Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
IS AMERICA GETTING SWEPT AWAY BY OBAMA-HYPE?
Have you ever been in a meeting where the group was on deadline to make a decision, but had been unable to reach consensus on which direction to go? What happens next? Nine times out of ten, someone comes up with a different idea than the ones you’ve been hashing around for hours. Everybody gloms onto it, and so do you, because you are desperate to place that important phone call, go to lunch, or you’re just plain worn down from arguing.
So whoever picks that perfect moment to throw out his or her idea becomes the hero while everyone else gets swept away in that new new thing, whose dazzle is untarnished by the imperfections of solutions that have been over-analyzed.
Leadership experts say this process usually results in the worst decisions. Doesn’t it seem to you as though many people are swept away by Barack Obama’s enormous charsma and dazzling star power?
Read MoreMIDNIGHT AT THE PING PONG PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY
Ping . Vermont’s presidential primary with its 15 delegates split 9-6 is called as expected for Obama.
I’m watching CNN and thinking about my first and only Texas precinct convention, in 1972. I’d learned from the League of Women Voters how my natal state’s Byzantine primary system worked, and I’d decided to participate from the ground up. As I recall only a few dozen people showed up; we met in someone’s living room; consequently, though I was a first time attendee I was elected to attend the county convention. I did attend that convention, but realized it would be impossible for me to participate further because of family obligations. So despite the friendly county judge who offered to put my name in the hopper for the state convention (that’s how it was done and probably still is), I declined.
Just as the predominantly Democratic Texas I grew up in changed its stripes to majority Republican (I allege that after I left for Arizona, the state went to hell) the current Texas Democratic party rules in which 2/3 of delegates decided in voting primaries and 1/3–the superdelegates—decided in precinct conventions or caucuses could well have changed over the years. But some fundamentals stay the same.
Pong. Early in the evening John McCain was declared the far and away winner in Ohio and Texas.
Republicans don’t have to pretend to be democratic. They understand elections are about gaining or retaining collective political power. That’s their big advantage. The Democrats turn themselves inside out trying to look democratic while in actuality their convoluted rules shore up the entrenched power of the party operatives as much or more than the Republicans. Their pronouncements express their egalitarian principles but their results tilt toward the political machine.
The Republicans will fall in line behind McCain, just as McCain sucked it up, accepted Bush’s hug and carried his water after being viciously assaulted by the Bush-Rove disparagement machine in 2000, and just as Mike Huckabee submitted himself graciously after the Texas numbers put McCain’s delegate count over the top and sealed him as the Republican presidential nominee.
The Democrats, says pundit Paul Begala, want to fall in love. More than that, I think, Democrats want to believe they are voting for the best ideas and ideals. And they love to put a fine comb through the arguments about who has them in purest form.
Read MoreCitizen Jane Tells Us How to Clean Up
Last night’s presidential debate on CNN was some of the best theater I’ve seen (watch clips). It had everything–a room packed with celebrities there to see our hottest political performers, snappy scripts well delivered, a spectacle much like top flight tennis players volleying at the height of their game, lights-camera-action.
Finally! Wolf Blitzer opened with the question that I’ve been giving the answer to since the campaign begain when he observed that Obama and Clinton look like the American dream team. It wouldn’t have been too seemly to ask who’d be on top, but the implication was obvious. They both gave the only answers they could, which was to say how much they respected one another and “here’s why I should be president”.
Obama is better with facile phrasemaking and people love that; nevertheless, Clinton got the best line–and biggest laugh–of the evening when asked whether the Bush-Clinton sequence should continue, she said “It might take a Clinton to clean up after a Bush again.”
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