A lot of people have been asking this week who benefits most from Huckabee likely winning Iowa, Guiliani or Romney. The answer is exceedingly simple: Huckabee himself.
Others are criticizing Obama for harboring the dream to be president for a long time. I'm sorry, but I've known a lot of people who would like to be President, and its hard to believe that most politicians wouldn't jump at the chance. The trait that separates naked ambition from a dream to be President is the willingness to say or do anything to get elected.
This past week we've seen the shift everyone's been waiting for. On the Democratic side we're seeing the shift away from Hillary as people start to sit down and realize that she's the least electable of all the Democratic candidates. Well, not least, she sits right between Dodd and Kucinich on the electability scale. On the Republican side, Huckabee has grabbed the mantle of the religious right and made a dash with it far away from the other candidates. The title for the fiscal right probably goes to McCain (I suppose Thompson's next, but one of these days he'll get around to having that press conference where he announces that he's dropping out of the race) and I think at this point he's actually the best bet to stop Huckabee.
If Huckabee and Obama win Iowa, they'll get a nice 10-20 point bounce which will be more than enough to give them New Hampshire, SC, and almost all of the Feb 5th states. And this underscores the whole problem with the polls everyone's been following all summer. They don't matter. Finding out what message resonates with voters when they start paying attention matters, and matters enough to move poll numbers in dramatic fashion if you have the platform to get that message out. Obama and Huckabee, the most optimistic of the candidates, have the right message. Lucky for us, with the exception of McCain, I think they are their parties' best candidates (although I think Richardson would make a better president than Obama). As others have observed, Obama seems to be coming to where he is at exactly the right moment in our country's history, and I think the presidency will easily be his.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Sorry, all out of Grit
A discussion on grit and whether or not we still have it as compared to our fore bearers who fought in, say WW2, has broken out among the guest bloggers on Andrew Sullivan's blog while he's away. I'm quite honestly shocked that the participants have not roundly decided we lack it.
I know it's always difficult to judge one generation against another, but consider this. At the time of the American Revolution our ancestors were willing to fight and die for being taxed without representation. Today the most outrageous earmarks hardly register a shrug. They were willing to fight and die for habeus corpus and to take a stand against the torture of prisoners of war. Today, even the Democrats are afraid to bring a bill to restore habeus corpus to a vote. We're so scared by a single terrorist attack on our soil in the last ten years that we're willing to give away freedoms our fore bearers willingly shed blood for.
I agree with the guest bloggers that if victory in Iraq was a foreseeable end with 150,000 or so troops in Iraq, we would pursue it. If that's your grit-standard we pass. But if fundamental Islam is such a threat to our world, then true grit would mandate doing what it takes to right Iraq, which would mean sending 400,000-500,000 troops over. We blanch at the mere suggestion of that. An alternative, if we believe Iraq like Vietnam is truly lost, would be to get out NOW, but no one seems to have the grit to make that call.
But honestly, I think we show the true measure of our grit in every aspect of our lives. We have become soft, there is no question. If our children struggle in school, it is the teachers fault, not ours or the children's. If we get a parking or speeding ticket, we harass the officer doing his job before taking responsibility. We totally lack the will to confront the desolation of New Orleans. We, as a country, are doing absolutely nothing to confront what our descendants will surely see as the great challenge of our own time: global warming/the end of oil. I'm sorry, but grit isn't living in denial or putting faith in technology advances (which we aren't investing in) as you buy a smaller SUV because you can't afford gas anymore, it's being willing to look at a problem, acknowledge it as a problem and do what you must to fix it. And whether its the outrageously low teacher pay or swearing off credit card debt (or budget deficits), our society totally and completely lacks the grit and determination to do what's best.
I know it's always difficult to judge one generation against another, but consider this. At the time of the American Revolution our ancestors were willing to fight and die for being taxed without representation. Today the most outrageous earmarks hardly register a shrug. They were willing to fight and die for habeus corpus and to take a stand against the torture of prisoners of war. Today, even the Democrats are afraid to bring a bill to restore habeus corpus to a vote. We're so scared by a single terrorist attack on our soil in the last ten years that we're willing to give away freedoms our fore bearers willingly shed blood for.
I agree with the guest bloggers that if victory in Iraq was a foreseeable end with 150,000 or so troops in Iraq, we would pursue it. If that's your grit-standard we pass. But if fundamental Islam is such a threat to our world, then true grit would mandate doing what it takes to right Iraq, which would mean sending 400,000-500,000 troops over. We blanch at the mere suggestion of that. An alternative, if we believe Iraq like Vietnam is truly lost, would be to get out NOW, but no one seems to have the grit to make that call.
But honestly, I think we show the true measure of our grit in every aspect of our lives. We have become soft, there is no question. If our children struggle in school, it is the teachers fault, not ours or the children's. If we get a parking or speeding ticket, we harass the officer doing his job before taking responsibility. We totally lack the will to confront the desolation of New Orleans. We, as a country, are doing absolutely nothing to confront what our descendants will surely see as the great challenge of our own time: global warming/the end of oil. I'm sorry, but grit isn't living in denial or putting faith in technology advances (which we aren't investing in) as you buy a smaller SUV because you can't afford gas anymore, it's being willing to look at a problem, acknowledge it as a problem and do what you must to fix it. And whether its the outrageously low teacher pay or swearing off credit card debt (or budget deficits), our society totally and completely lacks the grit and determination to do what's best.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Politics of Celebrity
It's becoming a problem in America. If Hillary Clinton were to win the 2008 election it would mark the sixth consecutive presidential election won by members of one of two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. Of the three leading Democratic contenders for the nomination, one has served seven years in the Senate, one six, and one three. Of the three, only Obama has any political experience at all outside of being in the Senate unless you count Clinton's time served as first lady where her main accomplishment was offering a disastrous health care proposal. The leading Republican candidate has never served in a national or gubernatorial office and resigned the Iraq Study Group to give paid speeches. Meanwhile candidates like Biden, who has been a Senator for 34 years and is Chairman of Foreign Relations, and Richardson, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times and has served as UN Ambassador, Secretary of Energy and Governor of New Mexico, are struggling mightily to gain traction. Why?
We're developing a sort of rotating cult of personality in America. Experience is beginning to matter less in a President than his celebrity, substance less than appearance. It's a dangerous phenomenon and one with no ready solution. That's because the easiest way to fix the problem is for the media to start doing a better job of more accurately portraying the candidates and of treating the race less as a popularity contest and more as a serious decision. But the media, and its obsession with celebrity and ratings and entertainment, is the chief cause behind this phenomenon in the first place and shows no sign of change. Making the ability to raise money a much less important part of the equation would also help, but there's very little hope of that happening either. I admit, this is one of many problems I just don't see a solution to.
I will say this, though. Next time you hear someone say they don't know whether or not to support Obama because he's so inexperienced, point out that his two main rivals only have three years more experience than he does in the Senate, and that he's served in government longer than either of them. Mention Richardson's credentials, especially about the Nobel Prize nominations, I bet that will wow some people. Maybe working together, we can offset this disturbing trend.
We're developing a sort of rotating cult of personality in America. Experience is beginning to matter less in a President than his celebrity, substance less than appearance. It's a dangerous phenomenon and one with no ready solution. That's because the easiest way to fix the problem is for the media to start doing a better job of more accurately portraying the candidates and of treating the race less as a popularity contest and more as a serious decision. But the media, and its obsession with celebrity and ratings and entertainment, is the chief cause behind this phenomenon in the first place and shows no sign of change. Making the ability to raise money a much less important part of the equation would also help, but there's very little hope of that happening either. I admit, this is one of many problems I just don't see a solution to.
I will say this, though. Next time you hear someone say they don't know whether or not to support Obama because he's so inexperienced, point out that his two main rivals only have three years more experience than he does in the Senate, and that he's served in government longer than either of them. Mention Richardson's credentials, especially about the Nobel Prize nominations, I bet that will wow some people. Maybe working together, we can offset this disturbing trend.
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