AmbivaBlog

"Ultra-pragmatic, consensus-building, favoring incremental steps in the right direction over broad culture war battles."

Beliefnet's Steven Waldman's description of Obama, in the context of how the Democratic Party's abortion plank was worked out.

Stated in negative terms, the left-wing attack on Obama (he's a compulsive compriser) is far closer to the truth than the right-wing caricature (he's ideological radical). More positively (?), he's not a cross between JFK and MLK. He's a cross between JFK and LBJ.

The context, by the way, is pretty depressing, as it shows how terrorized the Democratic party is by the most uncompromising pro-choicers.

Quit While You're . . .

. . . ahead!

(Most of you will have read this story via Althouse already.  But I couldn't help linking it, not least because the guy was just my age.  I was trying to think what I'd be happy, or even likely, to check out after completing or achieving.  And you?)

Is This Woman Saying She Expects Barack Obama (or Joe the Plumber) to Pay Her Gas Bill and Mortgage?

Sent to me by another conservative friend with the comment, "This really annoys me":

I watched the video, and I did not necessarily understand it that way.  The woman didn't say she wouldn't have to pay her gas bill and mortgage, she said she wouldn't have to worry about them, that her economic stress would be eased.  She didn't say how, and it's an awful lot of faith to be putting in a presidential candidate, but I think it's being misinterpreted.  What do you think?

Go to YouTube and read the comments.  Warning:  they're disgusting.

That Utopian Impulse.

Last night I heard Barack Obama declare to a rally in Missouri, "We're going to totally transform the United States of America!"

Totally?  Does it need it?  Do we want it?  I mean, sure, it's got problems (it's the worst except for all the rest, etc.), but I thought it was pretty good and evolving to be better, in spite of the inevitable setbacks.

That reminded me of the one truly scary thing -- only one -- I've heard Michelle Obama say, and it hasn't been much commented on.  She said, "We know how the world should look!  We know how the world should look!"  She felt so strongly about that she said it twice.

People who are sure they know how the world should look (they are not found only on the left, of course) can get quite totalitarian about "transforming" it, given the chance.  This, it strikes me, is a major argument for limited government.  I wouldn't want to be governed by right-wing Christian theocrats, and I don't want to be governed by left-wing utopians.  The messy marketplace of contending ideas, and the developments that go on at a much deeper level than ideas, can be trusted, in my unauthorized opinion, more than any programmatic vision of social justice, and more than the Bible.  (This perspective is not so much Libertarian as Taoist, but the two can comport rather nicely.)

Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress; Sarah Palin and a Republican Congress -- those are the two scariest scenarios I can imagine.  They both amount to takeovers by control freaks who "know how the world should look."  We're a lot closer to the former than the latter.  We could be subjected to two years of intensive leftist social engineering before Congress changes hands.  Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, would kinda cancel out.

I doubt that John McCain thinks he knows exactly how the world should look (though I'm sure he has a strong sense of how it shouldn't look).  In that respect, his age is in his favor.

P.S. For a fine Taoist political fable about the do-gooder impulse run amok, read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven.  (I know, I'm repeating myself.)

Just a Reminder . . . [UPDATED]

. . . that it's not all shouting. 

Rest your inner ear.

UPDATE:  Here's a great interview with the cellist.

"Who Does He Think He Is, Adlai Stevenson?"

That was one of the comments on a set of ten photos of Obama, "from whom I don't know," published online by Marty Peretz at TNR:

Only anyone old, old, OLD enough to remember the silver stickpin of a sole with a hole that was Adlai Stevenson's campaign button will "get it."  Then, it was supposed to signify modesty and humility.  Today, it probably means no time to buy a new pair of shoes -- a comment on the relentlessness of marathon campaigning. 

Adlai had sole.  And he lost to Ike twice.  Here's a snippet of his 1952 nomination acceptance speech, , from the book I described here:

What does concern me, in common with thinking partisans of both parties, is not just winning the election, but how it is won, how well we can take advantage of this great quadrennial opportunity to debate issues sensibly and soberly.  I hope and pray that we Democrats, win or lose, can campaign not as a crusade to exterminate the opposing party, as our opponents seem to prefer, but as a great opportunity to educate and elevate a people whose destiny is leadership, not alone of a rich, prosperous, contented country as in the past, but of a world in ferment. [...]

Better we lose the election than mislead the people; better we lose than misgovern the people.

Sad Little Factoid.

I just saw on CNN's crawl that there are fewer heart attacks the Monday morning after time "falls back" at the end of daylight saving.  There's also a slight increase in heart attacks the Monday morning after we "spring forward."  In Sweden, anyway.  The effect is small but statistically significant.

That's pathetic.  We're all so rushed and stressed (even in Sweden) that our hearts slurp up that one extra hour of sleep like desert plants in a rare rain.  It always does feel like a disproportionately great luxury, doesn't it?  Balm for that feeling that there are never enough hours in the day.  And some consolation for the winter dark's sudden pounce.  The two things together are like a hibernation starter kit.

American scientists responded that no one should conclude that one hour of sleep one day of the year is a matter of life and death.  But "there is growing evidence that chronic sleep deprivation has a negative impact on the heart."  News I should take to heart.

Getting on the "Hope" Bandwagon

Did you know the administration's homeowner emergency mortgage aid plans are called "Hope Now" and "Hope for Homeowners"?

That word needs a long timeout.  It started with "the Man from Hope."  Or maybe with The Shawshank Redemption.  (Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for that movie, mostly thanks to Morgan Freeman.  But the solemn Tim Robbins lines about hope -- "Hope is a good thing.  Maybe the best of things.  And a good thing never dies."  Excuse me? -- are one of the places where the seams show.)

It's one of those words like "try" that admits that you're already very uncertain of the outcome.

"Yes We Can!" . . . but will we?

 

H/T:  Ron

From The People's Cube, the right-wing Onion.

To Give Obama Credit:

Obama's characteristic pose is listening. I've heard that when McCain works a room he finds out who is powerful and goes to them ("Excuse me, but there's someone over there who matters more than you"), but Obama listens in an egalitarian way.

Says libertarian Deirdre McCloskey, here.  (She quickly goes on to qualify it:  "[W]e libertarian populists had similar hopes for Jimmy Carter, and we even thought Bill Clinton was listening.")

That's what McCain did to Letterman, isn't it?  He made the decision that Katie Couric was more powerful.  Not a good call!

Ever been not-listened-to that way by a politician?  I have.  Guess who?  Tom Ridge.  Mutual friend Barry Casselman (who I think attended the same high school as Ridge in Erie, PA) introduced us at a Minneapolis symposium he organized, at which Ridge and I both spoke.  Ridge hadn't even finished saying hello before he was looking restlessly over and past me, scanning for someone more important (or, in the case of a female, maybe younger would do).  After that, I had as little use for Ridge as he'd had for me.

I've heard at two degrees of separation that Obama has an astonishing ability to remember people's -- campaign volunteers' -- names and stories.  That's quite a political gift, or skill.  Doesn't mean it's any more sincere than Ridge's bald indifference -- likely less so.

"Americain."

Someone waves that sign at a Republican rally, apparently unaware of the irony that it's in French.