Just a few quick questions as I’m on the run but listening to Hugh Hewitt’s very good program today on Barack Obama and his connections to Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. What does this do to the perception of Obama as the "Post-60s" candidate? Is he really as "post-Boomer" as he would have us believe? Is he about as post-boomer as he is post-racial? Is the mask slipping as much as it appears to be slipping? Isn’t it becoming ever more clear that he is really just a more aggressive and more left wing version of the politics of the 1960s. He’s everything they always wanted to be but never had the chutzpah, actually, to become. The fig leaf that generation of pols (i.e., people like the Clintons) used to cover their true politics was evasive action, lying, and good old-fashioned trimming. Obama uses pretty words and soaring speeches . . . you have to be sophisticated to understand him and his associates. (So far, he’s done a better job of this even than the Clintons and with their multiple choice definition of "is.") It’s all very complicated . . . "God damn America" doesn’t really mean "God damn America" and, anyway, he’s not really as tight with these folks as the right wing attack machine would have you believe . . . He’s beyond race and beyond generational discord. Well, he’s beyond them because he is the embodiment of them. He is the wolf the Left has by the ears . . . they can neither hold him nor safely let him go. He is the real flower child of the 60s generation. Better still, he is their Frankenstein. What will they do to him when it becomes clear that his bride won’t have him for her bridegroom?
Julie, get hold of yourself!
Obama is certainly a post-boomer. No political candidate of my age, even left-wing, would be an associate of Ayers or Dohrn, because they would know, remember, what those people did and stood for. Even if sympathetic, association would have been avoided because of public perception worries. Obama's whole sensibility about the radicals of the 60's carries the romantic fog of time and has all the reality of a cheesy movie of the era as shown on late-night TV. I think that is a political debility for Obama, his misapprehension about that and about Rev. Wright, and we all begin to worry about God-knows-what-else-he-really-thinks. Unfortunately, it won't be a worry for some of the Left, for whom Che Guevera T-shirts are still the height of fashion and the romantic fog about 60's radicals still persists.
Wait. Who's the bride?
In terms of political philosophy is it possible to talk about someone being a child of the 60's without agreeing in part with Hegel, or even perhaps Marx? After all if Hegel and Marx are correct then we are all irrevocably products of our own time, and it would be ridiculous to pretend or act otherwise. My smaller point in terms of politics is that if Obama proffesor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago and Senator from Illinois is simply a product of his times what hope is there for anyone else?
I saw an interesting poll that showed how a lot of regular folk felt insulted whenever people insulted the intelligence of George Bush, there is something to that...George Bush love him or hate him is probably still on ballance way above average intelligence, and it really seems absurd to go into pretzels praising a person as full of virtue so that he may be elected only to curse his name when he leaves office eight years latter. He may have made mistakes, but I am willing to take it on the good authority of Senator Obama that his heart was in the right place. I think we can find things to admire even in Hillary Clinton, and we can find much to praise in McCain. The american way is to aspire to be quarterback, I was always an offensive lineman. Of course that didn't prevent me from the american alternative to being quaterback, being an arm chair quarterback. Still I have to maintain a certain respect for those who actually are on the field, otherwise you become that old fat guy on the couch with a beer who thinks he could have been Peyton Manning. Like NFL playbooks, the world is a more complicated place than our backyard football games of yore. Everyone speaks a different language full of technical and esoteric terms, understanding the experts is a lot of work and it is easier to just give up and explain them away on the basis of what you already know.
If I was designing a Gallup poll I would throw in some curve balls..."do you think you would be a better president than George Bush?"
"Are you more knowledgeable than McCain when it comes to the economy?"
"Does your knowledge of foreign policy exceed that of Obama?"
Depending on my mood but for the most part in general I would rather be around people who could answer no to all three questions, and my fellow americans might also prefer to be around me when I am disposed to answer likewise.
Of course my original analogy was football, and in football you never let down your guard, you never quit and all arguments are settled by blood, dirt, sweat and tactics...As Bismark said: "Even the most indifferent arguments will do if they win you the majority of the bayonnets(superdelegates?)"
Too few people know of the Weathermen for that issue to fully register with the electorate.
Doesn't a man speak of what's in his heart? Will Obama prove any different? For over a year now he's been prattling on about change, when all the while he hankers to speak what's on his mind and what's in his soul. And "Reverend" Wright has provided the necessary lumination to show us what's in Obama's soul. Wright then is the key, however disagreeable and unpleasant that is to observe. Lee Atwater would know exactly what to do with a "Reverend" Wright.
And so will talk radio and the blogosphere. The MSM will do all they can to avoid covering that aspect of Obama's personality; they'll do all they can to provide cover for him, but they'll prove about as effective as they did in avoiding the Swift Boat controversy.
Obama's black liberation theology is about to be exhumed from where he did his level best to hide it, and be thrown into the light of day, ------------------------------------------------------------------- and Americans are going to recoil from it.
What I hate about pollster's questions is that I can never honestly answer with just yes, no, or even undecided. Maybe it is just me. But John Lewis, your questions are similarly unanswerable, as in...
#1 - "No, but so what? I wasn't running. who would elect me, anyway? Oh, but do you suppose GWB felt like that at some point?"
#2 - "How should I know? If he knows only as much about economics as most politicians, we are in trouble. Did you see the Sen. Sherrod Brown piece in the WSJ? God help us!"
#3 - "He was on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, wasn't he? It is not his knowledge I question, but his judgment."
If Republicans cannot speak to the issues and argue Obama and the like into the ground, then I suppose there is no choice but to bash him personally. Doing so might help McCain win, but it does not seem like a good long-term strategy for the nation.
I'm beginning to think he's not simply a Flower Child, Julie, nor is he simply their offspring / their Frankenstein.
Here's who I think he is: he's a romanticist akin to these folks who watch flicks and honestly believe white folks walked around the pre-World War II Chinese countryside with perfectly coiffed hair, beautifully tailored clothing, and all that Hollywood foolishness [yes, I just watched "The Painted Veil" on HBO].
It seems to me only that level of faith in a mythological recent past allows a man who aspires to be President to keep the close friends this man has obviously kept. I have a friend who, deep down inside, just wants to be cool. That's Barack, too, apparently. Too much a product of a segment of America that supposedly hates celebrity but secretly loves it, worships it.
As a result, he appears obviously unelectable to me. We shall see.