Daily Archive

Times headline:

Marion Cotillard ‘in shock’ over 9/11 row, but will not apologise

Or, put another way, “Actress finds herself suddenly in hole, digs.”

The Hill Chronicles:

Obama speaks and the world melts. Forgive the euphanism but it is as if people are salivating all over themselves every time this man speaks. Obama, a smooth talker, has done nothing as a politician that qualifies him to be president. He is a peanut - and we had one - Jimmy Carter, only he held a few more credentials that this man…

Raising Jimmy Carter reminds us. A President Obama does not seem likely to be another President Clinton. Indeed, given what we can seem to discern of his world view and can hear in his verbal music, experience suggests an Obama presidency would be rather less F.D.R., Truman, J.F.K. or even Bill Clinton, and rather more Jimmy Carter and NYC mayor David Dinkins.

The latter two were elected particularly owing to waves of good feeling, optimism, and a sense of “healing” — especially, when it came to Mr Dinkins, racial. And, as we know, both had less than stellar single terms in office, and were defeated for re-election. But one has to be cautious, too; a President Obama could pleasantly surprise us.

Indeed, on a question like this, I always hope I’m wrong. Who am I to say that I’m right and the country’s not? Maybe I’m just not hearing the orchestra’s pitch the way others are? If most want him, who are we to question? (Another of my blogging “friends” is a fervent Obama supporter, and I respect that. One’s allowed to be. And she’s an excellent, thoughtful blogger.)

That’s what democracy is about. The republic will survive. We aren’t electing a king who can simply wave his sceptre and force us to do his bidding. Four years from now there will be another presidential contest, and if he has prevailed in this vote a second-term seeking President Obama will not be able to dismiss critiques of himself with the likes of disarmingly endearing rhetorical questions:

Obama: ‘How Do You Know Any President Is Ready?’

We don’t know, of course. Either way, this is a good election. We may have the first woman president, or the first man neither of wholly European ancestry or wholly — at least ostensibly — Christian parentage.

As a non-participant in their internals, I try to view matters with a measure of detachment. Let these Democrats finish their intra-party argument, one way or the other; and then let the real campaign begin. If any Republican is up for this, and if any Republican has a chance to reach independent voters — the key to this election — and win this election, it is Sen McCain.

But if he eliminates Sen Clinton and in November most of the country beyond Democratic primary voters also do want a President Obama too, well, then, post-election, “Hail To The Chief“. I will stand by him and defend him abroad, out of respect of him as our president and chief of state. That unlike what a swath of lunatics others have been doing regarding the current president, for the last eight years.