Category: Barack Obama

The bloggy left is unhappy. Arkades worries here. Rick Perlstein says Reagan was a bad, bad man.

Now, there’s a new bar for Obama to meet: Abraham Foxman now demands that Obama leave his own church because his preacher has all sorts of crazy views that relate to politics. Examining Jeremiah Wright’s theology as it has influenced Obama’s thinking seems to me to be interesting and even important. And Obama will have to take some lumps for it. But demanding someone leave their own church because of some political views espoused by their pastor seems a bit over-the-top to me. David Bernstein doesn’t go that far but he argues it is not enough for Obama to condemn Farrakhan, as he has, nor to condemn Wright for things he has said directly related to the campaign, as he has, but to condemn Wright for his church-sponsored magazine’s kind words for Farrakhan. I don’t think this kind of pressure has any logical end – except for where Foxman wants to go. And Obama should resist being pushed around.

I should add, contra Bernstein, that I think it’s fair to criticize candidates when they are endorsed by a religious figure on the campaign trail, when they have a religious figure hold a campaign fundraiser for them, or when, as in Giuliani’s case, they employ a priest credibly charged with child molestation. But holding a candidate answerable for everything a magazine sponsored by his church says unrelated to the campaign is a step designed purely to sling the smear of anti-Semitism onto someone whose life and career has been transcending racial and religious barriers, not deepening them.

Cass Sunstein on Obama:

"’Visionary minimalist’ may sound like an oxymoron, but in fact–and this is the key point–Obama’s promise of change is credible in part because of his brand of minimalism. He is unifying, and therefore able to think ambitiously, because he insists that Americans are not different "types" who should see each other as adversaries engaged in some kind of culture war. Above all, Obama rejects identity politics. He participates in, and helps create, anti-identity politics. He does so by emphasizing that most people have diverse roles, loyalties, positions, and concerns, and that the familiar divisions are hopelessly inadequate ways of capturing people’s self-understandings, or their hopes for their nation. Insisting that ordinary Americans "don’t always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal," Obama asks politicians "to catch up with them." Many independents and Republicans have shown a keen interest in him precisely because he always sees, almost always respects, and not infrequently accepts their deepest commitments."

Leon Wieseltier:

Change: fine. A new generation: fine. A new politics: fine. It is all fine, and it is all contentless. Inspiration without content is a prelude to alienation. Newness is the oldest pitch in American politics. And I am a little sick of hope. ("I do not believe in miracles," says Herodias in Wilde’s play. "I have seen too many.") Also I have a queasy recollection of 1975 and the electrifying emergence of Jimmy Carter out of nowhere, in all his progressive pristinity, in a country made torpid by a war and an era of low politics. Why not the best? Skepticism is bad form in a bandwagoning moment. Yet I have a few doubts.

This kind of skepticism is entirely a good thing, I’d say. The one unfair critique is that Obama lacks policy substance. His campaign is laden with policy substance. Oodles of it. More, I wager, than Leon’s interest would ever bear.

Maybe it’s not right for Nevada, but this latte-sipping Oakeshottian loved it:

Erica Barnett cites Clinton’s 89 percent approval from the Human Rights Campaign. Chris Crain, David Mixner and Kevin Ivers have sharper memories of the Clintons’ long betrayal and use of gay people and gay issues. I don’t trust either Clinton on gay issues. Sure, they’re better than any Republican on the issues we’re confronting. But they know that already. And they’ll never take a risk for gay equality because they assume we have nowhere else to go.

I was chatting today with a friend about the reaction of some in the Democratic party to the actual, real, live possibility of a black man actually becoming the nominee. You know: not Johnson but King. Not someone instantly dismissable like Sharpton, but serious. Part of me thinks of Richard Cohen looking directly at the camera and gasping, with faintly disguised panic: "Schwarze!" But this scene – reminiscent of this gaffe in Colorado – is still the funniest:

The Reno Gazette-Journal puts the video online. It reminds me why his temperament is such an asset to him – and potentially the country.

A reader writes:

A while ago I sent you a tidbit on one of my students here in Mississippi – a young, up-and-coming Republican staffer/campaign worker deeply embedded in GOP state politics here. He’s graduated, been offered work on a few Congressional campaigns, and found time to send me this interesting piece of information:

"I’ll share a funny story with you that may shed some light on who our next president may be.  I was eating breakfast with my wife’s 77 year old die hard, republican grandmother the other morning.  We were watching the news and Obama was the focus of the story.  She looked at me and said, ‘You know, I think he just may be all right.’"

This may be the tip of an ‘Obama Republican’ iceberg. The problem is that establishment Democrats have been so traumatized by what occurred in the 1980s and 1990s that they simply don’t recognized this opportunity for what it is – a Reagan-style realignment that could potentially shape politics and political discourse for the next generation. They’re like shell-shocked soldiers who haven’t recognized the enemy has stopped shooting and is retreating from the battlefield.

But the Clintons have a plan for their own dynasty! You can’t let the interests of the Democratic party and the country come in their way.

The New York Sun pushes back on the usual smear efforts.