The Dish

"I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that,’" – Bill Richardson, currently weighing whether to back the Illinois senator.

It’s alive and well among African-Americans as well.

A Florida poster – unaffiliated, of course, with the campaign – spins the primary.

A reader writes:

I am right-wing policy wonk, and pro-war at that, but what is going on transcends partisan politics.

I hear people call the comparisons to Camelot romanticized, but are they? Obama doesn’t cheat on his wife with movie stars, nor did he come from any familial wealth, especially that gained by (the equivalent of) drug dealing. It would seem an improvement over JFK, or more appropriately, a real human being that can match up to the image of the martyr JFK became.

The main reason I am voting Obama: maybe, if he is elected, people could go back to talking to each other about things that matter; and it might even be socially acceptable for people to change their mind upon reflection.

I tried not to watch it and failed. It felt phoned in. The contrast between the banal cheeriness of the president’s demeanor and the grave threats he faces was unsettling. It’s good for a president to have some emotional resilience in that job. But Bush seems almost pathologically detached from any real understanding of the effects of what he says and does. If you’re him, that’s probably a good thing. If you’re anybody else, it’s horrifying.

Los Angeles, California, 3.45 pm.

A reader writes:

I am volunteering in the Obama campaign office in the Silicon Valley – answering phones, greeting folks, etc. – for the past couple of weeks and thought you be interested in what I have seen:

A Chinese American young woman who lives in New Mexico and was on her way back home after a visit, stopped to get a bumper sticker; an African American male (60 or so) who hasn’t worked on a political campaign since Robert Kennedy’s; lots and lots of Stanford, community college and high school students of all races, religions, etc. doing hard computer work and making phone calls; the 40 something life-long Republican woman who came to change her registration and took almost half an hour to fill out the form because it was really hard for her to do but she did so she could vote in the Democratic primary; the teacher who was having difficulty deciding and just wanted to talk to someone about why we were supporting Obama and left – after signing up to make phone calls for the campaign; a 60 something white male who came in today to write a check – had been a committed Clinton supporter until Bill opened his mouth and he realized that it was still all about Bill; the hundreds of folks who made 21,000 phone calls from our office on Saturday alone as part of California’ s “Make 100,000 calls day” on Saturday… I could go on but I think you understand better than most what is happening ‘on the ground.’

It’s a coalition of the willing.

(Photo: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)

It’s a long year and, mercifully, I don’t have to address all the many good points you’ve made in the past week or so by email about the weirdness of a conservative supporting Obama. Right now, I’m considering who should get the Democratic nomination. It seems to me that a conservative who picks Obama over Clinton or Edwards in that context doesn’t betray any great principles. But in the general? Isn’t he a leftist? A socialist even? Derb’s splutter is not unreasonable as splutters go.

A preliminary comment. Compared to what? It seems to me that any Republican cavilling at Obama’s incremental liberalism who has not exploded in rage during the last seven years has no standing to debate this question.

No conservative who has not gone nuclear at the Bush administration’s Medicare bill, or its doubling of federal education spending, or its adding $32 trillion to unfunded liabilities, or its long record of nanny-state initiatives, or its trampling of states rights in education, drug laws, marriage laws, and on and on … has much of a leg to stand on when complaining – now – about big government liberalism. In many ways, it’s much worse coming from the Republicans, because Bush and his cronies have legitimized left-liberalism in ways that even Clinton could not (and did not).

Of course, I have exploded in rage at the GOP.  But part of that explosion is a hope that they are collectively punished for trashing the brand and the principles of conservatism. If the fall comes around and there is a vast difference between the spending plans of the Democratic and the Republican nominee, I’ll happily revisit this question. But I should add that, while I’ve never met a tax cut I didn’t like, I’ve never subscribed to the idea that indefinite government debt is a conservative principle. And sometimes, as Reagan showed, that means raising taxes. Clinton’s tax hike did not kill the economy. Something similar won’t either. And the notion that a bankrupt government in a post-industrial economy needs to maintain the same economic policies as the 1980s is arguable. If you didn’t catch Chris Caldwell’s typically sharp essay on Sunday, check it out.

I have further thoughts – on foreign policy, climate change and identity politics – but I’ll save them for later posts. But let’s be clear here: Compared to Bush, Obama is a conservative. He is promising nothing like the expansion of government or debt that Bush pushed through in eight years. Nothing like. That doesn’t mean I like the idea of even bigger government. It does mean that a little historical context helps.

"I am more and more coming to the conclusion that National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up. The fundamental moral decency of liberal individualism seems, to the unserious mind that thinks itself serious, completely insipid next to very exciting big boy ideas about shared struggle, sacrifice, duty, glory, virtue, and (most of all) power. And reading Aristotle in Greek," – Will Wilkinson. I’ll bet ya Bill Kristol does not read ancient Greek. Allan Bloom did that for him.

David Roberts looks at the rationale behind Gore endorsing:

If he has a chance to make an influential endorsement, possibly even to nudge Obama to victory, does he have the willpower to refrain? I don’t see how. It would be such sweet balance to his botched endorsement of Howard Dean in ’04. Like Ted Kennedy, Gore would become a huge fish in the comparatively small(er) pond of Obama’s powerful backers. He would enter 2009 with the full power of an historic new presidency at his back. Imagine what could be done with that power. Gore as climate envoy? Climate czar? Climate secretary?

In that event, Gore would have achieved a balance between the conflicting demands of his conscience. He would have the freedom to be a focused advocate and change public opinion, alongside the power of government to affect real change. Best of all, he could get there without the inanities and indignities of a political campaign.

If the Dem. primary reaches the point where Gore could become kingmaker, I suspect the temptation will be irresistible.

Michael Crowley thinks that Gore could deliver a "death blow" of sorts to the Clinton campaign. C’mon, Al. Just do it.