This morning I heard Obama on NPR going to a barbecue and saying, "It's not a barbecue unless there's barbecue. If there's no barbecue, it's a cookout." That's my kind of guy: an egghead who offers theoretical definitions, doesn't get into the event.
All the talk on MSNBC about portraying Obama as a real person to Americans strikes me as deceptive. He's a real person, a cerebral person, a thoughtful man who has never made time to bro' down the way salt-of -the-earth Joe Biden has.
Obama's a lot smarter than Biden, and that's why I like him. My father-in-law is voting for Obama because he believes that Obama comprehends the huge energy problems the country faces and will show imagination and intelligence; when McCain mocked Obama's tire-air-pressure recommendation, it justly angered my father-in-law because McCain was being stupid about something really important. Last week I had dinner with a leading prof of international relations and when I said, "Do you think anything we're saying about Israel/Palestine would come as a surprise to Obama?" he said, "No way." And he knows folks who know Obama. Folks. Sorry!–I meant intellectuals. Obama likes ideas. That's why I like him; we need a whipsmart man who understands the tremendously-challenging issues before us. Right now on MSNBC there was an ad about the climate crisis. Who can doubt that word, crisis. McCain lacks the intellectual scope to deal with such questions.
All the efforts by the media to make Obama into a down-to-earth guy who can connect with the ordinary person's travails are bogus. He will care about ordinary people, as FDR did, as Reagan did. But he isn't going to really feel their pain, it's not in his skill set. I insist that Obama is a great man, that he has the potential to be a leader like Lincoln or FDR or Reagan, all of whom were aloof. Great men don't act like us at a barbecue.
Phil, you and I would have a great time at a cocktail party because I really appreciate your cast of mind. I'm stlll smiling over Hon, we have to talk.
Alexander Cockburn over at counterpunch shares his thoughts on the unknown quantity that is Obama. Joseph Biden is the rudder for that unknown quantity, placed there at the behest of the party leadership to assure that the ship of state will be steered responsibly.
http://counterpunch.com/cockburn08232008.html
As for the overall state of the race, race remains the big factor. “I still suspect Obama has no chance,” a CounterPunch contributor remarked in an email last week. “Not enough people in enough crucial states will vote for a semi-black metro-sexual, especially when they get through calumniating him. I'd never vote for him myself, but he's probably preferable. I figure he'd only be as bad as Bush. McCain, I think, is unbalanced enough to start a nuclear war, and not stupid enough to be managed by others.”
That's deep shit.
i actually heard the NPR bit too and though i am supporter had different feelings. i thought more like this and you will lose this election. you were invited to a barbecue and what do you do when you get there? you start quibbling irrelevantly over barbecue versus cookout
I don't claim that Obama is stupid, but what has he done to deserve the fawning that he gets from people like Phil? He moved up the ranks so quickly that it is very likely that he was pushed. He's also been handled gingerly. Why the special treatment?
Most reasonably intelligent people have ideas about how to solve the energy crisis, but I don't think that the average lawyer/politician is much more equipped to solve the actual problems facing the nation than the average mechanic or janitor is. The best we can hope for is an intelligent man who picks sound advisors and weighs their words carefully. Is Obama such a man? I have no way of knowing, and I doubt that Phil knows, either. Unfortumately, it's almost certain that McCain isn't the type of leader America needs.
We can judge Obama by his words, the company he keeps and his actions. Obama has voiced a disdain for middle America, keeps the company of Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko, and bowed to AIPAC. What's so great about that?
This is slimy writing.
I often disagree with Phil, but I wouldn't call him slimy at all. We just have different opinions.