Category: Obama

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iraq McCain Obama Politics The War on Terrorism

Obama versus McCain on Iraq

This is a political fight that I’d like to see.  And it looks like we’ve now got the chance.

From last night’s speech, excerpting the sections on Iraq:

And it’s not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians – a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn’t making the American people any safer.

So I’ll say this – there are many words to describe John McCain’s attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush’s policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.

Change is a foreign policy that doesn’t begin and end with a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged. I won’t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what’s not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years – especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.

We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in – but start leaving we must. It’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It’s time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care they need and the benefits they deserve when they come home. It’s time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda’s leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century – terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That’s what change is.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

The American Moment

The close of Obama’s speech tonight:

In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.

So it was for the Greatest Generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.

So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom’s cause.

So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that’s better, and kinder, and more just.

And so it must be for us.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Shameless

Watching Hillary’s performance tonight, I think the best response is to let her stand alone.

She just asked everyone to share their opinions with her about what she should do next on her website, HillaryClinton.com. I for one will be sharing my opinion in a respectful tone.

Edit: Andrew Sullivan summarizes the difference between Clinton’s speech and Obama’s speech very well:

As classy as she was classless; as graceful as she was rigid; as generous as she was stingy.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

On To November

2,118.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The Last Plausible Woman Candidate

With the primary winding down and many top Hillary Clinton supporters blaming her loss on sexism, the press has turned its collective attention to what Clinton’s campaign will mean for future female candidates. A number of editorial writers – sympathetic to Clinton – have posited that Clinton’s loss has shown that a woman candidate cannot succeed given our media environment. Dahlia Lithwick of Slate uses her usual incisive analysis to shred this line of argument:

They argue that Clinton had a legitimate shot at the presidency only because she represented a once-in-a-lifetime lightening strike of marriage, fame, and experience that is not only unique to her but that will die with her failed nomination. Silva quotes commentators who have argued that “only Clinton, a former first lady in an administration that presided over eight prosperous years and a second-term senator who has established her own credentials, could have achieved the successes she has this year.” Zernike’s experts echo this: “Mrs. Clinton had such an unusual combination of experience and name recognition that she might actually raise the bar for women.” Under this theory, Clinton was never really a strong woman candidate; she was just the lucky one who’d married a future president.

By advancing the argument that no woman will ever win the presidency without the advantages of a Hillary Clinton because only those advantages account for her success, we do more to disrespect her enormous talents than all of the oily misogynists on Fox News. All across the country, in the most unlikely ways and places, Hillary Clinton kicked ass as a woman. Why take that away from her now?

In an amusing coincidence the argument being put forward by Clinton supporters now is based on the same premise that I used as my number four point in my call on Hillary Clinton to withdraw from the race back in January. Kate Stone, among others, called this point “classically sexist“:

According to the writer her success would be based on who she married and what she put up with and how conniving she is. In other words, she is a viper. And it has everything to do with her gender when the writer flatly states that if she wins IT IS A LESSON IN HOW WOMEN GAIN POWER. ((I don’t think Clinton is a viper; and I have never called her conniving, so Kate’s summary of my position is a bit off.))

Now, Clinton’s supporters are saying that her loss proves that our country is too sexist to elect a woman president – and basing this view on how exceptionally positioned Clinton was due to who she married, what she put up with, etcetera.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The Kitchen Sink

Clinton partisans have said that Obama has run a vicious campaign and attacked her unfairly.  Obama partisans have said the same about Clinton’s campaign.  In the scheme of things, each candidate benefited from some of the less savory aspects of America.  And the candidates themselves have stayed mainly within typical intra-party bounds in their criticisms.

But I think the best illustration of the difference between the two campaigns is this list written by davefromqueens over at the Daily Kos of “35 Things the Obama Campaign Never Did.”  Obama has run a hard-nosed campaign but he showed a very classy and winning restraint as well.  I don’t think anyone can come up with a similar list of attacks the Clinton campaign didn’t launch.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Obama-Webb 08


A lot of liberal bloggers have been trying to bat down the idea of an Obama-Webb ticket: Kathy G on Matt Yglesias’s blog and Ezra Klein at The American Prospect. James Joyner over at Outside the Beltway provides a good summary of the arguments being used against Webb.

James Fallows, writing from his personal experience of Webb also tries to quash the idea:

Having first met Webb nearly thirty years ago – and having co-written an Atlantic cover story with him, and having broken my rule against giving money to political candidates two years ago when he began his Senate run – I can’t imagine a job he would enjoy less than the vice presidency.

Jim Webb has arranged his life so as to maximize his intellectual and personal independence, and minimize the things he “has” to do and the bosses he must answer to…The federal government office that least matches Webb’s lifetime path is the vice presidency.

But I think the final word so far has to go to conservative Ross Douhat who sees the great potential of an Obama-Webb ticket (h/t Andrew Sullivan.):

…what separates Webb from, say, a John Kerry or a John Edwards – both of whom appealed to Democrats because they seemed to (but didn’t really) shore up the party’s weaknesses on national security and with the white and Southern working class – is that he really is a different kind of Democrat. He isn’t a conventional left-liberal who happens to have a military record and/or a Southern accent; he’s a more sui generis figure, a cultural (though not social) conservative with heterodox views on a variety of issues.

This is why, were I Obama, I would look at the left-liberal case against Webb – on the grounds that he’s too anti-feminist, too pro-military, too skeptical about affirmative action and immigration, too hostile to Hollywood and academia – as an advertisement for the pick. An Obama-Webb ticket wouldn’t send just a message that people who share the same ethno-cultural identity as Jim Webb can have a home in the Democratic Party, the way Kerry and Edwards were supposed to show that veterans and Southerners could too be Democrats; it would send a message that people with Webb’s views can have a home in the party. It would lend substance to Obama’s thus-far insubstantial claim to be something other than a party-line liberal, and in the process it would have the potential to achieve at the national level what the Congressional Dems have successfully done at the local level – namely, expand the definition of what it means to be a Democrat. That’s the promise, as-yet-unfulfilled, of the Obama campaign. And that’s how you build a lasting majority.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Some perspective on how crazy Americans are…

Ben Smith tries to put the “Obama is a secret Muslim” belief into perspective.  As Andrew Sullivan says, “Maybe ten percent of Americans believing Obama is a Muslim isn’t so high after all.”

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Election 2008 Humor Obama The War on Terrorism Videos

Dunkin Donuts: The Coffee of Jihadists

[digg-reddit-me]Rachel Ray was outed as a terrorist sympathizer and Dunkin Donuts was declared the official coffee of Al Qaeda ((Munchkins were declared an essential part of the ideal pre-suicide bombing meal.)) as Michelle Malkin, super-heroine extraordinaire, protected Americans from the jihadist message hidden within a recent Dunkin Donut commercial.

We should all be thankful that Malkin is out there, patrolling our culture, and protecting us from this filth.

Thanks to Malkin’s heroically supersensitive ability to be extremely offended (and to get other people to follow her ((Or is it “sheeple”?)) ), Dunkin Donuts has finally renounced terrorism and removed this ad from circulation.

Some liberal pansies may ask when a scarf is just a scarf.  But what these liberals don’t get is that patriotism is not a function of “loving” one’s country; patriotism is not about wanting to make America a better place; and patriotism is certainly not about “independence.”  And treason does not include things like deceiving a nation to start a war of choice, or looting the government treasury, or allowing our sworn enemy to determine our foreign policy.  ((Oddly, as awful as all of these are, none of them necessarily fit the bill of “disloyalty to one’s nation.”))

What patriots like Michelle Malkin get is that patriotism and treason are not about intentions and actions, but about style.  I know Michelle Malkin is a patriot because she is always on the lookout for traitors (who all happen to be Democrats.)  She also talks about patriotism a lot, and I’m sure she wears a flag pin all the time (even though I could find a picture of her wearing one for this article.)  Rachel Ray is obviously a jihadist because she wore a scarf that looks kind of like a traditional Arab headdress.  That’s also how you can tell that Arabs hate America – because so many of them wear these keffiyehs.

That’s why everyone can see how ridiculous it is that presidential candidate (and super-secret Muslim) Barack Obama considers himself a patriot.  He said he stopped wearing flag pins because people used them as substitutes for “true patriotism.”  What he doesn’t get is that patriotism is only about the fashion statements.

And as for those jihadists at Dunkin Donuts who claimed to not know what a keffiyeh was, Malkin has a ready-made response:

Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style.

We should all be thankful that Dunkin Donuts had the courage to back down after the threats of boycotting spooked it’s fearless leader.  And we should all be thankful that we live in a glorious liberal democracy where such bullying is possible.  What better way is there to use our freedoms than to boycott those who wear items of clothing that resemble items of clothing from other nations?

Some may call such fashion-policing xenophobic neo-McCarthyism.  But Malkin knows it is true patriotism.

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Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics

Veepstakes

Marc Ambinder has his lists of potential VP picks. Here are mine:

Obama

  1. Senator Jim Webb (Virginia)
    The only choice that makes sense. Appeals to the Appalachian demographic that has been escaping him; solidifies his national security and military credentials; makes Virginia a swing state; his Reagan administration background emphasizes how far astray Bush has led the country.

McCain

  1. Governor Charlie Crist (Florida)
    My take on McCain’s campaign this past year is that he is desperate to win, and is willing to compromise almost anything in order to do so. The one exception is his position on what he sees to be the defining issue of our time: Islamist extremism. He believes this single issue overrides all other options. McCain is already focusing on Florida and trying to undermine Obama in the Jewish community there. Picking the popular governor would almost guarantee him this perennial swing state. Also an important factor: picking Crist would protect his right flank and placate social conservatives. Apparently, I’m a dumbass and got my facts wrong here.  Crist is a social conservative, but an “uncomfortable” one, having campaign as pro-choice before he became pro-life.  Another major negative: he, like McCain, is really old.
  2. Governor Mitt Romney (Massachusetts)
    A pick who would placate movement conservatives, bring him a substantial fundraiser, and someone who can speak convincingly on the economy. By picking Romney, McCain is indicating that he is giving his campaign over to the “movement.”
  3. Senator Joe Lieberman (Connecticut)
    Risking the alienation of social conservatives, the Lieberman choice would be bold and would put McCain in the best spot to win the presidency. He would be demonstrating that his presidency would be about the War Against Terrorism as well as his bipartisan bona fides. The boldest move, but also the one McCain would be under enormous pressure not to make. If McCain really believes this election should be about Iraq and terrorism, and if he wants to win on these issues, he should pick Lieberman. He won’t however.
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