Magna Cum Laude vs.Thank you Lawdy

A lot will be made this election cycle over McCain's years in public service versus Obama's. Hillary tried her best to breath life into the insinuation, "Look what putting inexperience in the White House has cost us the last 8 years."

Then today I get this e-mail:

"The academic records of the Presidential Candidates are clear:

Magna Cum Laude @ Harvard Univ Law School vs # 894 of 899 @ US Naval Academy.

Interesting facts, this is one of those situations where most right wing conservatives will ignore facts and just support McCain. If the shoe were on the other foot we all know they would be bashing Obama.

According to several sources (see link below) Senator John McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in his class at the U. S. Naval Academy in 1958, yet I've not seen this in ANY major media. I wonder if this would be the case if the roles were reversed and that unimpressive rank had been Senator Barack Obama's class ranking and Senator McCain had graduated MAGNA CUM LAUDE from Harvard Law School and been President of the Harvard Law Review--as did Senator Obama."

I think records are important and can't be ignored, but I wonder if we don't put too much emphasis on the past. Presidents have so many competent people around that, more often than not, it's not proven ability that matters as much as it is the direction and leadership. Bush has led us quite effectively (thanks to the competence of his camp) exactly where he wanted to. It's not where I want us to be, but he has no problems with it.

I would argue that the clearest indicators of Obama or McCain's future success in office is not their past, but their policy and vision of the present coupled with the nature and effectiveness of their current campaigns.

The Ironies of Campaignin'

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Worth Reconsidering

To presume is human, to reconsider sublime. At least that's what I'm beginning to believe as a father of three. Fatherhood asks one to do a great deal with often incomplete, misleading, and sometimes outright false information -- from arbitrating disputes to meting out appropriate consequences to picking cereal. I am loathe to admit the number of times I've rushed to judgment or totally misunderstood something as a dad. Sometimes the only thing that spares me from acting on dubious presumptions are a loving pair of deep mahogany eyes staring up at me, begging me to reconsider.

Art functions in a quite similar fashion. It asks us to reconsider our biases, our preferences, our intuitions, our world. That's what Barry Blitt was doing when he inked the cartoon, "Politics of Fear," which made the front cover of The New Yorker this month. And, yes, I join the ranks of Clarence Page and Jon Stewart believing that Blitt did a pretty good job.

read more on GP>>>

Exactly

VeeP Watch

Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia, is another not so bad looking prospect. He perhaps helps Obama bridge a connection with Southerners and Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic constituency is one thing John Edwards doesn't bring to the table. Tom Daschle is Roman Catholic, but not a Southerner. Kaine brings them both together.

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Dobson Hates Barack People!

VeeP

I'm liking John Edwards or Tom Daschle for Obama's VP right now. Obama said this week that he is looking for a partner who can be President, if necessary, and a great adviser. Chris Matthews points out that Obama also needs someone who doesn't make him look like the naive youngster. I think Edwards and Daschle meet all these criteria, particularly the third--even though both men are older than he, Edwards slightly and Daschle by about 13 years.

Though Daschle is very much a boomer, he's cool as hell and doesn't look like an old fogy next to Obama. Edwards, I believe, has the fortitude to implement a populous legislative agenda. Both men are extremely intelligent, can call it like they see it, yet are also team players. And both, I believe, would deliver key constituencies. What do you think?

Parallel Public Funding—The Audacity of Nope!

If you have a moment, listen to or watch these before reading futher:

• "In a Strategic Shift, Obama Opts to Forgo Public Financing", NewsHour 6/19-08 (12 min)
  
• "Shields & Brooks Discuss Obama's Fundraising Shift", NewsHour 6/20-08 (first 6 min)
  
• "Obama forgoes public financing", Meet the Press 6/22-08 (8 min)
• "Does Obama’s financing opt-out raise doubts?", Meet the Press 6/22-08 (4 min)
  

We can't have a new kind of politics on the terms set by our old politics.

One of the old terms we have to change is the guarantee that political gamers count on: the public just WON'T THINK and CAN'T REASON and will continue to accepted whatever interpretation ideological pundits, politicians and commentators offer.

Another of the old terms of debate we have to abandon is the misconception that APPROPRIATE CHANGE (change necessary to transcend gridlock) will fit neatly into traditional liberal-conservative ideological constructs. It won't. It can't, if one believes Albert Einstein.

Obama's choice to not commit to federally- and party-managed public funding of his campaign is not a flip-flop. He made no unconditional pledge to do so. He said he would IF he and his Republican opponent made mutually iron-clad commitments to close the loop-holes that make our campaign finance laws nigh useless. Though he is now more than willing to throw stones, McCain did not join Obama in going this far.

Obama's choice is also not simply a matter of pragmatism as an overwhelmingly cynical--when not indiscriminately antagonistic--mass media have suggested. It wasn't just the opportunity to go after more money (i.e. political expediency) that compelled Obama. He has already out-raised McCain more than 5 to 1, and he could have used the money raised during the primaries up until the Democratic Convention 8 weeks from now, plus the $85m of federal public financing, plus money spent on his behalf from the DNC. If winning at all costs were Obama's impetus, he would have done just this. It would have been the politically expedient way to have his cake and eat it too. As it now stands, Obama will raise money (and can spend as much as he raises), but not in amounts so extraordinary so as to dwarf the aforementioned composite amount. The difference is that now Obama will be funded in small amounts (on average less than $100) by a self-organizing, broad, identifiable coalition of "we the people"—not by an anonymous fiction often appealed to by politicians as the "general public" or the "American people—not to overlook deep-pocketed, well entrenched corporate interests who regularly manipulate the current system of so-called "public financing". This was in no wise a money play.

The laws allowing for the public financing of presidential campaigns were written in 1976 after Watergate. They are 30 years old and do little (if they ever did much) to address the ways strategists game the system today. We've all watched with disgust at how toothless those laws have been in their ability to subdue the influence of money in the political process. Yet for reasons I don't understand, we've accepted politician's banal excuses as to why they just can't do anything substantive about it and let them off the hook for compromising reform efforts to the point of uselessness.

Matthew Dowd, Republican stratigist, on ABC's This Week said Obama has created a "brand issue" for himself—"he's tarnished his brand." This comment belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the Obama brand—at least the part that has capture the imagination of post-ideological progressives like myself. Obama's brand is safe with us if all you have on him is that Obama chose to take a transparent position parallel to a too easily exploitable so-called "public finance system" that has yet to limit the impact of big money in American politics. I'll take that brand of politics over the status quo any day.

Believe it or not, I'm not an Obama or bust guy. I'm certain he will disappoint me in some ways. But this isn't one of them. Like I tell kids who want to be mad at name-calling, we have to "consider the source." The push-back to this move is coming from all those who have a vested interest in our political system as it is. Obama is finding ways to subvert that system, and I'm glad for it. It gives me hope.

*Thanks to Stephen Colbert (or his writers) for the clever and insightful phrase "The Audacity of Nope"—I love it!

Baracknophobia

The Assassination of Hillary... [and] Barack

Assuming the best (until evidence to the contrary surfaces), I think this is brilliant! Disturbing, yes—intentionally so (not for children)—but BRILLIANT...

www.theassassinationofhillaryclinton.com

www.theassassinationofbarackobama.com

Story by NY Times blogger Sewell Chan

"It's art....It's about character assassination—about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media."

-Yazmany Arboleda, 27-year-old Boston-born performance artist

Gut Reaction

Having just finished hearing Obama speak, what strikes me most notably is that John McCain and Hillary Clinton's speeches were about themselves, while Obama's speech was so graciously about others.

That is so telling...

Furthermore, Barak put the Democratic Party on notice that his high-road, others-interested methodology should become the standard now that he's the presumptive nominee.


What brings tears to my eyes is that with Obama as President my children will grow up in an America in which, for the first time, no one can say that they have no right, no place, no voice... and seem even remotely credible.


The commentator line of the night came from Carl Bernstein on CNN, with regards to Hillary's attempts to strong-arm herself into the VP position:

"The Clintons are the Ike & Tina Turner of politics—they don't do it nice-and-easy, they do it nice-and-rough."

Another great quote:

"She almost offered him the vice presidency tonight."

Want the Right to Help Shape the World?

Barak Obama broke ties with Trinity United Church of Christ this weekend. I hate it. He had to do it, no doubt. It was the politically expedient thing to do. He probably couldn't have won the general election without it... but I hate it.

George Will said it well when he described it as the only way Obama could "coderize the wound." Now, George and I probably differ greatly on what we interpret that wound to be. The wound that George and others often speak of is, frankly, imaginary to one who has been through the crucible of race. It's the self-delusion that racism as an institution has been dismantled and that the wounds it once inflicted on the public psyche are categorically on the mend and that comments such as those made by Rev. Wright or Father Phleger only serve to lacerate regenerated tissue. I find this to be naive wish-fulfillment. The wound I perceive has been the lancing of the dominant culture's racial sensibilities and ahistorical fantasies, precipitated by the viable Presidential candidacy of a person of color and the inevitable revelation that his story validates some but not most of the myths the dominant culture has told itself about "truth, justice and the American way." (By the way, "dominant culture" in this instance is not code for "white".) Obama had to leave Trinity because all too many could not have heard his message of unity otherwise.

I get why he left. I believe Obama understands intuitively an ethic that is difficult for me to appreciate at this very moment: If you want the right to help shape the world, you have to give the world the right to help shape you. The same is true of one's country. And these are the very rights—not just privileges—we extend to the person we as citizens vote into the White House.

Obama's decision to leave Trinity is thus deeply political, so deeply political that its public expediency trumps any personal or spiritual considerations. Not that there are no personal or spiritual considerations, but the argument that they are somehow paramount is kinda like arguing the significance of one's flashlight in the flood of a glaring spot light. Yet I do not believe this to be a bad thing. It's probably the most righteous politically expedient thing I've ever seen done.

Love It!

What to Do About a Changing World

Hey, Democrats never claimed to be the party of Lincoln...




He's the man who puts conservationism back in conservatism...

The Non-Attack!

"Hamaus, Foreign Policy, Inexperience, George Bush's 3rd Term, Iraq, Age--all of it on the table--in one exchange!"
-Tim Russert, Meet the Press

If Obama remains true to the high road that is 3 weeks from bringing him the nomination, dyed-in-the wool Republicans will only be left with having to manufacture scandal against him. We got a taste this past week of the non-Attack accusations that are likely to be levied in the general election this fall (yes, I'm feeling hopeful again, possibly for no good reason)...

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Watch first this NewsHour segment regarding the Presidential Campaign since the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on last Tuesday (up to 6:17).





Now analyze that in the light of this NewsHour segment regarding the reporting of race in this race.


I think the Clintons are brilliant and have understood how to exploit these dynamics long before and far better than many. This is why my biggest contention with Hillary ("since the very beginning") has been that she scares me--particularly her commitment to political expediency.

*I have no desire to perpetuate negativity. This is satire. If any of it comes off as just mean, tell me why and I'll take it down.

Just Mad!

As I watched Barak Obama on Meet the Press yesterday, I was just mad. Yet I couldn't tell who to be mad with. Is it Obama's own intuitions that compel him to step further and further away from the prophetic tradition of the church—embodied in the untimely protests of Rev. Jeremiah Wright—or is it the dominant culture (of all races) demanding this kind of political expediency from him in an effort to maintain their delusions of blamlessness?

I don't know. What I do know is that the net result is to establish a public square in which no critique of America is ever considered, whether just or not. Such a mindset is just mad within a democracy.

The Vicissitudes of Agreement

Although the results aren't outside of realm of the expected, someone please help me understand: When did 618 people become a representative sampling of anyone but themselves? What intentionality do you imagine was given to making sure a multiplicity of demographics were represented?

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