Americans do the right thing--after trying Republicans and everything else

Every once in a rare while Maureen Dowd writes something that is worth quoting; in her latest column, Dowd writes about President Obama:

In 2008, the message was him. The promise was him. And that’s why 2010 is a referendum on him. 

That is a neat way to summarize the dynamics of this election.  Which is also why it is bloody dangerous to have personality-driven politics and leaders.  Bill Clinton's re-election was not about Clinton the person at all--not with all that baggage he carried around.  But, during the campaign season, the stock that Obama sold was himself, and now as President he has a tougher problem making a repeat sale.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Kristof, who seems to have taken time off from the gruesome stories that otherwise he forces us to recognize, wants us to give Obama a break:

go ahead and hold Mr. Obama’s feet to the fire. He deserves to be held accountable. But let’s not allow economic malaise to cloud our judgment and magnify America’s problems in ways that become self-fulfilling.

I am not so sure about this argument. 

The problem is that the alternative, in terms of Republican leadership, is an even more pathetic joke.  If the GOP takes over the house, Kevin McCarthy will become number 3?  I remember him from my days in Bakersfield, and a few days ago I watched him on C-Span and the guy is as lacking as ever.  At least Bill Thomas, whose retirement paved the way for McCarthy, was a really sharp guy and, unfortunately, even more ruthless!

So, to some extent, I am with Paul Krugman who is worried about a Republican Congress:

This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

However, I wish, for the nth time, that Krugman would be less shrill and less hyperbolic, and engaged more like the economist he is; did he really have to write "Be afraid. Be very afraid" ...?


David Brooks lays out what Obama's problem is going to be if (when?) Republicans take over the House (and Senate?):

[If] Obama is to rebound, he is going to have to suppress his natural competitive instincts. If he gets caught up in the Beltway fight club, the Republicans will emerge as the party of limited government and he’ll emerge as the spokesman for big government — surely a losing proposition.

Thomas "master manipulator of metaphors" Friedman, too, has something sensible, for a change, when he writes on why this election matters, as he looks at it from India while talking with some of his favorites (does Friedman talk to the 400 million poor there, I wonder!):

It looks, said Srivastava, as if “what is happening in America is a loss of self-confidence. We don’t want America to lose self-confidence. Who else is there to take over America’s moral leadership? American’s leadership was never because you had more arms. It was because of ideas, imagination, and meritocracy.” If America turns away from its core values, he added, “there is nobody else to take that leadership. Do we want China as the world’s moral leader? No. We desperately want America to succeed.”
This isn’t just so American values triumph. With a rising China on one side and a crumbling Pakistan on the other, India’s newfound friendship with America has taken on strategic importance. “It is very worrying to live in a world that no longer has the balance of power we’ve had for 60 years,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “That is why everyone is concerned about America.”

Well, we--in the US and in the entire world--will find out real soon.

My long term bets are always on the good ol' US of A.  As Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.”  And with a Republican victory in the midterms, we would have exhausted everything, and we will start doing the right thing.

Stereotyping people based on their favorite NY Times writer

This (ht) is funny; how come some people are so creative?

Maureen Dowd
Women who remember fondly the first time they got their period.
Thomas Friedman
Men who refer to young women as "young lady."
Nicholas D. Kristof
People who are terrified others will find out that they don't actually read the NYTimes.
David Pogue
Your friend who sneers whenever they hear the phrase "social media expert" yet call themselves that.
Guy Trebay
Your friend's friend who always forgets to pay their part of the bill.
Frank Rich
People who spit when they talk.
Andrew Pollack
That guy your spouse knows who paid to have his whole genealogy mapped out.
Paul Krugman
People who realize that he's better looking than George Clooney.
David Brooks
People who recognize a fellow D&D player when they see ‘em.
Gail Collins
Your aunt in Boston.

[Lauren Leto's got a WordPress blog, because Tumblr's for pansies. Truth. She's based out of Detroit, counting fat stacks of cash from her book, Texts From Last Night, which you probably contributed to inadvertently. She also wrote an awesome blog post about who your favorite author is that she'll probably also get a book deal for. I say: If you're in a bar with people from Detroit, make sure they're on your side.]

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@gawker.com

Quote of the day

"Work somewhere in a soup kitchen or something if you can’t take the pressure."

I suppose this is a rephrasing of "if you can't stand the heat ...." Anyway, that is California's governor quoted in Maureen Dowd's column.  I cannot understand though why that is a column--it is more like Dowd reporting on a meeting/interview.  Where is the analysis/insight?  I say this not because I am not a fan of Dowd.  Well, of course, I am not a fan of Dowd; but, that is beside the point.

Speaking of NY Times columns, Frank Rich, as always, has a good commentary and with hyperlinks.  Nicholas Kristoff has taken a break from detailing something on the freaky side of unfortunate aspects of lives somewhere, and has a neat column on an offbeat and upbeat experience. The good thing about Thomas Friedman's column is that he does not lead with how he had yet another insightful conversation at lunch with somebody.  The bad news is that his penchant for manipulating metaphors is right at the title for the column! 

Waiting to exhale on Afghanistan ... egalitarian faux-democracy?

I have made my position clear.  Now, I am with billions of others on the planet waiting for Obama to tell us what his decision is.

If he still planning on a surge, hey may want to think more about it.  Why? Pakistan is not keen on a surge, particularly if the US does not share its plans. (ht)

Pakistan expressed fear Friday that a large increase in foreign troops in Afghanistan could push militants across the border into its territory and called on the U.S. to factor in that concern as part of its new war strategy.....
...The Pakistani concerns, raised by the prime minister during a meeting with visiting CIA director Leon Panetta, could pose another headache for President Barack Obama as he weighs military proposals to send 10,000 to 40,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year.

And, that same AP story ends with this BTW kind of an observation, which is a nasty reminder of how we got to where we are:

Pakistan helped nurture a generation of Islamic militants after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Following the Soviet withdrawal a decade later, Pakistan helped the Taliban seize control. Many of these militants fled to Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Meanwhile, Obama taking his longest time trying to come up with a solution that pleases all is beginning to get noticed, finally.  The ever caustic Dowd, who is good at playing with words (I don't care for her columns at all; but, to borrow from Rumsfeld--did I really quote this war criminal?--we have to go to engage in discussions with the columnists we have!)

If we could see a Reduced Shakespeare summary of Obama’s presidency so far, it would read:
Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.
It’s time for the president to reinvent this formula and convey a more three-dimensional person.

Lee Siegel describes the un-decider's approach as:

egalitarian faux-democracy, in which the illusion of responding to every side in a debate undercuts the democratic process of actually arriving at a decision.

How exactly does this work? Siegel explains:

This illusion of national participation in his decision-making process, with the promise of a happy ending that excludes no one, has been Obama’s method almost from Day One. Call it the American Idol style of governing—except that no possibility ever gets voted out of the competition.
No one must feel marginalized by a tyrannical majority. Obama allows the responses of the public, and the political establishment, and the media to break down every issue into a million parts, so that the multi-faceted clamor outside his head ends up looking a lot like the multi-faceted way he considers the world from inside his head. And by the time a decision comes—and yet it seems that Obama has not come to a single consequential decision since his inauguration—some people will feel unsatisfied, but no one will feel defeated.

Not looking good, man.  Not looking good at all. 
Update: later I was reminded of this comment on candidate Obama by Robert Samuelson--back in June 2008 that he might be the best graduate student ever:

I cannot detect powerful convictions in Obama. He seems merely expedient in peddling his convenient conflicts. He strikes me as a super-successful graduate student: the brightest, quickest, most articulate guy in the seminar. In his career, he has advanced mainly by talking and writing -- not doing -- and may harbor a delusion common to the well-educated: that he can argue and explain his way around any problem.