[Dialogue] Beret Griffith sent you an article from startribune.com

Fri Jan 18 19:26:05 EST 2008

Janice,

We desperately need better policies, but policies won't get you 
elected.  I hope everyone reads "The Political Brain" by Drew Westen.

Karl

>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: <mailto:beretgriffith at charter.net>Beret Griffith
>To: <mailto:dialogue at wedgeblade.net>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 <http://www.startribune.com>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 
><http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/13781186.html>here.
>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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