he’s not good at it; he doesn’t want to bother with the introduction. But in a setting like that, the introduction is what matters, far more than the attack.”
As a person whose “day job” consists of constantly attempting to make complex stories “clear & easy to understand,” I completely agree with this assessment.
Daniel Larison at the American Conservative (essential read):
“There is a basic rule in any competition, and elections are no different. If you assume that all you really need do is show up and wait for the other side to fail, you will lose and probably quite embarrassingly at that. McCain never made the case for himself, because he assumed that he would be the default winner once the public decided Obama was unprepared. Whether or not Obama is unprepared by some standards is not the point. Relative to McCain, he has shown himself to be fairly masterful while his opponent blunders and lurches. Despite having every advantage in the political conditions this year, Obama has not taken those advantages for granted nearly as much as he could have done. The post-nomination pandering and position-switching, all of which now seems to have been quite unnecessary, were part of a steady, cautious effort to appear cautious and steady, which gave calls for undefined change a reassuring rather than an unsettling quality and negated McCain’s efforts to portray him as reckless and unready.”
&
“Perhaps most remarkable about the attempt to potray Obama as a lightweight celebrity is how true of McCain that description now seems to be.”
Above: McCain speaks on Fox News today.
But: isn’t this also an argument against Sarah Palin?
An absolutely essential read from “pointy-headed conservative” David Brooks on how the Republican party’s decades-long campaign against “the elite” has turned into a serious anti-intellectual drag on its own success, Palin being the most recent manifestation:
“What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.
Above: Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics.com shines the light of the presidential polls against the backdrop of the momentous economic events of this month:
“It is fair to say that, on a purely political basis, McCain needs a resolution more than Obama. His numbers have taken a hit - and, despite his best efforts, he has not successfully gotten in front of this issue. That’s not to say that he needs this particular bill to pass - the fact that members of Congress in the most competitive districts voted against the bill tells us something. Rather, McCain needs this issue to become less immediate, less salient. Nothing else is getting through right now. McCain needs this to drop off the front page as a first step to recover the ground he has lost in the last 20 days.”
Another interesting nugget in this same piece:
“..the number of undecided voters has increased in the last three weeks, from a low of 6.3% of the electorate on 9/8 to 8.8% last night.”
Another acute assessment of the steep climb McCain faces comes from Bush administration official [& McCain supporter] Peter Wehner:
“John McCain has faced far more difficult challenges in his life than he does now. But politically speaking, the race, never an easy one, looks considerably more difficult. Senator McCain can still prevail, but at this point, he may need an assist from outside events or from Barack Obama. And one thing Senator Obama has shown is that, for whatever flaws he has, he doesn’t make many glaring, stupid, and unforced errors. He’s hard to knock off stride. Obama and his team, while certainly not flawless, have run a very impressive campaign for 20 months. To hope they’ll badly slip up in the last five weeks is asking for a lot. As we’ve seen this year, a lot can happen, including in a short period of time. But for McCain it needs to happen, and soon.”
What do you think?
Thanks & credit go to NewsChannel 9’s Marcia Kling, who told me about this story.
Presidential historian Doris Kearnes Goodwin writes in Parade Magazine about the secrets to a great president. This is worth your time & careful consideration when applying these guidelines to Barack Obama, John McCain, & perhaps most importantly, President George W. Bush.
After the jump, I’ve expanded on the piece with images & relevant links for further reading.
If you plan to vote for president this year, please read this article.
[Disclaimer: the views expressed in this post are completely my own & do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone else at WTVC NewsChannel9 or Freedom Communications]
Vice President Dick Cheney is visiting the Chattanooga area Friday; he will be present at the commemoration of the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga.
So please join me in welcoming America’s worst-ever Vice President.
I believe he is a man who, while in office, has done far more damage to the United States than any terrorist ever has or will in the future.
Here’s a pretty essential read from the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza for those of you curious about the years not mentioned much in Barack Obama’s 2 memiors - his first years as an Illinois state lawmaker. The article reveals a man driven by ambition - something that’s of course required for anyone running for president at age 47.
Curious to see whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Here’s part two of our point today about “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes,” & how it leads you down the path to greater wisdom.
Maybe you’re a rabid Sarah Palin supporter who is not willing to listen to anyone on the left argue why Palin isn’t the best choice for McCain.
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Well, the entire GOP is not smitten with her. Here’s what some voices (sure to be branded “ELITISTS” by some) are saying:
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What the heck is going on with the U.S. economy?
I will admit here that economics is not my strong suit.
But Paul Solman of PBS really does a good job in the clip above making things clear & easy to understand.
He uses Monopoly pieces & other “dollar store” items to help make sense of what’s happening.
This piece aired on PBS in March, but it still is relevant to what happened with the markets yesterday.
Again, highly recommended viewing. I hope you take the time to educate yourself about it - it should be one of the reasons in making your choice for president.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A new poll says two out of three Americans are strongly opposed to expanding the president’s powers at the expense of Congress or the courts, even if it would improve national security or the economy.
The Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll finds people wary of increased government authority, and especially skeptical of increasing the president’s powers after the controversies surrounding the Bush administration.
The government’s power to take private property for redevelopment had little support in the poll, not even when owners are paid a fair price and the project creates local jobs.
The poll also finds a generational gap over the issue of gay marriage. More than two-thirds of those under 35 favor the recognition of gay marriage. Less than 40 percent of those over 35 feel the same way.
Those who believe the United States flag is the symbol of our country, aka “the one worth giving your life for,” I beg to differ. For me, it’s the document you see above that makes the United States the greatest country in the world.
If you haven’t read the U.S. Constitution, that most rare expression of genius in human history, allow me to strongly suggest doing so, especially before you vote.
From “the GOP Plays the Victim Card,” by Gregory Rodriguez of the Los Angeles Times:
“…Republicans didn’t invent victim politics, nor do they have the franchise on it. But the form they engage in is particularly troublesome, not least because so many conservatives seem not to even realize they’re up to their eyebrows in a game they claim to despise.
…
Conservatives still behave like a battered minority.
(above: “Gossip” by Norman Rockwell)
If nothing else, 2008 is the year of the forwarded e-mail, touting the latest political ‘facts’ about a candidate. After the jump, some valuable advice on how to handle them.
(picture by Matt Brunson)
…she’s a hockey player.
(WARNING: This post is rated PG-13 for violent content.)
I’m going to post a great piece in full here written by FiveThirtyEight.com’s Sean Quinn for 2 reasons:
1. It will calm the anxieties of Sarah Palin fans (the poor dears) who believe she has been insulted by that horrible Barack Obama because of that ‘lipstick’ line, &
2. It will make Obama supporters realize why McCain picked Palin, what she represents to the ticket, & what they’re really up against.
“She’s a hockey player. She’s a fourth-line hockey agitator, beloved by the home crowd, loathed by the opponents, injecting passion into both fan bases, the kind of home-team hero that no Stanley Cup winner goes without.
Once upon a time, I applied an NFL-replay mentality to hockey playoffs, holding on to outrages over missed calls, blatantly unfair officiating, double standards, and outright getting-away-with-stuff (which always led to an early spring exit for my beloved Blues). I wanted – and unreasonably expected – bad behavior to be proportionally punished.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.And then several years ago I had an epiphany about the hockey playoffs – nobody is coming to save you. Initiators win, reactors lose. Expect adversity, because it’s built in. The fourth-line, no-scoring-talent, pest agitators (or as we now call them, “energy guys”) have a specific job. Skate in, take a cheap shot, make it after the whistle. Make it against the rules. Stir something up. Put a wet glove in the other guy’s face and rub it. Get the outrage flowing. Get the opponent not thinking about the game, get them thinking about your shenanigans. And what happens? The “victimized” team loses its composure, hitting back. The guy who hits second is always the guy who goes to the penalty box.
Watching Sarah Palin this week, and the reaction to her by both sides, and all the talk of hockey mommery, I realized that this is who she is. She skates into the corner, throws up an elbow, and the Democrats cry: “Foul!” Hey! She said Obama has never passed a major bill – this is an objective lie! Hey! She ridiculed community organizing the day after Service was the theme! Technically people should punish her by not voting for her over this infraction!It’s whining, and whiners hit back second and go to the penalty box on top of it.
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Sarah Palin is a person who by her own admission found out about the Iraq surge – the centerpiece of the McCain judgment argument – from television. Apologies to conservatives, but technically, objectively, inarguably, this alone makes her unqualified to be President. But we don’t live in that technical or objective world. Political campaigns – as distinct from policy and governance – are the NHL playoffs. It’s only about who survives the war of attrition to the finish line first. Is Brett Hull’s skate still in Dominik Hasek’s crease and was that same situation disallowed in every previous instance throughout that season? Yes, but so what? Dallas had a parade.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.In the hockey analogy, Palin wouldn’t get within a thousand miles of an NHL All-Star Game because she’s not a scoring talent. She’s a role player, an emotion-rouser. Emotion messes with the chalkboard-drawn game plan and thus achieves a specific strategic objective. She can make game-changing agitation plays that rouse her home team and provoke the other side into counterattacks that – 100% of the time – end up punishing the team who hits back. Democrats would be smart to understand her as such, and I see a lot of reaction that doesn’t seem to grasp what Palin is doing and the value she’s providing. I see a lot of Democrats taking a lot of bait.
This applies more to Democratic surrogates than it does to the top-ticket duo. Joe Biden had the smart response yesterday – naming the behavior – expecting it, and then riding through without taking the bait:
“It was about how well placed — and boy she is good — how a left jab can be stuck pretty nice. It’s about how Barack Obama is such a bad guy.”
And that’s all he says of Palin’s antics. Name the behavior, even praising the skill with which the agitation was attempted, and then back to focus. It’s “the economy, stupid.”
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Finally – is the analogy complete? In the end a great hockey agitator who rouses both sides emotionally (and successfully gets the other team to lose focus) still needs the home team scoring talent to come through. Successful agitator Kris Draper of the Detroit Red Wings had the clutch Steve Yzerman for a lot of years. That worked. Detroit won Cups. They had parades.
Successful agitator Tyson Nash, when he was on my Blues, was stuck with the antithesis of playoff clutch, the easily thrown-off-his-game Keith Tkachuk. That didn’t work. No Cup. Even if Palin is successful in her task of agitation and distraction, which one is John McCain?”
What do you think? Post a comment now! All opinions are welcome.
Forgive the defensive crouch, but as a bona fide member of the media [who, admittedly, never uses a long "I" when I say the words 'Iraq,' or 'Iran'], I’m a bit perplexed at the vitriol I’ve felt from the GOP over the coverage of the Sarah Palin story.
I’d like to ask you, the person who’s reading this webpage at this very moment: If you were a member of the media, how would you have handled the situation?
As far as I can tell, most members of the ‘mainstream media’ were trying to satisfy the public’s insatiable appetite to find information about her.
That is what I have done my entire adult career, & shouldn’t be taken as a slight.
It’s an acknowledgement of current conditions.
Millions of people are typing “Sarah Palin” into the Google search bar to see what they can find out about her.
A decent percentage of them will reach conclusions that are the virtual opposite of yours.
But that’s okay - ”E Pluribus Unum,” right?
The questions, in my view perfectly legitimate, included:
Who is Sarah Palin?
What is her record as a public servant?
What are her stances on the issues?
What choices did she make as a public servant that voters would be interested in knowing?
Which parts of her biography make her particularly prepared or unprepared to be vice president or President of the United States?
I could go on. But somehow these questions have morphed into “vicious attacks.” As far as I’m concerned, the only thing the media is after is the truth.
Here at the NewsChannel, one of the biggest deciders on doing a story (any stry) is whether the story is generating what’s known as “water cooler conversations.” My ears always perk up when I hear someone (usually out of the newsroom) talk about a national story. It tells me that there is interest.
That is the case for any reputable media outlet.
If you, the person reading this webpage right now, are not discussing it with anyone you interact with in person, chances are far lower that the story will get done.
The Sarah Palin story was one of the biggest “water cooler” stories to come down the pike this year. In fact, I had more response & comments on Sarah Palin this week, both on this blog & in person than I’ve had for any other week during the campaign.
So help me out here, folks. Satisfy my curiosity. What specific examples of “vicious media attacks” are you talking about? Tell me how you would handle the news (released by the McCain campaign) that Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. Should we have ignored that, given the fact that it was the hot topic of conversation among you, the voter/viewer, for a nearly 48 hour period?
p.s. Please don’t give me the excuse that it was the “left wing blog” rumors that played out all through last weekend. I don’t pay attention to rumors & wouldn’t report them without any basis in fact. & the vast, vast majority of the American public who’s paying attention to this election don’t follow left (or, for that matter, right) wing blogs on a regular basis. This uproar over supposed “media attacks” didn’t start until after the pregnancy announcement.
p.p.s. Please also note that any information about the boy who is the father of Bristol Palin’s baby, such as his picture, his name, or quotes from his MySpace page, are completely absent from this blog. I just don’t care. If you care, you can find that somewhere else.
FURTHER READING: Why the Media Should Apologize, by the Politico’s Roger Simon. This piece pretty much sums up my view on the matter.
First up last night, First Lady Laura Bush introduced her husband & outlined the President’s legacy:
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& then, the man himself spoke - though it was from 1000 miles away at the White House:
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It felt odd. You can certainly tell that Bush is disappointed he was not able to address the crowd that helped send him to the White House twice. Hurricane Gustav certainly did the McCain camp a favor - it kept away one of the biggest criticisms on the other side, that President Bush & John McCain are joined at the hip.
Bush was correct to bring up this, his greatest moment as president, on September 14th, 2001, in New York City. Watch:
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Many are calling him the worst president in history, & in many ways one could describe this president as a failure. I hope to get more into this later, but I consider his biggest mistake to be one that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan outlined in his book - that the administration never got outside of what McClellan called “the permanent campaign.” Bush governed as if he had a mandate from the country (by a large margin, he didn’t). Nearly every single act as president was designed to please half of the country without being anywhere close to empathetic for the concerns of the other side.
But there are bright spots to the Bush presidency, & Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek magazine spells them out in a recent edition of Newsweek. Before you banish President Bush to the dustbin of history as a failure, read this excellent piece to recognize that things aren’t so much black & white as they are shades of gray.
What do you think?
I saved a couple of lines from the speech last night for this post:
“America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices. And Democrats, as well as Republicans, will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past, for part of what has been lost these past eight years can’t just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that’s what we have to restore.
We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.
The — the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.
You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.
But this, too, is part of America’s promise, the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.”
As one who’s read both of his memoirs, I have to say that this philosophy really gets to the core of what Obama’s approach to government is. The GOP & the right wing is eager to brand him as an ultra-liberal, which has been so effective for them in the past, but in many ways there will be disappointment from the left side of the Democratic party.
A piece called “The Empiricist Strikes Back,” by Cass R. Sunstein of the New Republic, shows how pragmatism seems to be what Obama values over all:
“The real problem lies in the assumption, still widespread on both the left and the right, that Obama is a doctrinaire liberal whose positions can be deduced simply by asking what the left thinks.
Of course Obama is a progressive. From health care to assistance for low-income families to education to environmental protection, he emphasizes that Americans have duties to one another, and that government should be taking active steps to provide equal opportunity and to help those who need help. But, by nature, he is also an independent thinker, and he listens to all sides. One of his most distinctive features is that he is a minimalist, not in the sense that he always favors small steps (he doesn’t), but because he prefers solutions that can be accepted by people with a wide variety of theoretical inclinations.
When he offers visionary approaches, he does so as a visionary minimalist–that is, as someone who attempts to accommodate, rather than to repudiate, the defining beliefs of most Americans. His reluctance to challenge people’s deepest commitments might turn out to be what makes ambitious plans possible–notwithstanding the hopes of the far left and the cartoons of the far right.
Obama’s views have never been simple to characterize. For a number of years, Obama has expressed his support for capital punishment. As a teacher of constitutional law, he does believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to have guns and said so well before the Supreme Court ruled to that effect. While he emphasizes the need for environmental and labor safeguards, Obama is no protectionist. He understands the power of markets, and, in principle, he is committed to free trade. Reiterating these long-held positions does not exactly count as flip-flopping or “tacking to the center.”
…
There is a much larger issue here, and it has to do with the distinctive nature of this particular candidate. Obama really means it when he deplores red-state-blue-state divisions and claims to draw ideas from Republicans as well as Democrats. Just as he resists ideological templates, Obama does not believe in “triangulation”; his skepticism about conventional ideological categories is principled, not strategic. It is revealing, and entirely characteristic, that Obama admires Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, in which Goodwin describes Lincoln’s self-conscious decision to assemble a contentious, bipartisan cabinet. By nature, Obama does not follow old-line political orthodoxies. Above all, Obama’s form of pragmatism is heavily empirical; he wants to know what will work.
Obama’s not the only one that’s worthy of shattering past stereotypes. In many ways, John McCain is not a typical Republican. (We’ll of course get much more into that next week.) In this regard, this historic election is extremely good for the country. We need to move past cartoon caricatures & actually do our homework this time around. Don’t rely on someone else to paint the picture for you - educate yourself about the candidates, their positions, & their approach to government. It is how you, as an American, are being called to duty.
What do you think?
[Above: Barack Obama with his father, Honolulu, Hawaii, December 1971. This is from the only time in his life Obama actually saw his father in person.]
Chattanooga’s own Jon Meacham, who’s the editor of Newsweek, has a pretty good article in this week’s issue for those of you interested in the biography of Barack Obama. Highly recommended - you may learn some things about the man you haven’t heard before.
& there’s this thought provoking passage:
“Obama cherishes his life story as a unique saga, but the drama of a fatherless child’s rise to temporal power, driven by ambition, a hunger for control and an appetite for the approval of others, is a familiar one in American politics. Presidents, and presidential candidates, tend to come from one of two kinds of distinct families. There is either a powerful, prominent father at the center of the clan (the Adamses, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the McCains) or, more often than you might think, there is either a weak father or no father at all. An unusual number of presidents have been the sons of absent or weak fathers. Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton lost their fathers before they were born; Gerald Ford did not meet his biological father until he was 17 years old.
I asked Obama why he thought powerful politicians had either a strong father, or no father at all. “I think to put yourself through what is a pretty rigorous process of running for president you’ve got to have learned to set up some pretty high expectations for yourself,” he said. “Something’s got to be driving you, and in my case if you have somebody that is absent, maybe you feel like you’ve got something to prove when you’re young, and that pattern sets itself up over time. But also because, again in my case, the stories I heard about my father painted him as larger than life, which also meant that I felt I had something to live up to. You could argue that if you’re too well adjusted, you don’t end up running for president.” I laughed at this; journalists often joke that nobody normal ever makes it to the presidency, and it was funny to hear it from a man who wants the office. Obama went on: “So if the pattern sets in pretty early on where you’re pushing your comfort level it probably has to do with those very early influences, and that can come from either the absence or the presence of a father who ends up motivating you in some way.” He has a romantic streak about the possibilities of politics—hence the theme of hope—but Obama is also a realist, and his pragmatism has ancient roots.”
Read the full article here.
This post, for now, will contain all things Clinton-related this week. Check back for later updates.
DENVER — As Democrats arrived here Sunday for a convention intended to promote party unity, mistrust and resentments continued to boil among top associates of presumptive nominee Barack Obama and his defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
One flashpoint is the assigned speech topic for former president Bill Clinton, who is scheduled to speak Wednesday night, when the convention theme is “Securing America’s Future.” The night’s speakers will argue that Obama would be a more effective commander in chief than his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The former president is disappointed, associates said, because he is eager to speak about the economy and more broadly about Democratic ideas — emphasizing the contrast between the Bush years and his own record in the 1990s.
This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms.
Also from the Politico, an comprehensive, essential read on how Obama beat Clinton in the primary season. Read “Relentless: How Obama Outsmarted Clinton” here.
UPDATE: Mon/2:08pm:
DENVER (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are working on a deal to give her some votes in the presidential nomination roll call, but end the divided balloting quickly with a unanimous consent for Obama.
Democratic officials involved in the negotiations say the idea is that at the start of the state-by-state roll call Wednesday night, delegates would cast their votes for Clinton or Obama.
But the voting would be cut off after a couple states, perhaps ending with New York, when Clinton herself would call for a unanimous backing for Obama from the convention floor.
This is sort of a (far more detailed, literate & respectful) follow up to CNN’s sojourn to Copperhill, Tennessee.
This week’s Newsweek takes a look at perceptions of Barack Obama in the south, & writer Christopher Dickey chose a path that’s the reverse of General Sherman’s march to see what folks think of the Democratic candidate:
“I found whites frustrated and indecisive about the campaign, families at odds, generations divided. Many who thought themselves beyond prejudice were surprised by their suspicions of the young black man from up north. Meanwhile, many slave-descended blacks, hugely supportive of the half-Kenyan, half-Kansan, Hawaii-reared Obama, seemed afraid to hope too much, inoculating themselves with pessimism about the chances that any man of color could win the presidency, even this man, even today, or that, if he does, he will survive. As I say, emotions are raw. “
Again, read more here, & then come back to discuss in the comment section!
UPDATE: An interesting quote from Publius, who writes for a blog called Obsidian Wings:
“I’m a child of the rural South. But you know what? Actual racism is a lot less common there — we have a ways to go, but there has been real progress on that front.
The more serious problem is white resentment. A lot of white people honestly think they have been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities. And it’s hard to overstate how deeply these feelings run. It’s not so much animosity toward people who are different — it’s the animosity of the aggrieved. They feel like they are the victims.
That’s why race is a losing issue for Obama — it’s not so much that people are racist, but that they feel they are being punished because they’re white (yes, I know how completely absurd this must sound to the black community).”
(above: “the Wanderer” by Caspar David Friederich)
1. Conservative columnist David Brooks in the New York Times nearly hits the nail on the head as to why Obama is not pulling away in the polls: he is a wanderer or “sojourner,” who throughout his life never fully embraced any milieus he was a part of:
“If Obama is fully a member of any club — and perhaps he isn’t — it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama’s age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It’s not clear what the rest of America makes of them.”
2. The Politico’s Mark Penn examines how perceptions of strength (or lack of them) are still at play in an election year that should overwhelmingly favor Democrats:
“We hear less and less about who the voters would rather have a beer with or ask to baby-sit for their kids — the voters have had it with those kinds of choices. [Thank Heavens -Vote08]
So take key issues such as the economy, health care and Iraq. Once again, the Democrats lead on those issues by large margins. Americans don’t want their troops in Iraq for a hundred years or even for two years — they want to see the war end and the money spent on military action in Iraq going instead to help relieve our country’s problems at home. They favor alternative energy over drilling and nuclear energy, and they see the health care system falling into increasing disrepair.
So if they overwhelmingly favor the policies of the Democrats, why is the presidential horse race not reflecting a 10- or 15-percentage-point edge for Barack Obama? Because of the same concerns that the public had about past Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John F. Kerry. The image of Dukakis in a tank still haunts the Democratic Party.
3. Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post dissects how Republicans are trying to inject race in the campaign by accusing Obama of injecting race into the campaign:
“This battle over Obama’s image as a black man is arguably the central front of the presidential campaign right now. Once-sharp lines between the candidates on issues such as withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq or allowing new offshore oil drilling are becoming blurred. The Democratic Party’s structural advantages going into the election are formidable. It’s hard to imagine how McCain could possibly win unless he generates doubt in voters’ minds about Obama.
One way to do that would be to fabricate the impression that Obama is demanding special treatment and privilege because he is black — in other words, turn a self-made man into a stereotypical beneficiary of affirmative action.”
What do you think?
Two pieces that attempt to outline what makes McCain tick:
1. “The Curious Mind of John McCain: Ambition and Emotion Color the Complex Intellect of the Candidate” by Robert G. Kaiser of the Washington Post. Illuminating in how he gathers information & uses the ideas & influences of others to help shape his own.
2. “Is John McCain Stupid?” by Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. A good glimpse of how he’s not pleasing many in his own party.
Read them, then come back here & let’s discuss in the comment section!
One of the essential reads of the summer, from the June 30th issue of the New Yorker. It takes a look at how the GOP should not count on a monolithic voting bloc from evangelicals for this year’s race to the White House. This is the 2nd of our series of “annotated” New Yorker articles, designed to help you with links & clips pertinent to the original article.. read the 1st effort here, & read our latest efforts below.
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(Pew)
Just four years ago, during the last Presidential election, leaders on the religious right were the only white evangelicals whose voices were heard in the public arena. In their own gatherings, they proposed such things as the abolition of the capital-gains tax, a war on radical Islam, and an end to the “myth of separation” between church and state, but they concentrated their public campaigns on gay rights and abortion, the two issues that have resonated most strongly with evangelicals and helped to bring them into the Republican Party.
Under the leadership of James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family,
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, and others, including 
Richard Land, the official in charge of public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention, activists organized “values voters” with the help of ballot initiatives in eleven states for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
In November, all the initiatives passed, and George W. Bush took seventy-eight per cent of the white evangelical vote—a record for a Presidential candidate. Because evangelicals make up a quarter of the population, the religious right claimed credit for giving President Bush his margin of victory.
This year, however, is very different. During the primary season, religious-right leaders could not unite around a candidate.
Interesting article from the Politico today that outlines how the GOP is far behind the Democrats in the so-called “new media” — on the internet.
Some key quotes:
The right is engaged in the business of opining while the left features sites that offer a more reportorial model.
At first glance, these divergent approaches might not seem consequential. But as the 2008 campaign progresses, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the absence of any websites on the right devoted to reporting—as opposed to just commenting on the news—is proving politically costly to Republicans.
While conservatives are devoting much of their Internet energy to analysis, their counterparts on the left are taking advantage of the rise of new media to create new institutions devoted to unearthing stories, putting new information into circulation and generally crowding the space traditionally taken by traditional media. And it almost always comes at the expense of GOP politicians. While online Republicans chase the allure of punditry and commentary, Democrats and progressives are pursuing old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, in a fashion reminiscent of 2004. Back then, the Drudge Report and other lesser-known conservative portals played a key role in defining John Kerry and pushing back against criticism of George W. Bush such as when conservative bloggers debunked documents purportedly related to the president’s Air National Guard service.
Just as Drudge and critics of the now-infamous “60 Minutes” report on Bush were able to push stories damaging to Kerry or beneficial to Bush into the mainstream media, liberal online organs are now doing the same, to the detriment of GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
…
Deploying writers with backgrounds grounded in journalism rather than politics, The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo, in particular, have already become a persistent problem for McCain’s campaign, regularly posting negative opposition research and embarrassing videos in addition to advancing damaging storylines against the GOP nominee.
There is simply no equivalent on the right to these two liberal-leaning websites.
…
..prominent con
