He's a Reasonable Man So Get Off His Case
In a primary that could very well have driven Jesus to listen to Mark Penn's advice on going more negative on the 'money changers'--and one that has certainly caused Hillary Clinton to go shamefacedly racist--I'm pleasantly surprised at how much the Obama campaign has kept its cool. This is a man of impeccable integrity, who has surrounded himself with reasonable people telling him reasonable things. I hope that when this primary is over, Democrats of all kinds will realize what a privilege it will be to vote for him. I can recall following few other presidential hopefuls in the past five years--Zapatero, Johnson-Sirleaf, Bachelet, Rudd--who inspire such confidence. Recall that three major elections in the last ten days have elected a crazy person, a half-heartedly repentant fascist, and a fascist. Am I missing any others?
posted by Robot at 9:54 PM
2 Comments:
A British National Party member won a seat for the first time in the London assembly.
Also, as a hardworking, white American, I have to agree with you.
In all seriousness, I also see something in Obama that has been largely lacking on the presidential scene. It's like someone rummaged around in the DC closet of discarded presidential tactics and found "public servant." That's basically how Obama has conducted his campaign, with a conspicuous lack of invective.
It's quite amazing to me that Wright has been frogmarched out as an "America-hater" as a surrogate for Obama. Most liberals feel the need to distance themselves from Wright (e.g. Kevin Drum today: "egotistical ramblings"), but I'm not that disturbed by Wright, nor do I think it reflects poorly on Obama's character. I'm not claiming that that view is shared by many people, but that's their problem, not mine. Martin Luther King was working on a sermon called "Why America May Go to Hell" when he was killed, to cite a very relevant example. This is not to say that Wright is King at all, but had King lived, he very well could have ended up like Wright a la Jesse Jackson, another injustly maligned figure.
On the other hand, whereas you could construe Wright's words to say that he "justified" 9-11, McCain, Clinton, Obama, and most other politicians in congress (and perhaps the American public as well, for not stopping them), have actually implemented policies that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. (Clinton and Obama don't have to vote for those war spending bills, after all, let alone help authorize the goddamn war in Clinton's case.)
I don't know which is worse, McCain's open embracing of such policies, Clinton's hypocritical waffling, or Obama's tacit votes in support of funding, but the fact that McCain can essentially run on the same war platform as Bush tells me that something is terribly, terribly wrong with this nation and its political discourse. Reasonableness is something we left behind a long time ago.
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