Monday, May 05, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Michelle Obama Suggesting You're Angry Is Like Michael Jackson Calling You Weird

The Daily Telegraph takes a comment from Michelle Obama as describing her husband's lurking-just-below-the-surface anger: her husband was thinking "I can't let my ego, my anger, my frustration get in the way of the ultimate goal," she said. "Barack has been characterised as many things that have nothing to do with who he is."

Brian Faughnan is kind enough to remember a thought I had, early in my reading of Dreams From My Father, inspired by this passage:

I sat down and told him a little bit about myself.

"Hmmph." He nodded, taking notes on a dog-eared legal pad. "You must be angry about something."

"What do you mean by that?"

He shrugged. "I don't know what exactly. But something. Don't get me wrong - anger's a requirement for the job. The only reason anybody decides to become an organizer. Well-adjusted people find more relaxing work."

On a note related to anger, observe that Obama's mantra, "real change", is inherently dismissive of compromise, half-measures, and almost all that has come before. Change happens all the time, whether we like it or not. Washington may have a lot wrong with it, but it isn't that it has failed to change over the past sixteen years. Everything that Washington has passed in recent decades — welfare reform, NAFTA, tax hikes, tax cuts, the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, adding prescription drugs to Medicare, Katrina aid, 9/11 reconstruction aid, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sarbanes-Oxley, confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, overhauling the intelligence community and creating the DNI, CAFTA, campaign finance reform — none of them constitute "real change," apparently.

05/05 10:44 AMShare