Upsets, Local and Distant

Last week was my daughter's fourteenth birthday. Today, an hour after giggling about getting a croissant for breakfast, she briskly and angrily informed me that I "don't understand anything." I take this as an indicator that I have arrived as the parent of a teenager. She was in a snit last night; we don't know why, as her color guard group won their competition. It's probably small minded of me, but my feeling is, if she's going to be brusque and rude to me, not to mention, to my wife, she doesn't get any slack from me. I'm usually willing to try to understand things from her perspective, but not every time.

Obama continues to roll over the competition; I continue to roll through any article I see that addresses the question of his ability. The latest (to me, anyway) The New York Times' Week in Review article on The Charisma Mandate; the lead article in the current issue of The Economist shows Obama with the headline "But could he deliver?' From the Times' article, some key points: The phrase that's being used to describe him, usually pejoratively, is 'cult of personality'. One person says that that phrase translates to attacks on the ability to make speeches that inspire -- yet at critical times, that ability is essential, even though it does not necessarily translate into a great presidency. A quote from Schlesinger, relative to the Kennedy charisma: "There was, he wrote, a mounting dissatisfaction with the official priorites, a deepening concern with our character and objectives as a nation". The article goes on to point out that that might well describe the climate Obama supporters feel now, and points out how much of the Obama organization's style is almost religious, with direction to avoid discussions about policy, and focus on how the supporter came to be a supporter. I love the final paragraph: 'Ideally, Ms. Goodwin said, you'd have the combination of experience and charisma, "if you could mush Clinton and Obama togethr as one person." ' Yes!

And from The Economist: "After the bitterness of the Bush years, American needs a dose of unity: Mr. Obama has a rare ability to deliver it....(yet) anyone can get experts to produce policy papers. The trick is to forge consensus to get those policies enacted." They go on to say that a platform of telling people that they deserve more money and more opportunities might (I think, already has) raise expectations to undue heights. "There is a sense in which he has hitherto had to jump over a lower bar than his main rivals have. For America's sake (and the world's), that bar should now be raised -- or all kinds of brutal disappointment could follow." In fact, they say, if you want a combination of experience and the willingness to cross party lines -- look at McCain. McCain? Yes - McCain.

Someone who occasionally comments on this blog said that 'we live in interesting times'. Certainly true. I just hope we survive them with our democracy intact -- no October surprises, let alone martial law and its like. That I can even imagine such things is a tribute, incidentally, to the policies and attitudes demonstrated by the Firm of Bush and Cheney.