[Dialogue] Beret Griffith sent you an article fromstartribune.com

[Sunny Walker]

YEA JANICE!!

 

Sunny

Sunny Walker

303-671-0704

Cell: 303-587-3017

sunwalker at comcast.net 

 

Opening windows that fresh ideas may revive us and our lives have meaning

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From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Janice Ulangca
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 3:59 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Beret Griffith sent you an article
fromstartribune.com

 

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 <mailto:beretgriffith at charter.net>  Griffith 

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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