DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: BT on June 06, 2008, 10:44:33 PM
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Is Obama an enlightened being?
Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 6, 2008
I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?
I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.
Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.
Ready? It goes likes this:
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?
No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.
Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.
Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.
Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.
Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.
Not this time.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL&type=printable
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Right album, wrong song - try "Won't Get Fooled Again".
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I love that article.
Does this guy wnt to build Obama shrines?
Mahatma Obama.
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Republicans would be well served not to underestimate Obama.
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Republicans would be well served not to underestimate Obama.
If we can hack into his teleprompter we can have him say anything.
Unfortunately after the hacker has him sing "Marezy Dotes" guys like this author will write a treatise on how profound it is.
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I think some of his recent gaffes are fatigue driven. Give him a week off and he'll be fine.
How do you explain McCains poor performance the other night? Can't be fatigue, he hasn't campaigned hard since March.
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I think some of his recent gaffes are fatigue driven. Give him a week off and he'll be fine.
How do you explain McCains poor performance the other night? Can't be fatigue, he hasn't campaigned hard since March.
Maybe you are right , but when do we see him speak impromptu?
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If memory serves he did ok when he was debating the other dem candidates.
Fact is i think he will do well in a town hall meeting. He has the likability factor that gave Bush the edge.
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Maybe you are right , but when do we see him speak impromptu?
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Pretty much every time Reagan spoke without the note cards they wrote for him, he put his foot in his mouth.
I have not noticed that Obama has much of a problem with this. What he does refrain from doing is attacking the opposition in the sort of partisan way that the Republicans always do.
To be a successful president, he faces the formidable task of foreseeing and preventing the dirty tricks that the GOP has used against Carter, Clinton, Gore and Kerry. Some sort of jiujitsu that would use their ow force against them would be most welcome.
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Maybe you are right , but when do we see him speak impromptu?
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Pretty much every time Reagan spoke without the note cards they wrote for him, he put his foot in his mouth.
"There you go again..."
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It will be an interesting campaign season, that's for sure.
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>>Republicans would be well served not to underestimate Obama.<<
It won't be a matter of underestimation, it will be a matter of over cautiousness because the man happens to be Black. McCain has already shown he's not willing to kick the guy when he's down, which is what any politician who's ever lost an election will tell is exactly what you should do.
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Wow. The Santa Clausification has begun already.
If this guy gets shot in office they will start a religion about him.
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Pooch, I don't think that's it (I hope not, anyway).
I think it is more that he's calling on people to not be afraid, the "Yes we can" thing. That is appealing to people's better nature. And that hasn't been appealed to in ages.
A lot of people who have had hard lives don't react well to this. They're suspicious, and have little hope...period. They're seeing Obama as someone who says he can do all this, but that's not what he's saying at all. He's calling on us to get it together and do great things.
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but that's not what he's saying at all. He's calling on us to get it together and do great things.
Kinda. He's telling people to take charge of their own lives, not wait for government to do it for them.
Small govt with a safety net.
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I think some of his recent gaffes are fatigue driven. Give him a week off and he'll be fine.
How do you explain McCains poor performance the other night? Can't be fatigue, he hasn't campaigned hard since March.
Maybe you are right , but when do we see him speak impromptu?
Do you dare?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/7/233541/1086/910/532016 (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/7/233541/1086/910/532016)
My understanding is that Barack writes alot of his own speeches. This is especially true of the one he gave back in April in response to the Reverend Wright nonsense.
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Maybe you are right , but when do we see him speak impromptu?
Do you dare?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/7/233541/1086/910/532016 (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/7/233541/1086/910/532016)
Ahhhh don't dare me so , elese I might dare you also to listen to McCain for a quarter hour.
He wasn't bad , he is glib and charming , in a face to face with McCain he is very likely to come off well.
I think he is wrong though to say that Republicans are against doing good things or that people who suffer are depending only on the government to help them.
I try to avoid letting my own vote be dependant on the glibness of a canadate , I don't want a "gotcha" or two to make my mind up for me , but I must realise and admit that this is important in a contest of hundreds of speeches and millions of listeners.
I do take him seriously as a canadate.
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http://www.redstatenetwork.com/stories/elections/2008/mccain_invites_obama_to_debates
McCain Invites Obama To Debates [Updated. Cruelly.]
If We Can Only Tear Obama Away From His Teleprompter
By California Yankee Posted in 2008 | debates | McCain ? Comments (58) / Email this page ? / Leave a comment ?
On a conference call with bloggers this afternoon, Senator McCain congratulated, Senator Obama and announced that he invited Obama to a series of weekly town hall meetings:
Dear Senator Obama:
In 1963, Senator Barry Goldwater and President John F. Kennedy agreed to make presidential campaign history by flying together from town to town and debating each other face-to-face on the same stage. In Goldwater's words, those debates "would have done the country a lot of good."
Read on there is more.
Unfortunately, with President Kennedy's untimely death, Americans lost the rare opportunity of witnessing candidates for the highest office in the land discuss civilly and extensively the great issues at stake in the election. What a welcome change it would be were presidential candidates in our time to treat each other and the people they seek to lead with respect and courtesy as they discussed the great issues of the day, without the empty sound bites and media-filtered exchanges that dominate our elections. It is in the spirit of President Kennedy's and Senator Goldwater's agreement, in the spirit of the politics of change, and to do our country good, that I invite you to join me in participating in town hall meetings across the country to discuss the most important issues facing Americans. I also suggest we fly together to the first town hall meeting as a symbolically important act embracing the politics of civility.
I propose these town hall meetings be as free from the regimented trappings, rules and spectacle of formal debates as possible, and that we pledge to the American people we will not allow the idea to die on the negotiation table as our campaigns work out the details. I suggest we agree to participate in at least ten town halls once a week with the first on June 11 or 12 in New York City at Federal Hall until the week before the Democratic Convention begins at locations to be determined by our campaigns. Federal Hall is particularly fitting as it was the place where George Washington took the oath of office as our first President and the birthplace of American government hosting the first Congress, Supreme Court and Executive Branch offices. These town halls should be attended by an audience of between two to four hundred selected by an independent polling agency, could be sixty to ninety minutes in length, have very limited moderation by an independent local moderator, take blind questions from the audience selected by the moderator and allow for equally proportional time for answers by each of us. All of these are suggestions that can be finalized by our campaigns. What is important is that we commit to participate in these history making meetings to join in the higher level of discourse that Americans clearly would prefer.
To show our good faith, we should both commit to the first town hall I have suggested. In the mean time, we can work out dates for future town hall meetings.
I look forward to your favorable reply and to the opportunity to work with you to give Americans a better opportunity to understand our differences, our agreements and the leadership we offer them.
Sincerely,
John McCain
During the conference call McCain said the town hall format is the best because it provides voters more participation and a greater voice in our democracy:
Unfortunately, the town hall debates aren't likely to happen. Obama wants changes to the format before accepting the invitation:
?As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place about the need to change the direction of this country,? said Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. ?We would recommend a format that is less structured and lengthier than the McCain campaign suggests, one that more closely resembles the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.?
That's consistent with my impression that Obama is usually heavily scripted and prefers to deliver long speeches from a teleprompter. Without that remote control from his handlers, Obama is prone to gaffes such as his infamous clingy remarks at that San Francisco fundraiser.
In the Lincoln-Douglas debate format preferred by Obamna, one candidate spoke for an hour, then the other candidate spoke for an hour and a half, and then the first candidate was allowed a half hour "rejoinder."
[UPDATE, Moe Lane] For our lurkers: what this means, of course, is that contra Plouffe's suggestion for a "less structured" format Barack Obama is instead aiming for a more structured one - one where he has sufficient time to do everything except think on the fly. So, my question to the Obama supporters out there: how does it feel to know that your candidate is afraid of matching his wits against that of a 71 year old?
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Being a good leader very rarely has to do with the ability to wing one-line responses to others. We only remember silly gotcha's like Reagan's "there you go again", "I PAID for this microphone Mr Breen!" and the quip about how Mondale was young and unexperienced. as part of a political campaign.
Reagan was noted for being the "Great Communicator" by his ability to read his lines--something he learned well as an actor.
The rest of his spoken legacy that turned out to be successful was written, almost certainly by someone else, far in advance of the old geezer uttering it.
But to judge a future leader by his abilities to ad lib like Seinfield surrounded by a tough and drunken audience is just dumb. This is how one gets them to laugh in the audience and buy the sponsor's catfood at home. Stadup comedy is unrelated to competent political leadership.
A good leader hears all sides, consults the best advisers he can find, and follows the best advice he can in the most effective way. Such talents are not in any way revealed by any sort of media event 'debates', 'town meetings' or such we have yet devised.
30 second spots and crapola like 527 swiftboard drek is even worse, as it is utterly counterproductive to the process of selecting a competent leader.
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Good leaders inspire confidence.
How much confidence do you have in a person who can not input, process and respond to data in real time.
Is being a quick study a requirement for the presidency?
Is it something you would look for in a candidate?
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No, I do not believe that an ability to come up with a simple and quick solution is a major priority for a president.
JFK had over a week to decide what to do in the Cuban missile crisis.
Pushing the button and starting a war with China over Quemoy or Matsu (look at a map) would be a really bad idea.
I expect a president to be able to understand a complicated situation in the same way I would expect a student to know when calculus was required to solve a problem. It would not be necessary for him to do the problem in his head.
I suppose McGuyver might have been a lot of fun as a president, but we know McCain was not McGuyver, or he would have not spent all that time locked up by the North Vietnamese. I saw Rambo free dozens of POWs in under 90 minutes.
Reagan was rarely quick on his feet, and he was greatly respected despite this. His campaigning skills were not required for his performance as president.
Being a quick study is not the same thing as being a great ad libber or a McGuyver.
What makes a good movie or good TV is not what we need for a political leader. This is a good thing, because in reality, there are no McGuyvers or Rambos or even Dr Houses.
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It's not as important to know the answer as it is to know where to find the answer.
When we are comparing Obama to McCain, Reagan does not fit into the equation.
Nor does McGuyver or any other video action figure.
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It's not as important to know the answer as it is to know where to find the answer.
I could not agree more. That is my point precisely.
In a presidential 'debate', however, it would not look good for some candidate to say that they knew where to find data on the capital of Kazakhstan, the world's largest deposits of Uranium, or the projected annual interest on the money the US owes China. This is why I don't think 'debates' as we normally do them are all that useful in predicting who will be successful as a president.
McGuyver and Rambo would win hands down if they existed, but, alas they don't.
A real debate (as are held between university debating clubs) would not be a great improvement, either.
I do not think a satisfactory vehicle for proving future presidential success exists.
As they say in every mutual fund prospectus, "Past performance is no guarantee of future success".
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The debates and campaign appearances are nothing more than vehicles to improve comfort levels with the voters.
Trustworthiness, beerbuddyness, who has the better dog.
Important stuff.
I doubt i could vote for a candidate who had a chihuahua or other type of ankle biting drop kick dog for a pet.
A lab or retriever owner would get my vote hands down.
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I doubt i could vote for a candidate who had a chihuahua or other type of ankle biting drop kick dog for a pet.
I don't think I care about what sort of pet a president owns. Perhaps if a candidate had a parrot on his shoulder all the time, that could make a difference.
I am opposed to anyone drop-kicking dogs, even yappy lapdogs.
Chihuahuas (Chihuahue?os) were originally used for food by Mexican Indians. This is why they bred some of them to be hairless. Not having to pluck one's diner is an advantage. Properly fattened, escuintles (the official Nahuatl name) were the perfect size for a dinner, not unlike the goose Scrooge gave the Cratchetts for Christmas dinner.
FDR had a Scottish Terrier named Fala. My parents were so impressed they got one, too. He lived to be 15 years old and required a weekly bath to avoid the entire house smelling like a Scottish terrier.
I imagine that stinky dog washing was less a problem for FDR than for me.
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A lab or retriever owner would get my vote hands down.
If that's all it took to get your vote, you must have loved Jimmy Carter, then.
'Over the years, Jimmy Carter has had occasion to fight rattlers, train bird dogs...'
http://www.jimmycarter.info/book_7.htm
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I voted for Carter in 76
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I voted for Carter in 76
Don't feel too bad. I voted for Bush in '00.
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I liked the article at the head of the thread.
"Comfort level" is a pretty superficial way to judge a candidate, even if it's something more than mere racial prejudice. Of course, some voters will make "comfort level" the primary reason for voting for the candidate, but even amongst those who are most influenced by it, I don't think they'll score one candidate 100 and the other zero in comfort level. And my theory is that it would take a very wide gap in comfort levels to swing a vote one way or the other.
But on the "aura" or "vibe" level, there is youth, energy, optimism and hope on the one side and age, tiredness, meanness and rearview-mirror driving on the other. McSame has got a huge uphill road to travel and I can't see him even making it halfway up.
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Don't feel too bad. I voted for Bush in '00.
I don't feel bad.
He was a decent governor of Georgia, figured he'd be able to do it at the fed level.
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But on the "aura" or "vibe" level,
Those attributes also make up part of the comfort level.
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Yeah, I thought Bush might be able to handle the presidency, too. A shame he went off the deep end after 9-11. Just a damned dirty shame.