Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are those who say Barack Obama lost the first debate. He won the second debate, but he lost the first one.
I don't buy into that. What Barack Obama did during the first debate was deliberate. He needed to do something to wake up his base, his ardent supporters. Something that did not cost money, but got the core supporters energized regardless. The feeling that he could lose did it. It did the trick.
I went to my first Obama event of this election season.
This is nothing original on the part of Barack. He got it from Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was known to taunt his opponents by letting them sometimes win a little in the beginning. And then he would go ahead and knock them out.
Barack knocked out Mitt tonight like Mitt was mittens. It was a slam dunk. I saw the Barack I saw and signed up for in 2004.
This uprising in Tibet and elsewhere is also on schedule to going to waste for lack of political clarity. Political leadership is lacking. The uprising in Burma went to waste last year.
Street Action: Where The Action Is
People come out in the streets, and next thing you know the White House is paying attention, the Prime Minister of Britain is paying attention. A few weeks later when the streets go empty, those people then move on to other things, whatever is now in the headlines.
Street action is the dog that wags the tail.
Tibetan Diaspora Is Not Acting Right
I am a Buddhist. I think the world of His Holiness. He is better than the Pope. He is better than any mullah or pastor on earth. He is better than Jeremiah Wright, no offense to Barack. But he is a spiritual leader, he is a religious leader. He is not a political leader. His remark that Mao treated him "like a son" tells me all I need to know about him politically.
The Tibetan diaspora has to enact the church and state separation. The political leadership has to be elected every four years or so. The political leadership can not be someone born to it.
This uprising has not been the handiwork of the Tibetan diaspora. This has been homegrown and spontaneous. But it is true the diaspora is working in close coordination.
Seek Allies
Tibet's number one potential ally is Taiwan. If Tibet and Taiwan can together come around to a common goal of a federal, multi-party China of state funded parties, the rest of China will follow them.
Let 2008 be that year when China wakes up to itself as the world wakes up to China. Strike when the iron is hot, or when the world is paying attention.
In The News
Bush calls Hu to urge Tibet talks BBC News The anti-China protests began on 10 March ..... The Tibetan government-in-exile says about 140 people have been killed ..... the delay in Mr Bush's response is a measure of how delicate relations are between the US and China - two countries whose huge economies are deeply interlinked. ...... French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also called for dialogue over Tibet - adding he had not ruled out boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games being held in China in August. ..... Bush will attend the Olympic Games opening ceremony. European Leaders Press China Over TibetNew York Times Nepal Police Break Up Tibetan Protest Voice of AmericaPolice in Nepal armed with batons dispersed a protest Tuesday by Tibetan refugees and monks in front of the Chinese Embassy.
Pitt And Jolie Related To Obama And Clinton? San Francisco Chronicle, USA Brad Pitt can trace his family tree back to Barack Obama and Angelina Jolie can follow hers to Hillary Clinton ..... Obama is a distant cousin of Pitt ..... Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, as are Clinton and Jolie, twice removed.
Obama Warms to Wrapping Up Contest New York Times and has been adding more superdelegates to his column at a faster clip than she has .... Clinton, meanwhile, has indicated that she is willing to slug it out for the nomination through the summer ...... Nor did he get much writing done, as he had said he had hoped; instead he said he enjoyed reading a book, Philip Roth’s latest novel, “Exit Ghost.”
Pitt And Jolie Related To Obama And Clinton? San Francisco Chronicle, USA Brad Pitt can trace his family tree back to Barack Obama and Angelina Jolie can follow hers to Hillary Clinton ..... Obama is a distant cousin of Pitt ..... Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, as are Clinton and Jolie, twice removed.
Somebody - has to be some Republican, a Hillary Republican - somewhere along the way revealed Barack is a distant cousin of Dick Cheney and we have been suffering since. We lost New Hampshire, we did not do as well in New York City as I thought we might. People don't like Dick Cheney around here.
This contest was supposed to be over in January. Then I thought we might wrap it up on February 5. Did not happen. Then I thought March 4. Did not happen. I am blaming Dick Cheney. Otherwise we have had the money, the message, the man. What else do we need?
We lost Ohio. Who do you think is responsible? Two whisper campaigns did us in. One that Barack is a Muslim, another that he is a Dick Cheney cousin. The Muslim thing you can discount, especially now that everyone knows he has had a Christian pastor for over 20 years. But how do you make Dick Cheney go away? It is not true that Barack is a Muslim. But it is true that Dick Cheney is a distant cousin of Barack. That is not a notion you can hope to dispel.
So far I have kind of kept a distance from Barack, otherwise I have a feeling he might be my cousin too through his sister Maya. I mean, I did like the idea of being related to Barack, but I was wary of his Dick Cheney baggage. If Barack is my distant cousin, is Dick Cheney also my distant cousin. I can't stand the thought. I am not for that much mingling of the races. That would be a little too much for me.
But now I am kind of warming up to Barack after this Brad Pitt revelation. I would not mind having Brad Pitt in the family. I think he is a decent guy. What do you think?
When Bill Clinton called Barack "the biggest fairytale I have ever seen," he meant the totality of Barack. The person, his lifestory, his candidacy, his blackness, his whiteness, his Boston convention speech, everything, the package deal.
Then the remark backfired a little, especially among leading African Americans across the country, especially after Hillary went right ahead and belittled none other than MLK himself (And The British Left India On Their Own), and she topped it off with her use of the word "slum" to describe a black Chicago neighborhood. And Bill Clinton backpeddled. I just meant his Iraq War thing, he said. As in, his image of being an anti-war person is a fairytale.
Fairytale, now that is a loaded racial codeword. Suggestion: don't take this guy seriously. People who don't take my blog seriously call it The Onion. If once in a while I am funny, I am glad. But this blog is no Onion. There is some cutting edge stuff going on at this blog.
Bill Clinton has not backpeddled enough. He needs to go ahead and eat his words. When Bill Clinton is talking about Barack and Iraq, he is lying. Again. Is there anything Bill Clinton has not lied about over the vast expanse of his career? He probably calls it political skill. I call him a guy who just does not get it. He does not get the politics of hope, the new kind of politics. What Barack is preaching is a new religion, and Bill Clinton has not the slightest clue. Bill Clinton is acting like a holdover from the 1990s that he is.
Barack's new kind of politics is a foreign language to Bill Clinton, he does not get it. Hillary is the same way, she must be married to Bill: she talks derisively of "false hopes" and "hoping for change."
Barack's hope message is not one that is naive, it is a muscular message that will deliver as many states to him in fall as Reagan managed in 1984, his muscular hope is the kind that can take you to the moon. This is not a weak hope of hoping the computers crash at the credit card company headquarters and all your credit card debt goes away. This is the kind of hope that ends slavery, the kind of hope finds the polio vaccine, the kind of vote that takes you to the moon.
This is also the kind of hope that ends a war that should never have been authorized - Hillary? - and never have been waged. Bush?
Barack was a staunch Dean 2004 person. When that organization became Democracy For America, it got behind the Senate candidate Barack Obama. Today Barack is the most prominent Deaniac there is.
Guess what defined Dean 2004 more than any other thing: Howard Dean's anti-war stand. If anti-war is cool today, all the credit goes to Howard Dean. Barack took the right anti-war stand in 2002, but he did not have Howard Dean's clout at the time to go national with it.
Howard Dean made anti-war cool in 2004, Barack Obama gave the Dems a big victory with it in 2006. Dean was anti-war 1.0, Barack was anti-war 2.0 in 2006. The Dems took the House and the Senate in 2006, thanks to Barack.
To doubt Barack's anti-war stand is to doubt Howard Dean's anti-war credentials. That is like saying George Washington is not the Father of the Nation, Ernest Hemingway did not write The Old Man And The Sea. It really is that basic.
Barack was anti-war in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and this year too. Barack will be anti-war in 2009 as president. Barack will stay anti-war until the war is over, until he brings it to an end as president.
Barack was the most sought after Democrat during the 2006 election that turned the tide for Democrats in this country after six lonely years. The anti-war plank is what got the Dems the victory in 2006 and there was general consensus that Barack was the mascot nationally for that anti-war theme.
So how do you explain a few things?
Why did Barack say right before the 2004 convention that he did not know how he might have voted on the war if he were Senator in 2002? Duh. He was trying to enhance the chances of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Both Kerry and Edwards had voted for the war, but now they were the candidates who were going to end it. So if your goal is to end the war, you do all you can to enhance the chances of a Kerry-Edwards ticket. So Barack said what he said. That was still an anti-war stand. Don't you get it?
And why has Barack voted to fund the war? That is what any responsible Senator would do. You don't say because I am opposed to the war, now I am going to cut the funds to starve the American troops out in that desert.
You still want to end the war, and you take the necessary political steps. It was not the mistake of the armed men and women who have done everything that has been asked of them. It was the mistake of George Bush, it was the mistake of the Republican Party.
And so Barack took the political step of being the most visible Democrat in the country for the 2006 elections. Victory came along, but he realized that had not been enough to end the war. So he changed his mind on not running in 2008, and he ran. He ran to end the war.
So, if a guy was anti-war in 2002 when he was a nobody trying to be a somebody and anti-war was not how you became somebody in 2002, if a guy was a Deaniac in 2004, the most prominent Deaniac in the country, and the guy was The Anti-War Mascot Of The Democratic Party for the 2006 elections, and the guy became the only prominent Dem running in 2007 who had actually opposed the war from the very start, what I would like to know is when did he become not anti-war.
I respect and admire Bill Clinton. He gave good eight years. Personally I am thankful for the dot com boom. So I will give him the benefit of doubt. It might have happened in 2003. 2003 is the year that escapes attention. Barack might have made a pro-war lapse as a desperate nobody that year. Somebody go do the digging on this one and help Billie Clinton out.
We got 13 delegates to Clinton's 12. I am counting that for victory. Al Gore got more popular votes than Bush in 2000. Millions more. But the way the system works is.
New Kind Of Politics Does Not Mean Slap Me
When you get hit, you hit back. You let no attack go unanswered, no false claim about you go unchallenged. That probably is the fundamental law of campaigning, if there is such a thing. If the smear emails say you are a Muslim - and what is wrong with being a Muslim, asks the Buddhist - and you don't reach out to that same audience with a clarification that you happen to be a Christian, then people are going to believe you are a Muslim. There are emails out there claiming Barack is a commie, goodness.
This is not an argument against the politics of hope, the new kind of politics. I am not preaching slash and burn. I am not saying you put out viral emails claiming Hillary is a Sikh, or that she is a Maoist. No.
But you do have to make people feel that you do notice when you get hit, and that you do hit back. You can hit back with humor, with simple clarification, or a clever phrase. You can use the rebuttals to draw attention to issues. Example.
Hillary: I am a doer, not a talker. Barack: What has she done on Iraq?
If Barack refuses to accept this fundamental law of campaigning, he is not JFK, he is Adlai Stevenson.
Engaging Hillary is also the best strategy going into February 5. That is how you will get equal media attention. The first time Barack moved nationally was when he first engaged Hillary: The Exchange. Remember?
Politics continues to be a contact sport. All the new kind of politics means is that that contact does not have to be ugly. It can be matter of fact, it can be playful, it can be humorous. On the other hand, it can be terse. It can be pointed, barbey.
Iraq: The Gift That Keeps Giving
Hillary messed up on the defining issue for a generation. I could design a rebuttal for everything Hillary ever says to point out to her mistake on Iraq.
Big Speech
Barack must give a big speech on how he will take race relations in America to a whole new level if only to avoid a white backlash on February 5 to his impending South Carolina victory. You can't be someone wanting to become the first black president - no, that is not Billie Clinton - and avoid race as an issue. You can turn it into a big advantage. If you do it right, white America will vote you because you are black, not inspite of it.
Barack has half a million online donors. He beats Hillary big time there. He must issue online whips to raise big money. He should be shameless on this count. How about a goal of $2 million per day for every day after South Carolina? Got to spend big in the big media markets.
If Barack has an Iraq advantage, he also has a money advantage in having so many online donors, more than all other individuals in both parties combined. He must milk these two cows relentlessly. Otherwise Hillary plays even on most other counts.
Good Job On Reagan
Barack's positive comment on Reagan was a masterstroke. That played well in rural Nevada.
Hillary Cried Again, But Noone Saw The Tears
In New Hampshire she showed tears. In Nevada she exploited the Monica name to rally the women behind her. That was clever, I guess.
Money Is Talking
Both Barack and Hillary raised more than $100 million each during 2007. That should be indication this race is going down the wire. It will stay close.
40-60 In CA, NY, 70-30 In IL
If Barack could do this, he will win February 5. He will do real well in NYC. NYC will make up for Hillary's possibly better performance upstate.
In The News
Obama Edges Clinton in Delegate Count Washington Post The Nevada Democratic caucus has turned into a kids' soccer game: everybody is a winner. ..... pointed to Obama's support across the state ..... "a demonstration of what a strong general election candidate [Obama] will be." ...... increasingly this is going to turn into a contest of delegates Clinton Defeats Obama in Nevada VoteNew York Times her strength among Hispanic voters, who comprise a large share of the electorate in several upcoming states ...... “including rural areas where Democrats have traditionally struggled.” ...... Clark County, home to Las Vegas and its influential union blocs, was supporting Mrs. Clinton by an 11-point margin ..... more than 107,000 Nevada voters attended the caucuses ...... the most mysterious among the early-voting states. There was no clear front runner, no reliable polling data, and no institutional history. ..... At the Flamingo hotel, one of the at-large caucus sites on the Las Vegas Strip, it was a chaotic scene. ..... A boxed lunch was served and the proceedings were translated into Spanish. ..... “Hillary has more experience – and she has Bill!” Analysis: New Tone in Democratic RaceThe Associated Press Clinton laid down a winning hand in Nevada. So did Barack Obama. ...... shifts the fight to the South, where Obama is relying on black voters ..... Obama was able to salvage a foothold in the race and keep Clinton from claiming a full dose of momentum. ....... Six out of 10 of these attending the state's caucuses were women and nearly half of them backed her ....... More than half of white voters entering the caucuses said they supported Clinton; one in three said they backed Obama. The white vote made up two-thirds of the overall vote. ...... "Obama has to really take South Carolina to reassert his place in the order." ...... He headed home to Chicago while the caucuses were under way and planned no public appearances. His campaign, however, trumpeted the delegate victory and noted that Obama had closed a 25-point lead that Clinton had enjoyed in the polls in November. ..... no sign the race will turn genteel in the South. ...... the New York senator "does not respect our people." ...... South Carolina, no stranger itself to fight night politics. Analysis: Obama's Age Gap: Is It Race? CBS News Older Americans Have So Far Proven Unwilling To Vote For Barack Obama ..... Obama’s weak performance so far among older voters substantially increases the odds against him scoring big victories in the slew of states voting on February 5th ...... Nationally, Clinton led Obama 44 percent to 18 percent among voters over 65 ... in Nevada, a dazzling 36 percent of the primary voters were over 60 ...... When asked if the whole country was ready to elect a black president, just 54 percent said yes. By contrast, 65 percent said the country was ready to elect a woman president. ..... a pattern that could be a key to making Hillary Clinton the first female presidential nominee in American history. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama swap poison as muddled ... Times Online he was conforming to the caricature the Clintons have painted of him as the candidate of the well-educated liberal elite, rather than the sons and daughters of toil ....... a nasty racial undertone perilously close to the surface. ..... shored up her base among women by appealing for their sympathy over the scandal of Monica Lewinsky ........ California, which supplies one-tenth of the delegates ...... Clinton instantly went on the warpath, claiming that voters had been told, “they shouldn’t come or can’t support the candidate of their choice”. She further alleged that workers were threatened with the sack if they did not back Obama, but did not provide any examples. ...... An irascible Bill Clinton claimed to have personally witnessed voter suppression by union officials with daughter Chelsea and lost his temper when challenged about the lawsuit brought by his wife’s supporters to prevent casino workers voting at their workplace. .... mocking Hillary’s claim of having more experience than him. .... presumed it was “through osmosis, as a consequence of having been first lady” because he saw “no management experience” on her CV. ....... “Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and Bill Clinton did not” ......... “That’s what happens when you’re in Washington too long. You don’t speak English any more.” ...... disappointed to see the former president “descend from the high place he’s been and become an attack dog”. ..... anonymous leaflets were circulating at the university rally calling Obama the candidate of the “casino bosses”. ...... “I used to be a big admirer of the Clintons but they’ve been dirtying the pool. I’m seeing them do things I used to defend them over when they were in power.” But he was pessimistic about Obama’s long-term prospects of winning the nomination: “We’re seeing the same old political machine at work that used to wag the dog.” ....... It’s all a facade. You can tell because as soon as Obama became a threat, she started to twist and turn every word he said. ........ Clinton appeared to belittle Martin Luther King as a civil rights dreamer rather than a doer ...... African-American voters could still tilt the race in Obama’s favour, but at the risk of sending anxious white voters in Clinton’s direction. ...... From Adlai Stevenson to Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and, in 2004, Howard Dean, the reformers have always lost. ........ very nearly an even fight, the most even I have seen in my lifetime. ...... California with 441 delegates and New York, Clinton’s home state as senator, with 281 ..... the Clintons have been playing the race card against Obama in the hope of driving a “wedge” between black and white voters ..... “It is so obvious what they’re doing. They’re telling African-American voters, ‘You know an African-American can’t win so vote for us as the next best thing’, and telling white voters, ‘Look, these people are trying to take over. Is that what you want?’ ” ....... Connor drew the line at supporting Obama, repeating the increasingly common smear spread by viral e-mails that the Illinois senator could be the “Manchurian” candidate – a reference to the film in which the president is a sleeper agent for the communists. “A lot of people will vote against him just because his middle name is Hussein.” ...... Georgia, a Super Tuesday state with 103 delegates ....... Obama could win more states than Clinton on Super Tuesday but that she will win more delegates. That would boost Obama’s contention that he is best placed to win the support of independents and disaffected Republicans in a general election, and would be used to tempt the “super delegates” to him. Clinton loses support among black DemocratsBoston Globe Clinton's support among black Democrats has cratered as racial politics emerged in the nomination fight ...... Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents Washington, D.C., in Congress, joined the chorus, warning Clinton to "watch out'' in her comments on race. "The black community is not only sensitive on race,'' Norton said in an interview on Bloomberg Television today. It is "super-sensitive on race.'' ...... Among all Democrats, Clinton still leads 42 percent to Obama's 33 percent Nevada settled, South Carolina up for CNN International In Nevada's contest, Clinton led rival Barack Obama by 6 percentage points with 98 percent of precincts reporting ..... Although Clinton won the overall state vote, Obama took more delegates because of the areas where he won. Obama picked up 13 delegates to Clinton's 12. ..... Clinton's campaign organization helped hand her the win. ..... "Her people are efficient, fervent. They were there first, they were calling people, they had a list of voters they were using to call people, making sure people came out. They had signs, they had shirts, they had a clear chain of command" ....... Romney captured 94 percent of the voters who identified themselves as Mormon, which made up 25 percent of all Republicans participating in the GOP caucuses. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints estimates there are 170,000 members living in Nevada. Teen 'Bhutto assassin' arrested the militants may have wanted to put the cyanide into the municipal water supply. ..... The growing bloodshed has cast doubts on the ability of the security forces to maintain peace during the campaign for parliamentary elections on February 18. It has also sparked calls from opposition politicians for President Pervez Musharraf to step down. ..... a five-person squad was dispatched to Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, by Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader with strong ties to al Qaeda and an alliance with the Taliban in nearby Afghanistan. ....... But Maulvi Mohammed Umar, a purported spokesman for Mehsud, dismissed the report. "It is just government propaganda ... we have already clarified that we are not involved in the attack on Benazir Bhutto." ...... vague allegations that elements within the government might have been involved in the assassination. ....... Most registered voters say Clinton and Obama -- as well as McCain -- have the necessary leadership skills and vision to be president
Romney wins Republican caucuses in Nevada; Democrats Clinton ... The Canadian Press Former President Bill Clinton was a constant presence as well in a state he carried twice on his own in 1992 and 1996. Campaigns Face Common Foe in Nevada: Confusion New York Times “I’m like, what the heck is caucusing?” Vickie Francovich ..... “Where do you go?” ..... 520 Democratic caucus sites ..... in his closing argument to voters, Mr. Obama spent an exceptional amount of time dwelling on Mrs. Clinton. He repeatedly mentioned her by name, reflecting a sense by some Democrats — and worry among his own advisers — that she indeed held an advantage. ..... “Senator Clinton has said she is ready to lead from Day 1” “But it’s important on Day 1 to get it right, whether you’re talking about war or you’re talking about economic proposals.” .... the coast-to-coast fight that lies ahead on Feb. 5.
If we needed another shred of evidence that Hillary is a Bush Republican. The Bushies cashed fear in 2002 and 2004. They tried hard again to cash it in 2006. It did not work. They are trying equally hard to cash it for 2008. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Don't get me wrong. I am hard nosed on this security stuff. The threat to America is continued and very real. But that is precisely the reason to kick Bush out and not pick Hillary. America is less safe today. There has not been another attack on US soil since 9/11, and that sure is good news, and the branches of the US government at the forefront of that have to be commended. But why will you not hold people in leadership responsible for the fact that the Al Qaeda is stronger today than ever before? If Al Qaeda can strike with eery abandon in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia, is it not only a matter of time before it strikes America again? How much sense did it make for the US to take its eyes off the Al Qaeda and jump into a misadventure in Iraq?
If the Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan, that is where the action was. If the Al Qaeda moved to Pakistan, that is where the action shifted. It did not shift to Iraq. W's mistake has been to go after the wrong target. Wait until he goes into Iran, and then he will have taken both eyes off the Al Qaeda.
Hillary does not get this. I don't really know why. She is smart, she is tough. Maybe it is because it is a paradigm shift. It asks for out of the box thinking.
Benazir was the world's best hope to drain the swamp in Pakistan. But look how easily the Al Qaeda got her. The Al Qaeda is inside the Pakistani state and spreading like cancer. The Al Qaeda was a new virus in 2001. Saddam was the old virus. But W went after the Al Qaeda with the antibiotics he had. He was a medicine looking for a disease, and that is why he felt so gungho about going after Saddam. His disdain for basic scientific thinking is nowhere more dangerous than in how he has approached the Al Qaeda. No, it is not on stem cell stuff.
And our very own Hillary likes to play by the W book. She is with Bush on Iraq, and then she is with Bush on Iran. And now her closing argument is should something unpredictable, unfortunate happen, who do you want in the Oval Office? Nothing unpredictable will happen. If there is another 9/11 style attack on America, it will not be unpredictable. And the world will know who did it. And the world knows where these people are.
Hillary's experience argument makes me want to give W a third term. The guy was Governor of Texas, he has been president two terms. He is older than Hillary.
Fighting the Al Qaeda will not be easy, but it is not exactly rocket science either. You start with the disease, not with the medicine. The medicine you design in response. And all the time you objectively measure the reality out there, on what works and what does not.
Hint, hint. Al Qaeda is not a state, it is not a standing army. It took one semi defunct cell of one lone operative, one motorbike, one gun, two gun shots, one bomb, to destabilize a country the size of Pakistan. They are not trying to take over Pakistan like the Soviets tried to take over Afghanistan. They are just trying to destabilize it. That is all they want, that is all they need. They don't care about the ordinary Pakistanis who are rioting in all Pakistani cities in protest.
Hint, hint. They are only a few thousand in number.
Hillary took America onto the wrong battlefield. Barack will scale back and take America to the right battlefield. And the idea is not a military invasion of Pakistan, something unthinkable. That would be like punishing the rioting Pakistanis for what the Al Qaeda did to Benazir. Those rioting Pakistanis are also mad at the Al Qaeda.
The first order of business was to protect Benazir. She was democracy embodied. Democracy is what will drain the swamp. As for mosquitoes, you need the right weapons. You need super human intelligence. If you can't locate and penetrate the Al Qaeda, what good are you in this day and age?
The Dream
MLK talked of a dream. Barack is that dream.
The Bridge
Bill Clinton talked of the bridge to the 21st century. Barack is that bridge.
THE FIRST American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. The most sobering challenges that face this country - terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics - are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has this understanding at his core. The Globe endorses his candidacy in New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary Jan. 8.
Many have remarked on Obama's extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18; that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia; that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago; that, at 46, he would be the first post-baby-boom president.
What is more extraordinary is how Obama seals each of these experiences to his politics. One of the lessons he took from organizing poor families in Chicago, he says, was "how much people felt locked out of their government," even at the local level. That experience anchors his commitment to transparency and accountability in Washington.
Similarly, his exposure to foreign lands as a child and his own complex racial identity have made him at ease with diversity - of point of view as well as race or religion. "I've had to negotiate through different cultures my whole life," he says. He speaks with clarity and directness, and he is also a listener, a lost art in our politics.
In what looks like prescience today, Obama was against the Iraq war from the start. But his is not the stereotypical 1960s antiwar reflex. "I don't oppose all wars," he said in the fall of 2002. "I'm opposed to rash wars."
When it comes to waging peace, Obama has the leadership skills to reset the country's reputation in the world. He notes, for example, that the United States would be in a stronger position with Iran if it took more seriously its own commitment to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. His bill, cosponsored with Senator Richard Lugar, to add conventional weapons to the nation's threat reduction initiative, became law this year.
On domestic issues, the major Democratic candidates are reduced to parsing slivers of difference. But Obama has been more forthright in declaring his slightly heterodox positions to traditional Democratic constituencies. His support for merit pay for teachers, or a cap on carbon emissions, suggests a healthy independence from the established order.
The first major bill to Obama's name in the Illinois Legislature was on campaign ethics reform. In Washington, he coauthored this year's sweeping congressional lobbying reform law. When he describes his approach to healthcare negotiations, he says, "The insurance and drug companies will get a seat at the table, but they won't get to buy every chair."
Obama's critics, and even many who want to support him, worry about his relative lack of experience. It is true that other Democratic contenders have more conventional resumes and have spent more time in Washington. But that exposure has tended to give them a sense of government's constraints. Obama is more animated by its possibilities.
In our view, the choice on the Democratic side is between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton has run a diligent, serious campaign, and her command of the issues is deep and reassuring. But her approach is needlessly defensive, a backward glance at the bruising political battles of the 1990s. Obama's candidacy looks forward.
Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My Father," is divided into three main sections. The first is a reflection on his youthful search for identity. The second recounts his days in Chicago, which include the first stirrings of a religious life. The third is a roots pilgrimage to Kenya, to better understand his often absent father. It is hard to read this book without longing for a president with this level of introspection, honesty, and maturity - and Obama published it when he was only 33.
"I genuinely believe that our security and prosperity are going to depend on how we manage our continued integration into the rest of the world," he says. Obama's story is the American story, a deeply affecting tale of possibility. People who vote for him vote their hopes. Even after seven desolating years, this country has not forgotten how to hope.
In The News
Key newspaper nods go to mccain, Obama, Clinton SI.com Globe endorses mccain, Obama Boston Globe Des Moines Register endorses mccain, ClintonUSA Today Barack’s Blast From the Past New York Times, United States “Pot had helped, and booze,” he said of his days as an alienated adolescent. “Maybe a little blow when you could afford it.” ...... Obama has never been challenged in the incessant, sometimes-outrageous way a presidential nominee gets challenged. ...... the controversy had eclipsed even Mike Huckabee’s apology to Mitt Romney for suggesting that Mormons believe Jesus and the devil are brothers. (The Republicans are so deep into theological disputes that their Iowa race is beginning to sound like the Council of Trent.) ...... When they’re all bunched together, teetering between victory and disaster, they get sweaty and sloppy and borderline insane. (Hillary is probably regretting the day she called this the “fun part.”) ........ The whole point of the Iowa caucuses — if there is any point to the Iowa caucuses — is to see how everybody functions under stress. ...... If middle-aged men were disqualified from serious jobs because of recreational drug use as teenagers, there would be nobody left to run the stock exchange. ...... Romney, who has never tried coffee ..... Obama has a hard time with the cheesy side of political campaigns, and being required to dredge up emotions he doesn’t necessarily feel. ..... “The point was to inhale. That was the point,” he said, when someone asked the inevitable question. The Huckabee Trap TIME John McCain famously called some Christian conservatives "agents of intolerance" during his 2000 presidential campaign. ...... He said same-sex marriage defies "the holy word of God." He called abortion a "holocaust." And then he came back to the question of roots. "I think it's important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language." .......... Asked to explain his rise in the polls, he invokes God's blessing. ...... In 1992 Huckabee argued for dealing with AIDS by quarantining those infected. ... They could end up instead handing the GOP to Giuliani--probably the last thing they want. 2 LSU Students Shot Dead Inside Campus Apartment New York Times the police searched for three killers. ...... The victims, Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, both Ph.D. students from India ....... Mr. Allam’s pregnant wife called 911 at 10:37 p.m. Thursday after finding the men dead ..... Mr. Komma, a biology student, had been visiting Mr. Allam ..... The men were each shot once in the head ..... Mr. Komma, 31, was bound with a computer cable, and Mr. Allam, 33, was found near the door. ..... The apartment building where the shootings occurred is designated for married and graduate students and is on the edge of the campus, close to one of Baton Rouge’s highest-crime areas. The complex has a tall fence separating it from the off-campus neighborhood, but it has no gates or surveillance cameras. Obama hits his stride as Clinton stutters AFP Barack Obama is hitting his stride, just as Hillary Clinton's Democratic juggernaut stutters, setting up a punch-for-punch 18-day run-in to the first White House nominating clash. ......... Most surveys show Obama rising, and the longtime frontrunner sliding, suggesting that the young senator's timing may be spot on. ....... An Obama spurt which began in Iowa, now appears to be spreading, raising doubts about the notion that Clinton can afford a loss in Iowa ......... an aide raised Obama's dabbling in drugs as a wayward teenager, in her campaign's latest clumsy attack on him. ...... Hours later, in the last pre-caucuses Democratic debate, Obama displayed a new confidence, and brushed aside Clinton, who's previous imperiousness was replaced scrappy new persona. ........ the rivals' exhausting treks through Iowa in the next 18 days. ...... The former first lady is putting on a brave face, despite the indignity of having to deny her campaign is disintegrating. ....... Most of the campaign's recent misteps, the drugs remarks, a much mocked email about Obama setting his sights on the White House in kindergarten, reflect the difficulty Clinton has had in attacking her rival. ......... Clinton strategist Mark Penn warns Democrats could squander a moment of political promise, by nominating a novice. ..... "If you go back and look at the great change presidents, they have been people that had the experience," he said, citing Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. ..... "They knew how to make change happen." NH Puts Ties Clintons Built To the Test Washington Post, United States Yet some Clinton supporters are anxious. One staunch Clinton backer, a former elected official in the state, felt alarm on visiting Obama's headquarters in Manchester to pick up tickets for a friend for Oprah Winfrey's appearance with Obama last weekend and seeing how much "buzz" there was there. "I'm nervous. Obama's campaign feels like Jack Kennedy's. They seem so excited," said the supporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign had not authorized the comments. "When I call Hillary's headquarters, there's no electricity. It's scary." ...... In his final days in office, he made a farewell trip to thank the state for launching him in 1992. He urged Gore to consider then-New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen as his running mate in 2000. ....... In Keene two weeks ago, he harkened back to a visit to the town in his 1992 campaign, when he showed up simply hoping to draw enough people to "avoid total humiliation" and instead found an over-capacity crowd of 400. It was "the first time I ever really thought I had a chance to win," he said. ....... he doesn't have a clear sense of what Sen. Clinton's vision for the party is. ....... "They are just two very different people. To me, they might as well not even be related." Edwards cuts sharper edge in Iowa trail speeches Chicago Tribune, United States Hillary Clinton needs a 'miracle' to win Iowa, says Bubba New York Daily News, NY Obama Grilled on All Things Clinton ABC News The Road Warrior Newsweek Bill Clinton's Attack Reverberates Yahoo! News The former president also tried to pivot from inevitablity to managing expectations. ...... The bottom line is that any candidate aiming for "inevitability" plans to win Iowa. ..... Clinton's attack is both revealing and ineffective. "This interview was remarkable and perhaps quite telling about the mood within the Clinton world at the moment. I'm not sure that Bill Clinton did anything in this interview to advance his wife's cause. He appeared quite tense and almost pissed off that Barack Obama is running for president." Obama: Clintons' Jabs Because of Polls CBS News, NY voters are not interested in “politics as a bloodsport.” He vowed to fire any staff member who was involved in attacking another candidate’s integrity. ...... “The same old experience is irreverent, you can have the right kind of experience or the wrong kind of experience and mine is rooted in the real lives of real people and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change, and that was Bill Clinton in 1992.” ...... “If they’re suggesting that I, as this callow youth, somehow had a structural advantage in Iowa relative to the Clinton operation and the former president of the United States, that doesn’t strike me as a real plausible argument” The new face of America Times Online, UK he is the only man who can halt the racial, religious and cultural civil war that is tearing America apart. ......... Last week was a horrible one for Hillary Clinton. Her husband had thrown a wrench into her campaign to become president of the United States by declaring that he’d been against the Iraq war from the beginning - a transparent fib that reminded many Democrats of the pathological lying of the 1990s. .......... Grassroots Democrats were appalled at the descent into nastiness. It suggested desperation in the Clinton camp. ...... Hillary burst into desperate laughter. “I’d love to hear him answer that,” she cackled. Obama paused, then fired: “Well, Hillary, I’m looking forward to having you advise me as well.” The audience erupted. In one moment, the Alpha Female ceded authority to the Alpha Male. ........ The Washington media are taken aback by Obama’s surge in the polls. ..... In South Carolina, black voters have begun to switch en masse to Obama. It’s still far from over - and no one should discount Hillary Clinton - but the momentum is suddenly his. ....... the core appeal and sustaining logic of the Obama candidacy. It transcends race; it runs deeper than the vagaries of daily campaigning; it represents a generational, cultural shift, and not just a political one. ....... a war about war - and culture and religion and race ...... First and foremost: his face. It could be an effective potential rebranding of the United States. ....... November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man - Barack Hussein Obama – is the new face of America. In one simple image America’s soft power has been ratcheted up exponentially. ...... “I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war ... I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” ......... I was too young for the formative period of the Sixties civil rights, sexual revolution, Vietnam war. Those all sort of passed me by.” ......... Obama’s mother was, in fact, born only five years earlier than Hillary Clinton. ....... among the first Democrats in a generation not to be afraid or ashamed of what they actually believe, which also gives them more freedom to move pragmatically to the right, if necessary. ......... also repellent because its Methodist genuineness demands that she not profess it so tackily. But she did. The polls told her to. ....... Dreams from My Father, is a candid, haunting and supple piece of writing that reveals Obama as someone whose “complex fate” ..... As humankind abandons the secular totalitarianisms of the last century and grapples with breakneck technological and scientific discoveries, the appeal of absolutist faith is powerful in both developing and developed countries. ......... a modern, intellectual Christianity. ....... “I didn’t have an epiphany,” he explained to me. “What I really did was to take a set of values and ideals that were first instilled in me from my mother; you know, belief in kindness and empathy and discipline, responsibility. And I found in the church a vessel or a repository for those values and a way to connect those values to a larger community and a belief in God and a belief in redemption and mercy and justice . . . I guess the point is, it continues to be both a spiritual, but also intellectual, journey for me, this issue of faith.” ............ in time I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life. .......... The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The sceptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works. ...... Obama has clearly attempted to wrestle a modern Christianity from the anachronisms of its past ........ His appeal to whites is palpable. I have felt it myself. ..... Obama is deeply aware of how he comes across to whites. ....... people were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. ...... And so you have Obama’s campaign for white America: courteous and smiling and with no sudden moves. ........ let’s not make the punishment for crack cocaine that much more severe than the punishment for powder cocaine when the real difference between the two is the skin colour of the people using them ....... had an almost eerily nonracial childhood ....... He broke up with a serious early girlfriend in part because she was white. He decided to abandon a postracial career among the upper-middle classes of the east coast in order to re-engage with the black experience of Chicago’s South Side. ....... a commitment to carving a unique personal identity out of the race, geography and class he inherited. It yields an identity born of displacement, not rootedness. ....... a complicated and mixed identity – not a simple and alienated one ......... this complexity may increasingly be the main thing all Americans have in common. ....... If you believe America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do. ............ But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. ......... Close up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable. We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Barack Obama. Reefer Madness in Iowa New York Times, United States With the Iowa campaign in wild flux — and in the case of Hillary, acid reflux .... If primary voters don’t care that he did “a little blow,” then my goodness, why should I? Obama Says He's Ready for White House The Associated Press the former first lady's once-commanding lead in many state polls has vanished and that her campaign is scrambling to restore its footing. ......... Clinton said. "In theory, we could find someone who is a gifted television commentator and let them run." ....... his drug use had caused him to "waste a lot of time" during his high school years. ........ Asked about her comment, Obama said he was satisfied that his own past had been well-documented. "I've written two books. I've probably been more reported on than any political figure in the country over the last year," Obama said. "I hardly think I've been underexposed during the course of this race." Bill Clinton clashes with Hillary's advisers Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom Bill Clinton has finally succumbed to temptation and intervened personally to salvage his wife's faltering bid for the White House, according to leaks from her secretive campaign team. ...... The exasperated former President has clashed with some of Hillary Clinton's closest advisors over strategy ...... He went on the offensive on her behalf this weekend with his strongest attack yet on Mr Obama's qualifications for office ........... particularly frustrated that her chief strategist and polling guru, Mark Penn, chose to portray the former First Lady as the "inevitable" and "invincible" nominee ........... he attempts to re-position her in voters' minds as a challenger, rather than running like an incumbent. ...... He's talking with her constantly and throwing out ideas about how to save this thing. He's still convinced she can win, but it's going to be tough. ............ The Clintons are understood to have discussed an overhaul of her top campaign personnel last week but they decided that would give off the feeling of panic. ...... the former president is behind the new mantra that Mrs Clinton is an "agent for change" as the campaign switches its emphasis away from previous efforts to portray an aura of invincibility and entitlement. ...... the danger that his greater involvement in his wife's campaign might draw attention to him rather than her. Obama: Clinton's negative tone will backfire Newsday, NY Barack Obama, stung by a fresh Bill Clinton attack on him, predicted that the Clinton campaign's increasingly negative tone will backfire by reminding voters of the bad, old "blood sport" days of the 1990s. ....... Obama said he was less than impressed by Hillary Rodham Clinton's apology ...... A red-faced Bill Clinton sparked a new Bubba-vs.-Bama feud Friday night by telling Charlie Rose the Illinois senator was little more experienced than a TV "commentator" -- and quipping that reporters covering Obama were so starry-eyed they behaved like stenographers and didn't probe his history. ........ At one point, Rose said Clinton staffers were in the control booth trying to cut off the interview. ...... Obama pulled out a piece of paper and began reading aloud ........ Obama, buoyed by a new Quad City Times poll showing him ahead of Hillary Clinton by a best-ever 9 points Hillary And Bill: A Mess Of Their Own Making Town Hall, DC By the end of the week, her campaign had sustained a key resignation, a key defection, and a growing chorus of commentators saying that her campaign was in trouble, and that Mrs. Clinton could end up losing all four early primary races...... Then when Mrs. Clinton faced criticism for being “petty,” she had her aides insist that the criticisms of Obama’s childhood were a “joke,” and express disbelief that anybody would take them seriously. ...... she was acting out of a sense of disbelief, and desperation, and it cost her a very public and embarrassing defection of an Iowa campaign worker who disapproved of her negativity and joined-up with the Obama campaign. ..... he “didn’t inhale.” Bill Clinton was unbelievable then, and remains so today ..... in light of last week’s events, it would seem that the Clintons became victims not of other people’s attacks, but of their own miscalculations and missteps.
