Reading This, Reading That

This morning, I spent a little bit of time reading the McCain web site. I wasn't surprised to see that their view of the world was different than Obama's, and I took note of how often they held up something as obviously wrong, misleading, or an outright lie that I felt was actually right, not the full story, or in fact true. It made me wonder how much of what I believe is seen by them as lies. Problem is, it's almost impossible to talk about these things quietly -- even with people who are willing to discuss it, much of the discussion comes down to belief -- do I believe that my candidate is the best one. If I do, I'm going to put credence into what he says, I'm going to interpret the words, fill in the gaps, to create a tapestry that looks appealing to me. I suppose it doesn't really matter that my view of what the candidate means and plans isn't exactly the same as the next person's, but when it gets to discussion between people who don't agree on the central premise of who's the candidate, things stop pretty quickly; if they agree, differences are easily spackled over.

I'm sure whole courses have been written on that basic concept.

I also spent some time reading this article on the structure and functioning of the Obama volunteer effort. I believe that win or lose, the Obama effort will be used as a model for future political campaigns. Whether you support him or not, it's an interesting article. At least, this Obama supporter thinks so.