Here it is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/l02gop.html
To the Editor:
I agree with Gail Collins that women are not going to vote for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska just because she’s a woman.
What’s more, the vice-presidential picks of the two candidates indicate how they view the presidency.
Barack Obama chose his running mate after weeks of careful deliberation, finally settling on someone who is well known and with whom he can govern.
John McCain chose his running mate as a knee-jerk reaction, settling for someone he met only this year and interviewed only once as a potential running mate.
Mr. Obama took his responsibility seriously. Mr. McCain played politics instead.
For the last eight years, we’ve had a president who has politicized every department of the executive branch. Mr. McCain’s vice-presidential choice shows me that his administration would operate exactly like President Bush’s — with politics at the forefront and with a reactionary agenda. Liz Arnett
El Cerrito, Calif., Aug. 30, 2008
Here's what I got published on June 12, 2008.
My gratitude to Gail Collins for “The Audacity of Listening” (column, July 10). She points out that those people who are wringing their hands about Barack Obama’s “flip-flops” haven’t been paying attention.
Most of what people are calling flip-flops are long-held positions of Mr. Obama that some voters chose not to pay attention to during the primaries.
Mr. Obama is working to change the process and practice of politics as we know it through a rejection of ideology in favor of common sense and by affirming the need for grass-roots change.
He is building the narrative that will convince all Americans, once and for all, that we need universal health care, that we need to invest heavily in education, that we need to rebuild our economy in a way that addresses climate change.
Leadership requires compromise, and as long as Mr. Obama uses compromise as a means to reach an end and not as an end in itself, then I say, “Yes, we can!”
Liz Arnett El Cerrito, Calif., July 10, 2008
Link:
I did the phonebanking from home thing. I did the precinct door-to-door thing. I really wanted to get involved in the primary, and these were the ways I tried. But I wasn't very good at it. I'm not a salesperson at heart. I am a relativist, mostly, and the idea of trying to convince someone to vote for my guy doesn't sit well with me. I had a great time making phone calls because of the interesting people I talked to, but I don't think I was able to put aside my squeamish feeling about pushing my politics on someone else.
Voter registration has been a completely different experience for me. Here is a situation in which I'm actually doing something practical that helps a person participate in our democracy, helps them get a little chore done, and I don't have to preach to them. This is the kind of thing that appeals to me: helping people.
Obama has inspired me to get involved, to get to know my community, to understand what it means to be American in a POSITIVE way. To me, registering voters is a great way to do this.
Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation. It had to serve as the center of the community's political, economic, and social as well as spiritual life; it understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world.
