EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 7,  2008

Posted at 7:12 p.m. ET

CAMELOT?  WHAT'S THAT?

Attention now turns to vice presidential choices. But one curious choice has already been made.  Barack Obama has selected Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President Kennedy, to be part of his search team seeking a vice-presidential candidate.  London's Sunday Times remarks on the selection:

FOR a candidate promising a break with the past, Barack Obama made a curious choice for a key position in his presidential campaign team last week. His decision to appoint Caroline Kennedy to a sensitive political role leading his search for a vice-presidential running mate has aroused both intrigue and derision in US political circles.

The daughter of the late President John F Kennedy has no serious political experience, has been involved in only one previous presidential campaign - when her uncle, Ted Kennedy, ran for the White House in 1980 - and has long been considered the most private member of America’s most celebrated political dynasty.

I guess Obama wanted someone with less experience than he has.   (Okay, that was a low blow...but true.)  More:

Obama’s right-wing critics have mocked what they portray as his demeaning attempts to associate himself with JFK and the Camelot legend. One right-wing columnist dismissed Caroline’s appointment to his team as “window dressing," calling her a “Camelot heiress / political dilettante”.

What's also curious here is the belief that the "Camelot" magic continues.  President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, some 45 years ago.  Those born after, say, 1950, probably have little or no recollection of him.  That means you have to be older than 58 to have some sense of the man.  I really think that the magic is fading very quickly, and that Caroline Kennedy's presence means very little.  After all, Ted Kennedy ran for president in 1980, and no magic suddenly showed up to lift him.  There are members of Franklin D. Roosevelt's family involved in the Democratic Party, and no one seems to care.  Memories fade.

It probably was cynical of Obama to appoint Caroline Kennedy, but, given his handling of Rev. Wright, cynicism is not unknown in his camp. 

I'm more interested in his v.p. choice.  Coming soon to a hype machine near you.

June 7, 2008.      Permalink          

EARLY AFTERNOON POST:  JUNE 7,  2008

Posted at 12:28 p.m. ET

ANNOUNCEMENT

A joyous day.  I'm happy to announce the winner of our first Scott McClellan award for self-sacrificing patriotism. With pleasure, it goes to...

Rob Andrews.

Who?

All right, let me explain.  Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) just ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Frank Lautenberg, and lost.  Now, after the race is over, he informs us that Hillary Clinton, whom he supported, was engaged in nasty racial politics during her campaign:

A Democratic superdelegate from New Jersey said this week he is worried that unifying the party behind Barack Obama may be difficult because the Clinton camp "has engaged in some very divisive tactics and rhetoric it should not have."

U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, who supported Hillary Clinton throughout the primary season, disclosed he received a phone call shortly before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary from a top member of Clinton's organization and that the caller explicitly discussed a strategy of winning over Jewish voters by exploiting tensions between Jews and African-Americans.

"There have been signals coming out of the Clinton campaign that have racial overtones that indeed disturb me," Andrews said at his campaign headquarters in Cherry Hill Tuesday night after he lost his bid for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.

"Frankly, I had a private conversation with a high-ranking person in the campaign ... that used a racial line of argument that I found very disconcerting. It was extremely disconcerting given the rank of this person. It was very disturbing."

So, let's see:  He supported Clinton during the primaries, but he heard Clinton staff members engaged in racial politics.  He withheld this information from the public until Clinton lost, and now tells us.  Why did he wait?  He explains:

He said he made his comments only after his primary loss to Sen. Frank Lautenberg because "I didn't want people to think I was trying to win over Obama supporters in the primary."

Wonderfully creative.

For withholding disturbing information about the Clinton campaign, and continuing to support her despite what he knew, and waiting until she lost to butter up Obama, we are pleased to give this first Scott McClellan award to Rob Andrews.  What would America do without him?

June 7, 2008.      Permalink          

SATURDAY:  JUNE 7,  2008

Posted at 7:42 a.m. ET

HE IS AMONG US

Mark Steyn, who went on trial in Canada this week for hurting the feelings of certain Muslim groups, examines the Obama victory, and finds it wanting in...in almost everything:

The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to.

And...

...Sen. Obama raised a ton of money – over $300 million – and massively outspent Sen. Clinton, but he didn't really get any bang for his buck. In the end, he crawled over the finish line. The Obama Express came a-hurtlin' down the track at 2 miles an hour.

And...

But what does he care? Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton's: If you behave like a star, you'll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his "victory" speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way:

"I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation."

You know, Obama actually said that.  More:

There are generally two reactions to this kind of policy proposal. The first was exemplified by the Atlantic Monthly's Marc Ambinder:

"What a different emotional register from John McCain's; Obama seems on the verge of tears; the enormous crowd in the Xcel Center seems ready to lift Obama on its shoulders; the much smaller audience for McCain's speech interrupted his remarks with stilted cheers."

The second reaction boils down to: "'Heal the planet'? Is this guy nuts?" To be honest I prefer a republic whose citizenry can muster no greater enthusiasm for their candidate than "stilted cheers" to one in which the crowd wants to hoist the nominee onto their shoulders for promising to lower ocean levels within his first term.

And he might do it just by the laying on of hands.  More:

Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.

And...

Marc Ambinder is right. Obama's rhetoric is in a different "emotional register" from John McCain's. It's in a different "emotional register" from every U.S. president – not just the Coolidges but the Kennedys, too.

And what if Obama wins?

...the laugh will be on those of us who think that serious times demand grown-up rhetoric.

Trouble is, there may be many fewer Americans who demand grown-up rhetoric than there were before the sixties generation came along and made adolescence a permanent state of grace. 

Obama's rhetoric is soaring, but it's also frightening.  Steyn is right.  It's different from that of every American president.  It is not in the American political tradition.  It's more in the religious tradition, or, frankly, in the tradition of major demagogues and dictators of the last century.  That is harsh, I know, but read Steyn, and read the quotes, and see if you don't agree.

June 7, 2008.      Permalink          

HIS FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Con Coughlin, of London's Telegraph, continues the survey of Obamism, and finds that the movement's leader bears a striking similarity to a certain Jimmah Carter, whose enthusiasm for Obama has begun to bubble over:

Americans have, of course, been here before: in 1976, sickened by Watergate, they elected a naïve and inexperienced peanut farmer from Georgia to clear away the cynicism that came to define the Nixon era. From the moment he took office in January 1977, President Jimmy Carter made it clear that he wanted to make a new start in America's relations with the rest of the world. Gone was the hard-nosed Realpolitik of Henry Kissinger. Mr Carter transformed US policy by insisting that human rights be placed at the top of the agenda - with disastrous results.

Ah yes, I remember it well.  Coughlin goes on:

One of the less appealing aspects of Mr Obama's campaign has been the support he has attracted from Mr Carter who, seemingly oblivious to his handling of the Iran debacle (which culminated in 66 Americans being held hostage in Tehran for 444 days), has not been shy about offering his advice. Mr Carter was at it again this week, counselling Mr Obama against making Hillary Clinton his running mate.

Like Mr Carter, Mr Obama is an outsider who was relatively unknown before he decided to make his run for the White House. And like Mr Carter, Mr Obama appears determined to undertake a radical change in the way Washington does business with the outside world; changes that could have the same disastrous consequences for America and the rest of the world as Mr Carter's policy.

And...

Mr Obama's policies are not just naïve; they are unworkable, a fact he now seems belatedly to have taken on board. Addressing the annual conference of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, in Washington on Wednesday night, Mr Obama declared that he would do "everything in my power" to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

Even if he was vague about precisely how he intends to do this, it is a welcome improvement on his previous policy statements on Iran. But if he really wants to reassure the American public, and the wider world, that he has the credentials to be an effective world leader, he needs to give a lot more thought to how he will tackle the great security challenges of our age, whether it be protecting us from the designs of Islamist terrorists or the nuclear ambitions of crazed dictators.

Finally...

Otherwise, I fear that Osama bin Laden and his chums will be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of Mr Obama becoming the 44th President of the United States of America.

And that's a sobering thought.  Also, it isn't only Obama.  It's the people he chose to be around him, even if he's had to set them adrift for the convenience of the campaign.  It's Samantha Power and Robert Malley and the obnoxious Zbig Brzezinski, and of course it's his official delegation in his meetings with God - the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and Father Pfleger

But we must not question.  We must simply sit here and mumble, "Yes we can."  I always thought "Hallelujah!" was punchier.

June 7,  2008.      Permalink