Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/14/2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The Obama music video
Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/3/2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY
I got home tonight and came across this strange and riveting music video -- it made the tears well up, and I've been watching presidential elections since 1960 and thought nothing could do that anymore. This video represents the way a new political generation is feeling about Obama's candidacy. This isn't artificial, it is real in the hearts of those who are drawn to who he is and what he represents. Even people who are apolitical, who haven't followed the Bush disasters in all their fine print feel on some level, I believe, that something has gone terribly wrong with how we are governed. But many people's grave misgivings have been largely suppressed, or are inarticulate. Yet people yearn now for some proportionate catharsis, in a democratic way. Hillary Clinton, much less John McCain, are ambassadors from the past, and they can't give it.
Enter Barack Obama, who embodies it. He's a categorical discontinuity with the past. Just electing him would cross a watershed line in our politics. No party establishment has embraced him. He hasn't punched his ticket and lined up the usual suspects behind him. Nobody owns him, and nobody owes him. Obama says: It's your country, it's your government, and so it's your power. Use it. Do it now. Yes, you can.
There has been no major American political figure who has been able to summon people's hope like this since Franklin Roosevelt. We cannot miss this opportunity. There is the potential here, through this man's candidacy, for not only a victory and a mandate of historic size, but also for a new relationship between the people and their government. That's what is summoning us...
posted 02/03/2008 at 01:31:40
Enter Barack Obama, who embodies it. He's a categorical discontinuity with the past. Just electing him would cross a watershed line in our politics. No party establishment has embraced him. He hasn't punched his ticket and lined up the usual suspects behind him. Nobody owns him, and nobody owes him. Obama says: It's your country, it's your government, and so it's your power. Use it. Do it now. Yes, you can.
There has been no major American political figure who has been able to summon people's hope like this since Franklin Roosevelt. We cannot miss this opportunity. There is the potential here, through this man's candidacy, for not only a victory and a mandate of historic size, but also for a new relationship between the people and their government. That's what is summoning us...
posted 02/03/2008 at 01:31:40
Obama v. Clinton on Television
Comment on The Huffington Post, 2/1/2008
Setting aside the substance of the most recent debate for a moment -- and both candidates' batting average was high in that regard -- let's think about the subjective subtext or impression that each candidate left. Hillary took visible control of the stage, of the camera, and also of CNN's Wolf Blitzer from the outset, projecting and thrusting herself at the audience as much as simply talking to them. And talk she did -- often giving long, interminable answers, riffing from one wonkish point to the next, as if the debate were a policy circus and she were one of the Flying Walendas. Meanwhile Barack just sat there, dignified, composed, still, as if he were a highly intelligent Buddhist monk. When he answered questions, he answered them -- he got to the point. His body language was quietly coiled. If you were taking in only the words they dispensed, it sounded like he was losing the debate -- until Iraq. But was it really Iraq that turned the tide for him? Or was it the fact that his entire manner was just wearing better as the debate progressed, that his evident comfort in his own skin, and simple directness in fielding questions, made you feel as if he didn't need to throw his stuff at us in order to be who he is, and to be, in a word, fitted for the role of president? Mrs. Clinton was auditioning for our favor, vamping it up. Obama was simply having a conversation with us. And that eventually is what makes voters most comfortable with a candidate. If he wins, this will be a reason why.
posted 02/01/2008 at 01:09:10
posted 02/01/2008 at 01:09:10
The Obama-Clinton Race in Microcosm
Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/30/2008
George Lakoff is right. For proof, consider these core statements about Edwards' withdrawal by Clinton and Obama:
Clinton: "Sen. Edwards is a friend of mine, he was a colleague in the Senate, and I have the highest regard for him, and I"m really admiring of what he has done to make sure that poverty was on the agenda here in America. He encouraged all of us in his passion and advocacy, and I hope he will continue that work because it is really important that we stay focused on what we"re going to do to help people. You know, I"m out here talking about making the economy work for everybody. And it needs to work for the middle class, working people, it needs to give a life line to poor people like we did in the 1990s, so in any way that I can be part of this effort to try to target poverty I am going to be."
Obama: "John Edwards has spent a lifetime fighting to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the struggling, even when it wasn"t popular to do or covered in the news. At a time when our politics is too focused on who"s up and who"s down, he made a nation focus again on who matters " the New Orleans child without a home, the West Virginia miner without a job, the families who live in that other America that is not seen or heard or talked about by our leaders in Washington. John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this " that two Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose. So while his campaign may end today, the cause of their lives endures for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America."
Clinton referred to herself eight times in four sentences. Obama talked about Edwards and what he represented. This is the Clinton v. Obama choice in microcosm. Her candidacy is about herself. His candidacy is about the country.
posted 01/30/2008 at 22:03:16
Clinton: "Sen. Edwards is a friend of mine, he was a colleague in the Senate, and I have the highest regard for him, and I"m really admiring of what he has done to make sure that poverty was on the agenda here in America. He encouraged all of us in his passion and advocacy, and I hope he will continue that work because it is really important that we stay focused on what we"re going to do to help people. You know, I"m out here talking about making the economy work for everybody. And it needs to work for the middle class, working people, it needs to give a life line to poor people like we did in the 1990s, so in any way that I can be part of this effort to try to target poverty I am going to be."
Obama: "John Edwards has spent a lifetime fighting to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the struggling, even when it wasn"t popular to do or covered in the news. At a time when our politics is too focused on who"s up and who"s down, he made a nation focus again on who matters " the New Orleans child without a home, the West Virginia miner without a job, the families who live in that other America that is not seen or heard or talked about by our leaders in Washington. John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this " that two Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose. So while his campaign may end today, the cause of their lives endures for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America."
Clinton referred to herself eight times in four sentences. Obama talked about Edwards and what he represented. This is the Clinton v. Obama choice in microcosm. Her candidacy is about herself. His candidacy is about the country.
posted 01/30/2008 at 22:03:16
Empire and Terrorism
Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/29/2008
Gary Hart is absolutely right. The Bush-McCain policy of squatting in Iraq with permanent military bases has the look and effect of maintaining an American empire in a part of the world that has resented our presence since the moment Iraq was invaded and began to disintegrate. What he doesn't mention is that Bush and McCain justify this policy by claiming that the threat and occasional use of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in that region is necessary to quell Islamist terrorism, which would otherwise kill Americans in their beds. But if military garrisons and attacks are the only or most visible means of curbing terrorism, they will -- as they did in Iraq -- inflame the very danger they are supposed to douse. An entirely new strategy -- to pull out the political and social roots of terrorism, and not merely whack the weeds of radical fighters who spring up in opposition to U.S. forces -- is desperately needed. Which is why a totally fresh perspective is desperately needed in the White House.
posted 01/29/2008 at 23:04:37
posted 01/29/2008 at 23:04:37
The Cold War and the Legacy of President Kennedy
Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/27/2008
Steve Clemons says that John F. Kennedy was "a hard core Cold War hawk" who "approved the invasion of other nations and approved of regime change as a tool of American foreign policy." This is a serious distortion of American history and a slur on the full record of the Kennedy presidency. Within months of taking office, President Kennedy -- despite his doubts -- allowed the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba mounted by Cuban emigres to receive U.S. air support. Its failure taught him the perils of American military involvement in "regime change." He would never have attempted the kind of pre-emptive full-scale military attack on another country that Bush performed in Iraq. And as for being a "Cold War hawk," if that were true, President Kennedy could never have called for negotiations on a nuclear arms test ban with the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War, and in the same speech, call for a new era of "world law." That speech was delivered 45 years ago at American University, where tomorrow Edward and Caroline Kennedy will endorse and embrace Senator Barack Obama. They know the Kennedy legacy better than anyone. We should trust their judgment.
posted 01/27/2008 at 23:47:19
posted 01/27/2008 at 23:47:19
The Clinton Campaign and Negative Politics
Comment on The Huffington Post, 1/14/2008
The Clinton campaign's strategy this week seems clear: to try to tarnish Barack Obama's integrity by using surrogates to regurgitate innuendos about his past, and to use Bill to throw out a constant flurry of invented "how dare he?" political charges, to goad the Obama campaign into constant rounds of he-said-she-said political recriminations. If he takes the bait, it would only divert him from mobilizing the full reach of his potential support, which dwarfs anything she could ever muster.
As David Bender suggests, this would work in capturing the nomination only at the cost of irretrievably dividing the party. I know a number of die-hard Democrats who prefer Obama without previously having felt any disregard for Clinton, who are now disgusted with the disingenuous and self-absorbed nature of her behavior in this campaign. Not only is there an effective ceiling on her general-election support due to the antagonism (perhaps undeserved) that most Republicans feel toward her, there is a brand-new disdain that many liberal Democrats are now developing toward the tactics and the discourse that the Clintons are deploying in their drive to discredit their chief rival. Unless she is either defeated decisively in major states on February 5, or substantially modifies her strategy of slamming Obama with distorted claims about him, she could dissolve the chances of a Democratic victory in November.
The Clintons seem to think they can win only by playing old-fashioned, ends-justify-the-means politics. That should make clearer to Obama his only available strategy: ignore them, make more robust the vision of the America he wants to lead, and mobilize with a passion the new, younger voters who have seen in him the promise of a new political future for this country.
posted 01/14/2008 at 23:05:03
As David Bender suggests, this would work in capturing the nomination only at the cost of irretrievably dividing the party. I know a number of die-hard Democrats who prefer Obama without previously having felt any disregard for Clinton, who are now disgusted with the disingenuous and self-absorbed nature of her behavior in this campaign. Not only is there an effective ceiling on her general-election support due to the antagonism (perhaps undeserved) that most Republicans feel toward her, there is a brand-new disdain that many liberal Democrats are now developing toward the tactics and the discourse that the Clintons are deploying in their drive to discredit their chief rival. Unless she is either defeated decisively in major states on February 5, or substantially modifies her strategy of slamming Obama with distorted claims about him, she could dissolve the chances of a Democratic victory in November.
The Clintons seem to think they can win only by playing old-fashioned, ends-justify-the-means politics. That should make clearer to Obama his only available strategy: ignore them, make more robust the vision of the America he wants to lead, and mobilize with a passion the new, younger voters who have seen in him the promise of a new political future for this country.
posted 01/14/2008 at 23:05:03
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
posted 02/14/2008 at 21:07:04