Category Archives: Politics

A thought on the debate

Obama, Politics

Watching the debate with an even more fervent Obama supporter than me, what I saw was pretty much the above. That is clearly not what most people saw, what most people saw was this:

A Presidential debate is not like a baseball game or a car race with their clear, arbitrary, rules for defining a winner: in a debate, the winner is who the most people think is the winner.  That was Romney and, as a card carrying member of the Obama Team, it has brought up all sorts of swirling emotions in me. From denial through anger, from bargaining to acceptance.

With acceptance – although it may be bargaining – I am trying to see how Romney’s debate victory will play out and I have come to the conclusion that it did not mean much in that it will probably not change the election.  Although Intrade differs, saying that Obama’s odds fell from 71% to 67% because of his weak show. (The odds do seem to be going back up as a result of today’s jobs report.)

In a way, the odd thing about the debates – the odd thing about news in general – is how ephemeral it is. The debates end and are a big deal: the next day they are gone.

But what I am still left with is how easily Romney seems to be able shapeshift. Or, if you prefer, lie. It is not that he has changed what he believes, it is that he has always believed the new pitch. I remember firing – a job I don’t like as much as Romney – a guy who just flat out lied about something he had done. I don’t remember the details but I do remember him looking me right in the eye and saying something like It couldn’t have been me, I was in Queensland at the time. It was stunning and I was completely flustered.

I think that Obama was flat, he looked tired, he was down; but – I suspect – he found it hard to cope with a guy who can say My health plan includes the elimination of pre-conditions. (It doesn’t for those who haven’t been keeping score.) Obama could say No it doesn’t – and he did – but Romney comes back and says Yes, it does. and there is no place to go except get in a He said, he said, argument or move on. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out next Thursday. .

 

Brand loyalty and Obama

Politics

In the ealy 80’s when the Niners were battling the Cowboys for the best team in football – or, atleast, the NFC – I was, of course, a Niner fan. I had my reasons; good reasons. Among other things, the Niners were just a better group of human beings. At some point, somehow – I don’t have any idea of the circumstances  this was about 25 to 30 years ago – I got a Dallas newspaper and I looked at the sports section. (I think I expected to read about how great the Niners were from Dallas’s point of view.)

In the Dallas paper, I was shocked to read about how much better the Cowboys were as people. They had their reasons, good reasons! In detail. I always thought of Landry as an uptight jerk, but the Dallas paper had an article about what a great humanitarian he was and another article – or, maybe, the same one, it was long ago – talked about how uptight, how stiff, the Niners defensive coordinator, George Seifert, was. I had never thought of Seifert as uptight. Maybe a little quiet, formal, but not uptight. (I was truly taken back and – maybe unfortunately – never saw George Seifert, or the Cowboys, the same way again.) It seemed as if the Dallasonian world was completely backward from my San Franciscan world, at least as far as football goes and, I suspect, alot more. I was opened to another point of view.

I am a fervent believer in The allegory of the Cave Theory of Life in that I do believe that there is a Reality and we can only see imperfect shadows of that higher Reality. I’m a Democrt and, more importantly, a democrat. I think Obama is terrific. That is my reading and what I project on the shadows of a higher Reality. I see an Obama that is a centrist pragmatic trying to dig us out of a very deep financial and ecological hole that we have dug ourselves into over, at least, the last 16 years.  That may be the actual Reality. Or it may only be my distortion. What I am aware of, is that there doesn’t seem to be a Dallas-newspaper-analog that presents a reasoned, other, view of Obama.

I got an email, today, from an acquantance who said “Hopefully, the Marxist, Central Planning and Control Obama will wind up in his ‘Elba”; while riding with a friend – who seems conservative to me but refers to himself as moderate – about a year ago, he referred to Obama as a Trotshyite and, when I asked Tell me why you say that, he answered That’s just how I feel, I have a right to feel the way I feel ; after Obama said – in a speach at the UN – that The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is denied, conservative commentator Erick Erickson said In his speech to the United Nations general assembly today the president of the United States declared that the future does not belong to practicing Christians.  What? Where? How?  Oh, right. He just feels that way.

And so it goes.

 

Paul Ryan and lying

Politics

With a couple of disclaimers like almost everybody exaggerates – I sure have – and nobody remembers everything, I am fascinated by Paul Ryan’s lying. Not so much the lies themselves, but the foolishness of it; the riskiness. It is one thing to say that he ran marathons when he only ran one or to chop some time off that marathon when having a beer with a group of  business associates and an entirely other thing to put it out in front of the entire world.

For starters, part of that entire world includes people who were there and remember. I am very aware of that as I blog. Anything I say here, opens me up to someone saying, Hey! I was there and you never…. To me, it would be incomprehensible to exaggerate to a reporter, even one from, say, the Portola Valley Almanac.  For Paul Ryan, it is almost a guarantee that it will be checked. For Ryan to imply that he has run multiple marathons or that he climbed close to 40 of Colorado’s 14,000 peaks, just seems nuts.

What was he thinking?

 

 

Michael Lewis on Obama

Politics, Uncategorized

The latest Vanity Fair has an article by Michael Lewis (the author of Moneyball, Blindside, The Big Short, among other books). It is entitled Obama’s World and they sub-tag it  “Hanging out with the president—on the basketball court, in the White House residence, and on Air Force One—provides an eye-opening lesson in what it takes to lead the free world, as well as an unparalleled portrait of Barack Obama”. I am not, particularly, a Vanity Fair fan but I am a Michael Lewis fan and the article is well worth reading.

It is more than just about Obama, it is a fascinating investigation into the isolation and strain of being the president. You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” [Obama] said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” The self-discipline he believes is required to do the job well comes at a high price. “You can’t wander around,” he said. “It’s much harder to be surprised. You don’t have those moments of serendipity. You don’t bump into a friend in a restaurant you haven’t seen in years. The loss of anonymity and the loss of surprise is an unnatural state. You adapt to it, but you don’t get used to it—at least I don’t.”

In reading the article, I ended up thinking about Bush almost as much as Obama. I highly recommend it.