In the meantime

A Golden Opportunity

Last week, on the eve of his historic inauguration as this nation's 44th President, an opinion poll showed that Barack Obama enjoyed an 80% approval rating from the American public as he takes office. At the beginning of his Presidency, Barack Obama faces an opportunity unknown since at least the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term. He takes office with incredible popularity at home and abroad.

The Inauguration was truly a global community event. An estimated two million people filled the National Mall to witness the event in person. One million more stood on the periphery or along the parade route in Washington. In excess of two billion people watched the event on television or online. All over the globe, people gathered together to watch the event with their friends, neighbors and family. Millions live blogged or micro-blogged about the event.

The last time the global community shared in an event was in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. In fact, over the last several generations, most of the events that have brought us together were shared tragedies. This week, the world community shared together in an event that held - at least on the surface - the promise of hope, optimism, change, and even a degree of national unity.

Now comes the hard part: actually governing. Obama must now lead the nation through the financial, international, and social problems that beset us. A candidate - and even a President-Elect - can make promises and pronouncements, or engage in critiques of the failed policies of the past. A President doesn't have that luxury. He has to make the policies, make good on the promises, and seek to build up rather than tear down.

Can you imagine how it must have felt for President Obama the first time he was in the Oval Office alone? Former President Bush was quoted last week as saying the first time he found himself in that position, he felt as if the weight of the world had descended upon his shoulders. When the "weight of the world" fell on Bush's shoulders in January 2001, it was before 911, before Afghanistan, before Iraq, before the financial crisis that looms over us now.

It remains to be seen how - or even if - President Obama will be able leverage his considerable charm, political savvy, personal convictions, oratorical skills, and innate leadership abilities to lead America and the Free World. I can only say that I want him to succeed with all of my heart. I don't agree with many of his positions on the issues, but I want him to be a great President nonetheless.

I want to see him bring our nation together to overcome our present challenges. I want to see him work side by side with Republicans, Democrats and Independents to make our government more responsive to the people, and reign in spending. I want to see the war in Iraq end in such a way that leaves that country as a democracy and a force for peace in the Middle East. I want to see victory in the war on terror in Afghanistan. I want to see an end to the Red State - Blue State impasse.

Can he do it? Again, it remains to be seen. To paraphrase Mark Twain: "I hope he can. I hope it... I doubt it." The odds are stacked against him. He certainly possesses the intellect and communication skills, but remember James Buchanan and Jimmy Carter were perhaps the most qualified people to assume the office, yet history remembers them as less than successful Chief Executives. Not to mention that the business of partisan politics - making your colleagues across the aisle out to be the boogeyman - is how politicians hold on to power at all costs. When was the last time you saw a politician - Republican or Democrat - exercise true political courage putting the interests of the country ahead of advancing the interest of his party? I'll give you some time to think. Like, oh, say, a week or so.

But I am an eternal optimist. I am still holding on to hope that President Obama can be a transformational leader. I hope he becomes a historic president. I hope he can take full advantage of the golden opportunity before him and us.

I hope you will join me in sincerely lifting our President up in prayer.

Chutzpah, defined

At the very least, it was a public relations nightmare.  It was most certainly a clear sign that they don't get it.  At worst, it was a vivid display of the kind of management insight - or lack thereof - that has caused the Big Three automakers to teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. I'm referring to yesterday's Congressional appearance by the CEO's of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and more specifically to their method of conveyance to said appearance.

The three CEOs flew from Detroit to Washington on their respective corporate jets. Separately.  They didn't even bother to carpool or "jetpool," if you will, in one G4.  No, they each flew on their own jet at a cost of approximately $20,000 per jet.

Get the picture: The CEOs fly in pampered corporate luxury to a meeting where they arrived essentially with hat in hand begging our representatives to give them our tax dollars to rescue the companies that they placed at the edge of collapse with highly questionable leadership and vision.

Any way you look at it, the circumstances surrounding the CEO's congressional appearance showed an enormous amount of chutzpah. It is outrageous effrontery.  And what's worse, the CEOs are totally clueless.  As enraged congressmen called them to task about how they traveled to the meeting, you could see it in the CEO's eyes and read it in their body language: How dare you bring up our corporate jet travel, this has nothing to do with anything.  We are entitled these perks.  We deserve this because of our position and our stature.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things, $60,000 for yesterday's CEO airfare is a tiny drop in the bucket.  Sure it is symbolic.  But symbols mean something.  That's why they are called symbols.  And the symbolism - not to mention the irony - of these arrogant corporate bigwigs arriving in luxurious fashion to beg for taxpayer money was damning. One of the day's most astute observations belonged to Rep. Gary Ackerman (D, NY): “It’s almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in a high hat and tuxedo.” 

You know, there's not much that Congress does well, but they are good at sticking their political finger in the air and discerning which way the wind is blowing. Over the last 24 hours they did that and realized that if they just handed these guys a blank check the public would be furious at them. So today, Pelosi, Reid and company were posturing for the cameras, declaring these guys won't get a thin dime until they present Congress with a plan on how they were going to use the 25 billion that Congress has already decided to give them (and that they would already have given to them if it weren't for the outrage over the jets.)

There's another delicious irony here: Congress is taking the Big Three to task for failing to have a plan for how they were going to use taxpayer's money.  Wow. What a concept. Maybe Congress should try that strategy themselves from time to time!

I'm certainly no economist or business consultant, but one wonders where it will end.  A couple months ago, the epicenter of our financial woes appeared to be in the credit markets and specifically in the mortgage market. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG were being bailed out and and $700 billion was targeted to buy out so-called toxic loans in institution's portfolios. The underlying problem, however was clearly stupidity - subprime mortgage loans were made and offered to people who could not possibly make the payments on it.  

Now, just weeks later ground zero of the crisis has moved to the Big Three Automakers, we are told we must bail out Ford, GM and Chrysler.  The aforementioned $700 billion has now been redirected from financial institutions to other areas that would benefit taxpayers (read: voters) more directly. And the underlying problem is still stupidity.  The automakers have been on the rope for decades because of quality issues, plus their inability to make cars that people actually want to buy.  

The people at the center of that stupidity were they ones appearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, staring blankly at the lawmaker who just asked them if to raise their hands if they were willing to sell their corporate jet.  They are the ones who have failed to make their companies profitable, and they are now asking you and me to provide the funds to protect those companies from the consequences of their bad business decisions and lack of effective leadership.

Something is just not right about that.  I understand it is a complex issue, and that there are literally millions of jobs hanging in the balance. But the idea of bailing out GM, Ford and Chrysler really, really rubs me the wrong way.  I am a dyed in the wool capitalist who abhors any type of class warfare or wealth envy.  I am grateful for those entrepreneurs and business leaders who create jobs and grow companies.  But looking at the CEOs before congress yesterday, these men who have clearly failed miserably in leading their companies into anything resembling profitability basically asking Congress to use our money to bail them out leads me, along with tens of millions of my countrymen to answer with a resounding "No way."

President Obama and the Church

In less than two weeks, if the polls are to be believed, a record turnout of the American electorate will elect Senator Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States. To be sure, his election will be a significant and historic milestone for our country.  No matter what your politics, all Americans recognize that the election of an African-American President signals that the last significant vestiges of institutionalized racism in this country are gone forever.  We all rejoice in that.  But at the same time, no one really knows what kind of President the Illinois Senator will be.

The optimistic and pessimistic sides of me have differing takes on this. The optimist part in me thinks that Obama has the opportunity to be, as Colin Powell noted in his endorsement, a "transformational leader."  He could bring us together and seek common ground with both Red State and Blue State America. The pessimistic side of me fears he might move sharply to the left and govern from there causing us to move farther away from the Jeffersonian ideal that the government that rules best rules least. (I must point out that if that happens it will, unfortunately, be just a continuation of the Bush Administration's disappointing trend toward enlarging government and moving away from a free market economy.)

For now, I will choose to hold on to the optimistic hope that a President Obama will unite rather than further divide us.  More importantly, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I will support him as my President and be faithful to pray for him.  Let's be clear: If I choose to follow God's Word, I have no other choice.  Sadly, I fear many in the church - most notably many church leaders - will choose to be political rather than biblical in responding to President Obama.

That is the critical question facing the church in the United States today: Will we in the church choose to be biblical or political in our response to a President Obama? I am convinced that our response will in large measure determine our effectiveness and credibility for the next four years. 

It is no secret that since at least the late 1970s, the portion of the Christian community known as the "Religious Right" has been solidly entrenched in the Republican party. In the interest of full disclosure, I should state for the record that I have voted for the Republican Presidential candidate since I cast my ballot for Ronald Reagan's first term in 1980, so I would certainly qualify as a card-carrying member of the Religious Right. 

For a generation now, those of us on the Right have presumed to have a lock on so-called "values voters."  We have assumed that God was on our side and that we were on His. We have almost deified our preferred candidates, while denigrating and demonizing opposing candidates almost to the point of character assassination.  We assumed that if you were a Christian, you would vote the same way we were voting.  That was a safe assumption for us to make because everyone we knew and socialized with agreed with us 100% politically.

This present election cycle has been vastly different.  The "Religious Right" as we knew it for a generation foundered, unable to agree on a candidate to support. (Why they failed to wholeheartedly endorse Mike Huckabee is still a huge mystery to me.)  When John McCain, arguably their least favorite candidate - one who openly called Christian leaders "agents of intolerance" in 2000 - was tapped as the Republican nominee, the damage to their credibility and influence was done.

Absent someone to be for, many of my brethren on the Right have opted instead for simply being against someone, in this case Barack Obama. In my role as Managing Editor of two Christian media portals, I receive dozens of press releases and news wire dispatches from Christian organizations in my inbox and on my Blackberry every day.  Here is a sampling of recent headlines from Christian groups and organizations:

"Newscast from the Future Exposes Obama Nightmare"
"Reasons Why Obama Looks Like a Wolf"
"Barrie Hussein: Congenital Liar"
"Fake Christian Chooses Fake Catholic as Running Mate"

It is interesting to note that these same Christian news wires ran numerous press releases attacking John McCain before he became the Republican nominee for his stance on a range of issues including abortion. But there have been nothing but positive stories sent out since he became the presumptive nominee.  This is a problem, folks.  When we fail to be consistent and biblical in speaking truth to power, we forfeit the right to do so.  When our staunch criticism of John McCain ceased when he became the Republican nominee, we are being political rather than biblical.

I can understand opposing - even strongly opposing - a candidate on the issues, but to call a man who gives a sincere testimony of his faith in Jesus Christ and who is by all accounts a devoted father and husband a "Fake Christian" is beyond the pale.

A couple of years ago, a prominent Christian leader (on the Right, I might add) stated that the church needed to repent of failing to give Bill Clinton the respect that he was due as one God had placed in authority over us.  He was right. Maybe if the church had earnestly prayed for President Clinton and shown him respect even while opposing his policies there would not have been the scandals in his personal life and his presidency.  If you scoff at that idea, I would suggest you underestimate the power of prayer. 

The Bible could not possibly be clearer: We are to give the leaders that God places in authority over us respect. And we are to sincerely lift them up in prayer. 

Tony Evans is fond of saying the white church depends on an elephant, the black church depends on a donkey, but Jesus is not riding on either.  He stands before us saying, "I'm not here to take sides, I am here to take over!"  The bottom line is this: My personal relationship with Jesus Christ defines who I am, not my political convictions.  My relationship with Christ transcends politics.

Let's purpose in our hearts that we are not going to repeat our mistakes from the Clinton years.  Let us determine at the start that We will be faithful to pray for and support our President - whether it is Obama or McCain - and ask God to give him wisdom, discernment, and favor as he leads us in the years ahead. 

McCain's Palin Problem

As a general rule, I try - admittedly with varying degrees of success - to be politically neutral in my postings in this space. That is actually fairly easy for me to do, because these days I find myself to be pretty ambivalent politically. 

It wasn't always that way. I have voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1980.  For that matter, I have voted for Republicans for everything down to local dog catcher except for the occasional ballot cast for conservative Democrats like Zell Miller.  I am a political, fiscal, and theological conservative, and the Republican party has, over the years, for the most part espoused those values.

"Espoused" being the operative word there, in contrast to "embodied." Over the years, Republican administrations that I voted for have been responsible for government growing larger and larger and the free market economy being ignored in policy considerations. 

I have not pulled the lever, punched the chad, or checked the box with great pride for a Republican presidential candidate since the last time I did so for Reagan in 1984. The presidential candidates I have voted for since that time have earned my vote by the dubious distinction of being the lesser of two evils.  George H.W. Bush.  Bob Dole.  George W. Bush.  I was far from enthused about the prospect of any of these men leading our nation, but given the alternative - Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Al Gore, or John Kerry - I held my nose and cast my vote.

In the years since The Great Communicator left office, the United States of America has been anything but United. We have become for all practical purposes two nations - the Red States and the Blue States. It has gotten to the place now where to be elected President, you have to pander to the extreme left or right of your base and thereby alienate roughly 50% of the country. Our last two elections have been bitter, divisive, ugly, and destructive.  In between those two elections, the events of September 11, 2001 united Americans in a way we haven't been since World War II.  But somehow, we squandered that unity and good will and by 2004 we were right back where we were in 2000.

Now comes John McCain.  When he ran in 2000, a friend of mine gave me a copy of "Faith of Our Fathers." I read it and came away with admiration for his integrity and his service and sacrifice for his country. But as a candidate, I found him lacking.  Lacking in excitement, lacking in leadership skills, and lacking in the ability to make us feel good about ourselves as Reagan did so well.  In 2000, I didn't appreciate McCain's characterization of Christian leaders as "agents of intolerance."

By most if not all accounts, it is a very different John McCain that ran for president this year and went on to become the surprise nominee.  Like many of my friends, I have not been able to support McCain for a myriad of reasons relating to policies, leadership, and his past.

As mentioned in a previous post, many of these friends have found their rationale to support John McCain because of his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, but that VP pick has made it even more difficult for me to support the Arizona Senator.

My first impression of the Palin pick was the fact that that her razor thin resume would instantly rob McCain of one of his strongest arguments - experience.  But just days later when we all saw how carefully Palin was being handled, many of us started to suspect there was a bigger problem. Why would the McCain campaign go to such pains to keep their new VP pick far away from the press? I began to suspect it was because they knew something we didn't about Gov. Palin, and that they wanted the Palin phenomenon to blossom as much as possible before reality hit.

When Palin began sitting down for carefully handpicked interviews, we saw for ourselves why they have been keeping her on a very short leash.  Take her answer to a Katie Couric question about the $700 Billion Wall Street bailout:

Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

Good grief. That reply, and for that matter her entire encounter with Couric was worthy of Miss South Carolina's bumbling answer about maps. (In case you didn't see that classic bit of video, watch it here.)

I'm not alone in being a conservative who is appalled by the prospect of Sarah Palin being a 72 year old cancer survivor's heartbeat away from being leader of the free world. Writing in this week's National Review (the NATIONAL REVIEW, for crying out loud!) columnist Kathleen Parker actually calls for Palin to step aside for the good of the country:

When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted... It was fun while it lasted. Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.

Even conservative icon George Will has expressed serious doubts about McCain's selection of Palin, saying, "Many cultural conservatives, who are much of the GOP's base, consider McCain's adherence to their persuasion perfunctory. By his selection of Palin, he got the enthusiasm of the base. But what has he got in Palin? In coming days, he and we will learn from a stern teacher, experience."

There's a little more than six weeks left until the election.  The initial burst of celebrity has faded quickly thanks to the economic crisis.  They can't keep her under wraps any longer, and the VP debates are coming up soon. (That should be interesting. Joe Biden, for all his experience is also famous for his gaffes.)

I fear John McCain will soon sorely regret his choice of the Alaska Governor as his running mate.

The Wright stuff

It is very rare that I agonize over a post.  To be sure, I always try to be careful in what I write, especially when the subject matter is potentially divisive or controversial, but usually the words come easy.  I have started to write this piece on the situation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright four different times and have scrapped the first three efforts.

It has now been 48 days since the Jeremiah Wright story broke in the national media. While I knew Rev. Wright was a somewhat controversial figure, I also had heard good things about his church and his ministry. I don't agree with much of his theology, but I still respect what he has done at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. That said, I was appalled at what I heard in those first sound bytes.

In what can only be viewed as a sign of how bizarre this campaign has been, the issue of what the Pastor of Barack Obama's church said in sermons - in some cases over seven years ago - has been in the news pretty much for all of the last month and a half.  When I heard last week that Rev. Wright was going to respond over the weekend, I fully expected him to be restrained and to reflect the scholarly side of him that we have heard about. I did wonder why he was going on a four day media blitz, though.

The Moyers interview was OK, but nothing was settled there. Rev. Wright's message to the Detroit NAACP was exciting, funny, and showed his great intellect. There were a few moments that made me squirm, but there were also many moments where I appreciated his calls for reconciliation and his explanation of how our culture and upbringing make us different but not deficient.

Then came Monday's appearance at the National Press Club. I cannot presume to know what was in the man's heart, but what came across to me, and to all I have talked with - both Democrats and Republicans - was a man with a monumental ego. It has been said that an egotist is someone who will burn the house down to fry himself an egg. Rev. Wright did his best to burn down the house for his most famous church member Monday. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Why did Jeremiah Wright do it? Was he in over his head? Did he misjudge the audience, thinking it was like his church, and not the hardened, cynical Washington press corps?  Was he intentionally torpedoing the Obama campaign - burning down the house, so to speak - because he felt they had dissed him and thrown him under the bus? Whatever caused the outburst one thing is certain: The argument that he was taken out of context in those now infamous video clips vanished as he clearly stated his convictions about all of those areas - that the US government came up with the AIDS virus to inflict it on minorities, that the US is a terrorist nation, that 911 was retribution for the US's actions abroad, and that the US marines are no different than the Roman centurians who put Christ to death. Knowing now that he really does believe those things, how could those clips have possibly been out of context?

Time will tell if Obama's words today can effectively stop the bleeding. It was obvious that he was genuinely hurt and angry by the position he found himself in. The pundits are split when judging Obama's actions since this story broke. Some are commending him for trying to salvage the situation and not wanting to dump his pastor the moment he became a political liability, and some are taking him to task for not totally disowning Wright 48 days ago.

If Rev. Wright had been her pastor, I have no doubt that Hillary would have dumped him in a nanosecond because her political ambitions take precedence over anything and everything. I tend to respect Sen. Obama for trying and hopig to bring Rev. Wright into the process, essentially building a bridge to a segment of the African American church.  And I might be wrong, but I think John McCain, given similar circumstances would have done something very similar to what Obama did. McCain learned the value of loyalty and integrity in the Navy. He has shown great respect for President Bush, a man that he has been at odds with for most of the last decade and who is, without a doubt something of a political albatross for the Republican candidate at this point. McCain has also shown class and integrity by not attempting to make political hay out of the Wright situation and being upset when others did on his behalf.

The question that keeps coming back to me is, why are we still talking about this? It is yet another example of how very strange this last year has been in politics. Who could have imagined that the news media would be captivated for 48 days by the words of a pastor of one of the candidates?

There is a lot about Senator Obama that America wants and needs to know about. But we won't learn any of it by taking about seven year old sermon clips from Rev. Wright's or playing the endless 'gotcha' game where the slightest gaffe or misstatement by one of the candidates immediately becomes the lead news for days if not weeks.

This is no way to elect the leader of the free world.

I Was Wrong... Again

If I had a dollar for every time I have been dead wrong about matters political over the last year, I could buy a nice used car.  It happened again Sunday afternoon.  In the midst of a discussion about the recent unpleasantness among the two Democratic candidates, I made the statement that I was convinced the worst was over and that you would see the two camps starting to make nice.  I based this opinion on reports over the weekend that senior Clinton staffers had threatened to jump ship if her continued campaign was going to be focused on trashing Barack Obama.

Boy, was I wrong. Instead of turning down the heat, both campaigns ramped up the attacks on each other in what is starting to look like some sort of scorched earth strategy. 

In a blatant effort to change the subject from her "misstatement" (spelled "l-i-e") about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, Clinton re-introduced the subject of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a story which had begun to fade from the headlines.  The Obama team, for their part, seem to have decided they can and will play hardball with the best of them, and they proved it today by issuing a statement calling Clinton out on her Bosnia embellishment and jumping on the Rev. Wright bandwagon.

With a month to go before the Pennsylvania Primary and more than three months before the convention in Denver, one wonders if there will be anything left of the Democratic Party when it's all said and done. The traditional Democratic coalition is at least at this point lying in tatters.  Hillary's bringing up the Rev. Wright topic again today is bound to infuriate the African American community, a group that Bill and Hillary have already alienated by their behavior since the South Carolina primary.

Also today, Clinton surrogates continued to insist that the former first lady is sitting pretty and attacked the news media for - almost as one - saying her chances of being the nominee are now next to nothing.  Their claims ranged from the silly to the ridiculous.  In the silly category are the claims she is more electable or that Obama's lead is not legitimate because Florida and Michigan are not counting.  The ridiculous was today's assertion by a Clinton crony that she is really ahead because if you add up the Electoral College votes in the states that she won she has more than Obama.

I won't bother to comment on the idiocy of that logic since there's no guarantee that the winner of the primary will go on to win that state in the general election.  But does it strike anyone else as supremely ironic that Democrats took such issue with the Electoral College process in the razor-close 2000 and 2004 elections and now when she needs a straw to grasp and it can be twisted to make her appear to be on top, Sen. Clinton has no problem embracing that same Electoral College?

Then again, it is no more outlandish or disingenuous than Sen. Clinton's sudden concern that the poor voters of Florida and Michigan not be disenfranchised.  She was not concerned with their plight months earlier - before she needed those votes - when she and all of the other candidates agreed that neither state would count.

Contrary to my prediction on Sunday, it appears it's going to continue to get get nastier and sink lower out there.

Barack Obama on Race

On Tuesday, Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama took a significant political risk in making a major speech on the subject of race. The speech was given in response to the controversy over incendiary comments made by Sen. Obama's former pastor of twenty years, Dr. Jeremiah Wright from Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Clips of Rev. Wright's sermons have been played endlessly over the last week.  While at least one of the clips was badly taken out of context - Rev. Wright was quoting someone else, not speaking for himself - his words are deeply offensive to most Americans, and apparently to Sen. Obama as well.

Obama chose - against the advice of his advisers, apparently - to make the speech on the issue of race an attempt to turn the controversy into an invitation to the nation to engage in a frank conversation about race relations. Obviously there were political realities in play in the process, but all but the most cynical agree that the Illinois Senator feels strongly about the issue on a personal level.

By all accounts, the speech was well written and masterfully delivered. Now, for the past 48 hours, news programs have dissected the speech and they have continued to play the sound bytes of Rev. Wright over and over again. The race genie is out of the bottle and it is getting pretty silly, even by American political campaign standards.  Just today, Sen. Obama, speaking off the cuff to a Philadelphia radio host, used the phrase "typical white person." Within hours, Talk Radio and the blogosphere blew a collective gasket.  Lost in the din was the fact that Sen. Obama was talking about his own grandmother when he used the phrase, and he was actually trying to validate the fear that some whites feel around black people.  He was trying to say that good, decent people of both races hold racial stereotypes.

It is a shame that Sen. Obama's speech could not have been given in a different setting and under different circumstances.  It was a ground-breaking, maybe even historic speech, but it is being buried under all of the yelling and screaming.

First of all, it was refreshing to have a politician talk to us like adults; He seemed to be talking to us, not at us.  Second, it was his own words.  There were no speech writers involved.  Obama is said to have been up till 2:00 am Tuesday morning writing the speech.  Third and by far the most important, Obama acknowledged the proverbial thousand-pound gorilla in the room: racial stereotypes and prejudices exist among otherwise good, decent people of all races.

Again, setting aside the fact that Sen. Obama is a candidate for President, he is uniquely qualified to give the speech he gave. His father was black and from Kenya, his mother was white. He was raised in a single-parent home by his mother with lots of help from his grandparents.  He has had to live in two worlds.  He has personal insight into both of those worlds.  When he spoke of black anger, he has seen it firsthand.  When he spoke of white resentment, he has seen that firsthand also, in the life of his grandmother.

At one point in the speech, Sen. Obama said we faced a choice: We could continue to wallow in our prejudices separately, or we can come together and talk about it; we could continue to play the clips of Rev. Wright over and over, or we can acknowledge our anger and resentment and start the process of repairing the breech.

Sadly, if the past 48 hours are any indication, we have chosen to wallow and play the clips.  And nit pick.

On another note, Sen. John McCain showed again today that he is a class act and an honorable man.  He fired a staff member today who was passing on a link to a YouTube video that linked Sen. Obama and Jeremiah Wright to Malcom X and the Black Panthers.  This is the second time McCain has publicly taken action to correct a supporter or staffer who was playing dirty.

One wonders if Sen. McCain can maintain this high standard if he ends up facing Sen. Clinton in the General Election.

Abandon All Hope

In Dante's epic poem Inferno, he and the poet Virgil begin a journey through the underworld.  In the opening lines of Canto Three, Dante relates the words engraved (according to the poet) on the gate of hell: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, or "Abandon all hope, you who enter here."

That phrase comes to mind when one hears Mrs. Clinton speak of late: Abandon all hope.  In one of the strangest twists in a very strange year, the theme of the Clinton campaign over the last few weeks has been exactly that: Abandon Hope.  The irony of it all is almost funny.  In 1992, Bill Clinton ran on a campaign theme of Hope.  He even pointed out he was born in a town called Hope.  He ended his acceptance speech with the phrase, "I still believe in a place called Hope."

Fast forward sixteen years. The former first lady is now running for President, and she is dangerously close to being denied the nomination by a relative political newcomer, Barack Obama.

Like Bill circa 1992, Obama's theme is Hope.  It has worked well for him.  He has won 11 out of the last 11 primary contests.  With Obama successfully employing the "hope" and "change" themes, Hillary Clinton was left to tout her "experience."  The problem is she really doesn't have that much real experience. A recent column by Frank Rich in the New York Times noted that her experience is, to say the least, sketchy:

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.

When the experience message failed to gain traction with voters, Clinton had a bizarre dilemma: She had to counter the "hope" message. In other words, she had to throw cold water on the hope that Obama was inspiring among voters, many of them young, and many of them involved in the process for the first time.  Frank Rich observes, "This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country."

Obama, for his part, has shown a remarkable amount of political acumen, deftly turning each attack into his advantage.  When Hillary feigned indignation - right on cue - about campaign flyers (flyers that Clinton was aware of days earlier when she said how HONORED she was to be on the stage with Obama), Obama challenged her to prove the facts were not true; When Clinton mocked him last week (watch here) bluntly asserting he was naive in his hope-filled rhetoric, Obama stood on the same spot and mocked her mocking him (watch here), saying he talked about hope out of necessity, because the odds of him ever being where he is today were very slim; When her TV spot came out playing on fears that a President Obama would be a disaster when the White House phone rang at 3 am, the Obama campaign had a matching ad out within hours pointing out that the phone already rang, figuratively speaking, on the subject of Iraq, and Hillary gave the wrong answer. Whatever your personal opinion about the issues or the candidates, you gotta hand it to Obama. The guy's good.

This coming Tuesday could very well be the end of the road for the Clinton campaign.  But, no matter what happens, it probably won't be.  I can't imagine a scenario where Hillary (and/or Bill) would actually relinquish power.  I may be wrong.  I hope so.

Oops, there's that word again.

Read the Frank Rich NYT column here.

GOP Race: And then there were two

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney suspended his run for the White House today in the wake of his disappointing showing in the Super Tuesday primaries this week.

Just this past weekend, Romney stated that Mike Huckabee needed to get out of the race because he was preventing Romney from denying John McCain the nomination.  Huckabee responded that such a request required a lot of gall and that he was offended by the suggestion.  Huckabee went on to say that if anyone should drop out of the race, it should be Romney.

All evidence indicates that Huckabee was right.  And now, Romney has done just that.

Romney spent an estimated 40 million of his 250 million dollar personal fortune in his run for the White House, an effort which netted him a total of 286 delegates.  That's about $150,000 of his own money spent for each delegate.  As Barack Obama observed in the last Democratic debate before Super Tuesday, that's not exactly a stellar return on his investment.

Despite far outspending his rivals for the GOP nomination, Romney lost in Iowa to Mike Huckabee.  His campaign never really recovered.  Romney never really connected with the voters, despite his being embraced by conservative talk show hosts and even by evangelical leaders - a bit of a surprise since Romney is a devout Mormon.

Romney's suggestion that Huckabee step aside for him did seem inappropriate considering the Romney campaign's basic lack of electoral success.  Had Romney been the clear choice of the majority of conservatives and evangelicals, that would be a different story, but he was not.  Also, the assumption that Huckabee's departure would greatly benefit Romney was suspect.  Most exit polls on Tuesday showed McCain to be the second choice of Huckabee voters.  Plus, exit polls on Tuesday clearly showed voters were choosing candidates based on character, not on the issues - a big change for Republican voters.

In an article on Time.com, Mark Halperin suggests ten things that Romney could have done differently.  Among those were "could have recognized that his biggest problem was a perceived lack of humanity, and addressed it with humor, purpose, and authenticity" and "could have consistently presented his own personality—disciplined, ambitious, take-charge, impersonal, passionate about his family and his religion—rather than tried to fit himself into a series of established Republican templates."

Most observers feel Romney's departure makes McCain a shoo-in as the GOP nominee.  But, if the vast majority of Romney supporters were to bolt to the Huckabee camp, this could be a horse race:  The combined delegate total for the two (depending on whose count you believe) is somewhere around 500, with McCain's total in the high 600s.

Our strange political year keeps getting stranger by the day.  Oh how the mighty have fallen...and continue to fall!

Our Strange Political Year

Must be tough being a political pundit this year.  The professional kind, I mean. Not the rank amateurs like me whose livelihood thankfully doesn't depend on the accuracy of his political prognostications.  I mean, how would you like to be Dick Morris, the proud author of a 2006 book that predicted the 2008 Presidential Race would be between Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice?

Who could have possibly predicted that Rudy Guiliani, who for the better part of two years was the presumptive Republican standard-bearer would drop out before Super Tuesday and would never garner more than 9% of the vote in any primary?  Who would have thought that the much vaulted entrance of Fred Thompson into the race would be a humongous dud?  Who could have predicted that Barack Obama would give Hillary Clinton a run for her money and stand in the way of the coronation of Mrs. Clinton that everyone thought was inevitable?  And who could have foreseen that John McCain would have more lives than a cat and that the oldest candidate - whose campaign pundits said last rites over six months ago - would be atop the Republican leaderboard heading into the home stretch of the primary season?

Not me, that's for sure.  In fact, some of my bad predictions can be found in this blog's archives!  It just goes to prove Yogi Berra's immortal theorem: It ain't over till it's over.

Super Tuesday next week ought to be really, really interesting.  Stay tuned.