Posts tagged ‘President Barack Obama’

February 17th, 2013

‘Checking the Property’ — for Presidents’ Day

by PaulM

Here’s a hat tip to the climate-change demonstrators in Washington, D.C., who are speaking on behalf of the planet this holiday weekend. Lowelltown is as white tonight as the monuments in the capital city. I wrote this poem after a family trip to Washington in the summer of 2004. There were John Kerry-for-President signs in the windows. GOP posters for “W,” too. Barack Obama was a figure on the horizon. — PM

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Checking the Property

My nine-year-old son says, “I’m going to read the ‘Gettysburg Address’”—on the other side is the lesser-known second inaugural speech. What’s the Lincoln shorthand? Freed the slaves; saved the union. People crowd the marble steps at dusk. A sign asks for silence. When he sees my wife lining up a snapshot, a guy in a straw cowboy hat offers to take a picture of my brother’s family, my wife, son, and me in the glow of the civic temple. Climbing the steps, I caught sight of the figure set behind the columns, and then lost him because of the steep ascent, only to come upon the sculpture again near the top, where visitors gaze at the huge seated president, whose massive square-toed boot juts out, looking as if it could kick Jeff Davis’ football the length of the Reflecting Pool and onto the white spike of the Washington Monument, which, in the after-supper hour, reflects sun along its narrow western face, a mighty glo-stik on the national common, a staunch obelisk, a big white numeral standing for the first president, who set the constitutional republic in motion, the stone blocks a different shade on the top half, marking a stop in work and resumption, the monument telling its own story, one in which protesters rolled cut stones into the drink, foreshadowing later protests and rallies and comings together, like the 1963 March on Washington that brought Martin Luther King to these same steps to declare his dream of a nation at last free for all, the same steps where Joan Baez and Bob Dylan sang for justice and where Dylan returned to sing for Bill Clinton’s booming inaugural, the same steps from which movie-land Vietnam vet Forrest Gump spoke, and from which he spotted his life-long love and source of ache splashing toward him, the same pool in which the spaceship crashed in the Planet of the Apes remake, this electric stretch of public land without timber or copper, a wide open space in which to make a verb of America—to recall and celebrate and to do democratic research and development in this red clay-lined lab, bordered and crowded with evidence of the ongoing experiment, and bearing key formulas and equations inscribed in stone.

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—Paul Marion (c) 2004

 

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January 22nd, 2013

Uncle Dave’s Review of the Speech

by PaulM

I haven’t dragged David “Uncle Dave” Brooks over here for a long time. He was irritating during the presidential election, trying to find ways to stay on Mitt Romney’s side—every once in a while he gave it up for the President, but I think Uncle Dave was always pulling for Mitt. In his NYTimes column today, he admires the inaugural address given yesterday for its bold liberal/progressive vision of a nation that does best when the citizens act together to accomplish important objectives. Uncle Dave admits he is partly in Barack Obama’s camp, but that big things can be scary and dangerous if too much power is concentrated at the top. It’s always interesting to see conservatives warning about big government being dangerous, but usually giving big concentrations of wealth, especially huge corporate entities, a free pass. The big market is OK by them, until, of course, it isn’t, as when “the market” or “the street” crashes its limousine into a brick wall. At that point “the market” wants help from “the government,” which is the rest of us.

Notice that he uses the word “collective” in his column. That’s a loaded term for the Right Wing, a hint that President Obama is way over there on the Left side of the spectrum where the socialists and communists hang around. Collectivism and collectivist are words with a creepy Soviet tinge. He could have written “community.” After all, Obama was a community organizer at the start in Chicago.

Why do I call him Uncle Dave? We’re about the same age. He’s a thoughtful guy who has made a career of trying to be the serious one in the room. He’s the guy who likes telling everybody to “calm down.”  He can be very funny. I laughed when reading his book “Bobos in Paradise.” He’s a good speaker—I heard him at a conference years ago and watch him on TV when I can. I think he would be happier if he gave up on the national Republicans and sat at the Democrats’ table in the cafeteria more often.

Here’s his opinion piece about President Obama’s speech. Please get the NYT if you want more.

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November 5th, 2012

Half-n-Half, Still

by PaulM

A while back I wrote about the perplexing “half-n-half” character of the American electorate. On Morning Joe today the hosts ran through the polls in battleground states and nationwide, showing a virtual tie between the President and his challenger. This, after two years of the Republicans making a case against the President on the campaign circuit and following about five months of the final choice in front of us: Pres Obama and Gov Romney. Each candidate was able to amass outrageous amounts of money. Each one in turn brought together on occasion tens of thousands of followers in rallies. The political contest brought to light wildly unacceptable conditions for voters in some states. It is unAmerican to be forced to wait five hours to vote by bureaucrats who are charged with making the election system function in a rational way. Free speech allowed at times for stunning accusations and despicable charges, which is totally American in form and content. Politics has never been clean. Ask Jefferson. Ask Adams. We can live with that. The citizen’s job is to sort through the muck and smoke to find a believable explanation of what is going on and where your candidate wants to take you. I remain baffled, however, by the way the numbers break down. It all seems so improbable in a nation of more than 300 million people. How can the subset of voters hear and see one thing in Alabama and a quite different thing in California? How does our extreme pluralism fall into 50-50 splits in state after state? It’s not like I know what somebody in Idaho is doing, and am taking the opposite side just to be contrary. This is how the jelly beans spill out on the floor, red to one side, blue to the other, pretty much in equal amounts.

I heard one analyst with Chris Matthews say last night that whichever side loses will “be aggrieved.” In a winner-take-all system as we have, the loser has to swallow hard. It’s not like one group gets the Presidency and the other group gets the Vice Presidency. The designers of our political system worried a lot about minority rights and the potential tyranny of the majority, but the election system gives complete domination to the person who earns 50.1 percent. Even more bizarre, someone tomorrow could win the popular vote and lose the electoral college vote. We’ve seen it before. Add that to the toxic cocktail that may be on the table Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. Think about what a cleansing effect a 70 percent result for one candidate would have. I had not seen a positive figure in that range for ages, until last week when President Obama’s approval rating for his handling of Hurricane Sandy was reported in the media. It think the number was about 68 percent in one poll. What a relief to see some agreement. The old quart bottle of Half-n-Half got smashed on the sidewalk.

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November 3rd, 2012

More on ‘Working People’ from President Obama

by PaulM

I picked this up from MoveOn.org

 

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November 1st, 2012

‘Bam!’

by PaulM

This is what Americans want to see, the leaders working together for the common good. As Patty Coffey likes to say, “Bam!”

CategoryCulture, Current Events, Election 2012, History, Politics | Comment3 Comments »

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October 28th, 2012

Turmoil

by PaulM

The web gives us disturbance, uproar, commotion, and confusion for synonyms of “turmoil”—words that fit both the weather forecast and political forecast. A storm is not really an outside force since we are in nature, but there’s a sense that something is coming to get us, to make trouble on the East Coast. Nobody knows how damaging the winds and water will be. On the election front the situation is confusing because of the conflicting or unhelpful public opinion polls. Romney ahead. The President ahead. Romney gaining in the last days because of what? There’s a disturbing AP poll about racial attitudes in America. Anyone who thought it was going to be smooth sailing to re-elect an African-American president, the first one, was dreaming. The ad wars are in full assault mode. At this stage the charges are getting harsher and meaner, and there is not much time to respond to wild accusations or plain old lies. The candidates rush from state to state. There’s a new poll showing the President and Gov Romney tied in Ohio, which would be a huge shift if the data holds up. Gov. Patrick recommends that Massachusetts schools close tomorrow because of the mega-storm roaring toward us. Elizabeth Warren has put herself in a position to win next Tuesday. Wouldn’t it be bittersweet if President Obama lost and a Sen.-elect Warren started hiring staff for Washington? How much of a good thing would it be to have a President Romney traveling around calling Massachusetts “my state?” Would the Romney compound in La Jolla, Calif., be the western White House? How will the national Republicans react if President Obama wins narrowly and keeps his team intact?

I’m for the President, and I don’t consider myself naive, but it has been puzzling to me as I try to understand the visceral opposition to Barack Obama around the country. In my view he stands for what is right and good and has made important progress on some enormous problems, from the economy to foreign affairs. I’m not going to recite the laundry list here. A year ago, I was telling friends that I could imagine a scenario in which 51 percent of the voters decided that they wanted a businessman in the White House to kick the national economy in the butt and get more results. I don’t agree with Gov Romney’s approach, but I won’t be surprised if the majority of people vote for change in order to try something, anything, new. I do think it will be a shame that the national Republicans would have won by sitting on their hands and not helping the President—basically, trying to run out the clock until next week. After the Republican primaries, I didn’t think the election would be this close, although, as I mentioned above, I never thought it would be easy to re-elect the first Black president. How bad was that comment by Romney campaign spokesperson former N.H. Gov Sununu, downplaying the value of Gen Colin Powell’s endorsement of the President? Is Sununu for Romney because they share a racial group? I think there are voters who were shocked that Sen Obama defeated Sen McCain four years ago. Those folks have been getting ready to vote against Obama for four years, especially if they didn’t vote or get politically involved in 2008. I’m eager to see the voter turn-out numbers next Tuesday. The early voting has been heavy, I’ve heard and read—and that early voting has favored the President, according to a news report last week. We’re about to get pounded by rain and wind for the next two days. If the storm called Sandy was a soundtrack, its impending chaos would be in line with the political movie we find ourselves in at the moment.

Driving back home from Vermont late yesterday, my family and I saw President Obama’s motorcade heading north on the highway near Nashua. The overpasses were shut down and guarded by police cars, a long section of Route 3 North was shut off, and a phalanx of green State Trooper cruisers escorted the President’s limousine, staying close, front, back, and sides. We were excited to get a glimpse of an historic figure as the vehicles sped by on the other side of the grassy median. We couldn’t see him, but we knew he was in the car. That was good enough for us.

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October 22nd, 2012

Politics

by PaulM

The death of George McGovern is something of a milestone for me. I cast my first presidential vote for him in November 1972. The voting age had been lowered to 18 that year in deference to the 18-year-olds who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam. Sen. McGovern opposed the continuation of the Vietnam War, which was the main reason I supported him. I agreed with most of the policies he advocated for on the domestic side, and in general I believed he was an honorable and decent man. Watching TV yesterday, I caught the last part of the movie “Primary Colors,” about the Clintons in 1992. There’s a scene in the kitchen with Libby (Kathy Bates) turning over the opposition research about Gov. Fred Picker (Larry Hagman) to Gov. Jack Stanton (John Travolta) and his wife Susan (Emma Thompson). Libby is distressed when Susan and Jack say they have to use the dirt that she dug up on Picker. Libby says she won’t allow it because “we don’t do that,” or words to that effect, and she reminds Jack that he told her it was going to be different with them—that they would win because their “ideas are better.” In the movie, that remembered conversation happens in 1972, when the characters were working in the McGovern presidential campaign.  It’s dizzying to think of all the twists and turns of idealism and cynicism and hypocrisy in that one short scene. Sir Walter Scott wrote, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” Recall that Picker, in the movie, replaced Sen. Lawrence Harris (the Paul Tsongas character) who has withdrawn from the race due to illness. Stanton had been saying Harris was going to cut Medicare payments for the elderly. Clinton did attack Tsongas with ads in Florida claiming Tsongas would cut the budget in ways that would hurt senior citizens.

Another convergence with the news of Sen. McGovern’s death was when my fellow blogger Marie posted about the locally famous bumper sticker: “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts,” which began to be seen after the Watergate scandal blew up and Richard Nixon became the first president to resign from office. Skip ahead to the Clinton (Jack Stanton) presidency and the impeachment and eventual acquittal of Bill Clinton, which some observers said was partly a pay-back for the impeachment of President Nixon in 1974, leading to his resignation. And Sec. of State Hilary Clinton (Susan Stanton) had been a staff member on one of the committees investigating Nixon. What a tangled web, for sure.

The summer of 1972 was an intense political period in Lowell. Marie Sweeney was working for Helen Droney in the Democratic primary campaign for Congress; I was volunteering for a newcomer, the anti-Vietnam War candidate John F. Kerry. It seemed like every political-body and his brother or sister in Lowell and Lawrence was either running in that race or working for a candidate. That summer I had a job in the shipping-and-receiving department of Cherry & Webb’s women’s clothing store on Merrimack Street (corner of John and Merrimack). The store was full of Paul Sheehy supporters, so I got the evil eye from some employees as I made my rounds delivering coats and dresses. Skip ahead to the present, and long-time US Sen. John Kerry, unsuccessful Democratic nominee for the presidency in 2004, has been playing Gov Mitt Romney in debate preparation with President Obama.

On Oct. 2, 2007, an overflow crowd waited at Lowell Memorial Auditorium for Bill Clinton to arrive by car after his private plane had mechanical problems. The former President was due to speak on behalf of Niki Tsongas, who was running to be U.S. Representative from the Fifth Congressional District after Congressman Martin T. Meehan left office to assume the Chancellorship of UMass Lowell. An an ex-president, Clinton became one of the most popular political figures in America. Here’s the YouTube clip of the event.

The wheel turns and turns, and sometimes we are on it.

 

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October 17th, 2012

Hip vs. Square

by PaulM

I’m sure that I’m not the first one to make note of this, but one aspect of this election is fundamentally about style: hip versus square. I don’t think Gov. Romney would quarrel with this characterization. He is comfortable in his own skin. As the weeks wear on, however, and as we see more of the two men in the same frame at debates, the difference between the two candidates is striking. Sometimes it seems as if President Obama is running against his father. Gov. Romney is a ’60s person who wasn’t, and President Obama is so post-’60s that he more or less defies labels. Romney was 20 years old during the Summer of Love in 1967. The President was six. And while GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan says Rage Against the Machine is his favorite band (Tom Morello can’t figure that out), the national Republicans in general come across as preferring an orderly Mitch Miller sing-along where everyone knows his or her part.  I know New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie loves Springsteen, who, apparently, doesn’t love him back. Gov. Romney lists as his likes the Beach Boys, The Killers, Garth Brooks, and Aerosmith, not what I expected to find on the ‘net. The Governor enjoys water sports.

The Obamas rub elbows with Beyonce and Jay-Z, a scene with a lot of improvisation.  We also know the President likes Bruce, Stevie Wonder, Charlie Parker, Sheryl Crow, and Dylan. He’s a basketball and poker guy. As parents they are pretty much no-nonsense in raising their children, but they make being responsible seem “cool”—like doing homework, planting a garden of healthy vegetables, and exercising.

So, despite all the crucial policy differences between the President and the challenger, there is the important “je ne sais quoi” of style that separates the two camps. I’m thinking about silent-majority-type Archie Bunker and his liberal, anti-war son-in-law Mike Stivic of “All in the Family”—but Mitt Romney is so much smoother and more confident than Archie. He would be the boss of Archie’s boss. And yet the cultural chasm between those two sit-com characters was as big as the one between the Romneys and the Obamas. The differences show up in attitudes about women’s rights, immigration, same-sex marriage, even our sense of community. Will America vote “hip” or “square” in November?

I like John Kerry, but for all his intellect and sophistication, I think he was seen as less hip than George W. Bush, who had a swagger and a grin. Reagan was so square he was hip in his own way, being a Hollywood guy. He’d cock his head and win over the audience. Jimmy Carter was hipper than Gerry Ford, being such a wild card. That was when “born again” was a Democratic thing. Bill Clinton was more hip than Paul Tsongas in 1992, and cooler with his shades and sax than President George H. W. Bush, the war hero, who is now a cool ex-President who sky-dives. Mike Dukakis? Not cool. But competent. Nixon vs. Humphrey and McGovern? Not going to go there.

Web illustration courtesy of utopianrealms.org

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October 5th, 2012

It’s About Us, Not Obama

by PaulM

It’s been a little painful to read and hear all the complaints about how poorly President Obama presented his case in the first debate in Denver. I have no idea why he was “flat” or “didn’t show up,” as some commentators have described it, but it made me think about his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Party Convention in Charlotte, N.C. He did not hit that speech out of the park either. He was a little flat there, too, and used a theme that we had heard before. “It’s not about me, it’s about you, it always has been,” or words to that effect. A lot of his supporters hoped he would mop the rhetorical floor with Gov. Romney the other night, but he did not. There are more debates to come, but the larger question is whose responsibility is it to make the case day to day and to make it in a bigger way when an election is coming. If you stand with the President, he didn’t let you off the hook Wednesday night. The situation became more urgent. The campaign is not over. The national Republicans are regrouping and spiritually reinforced by Gov. Romney’s energetic presentation of his views. His performance doesn’t make the views any more acceptable to those who see American life differently, however, he rallied his backers for another political assault. Give him credit for that, and for daring to “shake the Etch A Sketch,” as one of his campaign advisers said. President Obama has been making his case for four years. On balance, he has been effective, as I see it. Democracy is not an individual sport. He likes basketball. It’s a team sport. He had a bad night. Had a cold hand. When that happens somebody else has to take some shots. He’ll be back.

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September 27th, 2012

What It Is

by PaulM

It’s strange to read some of the commentary about the presidential election as it looks at the end of September. To read some of the analysts, especially on the anti-government side of the spectrum, you would think that Gov Romney’s only problem is in the tactics. If only he had performed better as a candidate to this point, or kept talking about unemployment rates, somehow his actions would have masked the core values and plans of the national Republican party. It’s as if fooling a lot of the people long enough and well enough to get them to vote against their interests is the real goal. I think what we are seeing is that the majority, not a huge majority, but enough in our winner-take-all system—the majority does not want what the national GOP is selling. They see the product. They see the belief system. They see the methods. And they are saying, No.

This could change in six weeks, of course, but I don’t think it is simply a matter of Gov Romney being off his game for the past five months that has brought us to this snapshot moment captured by the various opinion polls. The torturous GOP primary process exposed the real deal offered by the Right. It’s harsh, small, and anti-factual. Legions of Romney supporters believe the President is a Muslim and that U.S. soldiers found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is difficult to have a productive conversation on those terms. I hesitate to use the word “conservative” because the positions bundled in Romney-Ryan are more extremely anti-government than those in the traditional sense of “conservative.” David Brooks of the NYTimes yesterday had a useful essay on this point. He is a lost soul among the national Republican party and Tea Party-ing advance column. The media will try desperately to re-balance the contest between the President and Gov Romney by the middle of October because they don’t want people switching to re-runs of “Friends.” Right now, though, it looks better for the President.

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