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[from neighbor]Rob,
Happy New Year. I'm sure you watched the Iowa outcome last night. Obama's victory was encouraging, his speech was fantastic. Huckabee's victory was not surprising, at least in my opinion. He showed an engaging honesty in his TV interviews last night that is going to resonate well with a significant segment of conservative voters. But Super Tuesday will tell the tale more than last night's results. What insights did you pick up from these events?
[my reply]
I don't know about insights, but I have opinions!
I'll start by quoting the beginning of Obama's speech. This is verbatim:
"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you Iowa!"
If Obama becomes president in 2009, or ever, that speech will go down as one of the great ones in history, on a par with JFK's "Ask not", and MLK's "I have a dream".
George Bush has this fantasy that 100 years from now, people will look back at the Bush presidency, applaud his vision, and thank him for planting the seeds of Democracy in the Mid-East.
I think 100 years from now, History will view George Bush as among the most inept, disastrous presidents ever. And, I think they will be playing snippets of MLK's "I have a dream" followed by Obama in Iowa saying "they said our sights were set too high", and in so doing, will be marking the beginning of the civil rights movement (unfairly slighting Rosa Parks), and the beginning of the full realization of that very dream. Obama's speech was about how big, historically, this event in Iowa was, and I think he has it exactly right (unless he doesn't get elected, but I think he will!).
There are many great candidates that never became president, or in some cases, even the nominee. For example: John Kerry, Al Gore, Paul Tsongas, Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole and, the most qualified candidate in modern History, maybe ever, the re-election attempt by George HW Bush. Bush Senior got beat by Clinton, who was young and energetic and inspired people. The reason all these others didn't get elected wasn't so much about policy or resume, but a lack of dynamism and energy and ability to inspire.
Here's what I believe, firmly, despite all this talk about a black person not being electable:
John McCain, the only one of the viable Republican candidates that doesn't thoroughly scare the shit out of me, can't possibly win against Obama. One blogger today put it thusly: "He [McCain] makes Bob Dole look positively sunny." The elderly and dour McCain, perfectly okay with large troop levels in Iraq for 50 to 1 million years, has no chance against Obama's positive and magnetic energy.
Fred Thompson, the most sought after actor for "Depends" commercials, who has no chance at the nomination, is an even less worthy Barack opponent.
Rudy Giuliani, on his 3rd wife, patriarch of a massively dysfunctional family, a social liberal (by Republican base standards), has no shot against Obama, who has broad appeal, including, perhaps especially, with moderates and independents.
Mitt Romney - the quintessential plastic politician, who conceptualizes, engineers, manufactures, logo brands, blister packs, advertises, markets, and distributes for mass consumption a product (his candidacy) that conventional thinking indicates will sell - has no chance. He can't inspire the conservative Christian base, other than a small subset of mormons, and he can't inspire moderates and independents while he panders to that unimpressed base.
Mike Huckabee, the Southern Baptists dream candidate freaks out just about everyone else, and, although he can probably do better than any of the others, appeals to a much smaller slice of the American pie than Barack Obama.
O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA!
