Wolffe On Obama

It was not my intention to post book reviews on this blog, but I have just finished reading RENEGADE by Richard Wolffe. The promotion said it is in the tradition of Theodore White’s, Making Of A President, books. “In the tradition of …” is an accurate description. This book is not merely an imitation. Mr. Wolffe has his own style and his own experiences to draw upon. In many ways his book is more than an account of the campaign; it is also a brief biography. Because of Mr. Obama’s background, his race, and what many people will call his improbable rise to political stardom, the biographical material is fascinating and necessary. Few candidates, if any, will be able to emulate his strategy of building a grass roots campaign. The first thing required to make such a strategy work is timing. The worst President in the history of our nation was finally leaving office. I am tempted to say that anyone with more than a beer soaked peanut for a brain desperately wanted change, but that would be too harsh. Suffice it to say that a vast majority of the people recognized the need for change. That was not much of an issue. At issue were the proposed changes and the ability of the respective candidates to bring about those changes.

The next thing required in building a grass roots campaign is a candidate who has the charisma to excite prospective volunteers and make your grass roots organizations attractive to them. Even that is not enough. You still have to find local people who know the community and have the ability and dedication to do a lot of very hard work for very little in the way of monetary compensation. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to recruit volunteers and make them effective. It is a risky strategy that burns up a lot of resources. Mr. Wolffe did a good job of describing the grass roots efforts and the charisma of the candidate. He also did a good job of describing the campaign staff, its organization, and the role Mr. Obama played in the planning and the development of the strategies employed.

Finding the right balance in a book that concentrates so much on one candidate can be difficult. If your focus is so narrow that you ignore the campaign strategies and actions of the other candidates, some of the nuances of the strategies and reactions of the candidate you are covering will be lost. I thought Mr. Wolffe achieved a pretty good balance in regard to the primaries and Hillary Clinton, but I would like to have seen more about John McCain’s strategy, his steps and his missteps. At the beginning of the general election campaign the economy went into a tailspin. This added a sense of urgency to the desire for change. Mr. McCain simply did not get it. He said the economy was fundamentally sound, and he continued to advocate still more tax cuts for the wealthy. I thought that one of the more telling moments of the Presidential debates was when Mr. McCain said Mr. Obama was not running against George W. Bush and Mr. Obama replied that it was difficult to distinguish between the policies of Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush. This exchange is not in Mr. Wolffe’s book, but that is a very minor complaint.

Mr. Wolffe never intended to write an in depth analysis of the election. While covering Mr. Obama’s campaign for Newsweek, Mr. Wolffe was given unprecedented access to the candidate. He then used the information he gained from that access to provide us with a portrait of an extraordinary man. The focus is on that man and the events that shaped him as an individual and a candidate. This word portrait shows us Mr. Obama’s personality and his management style. It shows us how Mr. Obama dealt with the stress of a grueling campaign, and how he reacted to the setbacks and the triumphs. It is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to know more about Barrack Obama. It is also a valuable source of information for anyone who wants to research the election in greater depth. Best of all, RENEGADE is a very good read. Enjoy the ride!
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God bless Ted Kennedy. Even his staunchest critics are praising his congeniality and ability to work out compromises. They are not doing this to be polite. They are not simply eulogizing him. They really mean it. He will be missed!

Unfortunately, compromise has become a thing of the past. The filibuster has always been considered an extreme measure that was rarely used. Not now. It is estimated that the Republicans used it 72 times in February 2008 and 56 times in April 2009. This recalcitrant partisanship and breaking of Senate tradition is destructive to the Senate, the nation, and ultimately to the Republican Party. The Democrats should forget about even trying to compromise on health care reform. They should skirt the filibuster rule and ram the legislation through anyway they can because the Republicans have made it clear that they will block any meaningful reform. In regard to other legislation the Democrats should try to work out reasonable compromises whenever possible. If the Republicans refuse to cooperate, ram the legislation through. Let the Republicans become the party of irrelevant as well as the party of no. The people of his nation deserve and want a government that functions. Hopefully the Republicans will think of Ted Kennedy and start behaving like the loyal opposition rather than performance robbing sludge.

Say No To Change!

From the Commentaries of Salamander Pingrich:

Change is dangerous! We do not need it now and have never needed it. It is time to get back to the original intent of our founding fathers. Our Constitution was perfect as first written. Get rid of all the amendments, including the first ten. The first ten amendments set the dangerous precedent of changing our government. They were not in the original Constitution, and we all know they were propagated by the liberal Democratic-Republicans. Hell, those damn liberals were not even bright enough to figure out whether they were Democrats or Republicans. How dare they tell us we have to let folks with strange ideas pray however they want and worship cows or whatever else they feel like worshiping. We do not need any of those other, so called, rights either. Well, except for the right to bear arms, but we have the NRA to protect that right and the guns to enforce it. It is a good thing too. Because of that right hostile Indians have not attacked us in centuries. And what is wrong with only white, property owning males having the right to vote? It seems to me they did pretty good. It was when we allowed all those other people to vote that we started down the wrong path. It was after that that we got all the socialistic things like public education, Social Security, Veteran’s Administration hospitals, bank depositor’s insurance and such. None of which would have been possible if the Federal Government did not have the power to tax us.

Now that I think about it, the original Constitution was not so perfect after all. Having a federal government that can tax people is dangerous. We should go back to the original intent of our founding fathers. We should go back to the Confederation. No, not the Confederation created just before the War Between the States. I mean the one that did not have the power to tax anyone. I mean the one that won our independence. If it was good enough to do that, it is good enough for me.
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I know I said I would try to keep this blog non-political. I obviously blew that, but I have tried to provide some balance to my own views by presenting the above excerpts from Mr. Pingrich’s Commentaries. What I have written below is simply the truth.

During the August 16, 2009 edition of Meet the Press the panel was asked about all the apparent threats made by people who are opposed to health care reform. Tom Colburn of Oklahoma said it was not just health care reform that had people so upset. He said people were upset about a wide range of changes, and he implied that the threats were justified. Dick Army also seemed to be making excuses for the threats. We Democrats follow the Constitution and say it with ballets rather than bullets. We did so even when George W. Bush was throwing our economy into the toilet and getting us into an unnecessary war. The people of this country have spoken, and they have voted overwhelmingly for change!

WHO’S A NAZI?

Glen (Dreck) Beck and Rush (Limbo) Limbaugh are in a contest to see who can sink the lowest. By calling President Obama a fascist and inciting the lunatic fringe on behalf of the insurance and drug companies both men have sunk so low that they are in danger of setting their hair on fire. In fact, one of the judges of this contest seriously suggested that singed head hair might be a good way to determine the winner. Another judge objected, saying this would give the dreck man too much of an advantage over the follicley challenged limbo man.

The other judges promptly chastised the objecting judge for trying to be politically correct. “He’s not follicley challenged,” they said. “Saying that is like saying both men are intellectually and ethically challenged, and we all know they failed to meet those challenges a long time ago.”

“You should have said Limbaugh is nearly bald.”

The judge who had made the follicley challenged comment laughed. “As in bald faced liar. I like it!”

“Now, hold on there,” the other judge said. “Your comment makes me think you’ve already decided in favor of Limbaugh.”

“Well, Beck did say we should stop calling Obama Hitler.”

“But this contest is far from over. We can’t pick a winner yet. Beck is so good at ignoring anything resembling a fact that Fox will eventually have to do what Limbaugh’s employer did; they’ll have to say Beck is an entertainer whose job is to amuse rather than inform or report.”

“You make a good point. Beck’s an upstart, but he tells terrific lies about euthanasia and such.”

And so the contest continues. Other conservatives, inspired by our two media dregs, are trying mightily to please the insurance and drug companies by adding to the deception, and they are encouraging the gullible to react to the outrageous rumors. Saying that the Democrats are acting like Nazis is a classic example of what psychologists call projection. By inciting the gullible to disrupt town hall meetings the fear mongers are using the same tactics Hitler’s Brown Shirts used to disrupt meetings and stifle debate. Sarah Palin’s lies about the health care bill containing a euthanasia proposal and “Obama’s death panel” also indicate that she is following Hitler’s advice about telling the big lie rather than a small one. In fact, most of the opponents to health care reform are telling the big lies. Mien Kampf, anyone?

I am afraid that reasonable people, who have this strange, un-Republican notion that facts matter, are going to have to hold their noses and suppress their gag reflexes until this contest is over. Unfortunately, such contests will outlast the health care issue and most of us. Even when Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh finally leave the stage there will be others who will seek fame and fortune by exploiting the irrational fears and anger of people who are sitting on the thin edge between sanity and insanity. Those fear mongers may not be Nazis, but they are certainly despicable.

I realize that what I have just written is political, derisive, and scornful. I do not apologize for that. My fictionalized account of this, how low can you go, contest is far too real. The American people are both the judges and the victims. People who make their case responsibly and civilly deserve our respect and attention regardless of whether we agree with them. People who use sleazy tactics, tell outrageous lies, and depend on recklessly dangerous vitriol to create fear and anger deserve our scorn and contempt. The first amendment protects their right to free speech, but it also protects our right to mock them for misusing it. We should laugh at those irresponsible people, and we should do whatever is legally and ethically permissible to make them irrelevant. Fearful, angry reactions are dangerous and frequently disastrous. We must seek and demand objective reporting on what the proposed legislation actually contains. Our whole political system is based on the precept that an informed electorate will make rational choices. We must be informed rather than misinformed.