I try to limit my political posts, but Keith Olbermann is on fire!

Thanks to this article by George Packer (which is evenly critical and positive about both candidates) and my friend Sage’s crazy “Go-bama, Go” love, I realized this weekend what it is about Obama that bugs me. It isn’t his political positions, because I agree with what firm details I can glean, as I do Clinton’s. It’s his rhetoric. I don’t trust it and I don’t believe in it. As Packer puts it, Obama sees the Presidency as position of transformation; Clinton sees it as a positions of achieving political objectives. The former lends itself to high-flying rhetoric and beautiful speeches, but the latter is the reality of American politics.

The primary problem I have with Obama is that I don’t share his belief that transformation of the broken American system is possible, much less that it can be done from the position of president. That approach, I fear, leads to a decision-making process based on an idea of ‘vision’ that isn’t wholly based in the world of political machinations that we live in, where choosing lesser evils is often the only possibility available.

The rhetoric is attractive. I don’t blame people for being attracted by Obama’s charismatic speeches and his ability to turn a phrase and deliver a masterful speech. but I don’t know that the ability to move a crowd with beautiful words has much to do with good governing. Creating a ‘movement’ is an accomplishment in itself, but it doesn’t necessarily have much to do with practical abilities to govern. I don’t think Obama would be a bad President– though I do remain convinced that Clinton would have a better chance in a general election– but I do think Hillary would be better because I think she has a more realistic conception of what is possible for the President. Even if Clinton were a better speaker and performer, her fundamental pragmatism doesn’t lend itself to the kind of oratory that Obama utilizes.

But the rhetoric of transformation has a fatal flaw for me– it embraces a fundamental and inescapable contradiction related to the issue of transformation and pragmatism. That contradiction was perfectly encapsulated by Obama a few days ago when he said:

That’s how change has always happened – not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up.

Implicit in this kind of statement is a recognition that transformation doesn’t happen from high political office… being employed in the service of getting himself elevated to the highest political office there is. If Obama really believed this– as I do– then he wouldn’t be running for President and would refuse calls to do so. It’s much like a person pushing to be made CEO of a large company on a platform that innovation happens from the edge. It does not compute except as a bald-faced rhetorical ploy to engage the heart rather than the mind.

Seeing as how I love the most narcissistic of the arts– poetry– the use of words aimed at overcoming or bypassing the rational mind in favor of the heart shouldn’t bother me. But then I wouldn’t support even my favorite poet for President…

It also irritates me that Clinton doesn’t get the credit she deserves. Clinton’s history– her belief in working for change and doing so for her entire life, the way she has almost completely silenced her congressional critics through hard work and being a good Senator (consider, given her ‘provenance,’ what that says about her accomplishments as a Senator)– is forgotten in favor of a shallow rhetoric that invokes her husband at every turn. If Hillary had made every political move exactly the same way, but wasn’t Bill Clinton’s wife, she would be rolling to an 85% plus Democratic victory. No one could come close. I resent that. Nor does Clinton get recognized for the powerful symbolism that she provides for young women who are considering politics as Obama automatically gets for his symbolism to African Americans– particularly since it took a harsh loss early in his career for him to decide to actually become concerned with the group that rains adulation down upon him now.

At any rate, I’ve made my prediction about what I suspect will happen in the coming election, regardless of which candidate runs. In a strange way, a win by Obama would be the most satisfying because it would restore a lot of faith I’ve lost in middle-America, not only going a long way to disproving my cynicism about the potential for latent racism, but proving a large part of the populace capable of the valuable folly of idealism and able to be, if only for a short while, inspired by a vision of the better parts of who we are.

I’m going to respond to Stephen Downes’ comment on my “nightmare election scenarios” here because he appears to be accusing me of being a racist (or at least condoning it) and I’m not taking very kindly to it.
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[As I compose this, the final numbers aren't in, but Obama is on his way to winning the Iowa Caucus. The Iowa caucus isn't that meaningful. However...]

Part 1. George W. Bush is elected. I consider moving, but we haven’t colonized any further planets yet.

Part 2. George W. Bush is elected again. I wail and rend my garments… consider a hunger strike but I can’t give up bacon.

Part 3. Democrats, riding a wave of idealistic fervor and campaigns to turn out new voters, push Obama into the general election where he is beaten by [insert Republican candidate here-- they are all equally terrifying to me]. In a despair the likes of which have been unseen since the time of the Ancient Greeks, our lives become a new level of purgatory.

My reasoning: the problem is that Clinton and Obama are both basically unelectable because a) few new voters come out for the general election, b) many voters stay home, c) too many “moderates” will never be able to bring themselves to support either a relatively inexperienced, shape-shifting black candidate or a hard-edged woman with the last name of Clinton… when it comes time they will either not vote (advantage: Republicans) or vote Republican.

I’ve got nothing against Obama. I think he’s under-experienced and I don’t love the way he has wholly changed his persona… but the former can be overcome and the latter is just politics. I think Hillary would be individually a better decision-maker, but the power of the presidency is not solely in the office, but in the apparatus that they create around themselves.

No, what I fear is that neither of them are finally electable, and since Democrats and Independents don’t vote strategically (John Dean? Ralph Nader?) we will get stuck for another eight years (and make no mistake, Bush has shown that even the worst incumbent can be RE-elected) with some Republican knob…

Visualizing the congressional earmarks (fiscal appropriations slipped into various pieces of legislation)… Alaska makes out pretty well per capita!

Among the normal debate pablum (which you get from both sides, of course) of the second Republican presidential candidates debate (search for the term “suicide bombers) there was an extraordinary series of responses to a question about torture. Only John McCain stood up using torture, even in the war on terror. The rest of the clowns put their ignorance on full display… the sickest being those who tried to weasel out of it by saying they would support “any method possible” and “enhanced interrogation techniques” but “not torture.” Yeah, that makes sense. The pandering to the crowd by people like Romney is really no different than that practiced by the terrorist leaders they so despise.

Posted to a Creative Commons list today, links to several interesting articles regarding Wikis and the political process in Re-public (Summaries by the original poster):

Ward Cunningham - Wiki and the rise of gift economies
Creator of wiki software, Ward Cunningham, argues that the proliferation of wikis has proved that the for-pay economy is not the only way to create value.

Pete Ashdown - Open source politics
Being the first politician to to use a wiki to develop his campaign platform for the 2006 US Senate election in Utah, Pete Ashdown makes the case for open source politics.

Paul Hartzog - Panarchy and the wiki-fication of politics
Hartzog introduces the concept of panarchy, a sociopolitical field that emerges when connective technologies enable cooperative peer-to-peer production – of knowledge, of tools, of power.

Australian bill of rights initiative: Collaborating on public policy
Wiki politics are put into practice. This article focuses on the development and the rationale behind ARBI , an online project aimed at promoting awareness and discussion of human rights through the collaborative development of a bill of rights for Australia.

The mainstream media and the bloggers are all rabid about the upcoming trial of Scooter Libby. As they work through jury selection, it has become clear that truth and memory are central to the defense’s position. The question is: did Libby lie about his outing of Valerie Plame or just forget because he was so busy?

To help everyone out I will share a little discovery of mine. I figured out that Dick Cheney has a “tell” when he is lying. Incredibly, most of the Bush administration and its supporters share this little physical tic… look closely at their face, particularly their mouths.

It’s simple: if their lips are moving, they are lying. If their lips aren’t moving then they aren’t lying– they are most likely silently complimenting themselves on their last lie, thinking up their next, or (for the brainier ones) both.

You know things are getting bad when Republicans jump on a verbal gaffe by Kerry as if it is the end of the world as we know it. Is this the best they have on offer as we get read to go to the polls. Mocking Kerry would be perfectly fair– it’s amazing that any Republican supporter can do so with a straight face given the, umm, “verbal challenges” faced by the current Commander in Chief– but to take such an obvious slip seriously reeks of desperation.

Unfortunately, it’s just that kind of desperation that often draw in the gullible who don’t pay attention to the initial noise, just the endless reinterpretations in the echo chamber…

Whatever amount of sympathy I once had for Lee Siegel, former blogger at The New Republic, has largely evaporated after reading his smug, self-satisfied words after the fact…