A number of random thoughts, only some of them sad and cynical. Hope springs eternal – after all, we survived four years of Jimmy Carter. A quarter of a century later, we are still mopping up after his major foreign-policy/military disaster – the Iran hostage taking at the Teheran Embassy - but the Republic survived.
The Obama campaign outspent the McCain campaign four to one. I will look to hear murmurings about ‘buying public office’ and ‘campaign reform’ and ‘public financing’ in the next couple of years from the Mighty Wurlitzer of the mainstream news organs, but I am not holding my breath. I will also look to serious investigation of vote fraud in various precincts, especially as regards your friendly neighborhood ACORN office, but again – no breath being held there.
Do you suppose this will put an ash stake through the heart of the ‘America is teh most racist nation eveh!’ meme? Jumping Jeezus on a Pogo Stick, I hope so. I can also hope that the Good Reverend Sharpton and the Good Reverend Jackson might actually go out and get real jobs, doing something useful in their respective communities. I can also wonder if secretly they were both crying into their respective beers last Tuesday night, as the returns came rolling in.
I have about just had it up to here with “unnamed officials” and “anonymous sources” spilling dirt to compliant reporters. This most recent bitchfest of McCain campaign functionaries complaining about Sarah Palin is just the final straw. Sorry, mainstream media whores – up with this I will not put, starting here and from this moment. Either put a name on it, or skip it. And to those Unnamed and Anonymous highly placed sources? Man up and put your name where your mouth is. I mean it. I’ve complained about Sy Hersh doing this for years, suspecting that he is merely being used by his so-so-inside sources and he is too arrogant and F&&#ing dumb to know that he is being played..
And la Palin herself? She was the only reason McCain had a chance at all, so nice way to treat her, just so you have a chance of holding on to your insider access. I still wonder if the incredible, venomous anti-Palin spewings, which seemingly came up from nowhere didn’t have a lot of help from the notoriously efficient Axelrod organization.
How long will the Obama honeymoon last? Probably only a little longer than it takes the One to discover that the Presidency is not an office like that of the Tsar, that matters cannot be instantly resolved with a wave of an imperial hand. Also, the behind-the-scenes activities of various minions cannot be concealed by a local and compliant press for long, anyway. At some point the adoring press will have to get up off their knees and wipe the drool off their lips. The mainstream media, god help us, have been acting like a teenage girl in the throes of their very first crush. The fangirly squeals of “Oh, isn’t he marvelous!” are getting fairly wearing. So are the comparisons to Camelot. I can’t say I particularly remember Camelot at first hand – but I do know that practically everything about the Kennedy administration was a fraud, except for Jackie’s dress sense. And maybe the space program.
It’s one thing to quibble, strike heroic poses and Monday Morning quarterback, when you are on the outside – another to actually have full charge of whatever. Blaming your predecessor usually only works for about six months. A year, tops. I’d feel better about the Obaminator if he had actually stuck around in any of his jobs longer than it took to decide on which upward rung on the ladder he wanted to try for. I also can’t throw the notion that he is one of those fast-burners who rocketed up the ranks so fast that they actually never had time at each step along the way to do much. I think of him as the political version of the charming and ambitious scoundrel hero of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”.
On this weekend’s Prairie Home Companion, I listened to Garrison Keiller warble a hymn of praise to The One, and threw up a little in my mouth. I used to love that show, back when he was poignant and funny.
Finally – wouldn’t it be a hoot if everything that GWB and the Republicans were accused of doing over the last eight years – stealing elections, reviving the draft, corrupting the political process, allowing terrorists to attack on our own soil, selling out our allies for oil, fumbling national disaster response, trashing freedom of speech, oppressing minority racial and religious groups, bullying legislators and civil servants, neglecting military veterans – actually turn out to be SOP for the new administration?
Oh, yeah. I would laugh and laugh and laugh – if I weren’t already crying.
I stopped listening to Garrison Keillor a few years ago, after he stood on the stage of his once-funny show and said Christians shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
It amazes me how the lefties are all so very afraid of the Christians, when it’s the Muslims who rioted after the Mohammed cartoons, and it’s the Taliban that repressed women in Afghanistan, etc, etc, etc.
As to the new president learning “that matters cannot be instantly resolved with an imperial wave of the hand,” I read on Yahoo! News today that he plans to issue a series of executive orders as soon as he’s in office. One of them will consider domestic drilling.
So how exactly do we counter executive orders? I haven’t worried about those since Clinton left office, and I’m really enjoying my $2.05 gasoline.
Comment by AProudVeteran — 20081109 @ 1812
I agree with every point. At the risk of piling on Garrison Keillor, for many years it was a weekly standard at our house - I mean we scheduled around it. About two years ago I finally couldn’t make the math work as far as the balance between good natured humor and snarky leftism. I haven’t listened since.
Comment by Radar — 20081109 @ 1947
You forgot how the far right cried wolf for so many years, calling every Dem that came along a socialist, that when Obama showed up nobody cared. They’ve shrieked and they’ve hyperventilated and even when there was reasonable evidence that perhaps Obama wasn’t the greatest guy in the world after all, nobody cared.
And let’s not forget the past eight years. I don’t lay it all at President Bush’s door like some would, but he was in office when so much of our troubles went down. I don’t know how many people I know voted for “anyone but a Republican.”
Comment by Timmer — 20081109 @ 2250
Timmer seems to be exaggerating for effect. Most of the DemocRAT national players are Democratic Socialists in the Euro mold. This President-elect is a step or two to the left of the majority of his party. As for Bush, a well meaning war policy is no substitute for a successful war policy.
In the long run ALL domestic policy is set by the Congress which controls the purse strings and the “advise and consent” confirmation of administrators. The President’s true area of action is foreign affairs and event that is circumscribed by the budget process. But, it seems as though Bush, GWOT excepted, has done a pretty good job with foreign affairs. Canada has, UK may get, “conservative” governments. India is joining a closer bond to the Anglosphere. We’ll have to wait and see on the results of his and Powell/Rice’s diplomacy.
Y’all are gluttons for punishment. I haven’t been able to stomach Keillor for ten years.
Comment by Jim Burke — 20081110 @ 0745
I recall that Eisenhower was rather disgruntled to discover that as President, he could issue all the orders he wanted, but nothing much would happen. He had to learn the job. However, he had the life experience and the Messiah does not. We’ll have to see how good a study he is.
Comment by Terry Hazen — 20081110 @ 1132
What’s wrong with piling on when it comes to Garrison Keillor and the Prairie Home Companion show? NOT A THING!
I’m from Minnesota, and every sound that program makes is bent towards the redicule of Minnesota, the whole midwest, and all of rural america
Why would you bother listening to that crud?
Comment by Ranten N. Raven — 20081110 @ 1200
Your final point is interesting, Sgt Mom. It’s easy to complain about all sorts of stuff the Bush administration did (Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, massively political appointments and all the rest) but what will be *really* interesting is to see whether Obama actually rescinds any of it. There are some mickey mouse items like stem cell research which he’ll probably bin straight off - there’s no downside - but how many leaders can you remember who took a decision because they thought it was right even if it opened them up to being accused of weakness later on? Yup, Carter. And…ummm…? Giving up power is counterintuitive to any politician so it’ll be fascinating to see what he does.
Intrigued to know why you think Palin increased McCain’s chances though. What were all the ideologues going to do - stay at home and not vote Republican because he wasn’t far right enough? It seems that if anything she finally weakened McCain’s chances by appearing like a desperately scary outcome if anything happened to him.
So - in Obama’s position, would you ask McCain to come on board as national security adviser? He does seem a genuinely decent man for the job.
Comment by Al — 20081110 @ 1203
No, Al. Sarah Palin electrified the Republican electorate. There was hardly any enthusiasm that I could detect in my own circle, or in the various centerist or slightly-to-the-right-of-centerist communities that I hang out in, until she she was picked. They were all quite energized, even after the shit-storm began to descend.
And BTW - against what you might have absorbed from the BBC and others of that ilk - she seems to be a fairly bright and energetic politician, who rose up through the ranks of local political circles in Alaska, pretty effeciently kicking ass and taking names. She had better than a 80% approval rating among her constituents in Alaska, and seems to have been fairly effecient at separating her own personal religious principles from the needs and wants of those constituents.
BTW, going to Hah-vard and any of the other elite colleges does not guarantee any sort of intellectual quality, or expertise in managing much of anything. Graduates of those elite schools have the eclat of having gone to an elite school… but no guarantee of much else save an outsized sense of entitlement, and useful connections, for having gotten a degree from an elite school.
I graduated from a community college and a California state university, both of which have never been heard of by anyone who matters - and yet I have never felt at the least bit at a disadvantage, intellectually.
I just don’t have anything of the cachet that would have fallen, gossamer-like, upon my shoulders, if I had gone to an elite school. What the heck - I paid for it all myself with a part-time job, lived at home with my parents, and had enough left over to spend the summer after graduation traveling in England.
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20081110 @ 1814
It’s easy to complain about all sorts of stuff the Bush administration did (Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, massively political appointments and all the rest) but what will be *really* interesting is to see whether Obama actually rescinds any of it
Oh (snap) President-Elect Obama is receiving intelligence briefs now.
I wonder if anything he’s getting has made him go ‘whoa boy’ or ‘ah, that was a close call - thank God for the NSA’.
Intrigued to know why you think Palin increased McCain’s chances though.
It was enough to sway my wife from voting for Obama to voting or McCain. Counting her and my daughter that snagged two votes for McCain right there.
What were all the ideologues going to do - stay at home and not vote Republican because he wasn’t far right enough?
If they’re ideologues .. that means they adhere to an ideology, not merely voting for the man because he is in the correct party.
So, yes.
It seems that if anything she finally weakened McCain’s chances by appearing like a desperately scary outcome if anything happened to him.
Ah - the old ‘insurance policy’ meme. It was retarded when people said it about Quayle, Gore and Cheney, and it’s retarded thinking now.
Sorry.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — 20081110 @ 1859