I want to share a moment that illustrates, yet again, what an exceptional human being we are on the cusp of electing to the Presidency of the United States of America.
On this crisp, stunningly beautiful fall afternoon at Ida Lee Park, a short walk from our home in Leesburg, VA, Barack Obama electrified us all with his authentic, palpable, humanity; his sublime connection with the crowd; his grace and ease in our midst, his profound mastery of language...
I was standing in the crowd maybe 40 or 50 feet back from the podium, and at a point well into his speech Barack began a sentence with:
"If I become president, I will....".
We all seek respect daily, but how does it come about? Is it automatic or does it have to be earned?
We tend to respect people for what they do, their birthright and the role they play. If we did not acknowledge and validate them as the source of that status, action or expertise, we would not show them respect. Respect is automatic during the initial first impressions, but it is never static and has to be earned afterwards to be maintained. It is difficult to respect someone even when they are being negative and hostile, so we tend to wait for people to 'earn' that respect, though it is awarded without question at the beginning. In effect, a kind of respect with probation.
Respect does not come easily either. The very act of respecting someone means putting them either on par, or above, ourselves, in estimation. We tend to respect people only when we personally recognise them as the source of something wholesome, unique, beneficial or empowering: for example, a particular knowledge, action, expertise or leadership, not just through their work or social status. We have to feel we can trust them. That is why some people who are simply 'in charge', and have failed professional expectations, are not really respected.
A few years ago, I was absent-mindedly watching the regional news on television when I was suddenly rooted to the spot, overcome by feelings of surprise, elation and excitement. I had to share the moment with someone else and, in my rush to get my husband to see what was rapidly reducing me to a babbling state of incoherence, I knocked over the cup of tea, caught my jumper sleeve on the door handle and grazed my knee on the coffee table.
I had never seen anyone I actually knew on television before, and there, being interviewed large as life in front of me, was the owner of the local furniture shop who had sold us our dining room chairs only the week before. I was so thrilled, anyone would have thought that I was on the box. Television suddenly gave her superhuman status and, having actually spoken to her, that somehow made us part of the unfolding scene. For days I could talk of nothing else.
This event returned to mind when I received a Christmas card some months later from a girlfriend I hadn't seen in seven years. Her brief note said simply,"Saw you on television again recently and told everybody I knew you." Having seen me as a panel guest on a programme, she had reacted in exactly the same way, wanting to share vicariously in the brief moment of glory.
Seeing Barack Obama making his magnificent speech, surrounded by so many enthusiastic people who liked him, believed in him and was anxious for him to win, brought these experiences back vividly to mind. I felt I was there in the midst of those people, sharing that wonderful moment. It also reinforced the key part RECOGNITION plays in success in modern times because of our media age. If it is not confirmed by the public or the media in some way, success is not really defined in social terms. Having that recognition in all aspects of our lives is essential and it is clear that Barack now has his in abundance.
Who Do You Want in Charge?
The crisis in the financial industry that has taken over the headlines is viewed as serious, far-reaching, and complex. The next president of the United States will need to address these issues when he takes office next year. Who do you want for the job?
John McCain is talking loudly now, but comes late to the subject. McCain has said that he always is on the side of less regulation. One of his advisors, Phil Gramm, who’s been pushed to the back for calling Americans whiners, is the author of legislation that removed or forbade oversight for much of the practices now viewed as dangerous. Carly Fiorina, a failed executive who, in addition to losing money, was involved in wire-tapping her board, is another key advisor, but she is less on the scene after saying that none of the candidates would be capable of running a large company. It is true that McCain has very little experience in the private sector and has said he is computer illiterate. Involvement with the last major financial scandal nearly ended McCain's career during his first term as senator. He was one of the Keating 5 and officially reprimanded by the Senate for having exercised poor judgment. His attention to campaign finance reform may have served to make up for this, but lobbyists, including many from the finance industry, still dominate his team. McCain has downplayed his prior admission that he needs to be schooled on economics, but he does tend to have simple solutions to everything: "drill, drill, drill" and fire the head of the SEC. He has confessed to favoring making decisions in haste.
In contrast, Barack Obama has focused on the economy, especially as it relates to ordinary Americans, as a presidential candidate, U.S. Senator, and Illinois State senator. He spoke about the impending problems with mortgages and the need for better regulation more than a year ago. His advisors, in the words of Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, are "mainstream with a dash of creativity." They include Warren Buffett, Paul O'Neill, and Paul Voelcker, along with young, well-respected economists such as Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago. Obama is known to reach out to others to test ideas and report on actual experience (for example, successful programs in education). The Obama campaign, a large enterprise started from nothing with over 2.5 million investors, is a showcase for the use of new technology. Obama's proposals demonstrate that he understands how issues are interconnected and his plans address immediate problems as well as long-term challenges. In contrast with drill, drill, drill, Obama realizes people need immediate help with high gas prices. For the long term, his detailed proposals include removing the subsidies and advantages given to Big Oil and stimulating the development and use of alternative energy sources. This will generate new jobs as well as improve security and lessen the effects of climate change. Obama also has plans to improve mathematics and science education, which will aid innovation and industry in the United States.
By any measures of judgment, temperament, advisors, and executive competence, John McCain is not the person to put in charge of solving the complex problems of Wall Street and Main Street. Barack Obama is.
Just a quick response on FISA since some supporters expressed disappointment recently. Senator Obama demonstrated thoughtful consideration to make the right call on matters that realistically require both compromise and toleration. Most leaders can only do one or the other.
The last person I know of that had this competency was Daj Hammersjold, the first secretary general of the United Nations. Supporters need to embrace the duality of compromise and tolerance in order to change Washington. Senator Obama is not a flip-flopper but rather a critical thinker and a savvy politician. He is a systems thinker and leader. This means the whole is greater than the sum of the parts...the way our founding fathers intended.
If you were hiring a president using the same “cheesy” interviewing template you were taught in college, who would you hire?
My business career planning class preached the STAR analysis. When asked about the experience that qualifies you for the job, you better be able to name a significant Situation in your repertoire that you can be gauged on, identify the Task you were charged with, point to the Action you took to accomplish the task and the ultimate Result of your efforts.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would certainly point to running their presidential campaigns as the biggest thing they’ve ever managed.
Obama crafted and has thus far stuck to a single message of change that has resonated across America and propelled him throughout the campaign to unprecedented political success and certified rock star status. He has raised a record amount of cash, inspired throngs of adoring young people to rise out of the political woodworks to reclaim their politics and built the broadest coalition of electoral support in the process. Barack has shamelessly chosen to earn this nomination the old fashioned way… winning the most states, the most delegates, the most votes and generating the most enthusiasm. By taking major controversies and criticisms head-on without resorting to the same old Washington politics of spin, he has proved that politicians don't have to choose between telling the truth and winning. Obama's cool, collected, stellar performance under fire provides great insight into the kind of commander-in-chief he would be. He’s even been known to give a good speech.
Hillary has pushed out multiple rationales for why she should be hired. First, she was Clinton the inevitable. Then she became Hillary I-have-the-most-experience-how-dare-you-question-me Clinton. It didn’t work so she tried to weave change into experience. As of yesterday, she was still searching for a single unified message to define herself. The Clinton campaign has been such an unbelievable train wreck of a managed vessel that it’s been in self-destruct mode since the first ballot was cast. They ran out of money once, authored some of the most disingenuous logic-deficient and common sense-defying caricatures of opponents, and can’t even decide on a single definition of victory. Hillary has brazenly fabricated and sexed up stories in an apparent attempt to pad her resume when simply telling the truth would have sufficed because she’s accomplished a lot in her career. By all accounts, she’s chosen to surround herself with loyalists with little regard for competence as it applies to strategy. That's why her current path to the nomination, by her own account, is mostly independent of her own popular appeal and has been outsourced to superdelegates.
Again, if you had Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sitting across from you in your corner office, who would you hire?
First and foremost, I do not believe in any way, shape or form that Hillary Clinton can be, or will be, a clone of George W. Bush if she was elected President of the United States…..as far as I know.
BUT…
There are some striking similarities between how Senator Clinton has managed her campaign in relation to how Bush has managed the Iraq War.
Most experts will agree that there is no correlation between the best run campaigns and the best candidate. These same experts did not study if there is a correlation between how a candidate runs their campaign and how they perform if they are elected to office. They cite such examples as Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul as financially sound campaigns that didn’t go anywhere. I disagree. The Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich campaigns fizzled out because of how they performed as candidates. Most elections are glorified popularity contests. If it was about experience and who did the best job, instead of who is most likely to get elected, boring candidates like Kucinich and Gore would win every time. No one doubts that in office, these men would perform exceptionally well.
As I outlined before, Senators Obama, McCain and Clinton do not have any executive experience of any type whether in the private sector or in public office. Their campaigns are the largest and most complex organizations they have run to date. Therefore, I believe every voter should factor in how each have performed as CEO of their respective campaigns if they applying for the job of CEO of the United States.
In my opinion, if you have loved Bush’s leadership on Iraq, then you will love Hillary Clinton.
Frank Rich juxtaposes the two Democratic candidates in a refreshingly no-nonsense assessment of what their campaigns can really tell us about them and what we should expect.
The Audacity of HopelessnessBy FRANK RICH Published: February 24, 2008 WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.Barry Blitt It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency. The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup. That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo. Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work. But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating. The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3. In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline. This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid. Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit. As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country. Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn’t won in “any of the significant states” outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the “insult 40 states” strategy. The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters. If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall. The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity. There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence. In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward. What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.
The Audacity of Hopelessness
By FRANK RICH
Published: February 24, 2008
WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.Barry Blitt
It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.
The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.
That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.
Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.
But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.
The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.
In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.
This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.
Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.
As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country.
Bill Clinton knocked states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mr. Penn declared that Mr. Obama hadn’t won in “any of the significant states” outside of his home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa, among the other insignificant sites of Obama victories. The blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga has hilariously labeled this Penn spin the “insult 40 states” strategy.
The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.
If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.
The other persistent gripe among some Clinton supporters is that a hard-working older woman has been unjustly usurped by a cool young guy intrinsically favored by a sexist culture. Slate posted a devilish video mash-up of the classic 1999 movie “Election”: Mrs. Clinton is reduced to a stand-in for Tracy Flick, the diligent candidate for high school president played by Reese Witherspoon, and Mr. Obama is implicitly cast as the mindless jock who upsets her by dint of his sheer, unearned popularity.
There is undoubtedly some truth to this, however demeaning it may be to both candidates, but in reality, the more consequential ur-text for the Clinton 2008 campaign may be another Hollywood classic, the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy “Pat and Mike” of 1952. In that movie, the proto-feminist Hepburn plays a professional athlete who loses a tennis or golf championship every time her self-regarding fiancé turns up in the crowd, pulling her focus and undermining her confidence with his grandstanding presence.
In the 2008 real-life remake of “Pat and Mike,” it’s not the fiancé, of course, but the husband who has sabotaged the heroine. The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.
What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.
Interesting article by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Strange..Hillary's emphasis is all about competence, yet as seen with her closest political advisors, she tends to value loyalty over competence (sound familiar - oh yeah, that's right. Sounds like George W.!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
As Democrats, most of us probably like Hillary. As Democratic candidates go, she's shown herself to be more often on our side than against us. Yet, because she does often come across as so willing to compromise our democratic ideals -- as in her vote to authorize use of force in Iraq, and now the labeling of the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist organization -- that she appears more and more to be a "Bush-lite", centrist Democrat. Just the type we don't need now. We need a candidate who will work for change from their heart, not just from words uttered on a campaign trail in an attempt to win votes; with weakness in will and commitment to principle. Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to me to be the personification of how one uses situation ethics coupled with charismatic appeal to convince and persuade while not being truly in touch with her inner compass -- adroit at being a chameleon -- the type of politician who can win elections but has trouble being respected internationally. She does not have deep convictions upon which she is willing to stand, being tossed to and fro' by the perceived need for influencing and responding to the results of polls. Fortunately, the only poll that really counts is the actual voting process.
I know the Obama campaign is going to fair very well from Jan 3rd through Feb 5th. He is the personification of character and competence -- he has shown himself to be the best at using sound reasoning skills and judgment to reach the right decisions. Adroit at being a fundraiser yet that is not his greatest skill. (We need VOE's so badly in this country, but that's a subject for another time).
His positions on the use of military force, environment, the need for foreign diplomacy and the boldness to be willing to talk with our supposed enemies without preconditions; in all areas he is willing to listen and use reasoning to reach the best decision. Barack Obama is the best qualified for leadership out of the candidates our Democratic party is offering this season. He has the skills and experience to bring people together, to heal our divided nation. (Unfortunately, I do not believe Senator Clinton can win the general election as she will rekindle all of the deep divisions . I think Karl Rove is correct on this).
Domestically and internationally he will lead the charge to return our nation to the our previous status as most respected nation. I think the Clinton's will make many great contributions in the future, yet she should have the courage to step aside, even to retire. Let Barack take us forward from here. Barack's time is ... now.
Hillary, it's time to let the next generation lead.
Sent to Sen. Byrd's Office by email Aug. 1, 2007 10AM EST
Feel free to send something of your own - it can only help.
www.senate.gov
Dear Senator Byrd,
First of all I would like to thank you for your prophetic, courageous, inspired and judicious positions on Iraq since 2002.
Other Senators have also been wise, but you are the standard-bearer of wisdom.
I am flabbergasted that some politicians are still able to get away with the claim that they had bad information, as if you and your esteemed colleagues didn't even exist then.
You had the same information, and you made the obvious right choice. Thank Goodness we have senior statesmen like you who are not blinded by the politics of the moment.
You have truly earned the title "Dean of the Congress."
Second, I would like to ask you to advise where I can go to make a contribution to your re-election campaign over the Internet.
Third, I would like to ask you to make a public endorsement of, and to actively campaign for Senator Obama.
Your active support of his campaign will make all the difference in the world. Your sturdy presence in front of the camera with Senator Obama will be a monument to the power of recollection, reconciliation, courage and hope on many levels.
I strongly believe that our next president should have minimal executive experience. The imperial presidency has gone too far already.
Al Gore is right to focus on our departure from civilized rational interpersonal discourse as a core problem of our rapidly transforming information-age society. We need to return prominence to the core institution of our democracy, the legislature, the glorious institution which is the true mother of our nation.
While Senator Obama's experience pales in comparison to yours, it seems clear to me that he has more real legislative depth than any of the other front-runners. His attitude seems to me "How are we going to really get this done?" rather than "How am I going to get you to vote on this."
Prevailing this fall will not require long speeches, even from gifted orators like you and Sen. Obama.
A photo of you and hin, with any or all of the following 4 captions or sound tracks will be truly powerful and persuasive:
1. "We had all the information we needed to avoid this tragedy."
[OOPS! I just realized that one could be horribly misinterpreted. LOL ;)]
1. "We had all the information we needed to avoid the tragedy in Iraq."
2. "We can't just blame Bush"
[not in ltr - we need to redefine what this phrase means in people's head's: it means "We need to blame Hillary and Edwards, too"]
3. "We made a terrible mistake when our justified anger led us to let our country lash out irrationally."
4. "Support us now as we try and put our country back on the path of truth and righteousness"
No. 2 actually might spark the most discussion. Much needed discussion.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate my gratitude to you and my desire to support your vital work.
I sincerely hope that an endorsement of Sen. Obama by you in September or early October will be the hallmark event which shifts the Fall campaign.
We need your help. As you know, Sen. Obama has been attacked for supporting you, and has almost certainly lost votes from one of his core constituencies as a result (we all know which one).
We've almost all lost our conscious racism, but we also know that it has been proven that when a black and a white walk in to apply for a job, we just "feel" the white is more competent. Your assistance in laying this "competence" bug-a-boo to rest will be invaluable.
I sincerely hope by joining the forces of your campaign with Sen. Obama's, all progressives will make serious advances in both executive and legislative elections.
In 1978, America was "liberal," then Reagan won by a landslide. I believe we can hope for the same in 2008 as the pendulum swings back left.
With heartfelt thanks and sincere respect,
Tom Fennell
7421 Valley
Omaha, NE 68124
(away from home until August 20)
See a great article on Blogging at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-scher/why-the-dems-are-going-to_b_58497.html
It is supposed to be published in the World Herald tommorrow.
As a born and bred Omahan, I am staggered to learn that this little gem of an article is to be published in our beloved "Weird Herald."
Last week's lightening foreign policy slugfest zapped me out of my slumber. Blogging forces one to respond to many positions, which can be very liberating.
My blogging in the past week has led me to the following main insights:
1. We need a leader with strong legislative talents to restore the balance of powers in our government. We don't need another imperial executive.
2. Barack Hussein Obama is the only leader among our frontrunners who will have a shred of credibility in the Muslim Mid-East.
Hard as it still is for us to feel comfortable about being led by a black man, led by Barack, we may be able to find some sort of less horrible path in the Mid-East. Sound like pie in the sky?
I lived in Berlin in 1985-96 when Reagan arrived and we all called him crazy and unrealistic. I've lived in Russia since 1989. Not everything's rosy, but amazing things have happened, things many said would never happen.
Rejecting the opportunity Barack's candidacy offers us will doom us to yet more, and worse strife, and to the inexorable advancement of mass terrorism.
3. There are 5 stages of reaction to tragedy: shock, denial, anger, grief, and loss.
We made the mistake of acting out blindly during our anger stage with 9/11, which has only led too an even greater tragic loss in Iraq. God forbid that we should continue to act out in anger again; the losses will be devastating and senseless.
As we move to grieve for Iraq, we will finally also truly grieve for 9/11, a process which has been unnaturally delayed.
As we move to return to reality and finally grieve our irretrievable losses, Barack, the only frontrunner not blinded by pandering to anger, will be our steady hand in finding us a new and perhaps even better place in the world to replace the one we've lost forever.
Early February I wrote a blog on Barack Obama, the new presidential hopeful. Then I was in awe of the 'audacity' of this man from nowhere, much inspired by him and his dreams and I wondered whether his hopeful dash had anything to teach the UK. However, I concluded my blog with these words: "Much as I would like Barack Obama to become the next President, I do not think that he will, on this round. I think he should be Hillary Clinton's running mate and what an unstoppable team they would be - his charisma with her experience, not to mention the differing gender, race and personal ethos which would add extra appeal. He would at least dent her conservatism while gaining the necessary training to succeed after her.
Well, two months down the line, I take it ALL back! In my humble opinion Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States of America for the following reasons:
