We live in an age of forgetting.
Politics
Question Time: A Clarification
Jan 29th
Question Time
(watch the first minute)
Questions Being Asked, at a Point in Time
(watch any minute)
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I watched the whole Q&A session. Even if you’re not a politics junkie, you owe it to yourself to watch five minutes of it, any five minutes of it. The President took questions from House Republicans, and they had a respectful, substantive discussion on many issues for over an hour. It made me feel a little better about our democracy (mostly because of Obama, although the fact that no one yelled “You Lie!” or booed was a step up). It’s also kind of sad that this was a “highly unusual political event”, to quote the NY Times.
Polls Are Stupid
Nov 11th
I don’t know why most media outlets let polls drive their coverage (and presumably why politicians let them drive their votes) when what they usually turn out to be is a numerical recording of what we ate for breakfast or how itchy our underwear is making us feel at the moment.
The latest example (link):
CNN finds that people oppose the war in general, and by a pretty strong margin: 58-40.
[...]
What’s remained constant throughout this, though, is that Americans want Obama to follow the advice of his generals (CNN finds that to be the case by a 52-48 margin; NBC/WSJ found the same, with 62 percent expressing more confidence in the generals and 25 percent expressing more confidence in the president.
The message is clear. A majority of Americans are against the war in Afghanistan, and a majority of Americans want Obama to follow the advice of his generals, which is to continue the war in Afghanistan.
Yet these and other polls set the tone for the nightly newscast, and often the decisions of those in Congress. I think the reliability of polls plummets once you start asking questions more complicated than “Will you vote for Candidate X next week?” They’re not completely meaningless, but the results shouldn’t be treated like they were brought down from Mt. Sinai either.
Headlines That Are Ridiculous, Even for an Obama-Phile Like Me
May 14th
“Analysis: Is Obama’s detainee photo flip a sign of growth?” (link)
I don’t get the reversal on releasing the detainee photos. They’re going to come out anyway, either by court order or leak. And if it’s a leak, it’s not going to be a planned leak on their time table. It’s going to one of those “dropped the photos off at a 1-hour Kodak kiosk” leaks on a slow-news day when there’s nothing else to report on besides a team of bank-robbing toddlers who are killing with cuteness! And the guns that they have.
There’s a very small mental step from covering up the results of torture policies to defending torture policies. Maybe it’s unfair, but I think that’s how most people make associations.
I feel like the torture debate can be resolved painfully and slowly or painfully, messy, and slowly. And Obama seems to be stumbling into the latter.
I Apologize If This Image of a Goatse Offended You
Feb 23rd
I never understood this formulation in public apologies: “I apologize if my comments offended [you/some people/the entire human race].”
It comes off as more of a denial of responsibility than anything. “If my comments” offended? Why do you think you’re apologizing in the first place? It’s like they can’t quite believe anyone could have been offended by what they said or did.
I’d love for a sports star, celebrity, or politician just say “I apologize for offending people for my comments/actions/doing that thing to a penguin that no man should ever do to a penguin.” Show some class, and maybe people will treat with you some back.
The latest foofaaraa to raise this point (yes, “foofaaraa” isn’t a real word, but go ahead and tell me it’s weirder than “kerfuffle”) is Sen. Jim “Nostra-dumass” Burring predicting that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead in nine months because she has pancreatic cancer. After an uproar (it always takes an uproar) he kind-of-apologized.
.
They Truly Are a Free Society
Jan 30th
Iraqis culptor creates tribute to person who threw shoe at Bush
“A Face in the Crowd”
Dec 11th
I watched a great movie today, “Face in the Crowd.” It was made in 1957, but almost all of what it says about celebrity, politics, power, and television is not only still relevant, but prophetic in some cases.
The more I think about it, the more I like the movie. I highly recommend it. A few quotes from one scene:
GEN. HAYNESWORTH: “Politics have entered a new stage, a television stage. Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans. ‘Time for a change.’ ‘The mess in Washington.’ More bang for a buck. Punch lines and glamour.”
[...]
MR. PERVIS: “General, my papers have supported Worthington Fuller from the first day he ran for office. He’s not a grandstander, a backslapper or a baby-kisser.”
GEN. HAYNESWORTH: “That’s exactly what he’s got to become. A majority in this country don’t see eye-to-eye with him. We’ve got to find 35 million buyers for the product we call Worthington Fuller.”
Barack in a Hard Place
Dec 5th
Let’s get a head start on the bad Obama puns, shall we?
Some Democrats are publicly calling for him to get a head start on dropping the elect part from President-elect. Problems are mounting. Bush has already checked out. To quote Dem. Barney Frank:
“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.” (link)
It has been only a month since he won the election, and in informal settings, I hear as many people call him President Obama as President-elect. He could be more publicly hands-on if he wanted to with a minimum of people complaining that he is being presumptuous.
But I don’t think he wants to, at least for a few more weeks. Here’s why.
1. We’re nowhere the bottom yet of this economic mess. Unemployment will be higher on Jan 20. than it is today. There will be more stock market fluctuations, more turmoil, more bad economic news that continues to be “worse than expected”, a phrase I hear in every news story on the latest economic indicator. (You think it’s time we lower our expectations by now?) Obama doesn’t want to take responsibility for this mess until he has to, especially when…
2. He doesn’t have the powers of the presidency yet. By all indications, he is shaping up to be the most prepared new President we’ve ever had. But although he could take a more active role, he has one hand tied behind his back. If it became known he was taking an active role though, people wouldn’t take that into account. He would get 100% of the fallout for the continuing downturn, with limited abilities to do anything about it.
3. He’s really fucking busy. I have trouble eating a bowl of cereal before rushing out the door. He and his staff need to vet and hire thousands of people, reach out to potential allies and partners, take calls from foreign leaders, keep tabs on various crises like the automaker bailout and terrorist strike in India, etc. etc. I doubt he has much free time to be more involved than he is.
4. Presumptuousness. It’s becoming an increasingly small reason, but unless Bush publicly handed Obama the Torch of Life and took off on the next flight to the Galapagos Islands tomorrow, it would be awkward if Obama, say, gave a nationally televised address at an Oval Office-ish desk. I think the weekly YouTube addresses are a good mix of official and casual. I expect them to get more meaty the closer Obama gets to Jan. 20th.
I don’t want to become a total Obama fan-boy, but he has shown an amazing talent for navigating tricky situations, and I like how he is handling this one so far. He operates more deliberately and with a long-term outlook than some of his frenetic supporters, and I think this particular criticism doesn’t have much merit. Give him a month. I think this line of criticism will seem out of date by then.
The Rest
Nov 5th
* The Minnesota race was called for Norm Coleman over Al Franken. Coleman won by less than 700 votes. There will be a recount, but unless people were voting by throwing darts at their ballots, it’s hard to see how it will affect the outcome.
* Alaska: Seriously? Ted Stevens was convicted of corruption. And you’re re-electing him? And D.C. doesn’t get Senators or a Representative? I think it’s time to donate to the Alaskan Independence Party and get that ball rolling.
* A crowd gathered in front of the White House last night to celebrate. I saw it on the news but was too tired to go down there. In other parts of D.C., there were people literally dancing in the streets.
* I was following Prop 8., a ballot measure in California to ban gay marriage in the state constitution. A court ruled several months ago that gay marriage was legal, and several thousand couples got married. It looks like Prop 8 is going to barely pass. Now their marriages will be invalidated. It’s discouraging. I expect stuff like that from Alabama, but I thought California had progressed to the point where they didn’t want to enshrine discrimination in their Constitution.
* Finally, on a more upbeat note, I found this passage in a Washington Post article on the Obama campaign amusing:
Dunn, the senior Obama adviser, had the unique perspective of having run a campaign against Palin two years earlier, as an adviser to Alaskan gubernatorial candidate Tony Knowles. She considered Palin a formidable and charismatic politician; she also had a grasp of Palin’s thin record and her history on the “bridge to nowhere,” and had sat through numerous Palin-Knowles debates.
That Palin expertise, shared by few in the country, would steady the Obama campaign at a moment when national Democrats embarked on what one adviser described as “two weeks of total hysteria” over the Alaska governor.
Dunn had the research staff stop putting so much energy into Palin, convinced that she could not pass the vetting process. “How was I to know that they weren’t going to vet her?” she said.
Why Obama’s Lead Is Hard To Believe
Nov 4th
Every indicator is pointing to a dominant victory by Obama and Democrats in general on Tuesday. For McCain to come out ahead, there would need to be the greatest polling failure this century, greater than “Dewey defeats Truman”, which happened in part because pollsters stopped polling people weeks before the election.
Yet I can’t help feeling a little anxious, like it’s too improbable to really happen. I think I know where this feeling is coming from.
The last Democrat to win with more than 50% of the vote was Carter in 1976, the year I was born. He had 50.1%. Clinton came close in his 2nd term but didn’t quite reach 50%. Unless you are old enough to remember Johnson’s landslide victory against Goldwater in 1964, there’s a very good reason a resounding victory from a Democratic presidential candidate is hard to envision. Most of us haven’t seen one before.
It’s almost too good to be true (or too horrible to believe for most Republicans).
Also, we’ve been electing Jack Johnsons and John Jacksons for the history of our entire nation. Nothing wrong with that, but even on the superficial levels of race and name, what we are about to do is a big change. Here’s a quick quiz: name the last President we elected that had 5 or more syllables in his commonly-used name.
It’s not a reason to vote for him, but it’s a nice bonus.
I’m surprised how rarely I’ve had that “Wow, an African American may become President” moment. I felt it after Obama’s victory in Iowa, when the almost all-white crowd started chanting “USA! USA!” That was it though. It was always in the recesses of the mind, but I and I am guessing may others have been too wrapped up in the campaign to give it much thought.
But I’m starting to have that feeling again, that mix of hope and awe that we are setting ourselves on a completely new course. Not only away from our usual habits of choosing a President, but almost a 180 turn from the Bush administration, away from anti-intellectualism, away from torture, away from putting cronies in jobs they’re not qualified to do.
I suspect Obama will disappoint a lot of people if he is elected. A President can only do so much, and some people forget he’s a human who will stumble and make mistakes, not a demi-God with a magic wand. But he’s by far our best chance for restoring America’s reputation and promise, and for pushing the country to deal with all the stuff we’ve shoved under the carpet for too long.
I’m proud and excited to vote for him.
Obamamercial + Other Stuff
Oct 30th
I feel self-conscious about how often I’ve been writing about politics. I hope I can get back to writing comedy regularly after the election.
Soem random thoughts:
* How many nails in the coffin can one campaign have?
* It must suck to introduce Obama or McCain at a rally and then have to stand next to them the whole time until they finish. What if you doze off or yawn? I’d be fidgeting the whole time.
I had the half-hour Obama infomercial on in the background. I heard it all before, so I found it well-done but boring. Presumably, the target audience was undecided voters who will find most of what Obama said new.
What I found most notable about the infomercial wasn’t the content but the meta-message behind it.
The buildup and execution of the segment followed almost the same pattern as previously hyped events in the campaign, like his trip overseas or his convention speech at Invesco field.
Pre-media chatter that Obama may be over-reaching. (Remember the Greek columns?) Supporters worry about the potential pitfalls. Republican opponent helps feed the media narrative of a mistake waiting to occur. Then the actual event happens, it goes off near flawlessly and exceeds most people’s expectations (based on the Internet chatter so far).
The meta-message is strong and clear: the Obama campaign is good at navigating tricky situations.
His speech on race, his overseas trip, the convention, the debates, the financial crisis–this infomercial is just another data point for that meta-message. A well-run campaign doesn’t guarantee a well-run Presidency, but it’s the closest thing we have to meaningful data. For that reason, the meta-message may end up being more important than the message in this case.
Big Money, Big Endorsement
Oct 19th
The Obama campaign announced it raised $150 million dollars today.
These guys are good at keeping a secret. No one guessed it would be that much.
The average donation was under $100. I have to say, I didn’t like it when right after David Plouffe (Obama campaign manager) announced they raised $150 million, he asked…for more donations. Even I thought “You got to be fucking kidding me.” It would have been just as effective to say “The election can change in an instant. We need to stay focused. Please continue your support.”
Also, Colin Powell full-throatedly announced on Meet The Press that he was supporting Barack Obama for President. A lot of pundits are saying this is a big endorsement and it will control the news cycle for the next 2-3 days.
In today’s media environment, can any endoresement generate that much media attetion? It’s wonderful for the Obama camapign is Powell’s endoresement does, but the media’s appetite for anything new has become so voracious that I wonder if any endorsement can still have a lasting effect. I think it would have to be a truly shocking endoresement, like Bill Clinton endorsing McCain, or George Bush 41 endorsing Obama, to leave a lasting imprint, at least in the media landscape.
Update:
Video link. It’s a meaty endorsement. Every sentence has a purpose. The best part isn’t about what he says about Obama, but his comment on the efforts to label Obama is Muslim, and the implication that there is something wrong with being a Muslim. It starts at 4:25
Move over, Edward Murrow
Oct 17th
The View and David Letterman: asking the tough questions professional reporters are afraid to raise.
No, I am unfortunately not being sarcastic.
Recent Comments