Thank you everyone. Sorry I am late getting back to you – us older folks need our sleep, so I just learned about Iowa results this morning. I will answer some of you individually in the comments of my original diary, as I am genuinely impressed with the thoughts brought forward. I have decided to use a new Diary to respond in summary to all your great comments. And in all honesty, I have never used update before and I cannot figure out how to change the title.
In general, the answers given as to WHY in choosing Obama were mostly based on Charisma, Personality and Rhapsody. In summary – He is charming, he makes us feel good, his speeches and writings give us hope!
What I was truly hoping for was substance and depth, as well as strong character attributes. Please – Bear with me here. Now I would like to play Devils Advocate – again no fighting – this is a discussion, not another war.
In fairness, before we go further, a bit about me. I taught many years at the College level. I DO keep up with young people. I have also had the unique advantage of working with the former head of Save the Children, Dave Miller, for 7 years. His cousin was Abby Hoffman. Dave was my touchstone in learning and understanding about the customs, culture and personalities of people from the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Not being one of the top 75 Colleges in the country, Bush I, believe it or not, had recruiters in the most ghastly parts of the world, who would send students, on easy to get I-9 (student) Visa’s, to the lesser rated colleges. We ended up with a 39% ratio to our overall population; mostly from the Middle East, West Africa, the Pacific Rim, and South East Asia.
To address those of you specifically on inspirational reading, no I did not read Obama’s books and let me explain why. Right after the DNC Caucus with all the candidates, I sent each of the Democratic Candidates a list of questions. Some answered, others ignored me. Obama sent me two pictures of himself, in lieu of responses. Rather arrogant I thought, so I decided to wait and see.
Yes, I have read many, many inspirational books, e.g. `The Road Less Traveled’, `The Bagda Gita’ many of Norman Vincent Peale’s books, and I even own a specially translated version of the `Quran’, given to me by students. I have been reading inspirational books from all over the world for well over 25 years.
Again, as to the quality of speeches. Yes there are many very good public speakers. Most recently, Hukabee, James Dobson, Pat Robertson to name a few. Oral Roberts even got his followers to cough up 8 Million dollars in a short span, threatening that otherwise God was going to call him home. Each of these individuals is VERY charismatic and have great personalities, but they use that talent, for what I consider, rather nefarious personal gain. Yet each has a broad, but unfortunately gullible, following and now they receive over 300 Million a year from our tax dollars.
Charismatic, personality, Inspirational, – choose your adjective. In the span of MY lifetime, there have been only TWO world leaders who were charismatic, intelligent, and inspirational. They differed from Hitler, Stalin, even Churchill, and others, who also had those abilities, in that they chose to use those abilities to better their countries and mankind in general.
One was John F Kennedy (whom I met personally, as my father helped out behind the scenes in the Kennedy Organization) Under inordinate pressure regarding the Bay of Pigs JFK put the well being of his people and the world ahead of personal enrichment and called off the invasion of Cuba.(WAR always has such great profit for those few you know). In the end he was murdered for his choices.
The other person is Mikhail Gorbachev, who used `Glasnost’ to break down the walls of communism in Russia. By some miracle, is still alive and still working to better the world for all mankind.
I had several opportunities to meet Benazir Bhutto, at the home of the sons of one of her bothers, who lived in Manchester NH in the late 80’s and early 90’s. While the press portrays Benazir as `charming, likable, warm, I found her to be a demanding, imperious Witch (The W should be a B at the beginning of the last word). I won’t express my opinion of her husband.
So while Charisma may help one advance, and is definitely the frosting on the cake. Competency, experience and intelligence are much more crucial. to REALLY accomplishing anything and moving forward.
Although he likes to portray himself as the NEW JFK, Obama, other than being nearly as young and also a Senator, is NO JFK Obama’s comment about invading Pakistan, on Bhutto’s death left me cold. It also put a tremendous chill on the Pakistani’s who own “Mom and Pop” stores in the Manchester and Concord areas of NH. Juan Cole clearly lays out the challenges of America’s Mid-East conundrum, which must be tackled beginning the first week of the new presidency, or we are really in deep doo doo.
Now on strength of character. Tragedy, and the school of life experience seems to make people either smarter, wiser and more compassionate, or, it breaks them and leaves them angry and bitter. The Left Coaster does an excellent analysis about this topic and Obama. Please read the embedded links. Some of you will recognize Armando (now posting as `Big Tent Democrat’) and other well regarded leaders of the blogosphere.
Honesty, not `Truthiness’ is a characteristic I value above all else. Lies, even small white ones, eventually go to a place where denial sets in, and people do not realize they acquired this attribute. Again, Disingenuous, mendacity, or whatever noun you like, the ability to deceive by any means, can never be fully trusted.
Steve Clemons, a well known MODERATE foreign policy expert, does NOT believe warm and fuzzy Bipartisanship, touted by the Village DC pundits, will work I strongly believe, compromise, tried for damn near 20 years, has gotten us nothing but our teeth kicked in, our lunch money stolen and thousands of soldiers and probably over a million Mid Easterners dead. And strangely, despite not having 60 votes at any point during their period of rule, the Republicans got through most of what they wanted when in control of congress and the WH. Key to getting Republican votes isn’t to come forward sniveling on ones knees asking what the price for the votes is. I suggest the key is to have a president with a strong character, who can aggressively, but intelligently, make the case that the American people deserve health care, deserve lower oil prices, deserve fairer credit card policies – and a president who is willing to go the wall for the millions of us “WE THE PEOPLE”
So I ask each of you to focus your rebuttals on why you think charisma, good speeches, writings, trump character, experience, solid policy, and honesty. Dig deep prior to responding. It’s understood the links in this diary will be read, prior to responding. Lets make a game out of it and the best responses get one of Atrios’s “Ponies”, if I can figure out how to steal one.
As stated earlier, our European allies are stressing publicly, this truly is THE most important election of America’s existence We can either show the world we have matured and learned from our previous mistakes, and are willing to delve deeply into issues, character and strength, or, we can have a crashing end to empire that will be very painful indeed-for all of us.
