[Dialogue] {Spam?} Re: Beret Griffith sent you an article from startribune.com

Fri Jan 18 18:18:54 EST 2008

Here, here!  Thanks for articulating what I was thinking.  Here¹s hoping we
can have a campaign based on important issues.

Diann McCabe

On 1/18/08 4:58 PM, "Janice Ulangca" <aulangca at stny.rr.com> wrote:

> Dear Charles Krauthammer,
>  
> Scrutiny is fine, but please - when does "a smile" become "a smirk"?  And
> "You're not that bad, Hillary"  is "an unkind cut, deeply ungracious, almost
> cruel"?  Good grief!  Personally I'm very grateful for Edwards, H. Clinton,
> and Obama, all.  I know it's an honor to be president, and a chance to do much
> good, but what you have to go through to get there is terrific. And when both
> Republican and Democratic nominees are chosen, it will get worse, because all
> the gotchas of the pundits will focus on just one person from each party.
> Scrutiny of leadership style, experience, plans, vision, integrity, finances,
> wisdom is great.  But I hope nobody will vote, or not vote, for president
> based on the nuances of one two-second facial expression.  Or whether
> Hillary's momentary tears seemed genuine, or calibration of the degree of John
> Edwards' anger.  I suppose the pundits are bored with policies - but policies,
> and yes, personal persuasiveness, are what will make a difference in American
> lives and the world.
>  
> Janice Ulangca
>>  
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>  
>> From:  Beret Griffith <mailto:beretgriffith at charter.net>
>>  
>> To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
>>  
>> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 12:56  PM
>>  
>> Subject: [Dialogue] Beret Griffith sent  you an article from startribune.com
>>  
>> 
>> Beret Griffith wrote these comments: I found this editorial in  the
>> Minneapolis Star Trubune thought provoking.
>> 
>>    
>>  This Article from StarTribune.com <http://www.startribune.com>  has been
>> sent to  you by BeretGriffith.
>> *Please note, the sender's identity has not  been verified.
>> 
>> The full Article, with any associated images  and links can be viewed here
>> <http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/13781186.html> .
>>  
>>  Charles Krauthammer: Are we  through swooning? Good. Let's scrutinize Obama
>> Charles  Krauthammer, Star Tribune
>> 
>>   WASHINGTON - Was it the tears in the New Hampshire coffee shop?  Whenever
>> there is a political upset, everyone looks for the unscripted  incident, the
>> I-paid-for-this-microphone moment that can account for it.  Hillary Clinton's
>> improbable victory in New Hampshire is being widely  attributed to her rare
>> display of emotion when asked how she was holding  up. This "Hillary cried,
>> Obama died" story line is satisfying, but it  overlooks an earlier moment
>> played to a national television audience of  9 million that was even more
>> revealing. It showed a side of Barack Obama not seen before or since. And it
>> wasn't pretty. Asked in the Saturday Democratic debate about her dearth  of
>> "likability," Clinton offered an answer both artful and sweet --  first,
>> demurely saying her feelings were hurt and mock-heroically adding  that she
>> would try to carry on regardless, then generously conceding  that Obama is
>> very likable and "I don't think I'm that bad." At which point, Obama,
>> yielding to some inexplicable impulse, gave  the other memorable unscripted
>> moment of the New Hampshire campaign --  the gratuitous self-indicting aside:
>> "You're likable enough, Hillary."  He said it looking down and with not a
>> smile but a smirk. Rising rock star puts down struggling diva -- an unkind
>> cut, deeply  ungracious, almost cruel, from a candidate who had the country
>> in a  swoon over his campaign of grace and uplift. The media gave that moment
>> little play, but millions saw it live, and I could surely not have been  the
>> only one who found it jarring. It is fitting that New Hampshire should have
>> turned on a tear or an  aside. The Democratic primary campaign has been
>> breathtakingly empty.  What passes for substance is an absurd contest of
>> hopeful change (Obama)  vs. experienced change (Clinton) vs. angry change
>> (John Edwards playing  Hugo Chavez in English). One does not have to be
>> sympathetic to the Clintons to understand  their bewilderment at Obama's
>> pre-New Hampshire canonization. The man  comes from nowhere with a track
>> record as thin as Chauncey Gardiner's.  Yet, as Bill Clinton correctly, if
>> clumsily, complained, Obama gets a  free pass from the press. It's not just
>> that NBC admitted that "it's hard to stay objective  covering this guy." Or
>> that Newsweek had a cover article so adoring that  one wonders what is left
>> for coverage of the Second Coming. Or that  Obama's media acolytes wax poetic
>> that his soaring rhetoric and personal  biography will abolish the
>> ideological divide of the 1960s -- as if the  division between left and
>> right, between free markets and the welfare  state, between unilateralism and
>> internationalism, between social  libertarianism and moral traditionalism are
>> residues of Sgt. Pepper and  the March on Washington. The baby boomers in
>> their endless solipsism now  think they invented left and right -- the
>> post-Enlightenment contest of  ideologies that dates back to the seating
>> arrangements of the  Estates-General in 1789. The freest of all passes to
>> Obama is the general neglect of the  obvious central contradiction of his
>> candidacy -- the bipartisan uniter  who would bring us together by
>> transcending ideology is at every turn on  every policy an unwavering,
>> down-the-line, unreconstructed,  uninteresting, liberal Democrat. He doesn't
>> even offer a modest deviation from orthodoxy. When the  Gang of 14, seven
>> Republican and seven Democratic senators, agreed to  restore order and a
>> modicum of bipartisanship to the judicial selection  process, Obama refused
>> to join lest he anger the liberal base. Special interests? Obama is a
>> champion of the Davis-Bacon Act, an  egregious gift to Big Labor that makes
>> every federal public-works  project more costly. He not only vows to defend
>> it, but proposes  extending it to artificially raise wages for any guest
>> worker  program.
>>   On Iraq, of course he denigrates the surge. That's required of  Democratic
>> candidates. But he further claims that the Sunnis turned  against Al-Qaida
>> and joined us -- get this -- because of the Democratic  victory in the 2006
>> midterm elections. Obama has yet to have it pointed out to him by a
>> mainstream  interviewer that the Anbar Salvation Council was founded by Sheik
>> Abdul  Sattar Abu Risha two months earlier. Obama has yet to be asked why any
>> Sunni would choose to join up with the American invaders at precisely  the
>> time when Democrats would have them leaving -- and be left like the
>> pro-American Vietnamese or the pro-French Algerians to be hunted and  killed
>> when their patrons were gone. That's suicide. Even if you believe that a
>> Clinton restoration would be a disaster,  you should still be grateful for
>> New Hampshire. National swoons, like  national hysterias, obliterate thought.
>> The New Hampshire surprise has  at least temporarily broken the spell. Maybe
>> now someone will lift the  curtain and subject our newest man from hope to
>> the scrutiny that every  candidate deserves. Charles Krauthammer's column is
>> distributed by the Washington Post  Writers Group.
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
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