Category: Barack Obama

A reader writes:

I’m a Republican and I pray to God that Obama gets the nomination. I’ll vote for him in a heartbeat. He’s a rational man who understands and respects the people that he wants to represent. With this attitude, he shows the public that he believes in what we can accomplish together. It’s not what HE can do for us, it’s what WE can do together. Reagan was the last president who seemed this optimistic about the American public, and it goes a long way towards explaining his appeal. I would go so far as to say that Reagan’s appeal here in the Midwest was really never about policy per se, but about his disposition. He believed in Americans. Obama can go there, and does with striking clarity. It’s not an act, like Clinton, it’s a belief system.

A pitch-perfect take. This race is shifting a little, isn’t it?

Joe Klein channels my own thoughts:

A few days before the debate, I spent a day with Obama in Iowa, and the most striking thing to me about the Senator’s performances was the scrupulous honesty of his answers, his insistence on delivering bad news when necessary. A woman asked if he believed that stay-at-home moms should be eligible for Social Security. There is a way most politicians answer such questions: a moving tribute to the virtues of child-rearing, then on to the next question without ever making the commitment. Obama did the moving tribute — with a joke about his ineptitude as a parent — but then he told the woman no. "We can’t extend those benefits without huge financial implications," he said.

The very next question was about global warming. Obama laid out his rigorous cap-and-trade plan for reducing carbon emissions, but then he said, "One of the themes of this campaign is to tell voters what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear … So I’ve got to tell you there will be a cost to this — and the utility companies will pass it along to consumers. You can expect a spike in electricity prices," although, he added, the new technology should ultimately bring those prices back down.

I don’t know if this sort of quiet, unsolicited honesty can work in our rude, noisy politics, but it certainly is far more presidential than the dodging and fudging that you get from most candidates…He assumes a maturity in his audiences, and in the press, that simply may not exist. But given the stakes in 2008, perhaps it’s time for all of us to grow up and meet the challenge of a difficult moment for our country.

That’s what some of us sense in a "transformational" candidate.

And what do they do when they panic? They ask for more money.

"After the most secretive administration in memory, an administration that consistently misled the American people, we need a president who is going to be open and forthright. I think [the Philadelphia] debate really exposed this fault line. Senator Clinton left us wondering where she stood on every single hard question from Iran to Social Security to drivers’ licenses for undocumented workers… Her big answer on whether she would release the papers from her White House years was particularly troubling because she is running on her record as first lady as much as on her record as a senator. How can people fully judge that record if the documents from those years remain locked away?" – Barack Obama, turning up the heat at last.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my desire for knock-out punches is misreading the public mood. Maybe people want calm, clarity and decency in a candidate? This Luntz focus group must have Clinton worried. The respondents overwhelmingly backed Obama as the winner. The phrase: "grace under pressure." Yes, he has grace. And boy is his country under pressure. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time my first impressions were off-base. You live and learn:

My take on the debate last night can be found here. A reader adds:

I’m an Obama supporter, too, but like you I worry that his dispassionate presentation, what you call "high-mindedness," will hurt his chances, because it makes it hard for voters to connect with him emotionally. But part of me is also extremely impressed by his cool-headedness. Isn’t this exactly what we need to face complicated, dangerous times? Someone who does not get ruffled easily, who stays focused and calm, even with everyone inciting him from the sidelines to throw punches? I think we’ve forgotten what this kind of demeanor looks like, because we’ve been led for 8 years by an easily excitable and vain man, whom others have found easy to manipulate.

Obama is not Dukakis or Mondale. He has a good sense of humor and incredible grit, but he wears it lightly. And if he has a chip on his shoulder about anything, it doesn’t show. Isn’t that what we need, as a respite from Bush II’s Oedipal dramas and petulance, and from Clinton’s simmering frustration?

Edwards got in some good punches, and you could see a fine litigator in his combinations of attack and positive rhetoric. But I don’t think his populist take on socioeconomic issues resonates with enough voters.

On the lighter side, poor Bill Richardson, crawling up under Clinton’s skirts looking to be veep.

A reader writes:

In response to your reader who feels the reason Obama isn’t gaining traction with establishment Dems is race, I think it’s a whole lot more simple than latent racism or anything at all to do with race.

The establishment Dems are made up of baby boomers … of which I am one.  Like many other things my generation loves, power is utmost.

Obama represents youth and a consequent loss of control for my generation.  Kennedy faced the same turn the page hurdles with the added complication of being Catholic.  Obama’s complication is being black but he represents that same generational passing of the torch.

Make no mistake, this is about control and power.  My generation will likely not give up either without one whale of a fight.  Watch HRC’s dismissive demeanor when she puts him down…just as a mother might to a wayward, troublesome son.

I will thankfully be voting to rid DC of my generation.  We have so many old grudges that were never resolved, it’s time to turn the reins over to the young for some fresh thought, fresh innovation and fresh hope.  My generation burned all theirs out.

This is surely overdue:

Asked in the interview on Friday if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, “No.”

“I don’t think people know what her agenda exactly is,” Mr. Obama continued, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been fully forthcoming. “Now it’s been very deft politically, but one of the things that I firmly believe is that we’ve got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we’re going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election and then find yourself governing without any support for any bold propositions.” …

“There is a legacy that is both an enormous advantage to her in a Democratic primary, but also a disadvantage to her in a general election,” he said. “I don’t think anybody would claim that Senator Clinton is going to inspire a horde of new voters,” he said. “I don’t think it’s realistic that she is going to get a whole bunch of Republicans to think differently about her.”

There are, to me, three core issues in this election: the Constitution, the war and the environment. All three are urgent, and the need for deep, radical change overwhelming. It’s vital that the next president not assume and inherit the kind of extra-legal powers that Bush and Cheney have acquired as part of what amounts to a protectorate, not a presidency. The rule of law must be clearly re-established. Only Obama has the integrity to be trusted on that matter. Clinton will never have it. It’s vital also that the next president be committed to withdrawal from Iraq as swiftly and as cleanly as possible. Again: the difference between a triangulating shell of a politician and an actual human being who was right about this war in the first place is completely clear. And we need someone in the administration – Al Gore obviously springs to mind – who can marshall the country’s resources to tackle climate change and the urgent necessity for new energy sources. Gore loathes the Clintons as much as anyone, because he saw them close-up, and knows what their cynical, ruthless machine is really about: them. On those three issues, Obama is vastly superior to Clinton, whose history of executive secrecy and privilege, whose constant triangulation on the war and whose polarization of the country would make difficult and real change impossible.

Obama needs to be far more aggressive – but not hostile to Clinton. She just isn’t right for this critical moment in American history, too inherently divisive to bring this country back together in an extremely perilous time, too cautious to effect real change, and still too spooked by Republicans to do what is needed in Iraq. There’s still time to stop her. But it’s running out.

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)

A reader reminds me of that Petraeus hearing. An Obama supporter writes:

This YouTube must be watched. Watch Obama in what is a (long) but phenomenal delivery. He has the classical combination of pathos and logos. Just get past the initial obligatory lapel-pin intros and he begins relating immeasurable urgency with an almost hurtful touch of frustration, and remains a civil questioner.

We need to channel abiding anger at the awful mismanagement, betrayal of our ideals and blind arrogance that has led us into a nightmare without end in Iraq, and that now seeks, having lost Turkey as a solid ally, to take the war to Iran as well. Yes, we are doing better at tamping down violence in Iraq, thank God and the troops. No one is in any way disputing the heroic job the troops and Petraeus are doing in preventing a full-scale plunge into the abyss of regional warfare. But there is still no strategy for meaningful success or exit, and a huge potential for more, and more dangerous, war in the future, involving Iran and Turkey. And the costs keep escalating. In this awful impasse, we need a president all of us can trust. We need exactly the blend of passion and reason that Obama offers. Yes, he needs to prove himself more as a campaigner. Yes, he’s not perfect. But I still think he’s the best feasible hope in a rapidly gathering storm.