Category: The Dish

Quote For The Day

2386711461_b39249a9ab

"I can tell you this. My goal is to have the best possible government. And that means me winning. So, I’m very practical in my thinking. I’m a practical guy. One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. Awhile back, there was a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin called ‘Team of Rivals,’ in which she talked about how Lincoln basically pulled all the people he’d been running against into his Cabinet. Because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was, ‘How can we get the country through this time of crisis?’ I think that has to be the approach one takes to the vice president and the Cabinet," – Barack Obama, in Boca Raton today, according to Andrew Romano.

My piece on Obama and the "Team Of Rivals" can be read here.

Hillary for SCOTUS??? Ctd

A reader writes:

I had the great honor of clerking at the United States Supreme Court (and before that, clerking for a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals who was later appointed to the Supreme Court).  It is a wonderful, wonderful place to be – if you like quiet, if you don’t mind having a staff of perhaps six or so people total, if you enjoy spending your days reading briefs, opinions, and memos by kids a year out of law school, and if you like keeping a low profile.  (And if you don’t mind wading through the many cases that don’t make the headlines because — unless you are a law nerd — they are boring.)

In other words, even though it is a position of great power, it is one where daily life bears not the slightest resemblance to daily life for a person near the top of the Executive or Legislative branch.

  Your decisions are made in private, then issued publicly in written opinions mired in legal precedent.  You are not supposed to discuss publicly matters that are or may come before the court, and you are not supposed to elaborate much on your decisions after they are made.  And, although people may argue about how well this standard has been maintained, you are expected to behave with greater decorum than is expected of our elected officials.

I cannot claim to understand HRC or her ambitions.  But I suspect this kind of life would drive her crazy, and Bill even crazier.

But my fear is not that she will be offered this position and refuse it – there is no harm in that.  My fear is that she will accept it, and then turn it into something hyper-politicized, where every opinion is announced from the bench, and accompanied by public speeches condemning a conservative ruling, urging the legislature to overturn a result, encouraging protests, etc.  And what precedent might this set for the next time a Republican President gets a Supreme Court nomination?

I hope I am being far too pessimistic in my assessment of how HRC would behave as justice.  I would be delighted to be proven wrong.  Certainly I have no doubt at all that that she has the intellectual heft for the job. But I worry.

Did She Ask?

Al Giordano:

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

Redlasso: YouTube For The Deaf?

A reader writes:

I’m deaf, and I’m so used to being cut out of the whole Youtube phenomenon.  For Obama speeches, I’ve got this whole thing down where I open two windows, one with the speech and one with the transcript, and go back and forth between them (I’m a good lipreader so it works pretty well).  Then I found out that Obama’s campaign has a whole section of captioned videos on his website — only candidate to do so!  (I was already a major fan but that helped.)

Still, it’s a section rather than everything, and I’m used to just watching videos you post to get a flavor — facial expressions, that sort of thing.

So I was thrilled when I noticed that the video you posted a bit ago, Ellen talking to McCain about gay marriage, had a "cc" symbol in the upper right corner.  I jumped through some hoops, downloaded some stuff, et voila — captions!

I’ll tell Redlasso directly about my happiness too but wanted to let you know, in case it’s an element you hadn’t thought of and you were weighing which of two versions of the same video to post.

About Last Night

Thanks to all of you who came to the Immigration Equality Awards and fundraiser in Chelsea last night. It became a standing room only event, and raised around $200,000. Listening to my fellow honoree, Stacey-Ann Chin, was a particular pleasure. Funny and acerbic and self-aware, she nonetheless managed to convey what it is for some people around the world to live as gay or bi or transgender. In Jamaica, her homeland, to be gay is to live with a risk of constant physical danger, along with psychological and spiritual etiolation. Immigration Equality has rescued dozens of gay asylum-seekers, fleeing regimes murderously intent on abusing them and their loved ones. It has also done a huge amount to raise awareness of the US’s still-standing ban on any and all HIV-positive tourists, visitors and immigrants. I was really honored to be there. And you can still donate here.

McCain’s Medical Records

Timed for a Friday release before a Holiday weekend. If there’s some troubling data in there, I don’t think this is a story that will be over by next Tuesday. Age should not be an issue, in my view. But health is a legitimate question in a presidential candidate. I hope the Senator is in fine form. He certainly keeps a schedule that would defeat most forty year-olds.