Category: Politics

The great Obama speech on race in America impressed a lot of people, but they were already Obama supporters. It left me cold, and more than a little offended. To compare his grandmother’s probably rational fear of black men on the street with the bitter public rhetoric of the bombastic Jeremiah Wright shows a distinct lack of judgment on Obama’s part. Women are often fearful of men on the street at certain times of the day and certain parts of the city, and it’s a fact that black men are more likely to commit violent crimes than other demographics. There are all sorts of reasons for that, but it’s a fact and we’re all aware of it.

Wright has claimed, among other things, that the government of the US created the HIV virus in order to commit genocide against the black race. He has said, in effect, that the KKK rules America. Wright evidently hates white people, and doesn’t feel bashful about saying so from his pulpit. To compare Wright’s racism – and there’s no other way to describe it – to granny’s private fear is simply bizarre.

[added 3/21]

Consider the differences between Obama’s granny and Wright. Granny expressed a private fear to her grandson, perhaps to help him understand attitudes that people have. She didn’t take to a pulpit and denounce all black men as criminals, which is apparently the way Wright would have behaved in her shoes. And moreover, Obama doesn’t get to choose who his granny is, but he does get to choose a pastor. And of all the pastors in the city of Chicago, he just happened to choose the most hateful one.

It’s simply bad judgment, or a lack of intellectual honesty, not to make these distinctions.

[end of addition]
Obama must be so inured to black racism that he can’t even recognize it. And given that the two most significant people in his life in recent years – his wife and his pastor – express anti-white racism with no apparent discomfort, that’s not surprising.

This tells me that Obama is a lightweight, a John Edwards, a pretty face, and not qualified to lead this country. It’s sad for Hillary and for the country that he’s seduced so many Democrats, because a Clinton-McCain contest would have put all the important issues on the table for serious discussion. With Obama the presumptive Democrat nominee, the election will revolve around experience and judgment, much less interesting topics and ones that are easily disposed of.

See the LA Times Op-Ed pages for a similar take on the speech from New York Civil Rights Coalition director Michael Meyers.

Larry Lessig’s decision not to run for Congress against Jackie Speier proves one thing, at least: the man is not a total fool. I applaud him for not wasting the public’s time with a quixotic campaign. Speier will make a fine representative for the 12th dsitrict, stirring things up quite a bit in her own way.

The Larry Lessig for Congress movement is gathering steam, and the Professor himself is showing all the signs of running:

Former colleague John Palfrey, of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, launched a “Draft Lessig for Congress” Facebook group, attracting more than 2,000 social networking Larry lovers, and others soon sprung for their own DraftLessig.org” domain.

When we contacted Lessig yesterday morning to ask what he thought of all this, we didn’t get answer. But today, he told the world he is “seriously” considering a Congressional campaign. Lessig says he won’t make his final decision until “about” March 1. That would give him a month to prepare for the fight. But he’s launched a new website and a very Lessig online video to show just how serious he is.

The video confirms (yet again) that he’s determined to change the political landscape. “In my view the most exciting part of the debate around change is the idea of changing how Washington works, changing the influence of money in Washington,” Lessig says. “Not an influence that comes through bribes, but an influence that is produced by the economy of influence that money now has in Washington.”

Sounds like a born politician to us.

I think this is a bad idea, and I’d like to tell you why.

Lessig isn’t a politician, so he wouldn’t be effective at moving bills, the primary purpose of legislators. He would be another Ron Paul, the focal point of a distinctly out-of-the-mainstream ideology instead of a lawmaker. Novelty legislators are fun for the media, but they don’t serve their voters well.

And I doubt he’d be effective at constituent services, the second most effective task, because he doesn’t have the web of influence that career politicians have. Ideologues like Jesse Helms and Maxine Waters are re-elected term after term because they’re adept at constituent services.

And finally, I predict that Lessig would lose interest and resign within a few months once he’d found out that lawmaking isn’t as glamorous as leading a high-profile academic program and essentially being a rock star for free downloads.

And there’s a real danger that a guy like Lessig would be harmful to the process as well. He would be taken as a tech expert in Washington, because he’s considered one in his present niche. But Lessig doesn’t understand technology per se, he’s more an expert on certain cultural implications of technology. So I wouldn’t want someone with such a thin grasp of tech issues to become “Mr. High Tech” on the Hill.

I happen to know Jackie Speier, the real politician who was endorsed by Tom Lantos to take this place in the House. I certainly don’t agree with her on every issue, but I’ve worked with her and found her to be a competent, intelligent person. So based on my experience with Sen. Speier and her demonstrated commitment to the people and the process of government, I’d bet that a Congresswoman Speier wouldn’t drop out at the end of the first term and go on the road with a rock band.

Lessig’s an interesting character with a lot of challenging ideas, but Congress is not the place for him.

Seth Finkelstein explains it all:

I am not impressed by Barack Obama.

Yes, he makes nice speeches. Yes, he’s anti-war. That’s great. I don’t hate him. He’s a good guy for a Presidential candidate. However, I feel no great inspiration, and there’s a lot of ways he seems to me to be an inferior candidate to Hillary Clinton. He’s a lightweight in terms of track record, with no experience in dealing with all the mud that can be thrown at a Democrat by the Republican campaign apparatus.

These days, when someone makes an emotionally appealing speech to me, my guard goes up and I start considering how they might be trying to take advantage of me.

That’s pretty much my take. Hillary is, let’s face it, stronger all the way around than Obama. It was a tad worrying that her husband was doing so much damage to her campaign recently, but she’s reined him in, which is no small feat. Obama is doing the same tired old emotional populist appeal that Edwards has been doing forever, it’s just not credible.

Experience counts.

It seems to have turned out well for McCain, and not so well for the others. I’d like to see a Clinton-McCain contest in November, because it would be more a contest of ideas than of emotion. I may not get my wish.

Get your red-hot 2008 Presidential Election returns right here.

With 12% counted, Hillary and McCain are doing well, but Vermin Supreme has five votes.

UPDATE: AP has declared McCain the winner.

UPDATE: With 42% counted, Hillary has a slight lead, due to Gloria Steinem’s whining.

Barney Frank puts the latest Republican gay sex scandal in perspective, urging the Larry Craig character not to resign:

“What he did, it’s hypocritical, but it’s not an abuse of his office in the sense that he was taking money for corrupt votes,” Frank told the Associated Press.

“I think people should resign when they have clearly done the job in a way that is dishonest.”

Frank went on to tell the AP: “It’s one thing to say that someone can’t be trusted to vote without being corrupt, it’s another to say that he can’t be trusted to go to the bathroom by himself.”

Pressure has been mounting, particularly within the GOP, for Craig to step down, after he admitted this week to pleading guilty earlier this month to a charge of disorderly conduct following his June 11 arrest in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.

I’m not even sure it’s hypocritical, as the Republican attitude toward sex seems to be “women for duty, boys for pleasure.” Craig opposes gay marriage, not gay sex, so where’s the hypocrisy?

I’d prefer he not cruise public washrooms, for the sake of the children, so somebody should teach him about Craig’s List. And Slate is to be congratulated for coining the term “Craig’s Lust,” it’s awfully cute.