SOUTH DAKOTA STRAIGHT TALK

The rubber is finally going to hit the road and Barack Obama and John Mc Cain are soon going to announce the selection of their Vice Presidential running mate. The Vice Presidential candidate usually makes little if any difference in getting votes but their candidacies do have certain predictable values in campaigning and garnering media attention with their announcement, acceptance speech, and the single Vice Presidential debate.

The Vice President should be someone that the President is comfortable with and hopefully ready and able to assume the Presidency in the event of a Presidential vacancy (death, impeachment, or resignation). It is worth remembering that when Harry Truman became President few expected he could fill the shoes of Franklin D. Roosevelt but President Truman proved more than up to the task of leading an America at War. Truman clearly outperformed expectations.

Otherwise Vice Presidential duties are 75 percent ceremonial, attending foreign state funerals, doing party fundraising, taking political pokes at the opposition party and perhaps if called upon breaking a tie vote in the U S Senate.

The almost Legendary, Vice President (during FDR’s first two terms) John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner described the Vice Presidency “as not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

Sidebar – Cactus Jack Garner who had served as Speaker of the U S House of Representatives is only one of two persons who served as both Speaker of the House and Vice President – thus being Presiding Officer of both Legislative Bodies. It is little remembered but in 1940 Garner challenged FDR for the Democrat Party Presidential nomination. Garner from Uvalde Texas when a member of the Texas Legislature led the fight to name the Texas State Flower the prickly pear cactus (thus the nick name Cactus Jack) lost that fight to the Texas Bluebonnet. Garner lived to be almost 99 years old. He was born on November 22, 1868. In 1963 President John Kennedy who was in Texas on that fateful day called Garner and wished him a happy 95^th birthday.

It is foolish to speculate who each of the Presidential nominees will select. The short lists are in the media daily and the campaigns and parties float names daily. What is happening is that both campaigns are positioning themselves in the political center.

John McCain is a conservative but ideologically unfettered. Suggestions from GOP activists are that he must shore up the Republican Party base. Barack Obama who is in overdrive flip flopping his way to the political center will try to find a centrist to make his candidacy more attractive. One other important factor that may come into play is that both campaigns are indicating that the important battleground States are Florida, Virginia, and Ohio. I would look for candidates that will play into both the Center and these States.

Interestingly, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been mentioned as a possibility in either major party ticket. He won’t be picked.

On the Democrat side, I have no idea. Recently mentioned Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia seems logical but I think Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a former Republican and Secretary of the Navy for Ronald Reagan would have made a better choice (Senator Webb now a Democrat recently took himself out of consideration.) For the same reason Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel would be an interesting pick.

For the GOP there are several that seem to make sense. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney who has moved from left to right, former Pennsylvania Congressman and Governor Tom Ridge (though he is pro choice could get through the GOP convention), and recently added House Chief Minority Whip, Eric Cantor of Richmond, Virginia all seem to be logical and in the running. Cantor who is little known outside Washington is conservative but respected by the moderate Republicans. Cantor also is Jewish and besides doing well in Virginia and would have appeal to many Florida voters.

Finally Senator Joe Liebermann would make sense but he could not get through the Republican Convention and in any event it is a fight the McCain camp would avoid.

It will be an interesting three or four weeks.

Straight Talk Commentary – The very engaging and interesting article appeared this week in “The New York Times”. Essentially it says there is nothing funny about Barack Obama. I could not agree more.

My problem is that the Illinois Senator is inexperienced and an empty suit. We really do not know much about him. He has a shallow record both as Senator in Illinois and from Illinois. After losing to Hillary in New Hampshire he shifted his persona and positions from being everyman in Iowa to the States running up to Super Dooper Tuesday as the Liberal Candidate (reestablishing the Mc Govern coalition of anti war activists, liberal elitists, students, and African Americans.) Since becoming the presumptive Democrat nominee last month BHO now is reincarnating himself yet again.

What are Citizens to really know about the true ability and the political package we may be buying on November 4th? I expect yet another reinvention as he makes his European and Middle East Tour. Europe may receive him like a Hero or a Rock Star.

Despite his lack of any governing political philosophy his talent as a speaker and the political personalization as “the agent of change” do capture the Public’s imagination if not their funny bone.

The popular culture fascinated me and while I found nothing too humorous in “The New Yorker” magazine cover I can not understand that wile Barack Obama is truly not funny, he is also untouchable.

Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke

By Bill Carter

The New York Times

July 15, 2008

What’s so funny about Barack Obama? Apparently not very much, at least not yet.

On Monday, The New Yorker magazine tried dipping its toe into broad satire involving Senator Obama with a cover image depicting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife, Michelle , as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office. The response from both Democrats and Republicans was explosive.

Comedy has been no easier for the phalanx of late-night television hosts who depend on skewering political leaders for a healthy quotient of their nightly monologues. Jay Leno , David Letterman , Conan O’Brien and others have delivered a nightly stream of jokes about the Republican running for president — each one a variant on the same theme: John McCain is old.

But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique. And within a late-night landscape dominated by white hosts, white writers, and overwhelmingly white audiences, there has been almost none about his race.

“We’re doing jokes about people in his orbit, not really about him,” said Mike Sweeney, the head writer for Mr. O’Brien on “Late Night.” The jokes will come, representatives of the late-night shows said, when Mr. Obama does or says something that defines him — in comedy terms.

“We’re carrion birds,” said Jon Stewart , host of “The Daily Show” on the Comedy Central channel. “We’re sitting up there saying ‘Does he seem weak? Is he dehydrated yet? Let’s attack.’ ”

But so far, no true punch lines have landed.

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic “take” on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton ’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore ’s robotic persona.

“The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way,” said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson ’s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. “He’s not a comical figure,” Mr. Barry said.

Jokes have been made about what Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton really thought about Mr. Obama during the primaries, and about the vulgar comments the Rev. Jesse Jackson made about him last week. But anything approaching a joke about Mr. Obama himself has fallen flat.

When Mr. Stewart on “The Daily Show” recently tried to joke about Mr. Obama changing his position on campaign financing, for instance, he met with such obvious resistance from the audience, he said, “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.” Mr. Stewart said in a telephone interview on Monday, “People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them.”

Despite audience resistance, Mr. Stewart contended, his show had been able to develop a distinctive angle on Mr. Obama.

Noting that the senator seems to emphasize the historic nature of his quest, Mr. Stewart said, “So far, our take is that he’s positioning himself to be on a coin.”

There is no doubt, several representatives of the late-night shows said, that so far their audiences (and at least some of the shows’ writers) seem to be favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.

“A lot of people are excited about his candidacy,” Mr. Sweeney said. “It’s almost like: ‘Hey, don’t go after this guy. He’s a fresh face; cut him some slack.’ ”

Justin Stangel, who is a head writer for “Late Show With David Letterman,” disputed that, saying, “We always have to make jokes about everybody. We’re not trying to lay off the new guy.”

But Mr. Barry said, “I think some of us were maybe too quick to caricature Al Gore and John Kerry and there’s maybe some reluctance to do the same thing to him.”

Of course, the question of race is also mentioned as one reason Mr. Obama has proved to be so elusive a target for satire.

“Anything that has even a whiff of being racist, no one is going to laugh,” said Rob Burnett, an executive producer for Mr. Letterman. “The audience is not going to allow anyone to do that.”

The New Yorker faced a different kind of hostility with its cover this week, which the Obama campaign criticized harshly. A campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said in a statement that “most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive — and we agree.”

Asked about the cover at a news conference Monday, Mr. McCain said he thought it was “totally inappropriate, and frankly I understand if Senator Obama and his supporters would find it offensive.”

The cover was drawn by Barry Blitt, who also contributes illustrations to The New York Times’s Op-Ed page. David Remnick , the editor of The New Yorker, said in an e-mail message, “The cover takes a lot of distortions, lies, and misconceptions about the Obamas and puts a mirror up to them to show them for what they are.

“It’s a lot like the spirit of what Stephen Colbert does — by exaggerating and mocking something, he shows its absurdity, and that is what satire is all about,” Mr. Remnick continued.

Mr. Colbert said in a telephone interview that a running joke on his show has been that Mr. Obama is a “secret Muslim”; the New Yorker cover, he said, was consistent with that. “It’s a completely valid satirical point to make — and it’s perfectly valid for Obama not to like it,” he said.

Mr. Colbert said he had been freer to poke fun at Mr. Obama than other late-night hosts because “my character on the show doesn’t like him. I’m expected to be hostile to him.”

Mr. Stewart, who is also an executive producer of “The Colbert Report,” said the Obama campaign’s reaction to the New Yorker cover seemed part of what is now almost a pro forma cycle in political campaigns. “Nothing can occur without the candidate responding,” he said.

Bill Maher , who is host of a politically oriented late-night show on HBO , said, “If you can’t do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?”

One issue that clearly has some impact on writing jokes about Mr. Obama is a consistency among the big late-night shows. Not only are all the hosts white, the vast majority of their audiences are white. “I think white audiences get a little self-conscious if race comes up,” Mr. Sweeney of Mr. O’Brien’s show said.

Things might be somewhat different if even one late-night host was black. Black comics are not having any trouble joking about Mr. Obama, said David Alan Grier , a comedian who, starting in October, will have a satirical news magazine show on Comedy Central, “Chocolate News.”

“I tell jokes on stage about him,” Mr. Grier said, reciting a few that would not ever get onto a network late-night show (nor into this newspaper).

But he said of the late-night hosts, “Those guys really can’t go there. It’s just like the gay comic can do gay material. It comes with the territory.” Still, he said, he has no sympathy for the hosts. “No way. They’ve had 200 years of presidential jokes. It’s our time.”

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of the ABC late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” said of Mr. Obama, “There’s a weird reverse racism going on. You can’t joke about him because he’s half-white. It’s silly. I think it’s more a problem because he’s so polished, he doesn’t seem to have any flaws.”

Mr. Maher said that being sensitive to Mr. Obama was in no way interfering with his commentary, though on HBO he has more freedom about content than other comedians. “There’s been this question about whether he’s black enough,” Mr. Maher said. “I have this joke: What does he have to do? Dunk? He bowled a 37 — to me, that’s black enough.”

Mr. Kimmel said, “His ears should be the focus of the jokes.”

Mostly the late-night shows seem to be in a similar position.

Mr. Burnett of the Letterman show said, “We can’t manufacture a perception. If the perception isn’t true, no one will laugh at it.”

Mr. Sweeney said, “We’re hoping he picks an idiot as vice president.”

Straight Talk Commentary – The Washington Post article below dramatically suggests that Americans have once again fallen into what President Jimmy Carter suggested was a Malaise.

Sidebar – For a recent look at history perhaps repeating itself take look at Carter’s 1979 Malaise speech. The facts Carter recites demonstrate in particular Governments dramatic failure in dealing in dealing with issues, particularly energy independence.

As the WaPo article says, with all the issues and problems that seem to be overwhelming America, Americans feel little sense of hope that there is little chance of anything getting better.

If this article is on the mark and I believe it is - Restoring Hope is the marquis issue for the 2008 Presidential Campaign.

Hope will overshadow Change that eclipses the Economy and the War Against Terrorism. Like the elections of 1932 (Franklin D. Roosevelt) or 1980 (Ronald Reagan), Americans want a Leader who restores our Confidence.

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control

By: Alan Fram and Eileen Putman

WashingtonPost.com

June 22, 2008

WASHINGTON - Is everything spinning out of control?

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.

An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.

"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."

Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.

Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.

But there's always sports, right?

The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too.

Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating.

Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.

It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.

Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.

American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.

"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."

Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.

This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.

Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

(Straight Talk continues)

Endbar – For a look at the long term issues our Presidential Candidates are not talking about look at “Big Issues for the Next President” at Issuesandanswers.info

“Forbes Magazine” reported earlier this month that Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods are number 1 and 2 on their list of the 100 most powerful and high paid celebrities.

Beyond fame and fortune both Oprah and Tiger are among the most widely admired Americans.

Sidebar – like Rudy, Hillary, and now Barack, Oprah and Tiger are on a first name basis with the World. In the World of Public Opinion that’s powerful, although it did not seem to help Hillary and Rudy.

Oprah and Tiger were certainly inspirational this past weekend.

Tiger’s historic 91 hole overtime win of the U S Open is already widely known. His 2008 Open Championship win is memorable and one for the history books. Despite his knee and playing in pain, Tiger showed his skill and more importantly the focus and will to win of a true Champion. Thomas Boswell's beautifully written article in today’s “Washington Post” details Tiger’s conquest of Torrey Pines. Truly Inspirational!

While Tiger was busy on the links on Sunday, Oprah was giving the Commencement Address at Stanford. Among her other remarks it was reported, "Money is pretty nice," she said, drawing knowing laughter from the crowd. "I like money. It's good for buying things. But having a lot of money does not automatically make one a successful person.” In her address Oprah also inspired her audience of 25,000 packed into Stanford Stadium including the 4000 graduates.

What does this have to do with the politics?

Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods have a life of accomplishment yet both are endorsing Barack Obama.

Like the two celebrities Barack is inspirational (he gives a great speech) and despite his Harvard Education and his election to the U S Senate (generally agreed without a real opponent), Barack has little record of real accomplishment.

Barack Obama started out as “the man of the people” when he won the Iowa Caucus. Through the rest of the primary and caucus season he changed his voting constituency and was victorious claiming the “McGovern Coalition. He won with a Democratic coalition of Anti War Liberals, Students, Intellectuals, the Wealthy and overwhelming African Americans. He ceded elderly men and women and the working class to Hillary who received very close to more or less than 50% of the popular vote (depending on whose spin you want to believe and which candidate you prefer).

Obama tapped into the Change theme that was easily exploited with the young that the Government is Broken and Does Not Work. Through the use of social networking that youth so easily employ, his campaign was almost naturally if not seamlessly ready made for the Inspirational Candidate.

The winds of change are a tail wind for Barack Obama.

While the winds of change and the Inspirational Zeitgeist seem to be in favor of Obama, the 2008 Presidential Election has been unpredictable. Ever since the 2006 elections (that the GOP lost in a blowout) it has been well known is that the bar would be set very high for Republicans in 2008.

In John McCain, Republicans have chosen the best possible nominee to run on the Change issue, McCain actually has a record of being a change agent. More importantly though McCain has lived a life of that is in fact Inspirational.

It is often said in Politics perception is reality. On November 4th we will see if Americans choose the Perception or the Reality.

Pinning her to the mat isn’t good enough to win; he is going to have to throw her out of the ring.

Barack Obama has been declared the winner of the Democrat nomination however there is just one problem. He does not have a majority of the legally committed delegates required for nomination. Those pesky super delegates, who say they are for Obama, legally have the right to change their mind. Until the roll is called, the votes are cast, the results announced and the gavel falls, there is at least the remotest possibility that Hillary could pull this off.

Tonight Hillary Clinton did not concede nor did she say she was leaving the ring. She said talk to me.

Hillary received by her claim more popular votes than Barack Obama and won more States including the largest ones and the swing states. With over 1900 delegate, the majority of many states and her filing notice of a possible credentials challenge of the Florida and Michigan delegations she has plenty of bargaining power and there are still almost three months until the Denver Nominating Convention.

Perhaps she is waiting for another remark about bitter people in rural areas clinging to God and Guns or another Major Rev. Wright debacle to unfold. Or perhaps she is just bargaining to get her debts paid or a place on the ticket.

Time will tell – and it is precious time for Barack Obama but for tonight the Fat Lady who was thought to be warming up has retreated for another day.

Good politicians like good salesman accentuate the positive and never speak of the negative. Barack Obama has proven to be a great salesman.

Elected officials often target their remarks when speaking to interest groups and that can border on pandering, and the soon Presumptive Democrat nominee like most politicians deserves some leeway.

The weekend news that the Illinois Senator is quitting his church after twenty years is just the latest edition of the Obama Continuous Reinvention Machine. It has only been a short two and one-half months (March 18th) in his “A More Perfect Union Speech” when he said, "I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” Since then he disowned Wright and now the Church.

Then there was his gaff about meeting hostile foreign leaders without any preconditions – but reinvention interceded.

But consider his difficulty with the facts when he spoke last year in Selma, Alabama. As reported on his Obama08 campaign website - from a “Washington Post” news article –

“During his speech he said “ "Something stirred across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks were willing to march across a bridge," Obama said, explaining that, as a result, his parents "got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born." Earlier in the day at a prayer breakfast, the Illinois Democrat said: "If it hadn't been for Selma, I wouldn't be here."

"This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor," Obama told an audience of civil rights movement veterans. "When people ask me if I've been to Selma before, I tell them I'm coming home."

Obama’s truth and revision problem here is that he was born about four years before the Selma march. When confronted with this rather large inconsistency – the WaPo article continues, “ An aide later said the senator did not mean to imply that his birth was a literal result of the Selma marches but rather of the movement overall.”

Suggesting as Obama did that his birth was a result of his parents getting together in Selma is a biographical fact and not something that is subject to revision.

I do give it to him – he makes a great speech and is mega charismatic!

Beyond my issue that Senator Obama continually revises and extends his remarks and re invents himself - he is an empty suit (he has little experience, has no legislative accomplishments, no administrative accomplishments and a little understanding of economics or foreign policy).

Barack Obama appears to be on the brink of becoming the Democrat’s presumptive nominee, but what you see in June will not be what you see in November.

Endbar – For a look at what’s next from the Clinton Camp, see what their mega spin master, Lanny Davis has to say. Check it out at South Dakota Straight Talk’s issuesandanswers.info.

Barack Obama gave an exclusive interview during his campaign stop to Sioux Falls with Argus Leader reporter Jonathon Ellis.

Sidebar – Jonathan Ellis increasingly is raising his profile as the hometown paper’s political reporter. He has been extending his scope beyond City Hall. If Ellis is still in the Argus stable, I would not be surprised that he does not assume David Kranz’s position as the Argus’ marquis political writer.

During this campaign Obama had been an empty suit. He panders to the Democrat primary electorate (and recently to the electorate at large) with broad claims of change without ever getting to important specifics. His claims seem no more than political pandering.

Specifically in the Ellis interview Obama makes the extraordinary claim that half of America’s electricity needs could be generated by wind power generated in South Dakota.

Obama stated “ But it's (wind power) also a terrific tool for economic development, especially in rural areas and places like South Dakota, where we could generate as much as half, the equivalent of half of the electricity needs of the United States, just from wind power here in South Dakota.”

It is doubtful that wind power produced nationwide could provide for one half of America’s electricity requirements much less that generated in South Dakota. There is also the question of the interruptible nature of wind power. Then too is the question of the power loss by distribution to local consumer’s over long distances nationwide. The Obama campaign if they are serious should have their campaign advisors on energy back up this bold claim with specifics.

The devil is in the details. As Obama has told us he will change the way Washington works (without telling us even one way how) or demonstrating that he has done more than vote the Democrat party line (as opposed to John McCain). He should explain where the truth can be found in his enormous claim.

Barack Obama gives a great political speech and talks the talk but he has to prove he is more than a windy politician from the Windy City.

Straight Talk Commentary – Karl Rove has an interesting piece in “Newsweek”. Whatever else you think about Karl Rove, he is a brilliant political tactician.

Barack Obama appears to have the Democrat nomination almost in hand. It has been a Yogi Berra election (it’s not over till it’s over) and Hillary Clinton not only is going to the mat but is running till they literally throw her out of the ring.

It baffles me that those super delegates (the political professionals) appear ready to anoint Obama. As Rove and others have stated, Obama essentially has reestablished the McGovern coalition (African Americans, Students, and Limousine Liberals.) Hillary Clinton’s coalition is made up of Women of all ages, Blue Collar Workers, and White Voters. Clinton also captured the all important Catholic Democrat vote.

Additionally Hillary defeated Obama in the large states – Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, and Texas. She also won in Florida and Michigan though under a cloud. She also appears to be a stronger candidate than Obama against McCain in the important contested Sates – particularly Florida and Ohio.

Political professionals know (as recent polls bear out) she is the better candidate (at this point) against Senator John McCain. I marvel that the Democrats seem so committed to this process of apportioning the votes in these primary elections. Perhaps it is their idea of democracy and equality that they are so wedded to quotas. It is not serving them well.

Hillary Clinton’s principal challenge is to persuade Super Delegates to veto the pledged delegates. The question is will blind loyalty be won over by political pragmatism?

A word about Obama – Barack Obama gives a great speech. People are desperate for Change and Obama is physically attractive. We know he has been in the Senate three years (for two years running for President) and has no legislative accomplishment. We know in the Senate he voted with fellow Democrats in excess of 90% of the time. A look at his Senate website reveals his most touted accomplishment is increased funding for the Fermi Laboratory in Illinois. We know little of his core beliefs and specifically what he would do (change) to make Washington Work, though he talks about it a lot.

We have learned about his views of Americans that are bitter and cling to God and guns. We have learned about his relationship with his Minister and his Church and how he deals with them when the political spotlight is turned on them.

Barack Obama is on the brink of receiving the Democrat Party nomination yet he remains un vetted and many Americans are unsure what he believes and who he is.

Dear Senator Obama

Newsweek

By: Karl Rove

May 5, 2008

Four months ago, you took the political world by storm in Iowa. The media were agog. They called your words "gorgeous," your victory "a message to the world." You "made history" and Americans could "look at ourselves with pride" in "a moment to marvel."

Times change. The six weeks leading into Pennsylvania were difficult. You excelled at raising money and gaining endorsements, but got weaker as big problems emerged. Before you can fix them, you must understand them. In Pennsylvania, you won only 30 percent among Catholics and 29 percent among white working-class voters. Defections like this elect Republicans.

Even liberal commentators who adore you warn you can't win with a McGovern coalition of college students and white-wine sippers from the party's left wing. Saying small-town voters cling to guns, faith and xenophobia because of economic bitterness hurt you; it reinforced the growing sense you don't share Middle America's values. So did asking about the price of arugula in Iowa, dismissing the "true" patriotism of people who wear a flag lapel pin, being "friendly" (as your chief strategist, David Axelrod, put it) with a violent, unrepentant '60s radical and having a close relationship with an angry pastor who expressed anti-American sentiments.

You argue the son of a single working mom can't be an elitist. But it's not where you start in life; it's where you end up. After a prestigious prep school, Columbia and Harvard, you've ended up with the values of Cambridge, San Francisco and Hyde Park. So you're doing badly in Scranton, Youngstown and Erie, where ordinary Americans live.

HERE ARE SIX SUGGESTIONS FOR WHAT TO DO.

1. Your stump speech is sounding old and out of touch. You made a mistake by not giving the bored press (and voters) something new last Tuesday when you lost Pennsylvania. Come up with something fresh that's focused on the general election. Recapture the optimistic tone of your start and discard the weary, prickly and distracted tone you've taken on.

2. When you get into trouble, pick one, simple explanation. And stay with it. Take the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. You said you weren't sitting in church when he said those ugly things. Two days later, you excused him, saying his comments didn't give "a well-rounded portrait" of him. Two days after that, you condemned his statements as "not only wrong but divisive" but still couldn't "disavow him" any more than you could your grandmother. Ten days later, you implied if Wright hadn't retired, you might have left his church. It would have been better to say from the start that Wright's words were wrong and offensive and you should have spoken out earlier. The applause would have been deafening.

3. Your lack of achievements undercuts your core themes. It's powerful when you say America is not "Red States or Blue States but the United States." The problem is, you don't have a long Senate record of working across party lines. So build one. In the coming months, say that you'll appoint Republicans to your cabinet and get a couple to say they'd serve. Highlight initiatives Republicans can agree on. Most importantly, push for a bipartisan issue now before Congress.

4. You speak of the "fierce urgency of now" that calls leaders to confront important challenges. Sounds good, but people are asking, what urgent issues have drawn your enormous talents? It's counterintuitive, but spend less time campaigning and more time working the Senate. Pick a big issue and fight hard for it. Win or lose, you'll give your argument substance.

5. Stop the attacks. They undermine your claim to a post-partisan new politics. You soared when you seemed above politics, lost altitude when you did what you criticize. Attacks are momentarily satisfying but ultimately corrode your appeal.

6. To answer growing questions about your inexperience, people need to know, in concrete and credible ways, what they can expect from you as president. That's missing now. And don't think those position papers written by academics and posted on the Web do the job. They have a check-the-box quality to them. Americans want to see your passion and commitment to things they care about, in ways that give them confidence you're up to the job. They can smell when something is poll-tested and focus-grouped, not from the heart. Also, you can't bluff anymore like you did on "Meet the Press" in October 2006. (You weren't officially running for president yet, but it's still telling.) Tim Russert pointed to the passage in "The Audacity of Hope" that says "no small number of government programs don't work as advertised," and he asked for an example. You cited Medicaid and Medicare, saying: "I think that there's no doubt that we could squeeze more efficiencies out of those systems there. Simple example, we don't use electronic billing for Medicare and Medicaid providers. Now there's no other business on earth that still has people filling out paper forms to get reimbursed, especially for a system that large. We could drastically reduce the costs of those systems."

The only problem is, the Bush administration, building on the good work of the Clinton administration, already put in place in 2003 a regulation that requires electronic billing of Medicaid and Medicare. Since then, all but a handful have been electronic. You won't get a pass on bluffing anymore. You'll have to do both your homework and occasionally something that's difficult for you (and most other politicians): admit you don't know.

You have talent, intelligence and tapped into something powerful early in your campaign. But running for president is unlike anything you've ever done. You're making mistakes and making people worry that you're an elitist. So while you'll almost certainly win the nomination, Democrats are nervous about the fall. You've given them reasons to be.

Straight Talk Commentary – Juan Williams writing on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King compares Dr. King with Barack Obama.

Williams’s essential point is that King acted from moral authority and saw Blacks as having to assume the responsibility for Citizenship, Obama views racism as a political problem and more specifically as a political issue in a political campaign. Unlike Martin Luther King. Obama believes that eliminating racism is primarily a government responsibility.

Juan Williams was in Sioux Falls two years ago and talked about how America is Changing . In some ways his lecture foreshadowed his Opinion Editorial on Friday.

Obama & King

By: Juan Williams

The Wall Street Journal

April 4, 2008

Martin Luther King Jr. died at age 39; today, the 40th anniversary of his death, is the first time he has been gone longer than he lived.

Figures such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have tried to claim his place on the American stage. But at most they have achieved fame and wealth. What separated King from any would-be successor was his moral authority. He towered above the high walls of racial suspicion by speaking truth to all sides.

Now comes Barack Obama, a black man and a plausible national leader, who appeals across racial lines. But to his black and white supporters, Mr. Obama increasingly represents different things.

The initial base of support for Mr. Obama's presidential campaign came from young whites – who saw in him the ability to take the nation to a place where, to quote from King's "I Have A Dream" speech, "we shall be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

Black voters rallied to Mr. Obama after whites in Iowa and New Hampshire showed they were willing to vote for him. Mr. Obama spoke directly to charges that he was not "black enough," that he was not a child of the civil rights movement because he grew up in Hawaii and has an Ivy League education, that he is too young, it is not his time, and even that his campaign is too risky because white racists might kill him.

Mr. Obama, his wife Michelle and supporters such as Oprah Winfrey make the case to black voters that he is the fruit of the struggles of King and others. They argue that this generation of black Americans does not have to wait for their turn to reach for the ultimate political power of the presidency.

Mr. Obama has carried a message of pride and self-sufficiency to black voters nationwide, who have rewarded him with support reaching 80% and higher. His candidacy has become, as the headline on Ebony magazine put it, a matter of having a black man as president "In Our Lifetime."

Among his white supporters, race is coincidental, not central, to his political identity. Mr. Obama is to them the candidate who personifies the promise of equal opportunity for all. But as black support has become central to his victories, this idealistic view has been increasingly at war with the portrayal, crafted by the senator to win black support, of him as the black candidate. The terrible tension between these racially distinct views now surrounds and threatens his campaign.

So far, Mr. Obama has been content to let black people have their vision of him while white people hold to a separate, segregated reality. He is a politician and, unlike King, his goal is winning votes, not changing hearts. Still, it is a key break from the King tradition to sell different messages to different audiences based on race, and to fail to challenge racial divisions in the nation.

Mr. Obama's major speech on race last month was forced from him only after a political crisis erupted: It became widely known that he'd sat for 20 years in the pews of a church where Rev. Jeremiah Wright lashed out at white people. The minister cursed America as worthy of damnation, made lewd suggestions about the nature of President Clinton's relationship with black voters, and embraced the paranoid idea that the white government was spreading AIDS among black people.

Here is where the racial tension at the heart of Mr. Obama's campaign flared into view. He either shared these beliefs or, lacking good judgment, decided it politically expedient for an ambitious young black politician trying to prove his solidarity with all things black, to be associated with these rants. His judgment and leadership on the critical issue of race is in question.

While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.

When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming "ourselves with dignity and self-respect." He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from "assuming primary responsibility" for achieving "first class citizenship."

Last March in Selma, Ala., Mr. Obama appeared on the verge of breaking away from the merchants of black grievance and victimization. At a commemoration of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, he spoke in a King-like voice. He focused on traditions of black sacrifice, idealism and the need for taking personal responsibility for building strong black families and communities. He said black people should never "deny that its gotten better," even as the movement goes on to improve schools and provide good health care for all Americans. He then challenged black America, by saying that "government alone can't solve all those problems . . . it is not enough just to ask what the government can do for us -- it's important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves."

Mr. Obama added that better education for black students begins with black parents visiting their children's teachers, as well as turning off the television so children can focus on homework. He expressed alarm over the lack of appreciation for education in the black community: "I don't know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs were something white. We've got to get over that mentality." King, he added later, believed that black America has to first "transform ourselves in order to transform the world."

But as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to transcend racial arguments and transform the world.

He has stopped all mention of government's inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America.

And he chooses not to confront the poisonous "thug life" culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.

Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright's racial attacks as the right of the Rev.-Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation's future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother's private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright's public stirring of racial division.

And he wasted time in his Philadelphia speech on race by saying he can't "disown" Rev. Wright any more than he could "disown the black community." No one has asked him to disown Rev. Wright. Only in a later appearance on "The View" television show did he say that he would have left the church if Rev. Wright had not retired and not acknowledged his offensive language.

As the nation tries to recall the meaning of Martin Luther King today, Mr. Obama's campaign has become a mirror reflecting where we are on race 40 years after the assassination. Mr. Obama's success has moved forward the story of American race relations; King would have been thrilled with his political triumphs.

But when Barack Obama, arguably the best of this generation of black or white leaders, finds it easy to sit in Rev. Wright's pews and nod along with wacky and bitterly divisive racial rhetoric, it does call his judgment into question. And it reveals a continuing crisis in racial leadership.

What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church.

Straight Talk Commentary – Religion again has been interjected into the Campaign for the White House. First it was Mitt Romney who straightforwardly embraced his faith yet distanced his religion from any role in a Romney Presidency.

Last Month Barack Obama came under increasing pressure to explain his 20-year membership of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s Church and the hate of Whites and America that Wright espoused there. Senator Obama made his attempt at “The Checkers Speech” (an attempt of a candidate to redeem himself when at the precipice of ugly public opinion.)

Opinion Editorialist Charles Krauthammer lays out Obama’s speech for what it is – an attempt explain away the hatefulness of the Reverend Wright and to distance himself from his Church without ever doing so.

There is not one person in America that really believes that Senator Obama was not aware of Wright’s anti American sentiment or rhetoric. No amount of explaining will keep Wright from being an issue as long as Obama is a candidate.

Unlike John F Kennedy or Romney, Obama did not say my church and its beliefs have no place in an Obama Presidency – Wright as an issue is not going away.

Jeremiah Wright has become Senator Obama’s Albatross.

The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud

By: Charles Krauthammer

The Washington Post

March 21, 2008

The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which"controversial" remarks?

Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented HIV "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for Sept. 11 -- "chickens coming home to roost" -- because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?) What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?

Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"

But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.

His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence and (b) white guilt.

(a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?

"I can no more disown [Wright] than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was Grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street. And Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus's time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did Grandma.

Yet Obama compares her to Wright. Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred?

(b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then he proceeds to do precisely that. What lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.

This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.

But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign. Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?