Author: Michael O. Allen

Revolution, or an election?

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton debating in Texas on Thursday. (Photo by Deborah Cannon)

Washington Post Columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote a column on Wednesday questioning the Barack Obama phenomenon. We will see more pieces like this, especially if Sen. Obama, (D-IL), becomes the Democratic Party nominee.

Let me attempt to refute some of his more salient points.

I don’t want to say Samuelson’s column is ridiculous. He does raise some interesting questions about Obama. He says in The Obama Delusion that he came away from an encounter with Obama at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention “deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship.”

Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I’m dealing with known quantities. They’ve been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

By Samuelson’s standard, only people who have held national office and are well known should put themselves forward as candidates for President of the United States. Although George W. Bush came from a prominent family and was governor of a state, not much was known about him (we still don’t know about his going AWOL from his Air National Guard units during the Vietnam War; his drug use during much of his adult life; and other criminal behavior and activities before he allegedly found religion). His entire adult life (besides drinking and drugging) was spent as his father’s enforcer in the deep background.

Hillary Clinton is known to the whole world, which is both her strength and weakness. Many voters are rejecting her precisely because they know her so well. Obama, besides being a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer, was a state legislator for eight years.

Samuelson criticized the plans that Obama has put forth about what he would like to do in office.

If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

He is right. Obama’s ideas are quite pedestrian. But Mrs. Clinton’s plans are only slightly less so. Obama’s supporters either cannot see, or refuse to see, the conventional politician right before them. They think it’s a revolution when, in fact, all it is is an election and a man running as hard as he can to win an office.

But, that said, I don’t believe it’s Obama’s job to lay out a plan on what he intends to do as president. That’s not part of the job description. I think most people trot out these plans because they think it’s required of them.

Did Bush talk about ‘unitary executive’ doctrine when he ran for President? No. He talked about being a ‘compassionate conservative’ and ‘a uniter, not a divider.’ We know now that both tropes are blatant lies.

A lot of people remember now Bill Clinton’s presidency fondly (willingly forgetting the impeachment and other assorted sordid goings on during those eight years) but what plans did he run on and did he implement them?

One of the things that a leader has to do is inspire and any other year I would have been inspired by Mrs. Clinton. Next to Obama, however, she depresses me.

I think Obama will be a better president and part of the reason is that he’s new and fresh and does not carry the scars and baggage of two decades of warring with Republicans. With Mrs. Clinton, we’re going to have to refight all the old fights.

And it helps that Obama is an inspirational leader.

Please, don’t get me started on McCain. As you all know by now, I think Sen. John McCain is a corrupt and immoral hypocrite.

Candor as performance art

I am sorry if I am beginning to sound like a broken record on Sen. John McCain, (D-AZ). His denial notwithstanding, this is not the first time he’s found himself under the glare and his response was almost typical. I said ‘almost’ because McCain himself would have put this story out himself and run with it.

McCain’s best Washington trick is media manipulation. He gets seasoned journalists, who should know better, to eat right out of his hands.

McCain quickly fessed up and reaped rewards for candor when he was outed as a chronic philanderer in his first marriage. He then dumped his first wife to marry money, Cindy, who, as luck would have it, came complete with a drug addiction. The McCain team went into overdrive and got in front of the story when it came out in 1994 that Cindy McCain had been stealing Percocet, Vicodin, and other drugs from a charity she was supposed to be running.

She granted semi-exclusive interviews to one TV station and three daily newspaper reporters in Arizona, tearfully recalling her addiction, which came about after painful back and knee problems and was exacerbated by the stress of the Keating Five banking scandal that had ensnared her husband. To make matters worse, McCain admitted, she had stolen the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity, and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

This little performance for the media had an additional benefit. It deflected attention from the Keating Five controversy that was threatening John McCain’s career.

McCain did it with the Keating Five, and with the story of the failure of his first marriage (Cindy is his second wife). So what you recall after the humble, honest interview, is not that McCain did favors for savings and loan failure Charlie Keating, or that he cheated on his wife, but instead what an upfront, righteous guy he is.

Maybe that’s why the people who know him best, Arizona voters, have always been lukewarm toward their United States Senator.

I'm just saying . . .

(Tableau borrowed from huffingtonpost.com)

The two faces of Mitt Romney were seen arguing on Boston Harbor this morning:


Mitt I: See, I told you, you shouldn’t have gotten out of the race.
Mitt II: You? You said nothing of the sort. I wanted to stay in and you told me I should get out and endorse McCain.
Mitt I: Well, hear me now. You should cancel your subscription to that damn New York Times. Why are they now telling the world this about McCain? Couldn’t they have come out with it six weeks ago? Even a month ago would have helped? Now, that hayseed, Mike Huckabee is going to walk away with a nomination that I almost bought outright.

That’s one of the perils of being two faced. Sometimes one face doesn’t remember what it is telling the other.

Ensconced somewhere with a team of divorce lawyers, headed by Raoul Felder, Rudy Giuliani is bashing his head against the wall, saying: 9/11. Judy. 9/11. Judy. 9/11. Judy. 9/11. Judy. 9/11. Judy. At least he marries his paramours.

Okay, say what you will, but doesn’t ‘that woman, Ms. Iseman,’ look like she and Cindy McCain were separated at birth? I’m not saying that Jim Rutenberg at The New York Times looked at Mrs. McCain and thought he was looking at Vicki Iseman but . . .

Anyway, it’s not like Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), was ever a choirboy.

I mean, wasn’t it his flagrant philandering that broke down his marriage to Carol Shepp, the woman who nursed him of his war wounds? And people, especially his friends in the media, praised him to no end for his candor and straight shooting when he confessed to that little infidelity. And, of course, this started a pattern of bad behavior by McCain, followed by penitence, which then leads to more praise, and so on and so forth.

The Times’ exposé is essentially combining the two strains of McCain’s Washington life: marital infidelities and financial improprieties.

A friend sent this note . . .

that I thought I should share:

Michael-

In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, Obama exhibits something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates.

That something is a creative imagination which, coupled with brilliance, equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it.

Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace–that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but Obama is the man for this time.

A Moment . . .

Senator Barack Obama at a rally in Houston on Tuesday night. Photo (From nytimes.com is by Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

An impressive tenth straight victory for Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He cut across every demographic in Wisconsin and bested his opponent in areas that were once weaknesses.

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), hasn’t thrown in the towel. Not Yet. Remember the Alamo! She said. See you in Texas, she said. She’ll work the night shift, she said. It’s about deeds, not words, she said. Besides, don’t listen to those sweet words because Obama plagiarized some of them, she said.

Hmmnn.

An argument could be made that all these victories suddenly put Ohio in play and Texas may even be winnable for Sen. Obama.

Is it?

Al Jolson, Elvis Pressley, Bill Clinton, just to name a few.

I’m sure I meant something by that list. But just what I cannot tell you because I am not really sure. The list is not random, however.

It took me a while to get to this Newsweek article by David Gates but I am glad I read it. Mr. Gates wrote a questioning and intelligent article about a sliver of American culture that is unstintingly honest.

Night and Day

I saw the contrasting pictures on the night of the so-called ‘Potomac Primaries’ and did not think anything of it until I read Frank Rich yesterday.

We don’t yet know who the Democratic Party nominee for president will be but, whoever it is, it is going to be a nice contrast with the presumptive Republican nominee. Come November, it will really be about the past and the future. Do we follow the same failed, ruinous policies that has driven the nation into a ditch, or strike out on a new path?

Trial Love Notes

Mr. Daniel Henninger, who writes the Wonder Land column on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, has been listening to Illinois Senator Barack Obama and, surprise, surprise, he found Mr. Obama “insanely” eloquent but the message a downer. The America that Mr. Henninger knows is not nearly as bad off as the good senator makes it out to be.

As a result, Mr. Henninger has a hopeful message for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY): Hang in there. America will soon get tired of the Obama message and then she can coast in to the nomination.

Mr. Henninger’s reason for this is that he found a poll that says Americans, especially those who are supporting Mr. Obama, are generally optimistic about the nation and, they will naturally reject Mr. Obama when they realize he has not been telling them the truth about their beloved country.

The conventional critique of Sen. Obama has held that his pitch is perfect but at some point he’ll need to make the appeal more concrete.

I think the potential vulnerability runs deeper. Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar. It’s a downer.

Up to now, the force of Sen. Obama’s physical presentation has so dazzled audiences that it has been hard to focus on precisely what he is saying. “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” Can what?

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

I have to say this is quite a novel take on the campaign, a trial balloon perhaps of how Republicans plan to attack the senator’s message in the fall. For instance, Mr. Henninger listened to another speech after Sen. Obama, this time by Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), the presumptive Republican nominee. He found Mr. McCain speech more to his liking.

The contrast with Sen. Obama’s is stark. The arc of the McCain speech is upward, positive. Pointedly, he says we are not history’s “victims.” Barack relentlessly pushes victimology.

For Sen. Obama the military and national security is a world of catastrophe welded to Iraq and filled with maimed soldiers. Mr. McCain locates these same difficult subjects inside the whole of American military achievement. It nets out as a more positive message. Recall that Ronald Reagan’s signature optimism, when it first appeared, was laughed at by political pros. Optimism won elections.

Prior to reading Mr. Henninger’s column, the chief complaint I’d read and heard about Mr. Obama’s speeches were that they were relentlessly positive and that Republicans will swiftboat and make mincemeat of him in the general election because he’s too nice.

One shouldn’t blame Mr. Henninger for this column. After all, it was on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. It could have been worse. This was a good try. It must get tiresome hearing all those hosannas from Republicans and independents praising Sen. Obama, the so-called Obamicans, even calling him Reaganesque.

Mrs. Clinton has been tearing her hair out trying to figure out how to counter Sen. Obama’s positive mien. Up to now, she has had to settle for being the the anti-hope candidate. Here’s an answer. Why not accuse him of being too negative for being so positive?