Obama '08?

Tell me the practical threat.
K
O

Diest TKO wrote:

Tell me the practical threat.
K
O

I gave you three, for starters.

Finally, since I have not damned Obama based on his association with Wright (indeed I have attempted to explain it in very balanced, non-judgemental terms), and since Obama himself has condemned Wright's remarks and his persistence in affirming them -- this is not a "smear" at all, and I did not make it. So the opening proposition in all your arguments here is entirely false.

Diest TKO wrote:

georgeob1 - You have not in anyway answered my question, nor have you proven it to be an invalid question. You continue to dodge the question.

The question has no answer. It is not "invalid": rather it is meaningless. I don't "dodge it because there is nothing there.

I believe that the stated policy positions of the candidates are important for the determination of one's preferences, but so are character issues and other related factors. Everyone gets to make his own choice and for his own reasons.

The roose of conspiracy in this thread is humorous, ...

Diest TKO wrote:

Partial quote...

Troll-like-non-contribution.

...

None of knows for sure all the truth about all the candidates. The best any of us can do is choose from incomplete and not perfectly reliable information and hope events prove us right. You seem to be far too willing to prejudge the motives and integrity of others merely because they come to a different conclusion than you. On that basis alone I would not vote for you if you were running for office, precisely because of this (irrational in my view) tendency to interpret disagreement as enmity. In my experience in life, that is a crippling defect of character for one who aspires to a position of great leadership. I can't point to any particular future policy or decision that will go wrong as a result, but I do know, based on long experience that this defect makes for a lousy, ineffective leader.

Butrflynet wrote:

He's fed up with the shallowness of people...thinks the title of Obama's book is just stupid and refuses to read it because it's a stupid title for a book.

Fed up with the shallowness of people...Mystified by the penchant of people to jump on the bandwagon without fully knowing what they're jumping onto...hasn't read the book but thinks he knows enough about Obama to know that the person who inspired the stupid title of that book is a kook and has jumped on the bandwagon that labels Obama as a kook too.

Yet, he's fed up with the shallowness of people.


It leaves me speechless...

Perhaps so. I will try to locate a book. Regardless of the book, I have watched several of the debates and listened to Obama carefully, and listened to some of his speeches after elections. I think I have given him ample chance to clarify his politics. How many people are going to read his book before the election, and how many people care about his book? We shouldn't have to read his book to know something about him.

Now that you are speechless, have you answered the questions about your politics and what you see in Obama's policies that you are so excited about? If I missed it, I apologize, if you haven't answered, I am waiting.

And I have another question for you, have you listened to unabbreviated sermons of Wright, and have you read the church website carefully?

I believe it is possible for a well-intentioned and intelligent person to come to a conclusion about possible or likely bad features in the character of a candidate, and do so for any of a number of reasons.

ranging from inconsistencies among things the candidate has said or done, past associations with individuals or groups, or some resonance between such factors and some stated policy positions of the candidate, and then use that conclusion as a partial or complete basis for his decision to vote for or against that candidate.

In a complementary way, I don't believe that such a decision about a candidate must necessarily be made exclusively on the specific policy positions articulated by the candidate on selected 'hot' issues in the campaign. I don't exclude such things - they are important - but I don't think that they should be (or usually are) the sole basis for that decision.

Indeed history very strongly suggests that in this country, character, or perceptions of it, is usually the dominant issue in voter choices.

To the extent that perceptions of character are a factor in such voter choices, it is often understandably difficult (impossible) to make a one-to-one correspondence between a perceived character issue and some anticipated specific element of policy or some specific collection of the many, many issues a successful candidate (for President especially) will encounter in his term of office.

In particular an earnest, intelligent voter may well be swayed by some perceived character issue without ever consciously relating it to some possible future policy decision. People just don't think that way, and it isn't necessary to have such a connection in mind to have or even justify such a suspicion or doubt about a character issue.

There is no objective formula for identifying the "best" candidate in a democratic election - either for us all as a group or individually. This is a subjective decision people make for their own reasons. Your choice is yours and not a fit subject for my judgement - same goes for mine.

You are of course free to request specifics about possible future policy effects if I attempt to use character issues to persuade you to vote one way or the other. You can use any evidence you choose to decide for yourself if there is or is not a character issue of concern. However you have no basis whatever to assert that I cannot entertain such an issue if I cannot point to some specific future decision or policy action - if for no other reason that such predictions cannot reliably be made - one way or the other.

While you may regard the Wright matter as irelevant, I believe there are some intelligent, reasonably objective voters out there who could justifiably be concerned about it.

I for one would not respect the advice on any subject of an educated person who persisted in the claim that the U.S. government had a hand in creating and disseminating the HIV virus in Africa as a means of exterminating black people.

I never felt that it was necessary for Obama to utterly repudiate Wright for all this - we all are flawed ourselves and he has a right to let personal loyalty trump some of this. However when Wright took the amazing and unnecessary step of reaffirming all that nonsense, Obama had no alternative and acted accordingly. It is all OK by me, but I would not premptorily condemn others who were influenced by all this, rejecting Obama much earlier in the game.

More to the point, if I thought that Obama was as obsessed with the notion of Black victimhood as evidently is Rev Wright, then I would have some serious reservations about his potential to truly be the racially transcendent figure he otherwise claims to be - and this leads directly to a character issue.

As it happened I decided that the difference was probably a result of the fact that Obama and Wright are of different generations, -- a mind set that might be justifiable for one who grew up when Wright did was not justifiable for one who grew up as did Obama and who has spoken as Obama has about the subject. Some people may have seen it differently than the way I did and may have found what was for themselves a reasonable basis on which to reject Obama.

None of knows for sure all the truth about all the candidates. The best any of us can do is choose from incomplete and not perfectly reliable information and hope events prove us right.

You seem to be far too willing to prejudge the motives and integrity of others merely because they come to a different conclusion than you.

On that basis alone I would not vote for you if you were running for office, precisely because of this (irrational in my view) tendency to interpret disagreement as enmity.

In my experience in life, that is a crippling defect of character for one who aspires to a position of great leadership.

I can't point to any particular future policy or decision that will go wrong as a result, but I do know, based on long experience that this defect makes for a lousy, ineffective leader.

I on the other hand, don't find this to be relavant at all. This evening Cobert made an interesting point about this whole nonsense. If we are to judge Obama for staying in the church for 20 years, are we then going to judge the large population of catholics who stayed in the church, scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal...etc. Of course not. Are Rev Wright's statements anymore extreme or inflamitory than the new Pope's reversal on other denominations followers going to heaven? Or condeming the Beatles (yes the band. yes really)?

nimh, question for you:

What do you personally think of a man who abandons someone for the sake of his aspirations? Do you feel he consigned The Good Reverend to the fates with his denials of listening to him in church, agreeing with his views, etc., yet remaining in his parish for 20 years as a 'loyal' parishoner?

I'm having a little trouble with his distancing himself from the Pastor the way he has. I think Obama could have spent some time explaining where Wright was coming from. A friend would have done that. A loyal parishoner would have done that.

BTW, it wouldn't make me NOT vote him, were I so inclined, but I would be seeing him in a new light. Well, I AM seeing something new about him, not terribly surprising given his desire to be President of the U.S.A., but still...he's tarnished himself with his reaction/behaviour.


Political expediency, n'est-ce pas?

Again, I'm not a follower of all the nuances of both nominees, so forgive me if this has been discussed somewhere or if he has dirtied his halo elsewhere.