Summing it up

Nice piece of summary from Will Wilkinson, caught by Andrew Sullivan:

Gut read. Obama owned it. This election’s over unless he murders and eats the flesh of a child on live television.

The Foreclosure "Crisis" Put Into Stark Detail

It's not that I've doubted the existence of the wave of foreclosures but sometimes it's hard to comprehend this as really being a crisis what with life seeming to go along as usual. The places we hear about being hard hit are far from my home and friends, so I don't see or hear about it first-hand. Aside from a couple of developments on which construction has seemed to freeze, there are no local signs of a problem.

This depressing news report (hat tip to Wonkette via Andrew Sullivan and others) and its images of foreclosed houses' contents being trashed really made it hit home for me. The video is worth watching, but not if you are having a bad day or want to cruise into the weekend on a high note.

Experience and Obama

Matt wrote an interesting post a few days ago about Andrew Sullivan and the Obama/Palin experience question that has reared its head full-force this week. I have been bothered by the experience argument against Obama for awhile, so here's a quick download on why this whole thing bothers me. Certainly Barack Obama has a different kind of experience from someone like Joe Biden, John McCain or I dunno... Dick Cheney or Nancy Pelosi as other examples.

Obama has, admittedly not been in the senate for decades, and he has not worked face-to-face with the leaders of foreign nations for decades. He has not run a company, and he hasn't authored, sponsored and passed dozens of pieces of landmark legislation to make significant progress on specific issues over the course of his years in the Senate (but who does in their first few years as a Senator... has anyone produced an example of such accomplishment upon arrival on the Senate floor?). He has not run a beurocratic machine like state, province, nation, etc. These are all valid points.

That said, what bothers me is the (in my opinion) flawed notion that these types of experience are necessary to success as President or having them (or not) is indicative of ones' "readiness" to lead. This line of reasoning, to me, engenders a sense that you need to follow a prescribed path or clear a certain set of hurdles to be ready, able, etc. This pumping up of a path to power or to qualification for leadership seems overblown to me, and I think Sarah Palin and Barack Obama provide an interesting contrast case to help highlight why that is. If anything, the debate that continues to develop since Ms. Palin arrived on the Republican ticket makes this whole experience line even more patently absurd.

I honestly feel like if you look at Ms. Palin's resume you can see some of the specific types of experience commentators have found lacking on Obama's resume, namely tenure in executive office. That said, you can also find things on Obama's resume that are not present on Palins. One post I saw today compared Obama's chairmanship at the Harvard Law Review (first African American to hold this post) to Palin's minor in Political Science at Idaho State. Some might call this comparison elitist, but the fact remains there is a track record of leadership and accomplishment that backs up the rationality behind Democratic excitement, voting and support for their candidate. The guy isn't, as Hillary suggested back when she was still in it, running based on one speech. He's running based on his interest in and pledge to bring together disparate interest groups and to work for change in new and dynamic ways.

Obama has, in the course of his campaign, show his interest in doing just that. He went to Michigan, a state that is considered very much in contention, and he did not cave to the powerful auto industry, instead taking Detroit to task for their resistance to raising fuel efficiency in American cars and their laconic approach to competition. He went after his own party, challenging them to embrace religious groups and evangelicals as possible allies on issues like poverty, AIDS, and rebuilding our inner cities turning aside years of capitulation to the idea that these groups will always vote Republican no matter what. He pushed for his campaign to have a 50-state grass-roots foundation, and has taken many steps to continue relying on this connection to real supportors and their issues all along the way.

While I absolutely agree with Matt that a good campaigner does not necessarily a good leader make, I think these are three fine examples where you can see the mark of a leader interested in building a movement. This is a guy who doesn't, as the right wing might suggest, simply care about talking pretty. He cares about setting up his campaign and an energizing machine that will push forward towards a new day of progress. Now I am clearly in the tank, plain and simple. I can't deny it, and I wouldn't want to, but that said, I think there is a flawed simplicity to the argument about experience, and while I'm not sure I've fully exposed what bothers me about that, I hope I've provided enough to spark some discussion or response from various quarters. Please, please, please let me know what you think.

That Stuff Will Kill Ya

Via Andrew Sullivan, here's an interesting tidbit from Reason, which I tend to like a lot. They show stuff that is likely to kill ya represented in a cool and easy to interpret graphical thing-a-ma-bobber. Check it, yo!

Andrew Sullivan, Obama and Palin

I've long been an admirer of Andrew Sullivan and a reader of his blog. One of the things I admire about Mr. Sullivan is that, in addition to having a formidable intellect, he is generally devoted to what might be called—if faux news hadn't ruined the term—a fair and balanced approach to political reporting. He consciously tries to avoid rank partisanship and dogma. He is a conservative who is appropriately outraged at the nationalistic thugs who call themselves conservatives in this country, who take their orders from Rush Limbaugh and have never heard of Burke. Given Mr. Sullivan's political viewpoints, his support of Barack Obama is a testament to his willingness to look beyond party lines and ideologies.

Over the last year, however, I have watched Mr. Sullivan's support of Obama grow increasingly intense, to the point where I now feel that he has abandoned any pretence of neutrality and has become almost a mouth piece for the Obama's campaign. How else would you explain his take on
McCain's selection of Sarah Palen as a running mate? Says Mr. Sullivan

"The first criterion for a veep - and I'm simply repeating a truism here - is that they are ready to take over at a moment's notice. That's especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That's more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain's pick with Obama's: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe. One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity."

Now, there is much I agree with here. McCain's pick could probably be described as "unserious." But this is an awfully strange argument coming from such an ardent Obama supporter. After all, Obama had been in the Senate for less than two years when he announced his candidacy for President. If Palin's thin resume makes her ineligible to lead the country, doesn't Obama's do the same? To Mr. Sullivan's credit, he posts several reader responses that make this point and he responds in an interesting way:

"ask yourself: could Sarah Palin have run a national election campaign against, say, a machine as powerful as the Bush family, and won? Does she have the skill set to construct a campaign that would actually have brought her to the nomination herself?"

It seems that, to Sullivan, Obama's skill as a campaigner qualifies him to be president. Palin, it seems, is unqualified in part because she was chosen and did not run herself. This argument is not entirely ridiculous. The Obama Machine is huge and well-oiled and Barack is at the center of it all. It's evidence of his considerable management skills. But I think that campaigning is very different from governing.

Bush had one of the best run campaigns in history: I think that's all we really need to know about that. Sullivan's argument is particularly puzzling if you consider that his main gripe with Palin seems to be her lack of experience in foreign policy and national security. I'm not sure setting up a brilliant on-line fundraising operation prepares you for dealing with Iran.

I have no doubt that Andrew Sullivan is smarter and better informed than I am. If we were ever to debate about anything he would probably demolish me. However, a strong mind can be used to deceive as well as enlighten and the world is full of people who use their intellect to deceive themselves. I'm not sure that's what Mr. Sullivan is doing now, but he has surely lost his commitment to even handed analysis.