{"id":407,"date":"2008-04-17T08:22:15","date_gmt":"2008-04-17T13:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=407"},"modified":"2008-04-16T22:24:27","modified_gmt":"2008-04-17T03:24:27","slug":"following-up-the-paradox-of-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=407","title":{"rendered":"Following Up “The Paradox of Barack Obama”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote a piece a while back – before the February 5th Super Primary – about “The Paradox of Barack Obama<\/a>“. asking a few questions:<\/p>\n

What Obama and his supporters are counting on are the choices of many individuals to take a leap of faith – a faith not borne out by recent history, but a faith in a better tomorrow – specifically a better tomorrow founded on the discernment of the American people. This is what Obama means when he speaks of \u201cthe audacity of hope\u201d<\/a>, the \u201cfierce urgency of now\u201d<\/a>, and \u201cthe great need of the hour\u201d<\/a>. It is what skeptics call \u201cdrinking the Kool-Aid<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

What Obama is attempting to do is call on the \u201cbetter angels of our nature\u201d. The paradox is that he will only succeed if America is transformed through a leap of faith. And a majority of individuals will only take the leap of faith if they first believe he will succeed. Which is why his campaign is a conjuring act. It is also why his campaign – unlike Hillary\u2019s – will require American politics to rise to a different level.<\/p>\n

The question now is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Can he get Hillary to rise to that level?<\/li>\n
  2. Can he convince Hillary to trust the American people and say what she means?<\/li>\n
  3. Can he convince Hillary that the American people will see beyond the gutter politics dominating the campaign?<\/li>\n
  4. Can he convince Democrats that he can win in a politics dominated by character assassination?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Now that the campaign has progressed as far as it has, I think we can answer these questions:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. No.<\/li>\n
    2. No.<\/li>\n
    3. No.<\/li>\n
    4. Yes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I wrote a piece a while back – before the February 5th Super Primary – about “The Paradox of Barack Obama“. asking a few questions: What Obama and his supporters are counting on are the choices of many individuals to take a leap of faith – a faith not borne out by recent history, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,6,4,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-2008","category-obama","category-politics","category-the-clintons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-6z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}