All Posts Tagged With: "Barack Obama"
Sober Man’s View of Barackracy
Obama gives me hope and he gives me fright.
Over the past few years, I have endured the common process of maturing from a naive, excessively optimistic youth into a more realistic, but still confidently optimistic young adult. Obama must now endure the same metamorphosis. He must convert his naive, excessively optimistic rhetoric into real, politically muddy pragmatism and results. An unfortunate reality of human nature is that politicians cannot obtain results without muddy pragmatism.
I find it difficult to recall a time in Obama’s career when he has used muddy pragmatism to push the world toward his idealized vision of it. This does not mean that he lacks the ability to do so, but knowing that he has little or no experience doing so disturbs and disquiets me. His optimism for a post-partisan world will be counteracted by the reality of his personal views being far to the left of what most Americans, even most Democrats, want their policies to look like. If he does not adopt a Bill Clintonesque moderate liberal approach, his bedtime fantasies of being the savior who leads us into a beautiful post-partisan world will transform into nightmares of Congressional gridlock. He made many promises to many constituencies, now he needs the courage and the maturity to tell some of those groups, “No, I Can’t. Sorry, but I cannot do it all. I must govern and prioritize as a pragmatist.” Read more…
Transition Predictions
Author’s Note: This post was written October 31st, before the election happened and any appointments were made. Already, I’m looking partly stupid and partly prophetic: I did not predict Rahm Emanuel as CoS, but I did predict Robert Gibbs as Press Secretary. Anyway, consider this an open thread on transition predictions.
Election Predictions
For the past week or so, contributors, readers, and friends of Urbanagora have been compiling our Official 2008 Election Predictions. We put swing states, close senate races, and more into the mix. Now that the campaigning is over, go out and VOTE, then come back and check how we think it will all turn out.
Voting in NoVA
Today I voted for Barack Obama in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I cast an absentee ballot because I wont be able to make it to my polling place on Election Day. Due to expectations of an unprecedented turnout, Arlington County is encouraging people to vote early by absentee ballot. Today when I arrived, there was over an hour long line snaking back and forth down a hallway, to lines winding around a big entrance way, and back up the hallway where the line began, and eventually to the room with the voting booths. Read more…
“You can tell a lot about a guy from his shoes”
Today cable news is paying too much attention to what the McCain campaign paid for Sarah Palin’s clothes. This is a story I couldn’t possibly care less about, and while it’s good for the Obama campaign, it’s not as helpful as focusing on the issues. As I speak the Dow is down 515. Palin will stay connected with those she connects with, but by now most at the margin have been lost, with polls showing that 55% of Americans have reached the self-evident truth that Palin isn’t prepared to be President.
As an Illinoisian I take pride in our state’s history of producing leaders who were great speech makers, like Lincoln, Everett Dirksen, and Adlai Stevenson.
I was thinking of Stevenson today when I heard about Palin, and the famous picture of Stevenson with a hole worn into his shoes. In that spirit, take a look at the pictures below:
Colin Powell Says What Needs To Be Said
Not his endorsement of Barack Obama. The endorsement is all well and good. It will consume some news cycles and run down the clock, and maybe even persuade a few moderates who are on the fence. But I think we should take a step back from the campaign for a second and look at two things Powell said that are only peripherally related to this election. They are deeply important points and Powell put them very eloquently. Read more…
How Will Obama Govern?
With little more than two weeks before the election, it appears rather likely that Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States. Here’s a look at some of the different models an Obama presidency could follow, and why each one may or may not happen.
What does Buffett’s support say about Obama
I’d recommend Andy Tobais for investment advice and political commentary. Tobias wrote “The only investment guide you’ll ever need” a highly readable book offering very practical, step by step ideas on how to build wealth slowly.
He has a comment up today, that I wanted to submit to the Agora for discussion on Warren Buffett’s support for Obama:
HOW DID WARREN BUFFETT GET SO RICH?
He started with nothing, inherited nothing, made it all by his wits. How? By being uncommonly smart, sure, but also by being wise, which is different, and uncommonly thoughtful; uncommonly decent, which has attracted decency in return; by taking the long view and sorting out what’s important; and – crucially – by being a good judge of talent: knowing which chief executives to bet on.
What does it say about Senator Obama that for the first time ever Warren Buffett has taken an active role in a modern Presidential election, hosting and headlining fundraisers to make Barack Obama our next chief executive?
What does it say about the urgency of the situation?
What does it say about Senator McCain?
New ad: Ninety Percent
The most memorable moment from last night’s debate was easily McCain’s statement that he is not George W. Bush. It was one of his most confrontational moments, and definitely a pre-canned line. McCain had other one liners in the bag, but his delivery fell flat.
As I mentioned in the Urbanagora liveblog of the debate, Obama should have immediately hit back and said, “When you vote with someone 90% of the time, it can be pretty hard to tell you apart.”
Today they hit it out of the park with this ad. (Thanks to Ryan for directing me to this)
