ossobuco wrote:I don't know that Obama is my favorite, me being left of him, but I like him.
I didn't get what was all so terrible about any skippos or mispos in his autobiography. Well, yes, the one guy. On the other hand, I'm sure I can name people in my life who would describe stuff differently.
It's sort of annoying, all the going after chaff. Just wait, I'm sure all candidates have serious bits to answer, or, that they should have, and serious bits are what matter.
Right now it looks like reporters are going after toe detritus.
All true. They certainly seem to have come up with zilch of significance so far, which makes you think/hope there's actually nothing out there, which speaks well of Obama.
One thing though that I think people may optimistically overlook is that journalists and voters go on different compasses here.
Journalists are out to uncover scandals, to discover something new, something Obama himself hasnt talked about, or that turns out to be different from how he wrote about it. Because then he can be said To Have Lied About His Past, which is a capital crime in inside politics. Without that, there's no scoop.
Ergo, anything Obama has already frankly and honestly written about in his books, is of null interest to a digging journalist. No glory in that - nothing to discover, its all already there.
Thing is, how many
voters have read Obama's autobiography? How many have even followed the news closely enough to have picked up on the main things? That he's half-Kenyan, that he travelled to Kenya last year - that may have registered with, I dunno, about a third of 'em. That he spent childhood years in Indonesia, after the last rather pathetic attempts to have "outed" him as a child Muslim or as having attended a "madrassa", perhaps the same proportion.
But that he used cocaine, for example? We know, the journalists know, those who follow the politics news have read about how he's written about that, but your average voter? They dont know. There's nothing for journalists to "uncover" here, but dont even think its not going to come back up in the 2008 campaign, either in the last primary stretch or, more likely, in the general campaign if he's made it through.
And I mean, its just 15 years ago that Clinton felt he needed to say he had "not inhaled", and that was just about a joint.
As for his multicultural upbringing, thats a plus of course for those of us who are looking for a President to bring expertise and knowledge of the world and a cosmopolitan outlook. But I'm afraid thats just us liberals (with the occasional idealist conservative like O'Bill or Lash as honorable members of the club).
I dont think theres much or anything of substance to the "he was a Muslim when he was eight!" claims (and I mean, so what?). But I do think that in the final stretch, when the majority of voters tunes in, his multicultural upbringing is going to play against him. Its not for no reason that one of the key indicators that polls use is (variations of) the questions, "do you think [Candidate A] cares about people like you", "do you think [Candidate A] is in touch with the concerns of people like you". To a large extent, people vote for someone they think
is like them. Someone who looks and talks like them. The down-home conservative rather than the intellectual liberal, never mind who's the smarter one. The guy whom you'd kick back with, as paull said.
I hate that kind of thinking - I think it's stupid. You want the most qualified for the job, not the most familiar. You're voting for President, not BBQ guest. But thats how it goes. And here's Obama, who isnt just black (and I'm still sceptical about how ready the Americans are to vote in a black President, though I'm a little more hopeful than when this thread started), but who grew up abroad (at least part of the time), whose childhood friends were Indonesian or Muslim or whatnot, and who went on to use coke and then admire a somewhat radical urban black community leader, before settling down as a mainstream politician, if an empathically idealistic and principled one. Thats not the kind of autobiography that will make a lot of American voters go, ah yeah here's a guy like me, he's one of us, a regular / common / downhome / whatever it is voters prefer kind of guy.
None of this comes up or out now, because, well, there's nothing to "uncover" here - journalists know all about it, Obama wrote all about it himself, those who are following the primary news also probably already know about it - no scoop to be had, which is why we get this detritus instead. I dont think it'd even come up much in the primary campaign at all, since Democratic primary voters are more liberal in outlook than your regular American, so they wont care as much, and since Obama's main rival will be Hillary, and when it comes to rivalling each other in who's the more common-folksy and regular there's nothing to win for her, so she has little reason to go there. But dont even think, if Obama makes it through, that its not going to all come up with a vengeance in the final stretch.
I do have the book -- technically. The week before last week, I was on vacation at my parents' home. I had the second copy (the first got lost somehow) delivered there so I could read it without distraction. The book did arrive at my parents' house one day after I left. 
At least now I know I will get to read it over Easter. 