Religious Resignation

[Occhidiangela]

I like Obama if the campaign trail guy is the real guy. I'm afraid that may not be the case.

I don't like Hillary, but I think she'd be better for the country than McCain.

I think McCain is the best human of the three, by far. But I can't really support his politics on the economy or the wars.

So, my picks in order:
Obama the uniter
Hillary
McCain
Obama the divider

Now it's up to the DNP and time to shake the list down.

--Pete

McCain's window of opportunity, his sweet spot, was 2000. He blew it. I don't think he's got a snowball's chance in Hell to win in November. He carries the GOP stain on his tie. Not sure if it's a blood stain or an oil stain, but he can't scrub it off. I don't see anyone in the GOP who he can pick as VP who'll perk up his platform, or his image. His support for the war, and continued troop presence in Iraq, will sink him, and IMO is somewhat related to his bitterness over how Viet Nam turned out, with America cutting its losses and letting the blood flow. Letting the blood flow in the short term in Iraq seems to be an option few people are seriously considering. If the Kurds play their cards right, the Sunnah and Shia will blood themselves horrifically, and they'll come out on top. Not a bad outcome.

Hillary is a bigger divider than either McCain or Obama. She's still trapped, mentally, in about 1969, in a similar but different way than McCain. I have little use for anyone stuck in that mindset. I've retained a small share of my Cold War thinking, with an eye to China, but have shed most of it.



Obama is a complete cypher to me, in terms of what he's really about other than getting elected. He's an open book, which means that a whole host of special interest groups, think tanks, and card carrying smart guys are going to trip over themselves to get into his inner circle. Who he brings with him to the show is still being worked out. As I understand it, he pays attention to University of Chicago economists.

He speaks well, though he seems never to have heard a note of his own voice he didn't like. Barry needs to learn what the word "concise" means. He strikes me as quite intelligent. While I like that, he risks "paralysis via analysis" as a weakness.

I took the time some months ago to watch his talk at Trinity about the need to get Americans who are religious, and who aren't, to establish more common ground than deeper border ditches. It made sense to me. It's the opposite of what Fallwell and his ilk tried to achieve in their reactionary political response to humanism.

I quite frankly agree with his suggestion that America talk, open more dialogue, with Iran. The attitude among Bush and his crowd of "we can't talk to these people" and "we won't talk to these people" pisses me off to no end. There was a golden window of opportunity in 2001-2004, to finesse some of the low level contacts we had with Iran into a warming of the cold war between us that began when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over after the Islamic Revolution. That window has been slammed shut, and a decent part of the blame resides squarely in Washington. Teheran hasn't helped its own case lately. (See the IAEA and Iran here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/weekin...broad.html )

At least Obama wants to get back to dealing with Iran on a more substantive level. They are the Big Dog in the Persian Gulf. It is idiotic not to deal with them. My biggest only worry is that he's got a Bill Clintonesque idea about how important it is for Americans to wear blue helmets.

Occhi