That wrinkled shirt is supposed to give the impression that Richardson is "one of us."
The New Yorker article about Obama:
I printed it out and read it while lying on the couch waiting for it to be time to head out to meet people at the Anti-Veto Rally the other night; at least I tried to. I woke up around midnight still wearing my Obama hat, with the light on and the papers in my hand. I finished reading it, took off my Obama hat and went back to sleep wondering how the rally went. :::yawn:::
The very first page of the article is the insight a person needs to see into the soul and motives of Barack Obama. He's talking with corn farmers about biofuels, demonstrating his knowledge of the biofuel production process, noting their objections to switchgrass as the better source for biofuels. He dug deeper to discover what the problem was and found that it is not about commodity price, that it isn't just the usual proprietary, anti-competition attitude you would expect of most corporations. The farmers were looking at the bigger picture of returning organic matter to the ground to fertilize their crops rather than denuding it for biofuel. Obama engages them in finding ways to accomplish good farming strategies and still be able to produce the more efficient switchgrass-based biofuel. He finds ways to get them to be willing to progress toward the goal rather than stubbornly digging in to protect their position.
And, I loved the side-by-side comparison of health care speeches between Obama and Hillary. What a difference! By the reading, I can visualize a wagging finger pointing at everyone with a lot of you shoulds versus a friendly arm across the shoulders negotiating a give and take on the issue.
I also liked the entire background story. If we can get people to read this article, maybe they will have incentive to dig deeper and read his books too.
The description of his Senate office reception area just makes you want to camp out there with a sign reading "people, give the man a break!" Obama must have enormous reserves and an amazing support system that keeps those reserves replenished. Maybe the best thing we can do for the campaign is invite him to hide out in Sacramento for a day to get some rest
Some poignant passages for me:
Obama is always disappointing people who feel that he gives too much respect or yields too much ground to the other side, rather than fighting aggressively for his principles."
Then it went on to tell the story of a seminar about the Second Amendment and how one of the classmates from an urban area was for gun control andeven though Obama agreed there were too many guns in big cities, he was willing to hear out another classmate because that classmate had grown up in the Soviet bloc where they didn't have such freedoms. "Standing on one side of the room with his arms folded is just not his M.O."
Also liked this one. It is something all of us need to keep in mind:
"One weekend I was with him they were making a big deal about his school in Indonesia being a madrassa," Valerie Jarrett says. "I said, ?'How could they have even run with this story? It's so completely inaccurate!' He said, ?'You know, we've contacted the school and the principal's gonna explain what kind of a school it is and we're gonna refute it all. You need to just calm down. This is gonna be fun! Valerie, you're not a guy but let me explain it to you in sport terms. It's like we're in a basketball game, and I'm gonna fumble the ball, and someone's gonna steal the ball, and I'm gonna miss a free throw, but we're gonna win the game. You can't get yourself worked up over every little thing that somebody says about me or you're gonna go crazy.' "
