John McCain doesn't have any drama. Obama is throwing people under the bus left and right. Now it's Wesley Clark that Obama is disowning. Is there anybody besides Gov. Richardson that Obama can stand up with and say, we agree on just about everything? At this point in his campaign, we should see Obama's ability to lead the party (sorta) in evidence, but I think to the contrary he is in a rather odd position.
The way I see it is that Obama's campaign has single-handedly crippled everything about the Clintonian triangulation if not dealt it a death blow. MoveOn, the organization started in Bill Clinton's defense has abandoned him. That may not be here or there for real insiders, but it's definitely real. I think Bill Clinton must be looking at Obama like OJ looked at Ron Goldman, driving his wife around in his new car. The Clintons don't run the party any longer, which wouldn't be such a bad idea if somebody else could. But I think the whole Democatic deck was in their hands and now they're playing 52 card pickup. Who are the heavyweights who have got Obama's back?
With regard to military service, Obama shouldn't even go there. That's just crazy. Kerry got his face smeared all over the pillow on that one. McCain has been on the Armed Services Committee and has 21 years in the service. As for the POW thing, well I look at it this way, and comparing it to Kerry's four months of active combat duty. Four months in Vietnam is plenty to make you broke, crippled and crazy. McCain survived all that plus prison. From a black political perspective you cannot ignore the fact that a lot of African Americans hold Mandela, King and X in high esteem because their time behind bars didn't break them, but made them stronger. McCain didn't come out of Vietnam broken, crippled or crazy, but strong. So he's faced down the demons - there is a massive and undeniable character issue plus on McCain's side. Period. Does that make him a better leader? No. Does it make him a better man? No doubt.
Beyond that, it seems to me that there's a simple binary at work here. Either you trust or you don't trust military commanding officers. That is something that must be calculated independent of the politics of war and peace. It has been my experience that independent of the politics of war and peace, middle aged, middle class black men tend to recognize and respect COs, or they ball them up into the whole military-industrial complex tar baby. The former group always includes ex-military and those I call working men, the latter falls into a category probably best summarized by The Police: "poets, priests and politicians", of which the black community has more than a fair share. From an empowerment perspective, I always make a point to say to my leftist and progressive friends, that military service for blackfolks means instant middle class, and is a damned sight better than living in Compton, where the cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down. The math has been done, even in wartime, it's safer to be a soldier, airman, marine or sailor, than to live in the Fifth Ward of Houston. In the service, there's never any question who has got your back, on the streets of Killadelphia, the answer is not forthcoming.
I wouldn't bother to suggest that black politics needs more than an attitude adjustment on the military service question. All they need do is look to those members in their families with honorable discharges and ask them who handles their business. That's what the presidency is all about, handling business, hopefully without drama. Sounds like McCain to me.
Still, you need more than competence to run the office, you need to win a mandate from the people. It seems to me that fly Obama is more likely to win that popular mandate than boring McCain. I still think that Obama's overexposure and constant "That's not the (fill in the blank) I knew" is an inescapable negative. But I also don't see, absent another Katrina-level media storm, that he will ever get under the press radar long enough for people to come back to him fresh. I intend to come back to the both of them fresh, as soon as we can get some debates scheduled. But this back and forth is driven by media and pundits, not by the policy cred of the candidates.
If I had my druthers, I would (as McCain, or a real journalist), sit down Obama for two hours and go agency by agency. What is wrong with the Department of Agriculture and why would the Obama Administration change it (for America). How, exactly? Most specifically, I want to hear Obama say on record what he would do with the staffing levels of the TSA. I dunno, that's just something I'd want to hear him stick to - say a 20% reduction in force, and say that as President he doesn't see a domestic terror threat and he would actually fire people and save money. The way I think of Obama, I don't envision him saying 'You're fired!' to Federal employees. Rather, you're redeployed or 'we're changing priorities and reorganizing'. It's easy to dismiss the Rev Wrights of the world (not that he did with alacrity), but it's a horse of a different color to layoff a division. Where does Obama show strength in cost-cutting ability? Where's that executive experience?
Obviously, McCain as a commander has had life and death decisions to make over people under his command. Unless of course he was some sort of desk jockey REMF. But I expect that kind of reputation would have emerged by now. And so my prediction is that McCain is not swift-boatable, and when it comes to executive decision-making, the battle is his to win as soon as the service issue comes up. There are rhetorical ways of re-arranging the battlefield so as to avoid that kind of head to head comparison, and my money says Obama will attempt valiantly to do so. Man to man, I don't think he can win.
So here's my other advice to McCain. Get in Obama's face about responsibility for bad decisions that cost people jobs and lives. Ask him point blank, when did he make a life or death decision that was wrong? Leave GWBush out of this, I'm talking about you. Barack Hussein Obama. When did you decide to cut funding and cost 10,000 people their jobs? How did you own up to that? I don't think you can handle the pressure. Hell you can't even shut Bill Clinton up. Well, nobody can do that.
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