Looks like Hillary’s near-tearful moment over the terrible tragedy for the American polity that awaits us if the good forces she represents don’t win–which is what she was saying, if not actually feeling, when she fell apart–will hurt her and if not a Muskie moment, could signal the breakdown of her campaign in N.H. People excuse her by saying, "She’s exhausted," but so was Muskie, and so is Obama. Part of the reason a campaign works is we get to see the candidates tested by exhaustion, if not an actual world crisis. Hillary seemed girlish, and afraid to express her true feelings, whatever they are.
It is interesting to compare her tearinesss with Obama’s non-tears. On NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams handed Obama the latest Newsweek with a beautiful cover image from his Iowa victory speech and the phrase: "Our Time for Change Has Come." Obama hadn’t seen the arresting image. Williams said, with a soft thrill in his voice, How does this make you feel? Obama said it made him think of his mother, who’s not here. How proud she would be. Then he said that at such moments his mother’s chin trembled and her voice shook, and she broke down. Obama did a little bit of a parody of his mother crying, then tossed the magazine back to Williams. Peter Kaplan, the highly-intuitive editor of the Observer, always said to me that Obama, like Jack Kennedy, is cold, and that’s good. In that moment, showing no emotion when others of us would have been unable to speak, I saw the same thing. Isn’t that the guy you want with the little nuclear football?
I guess the same characteristic in a white european man would result in a completely opposite reaction.
Obama has a forked tongue, and he went to Harvard. Sorry but a good speechwriter is hardly gonna assuage my political cynicism at this point in America's imperial, democratic, and economic collapse. Obama will say anything, his chutzpah in this regard is matched only by Hillary's. I don't know, maybe Obama can close his credibility gap with me. But I don't know how. Maybe nominating Abraham Lincoln's carcass for VP?
And look, I have nothing against Harvard per se; but wouldn't it be something to have a president who didn't even go to college or especially not the Ivy League, who became successful, popular, and powerful without going through any grooming by establishment elites and their institutions? Would it be too much to have just one genuine, self-taught through experience, sincere, intelligent, hard-working, straight-talking, and legitimately popular, that is, from the populus, candidate for president?
Maybe in the future popular movements in the U.S. (I'm crazy!), centered on I don't know ecology, democracy, worker's rights, justice, take your pick as any would have resonance right now, will yield a charismatic leader with actual legitimacy in the eyes of the people, naturally earning obsessive media derision in the process (but any publicity is good publicity). A person with such a backing, a legitimate movement of millions of Americans, that can use sheer mass to overturn the current military-media dictatorship–oops did I say that out loud? I meant "two party system".
His lack of emotion could simply mean he's a sociopath. Politics seems to draw them. "Obama did a little bit of a parody of his mother crying…" had echoes of George Bush mimicking the pleas of Carla Faye Tucker for clemency.
To quote P.J. O'Rourke, "However did such sewer fish swim upstream into our body politic?"
But power attracts those least able to wield it.
Surprised to see you falling all over Obama, Phil. Sonorous and glossy, yes, but inside nothing but empty platitudes.