From the National Journal tonight –
Ron Fournier The Speech Obama Could Not Give
Bill Clinton framed the election in ways that Barack Obama simply cannot –negative and nostalgic and so overtly defensive that his was a dirty job. One better left to a master politician who will never face voters again.
In a folksy yet brutally partisan address that captivated his fellow Democrats, Clinton branded the GOP as extremist and obstructionist and hateful. He cast the 1990s as good times worth repeating under a Democratic president. And he took the central question of Mitt Romney’s campaign –“Are you better off than you were four years ago” –and turned it on its head.
Negativity,nostalgia and negating Romney’s campaign meme –this is the one-two-three punch that,because of personal and political limitations,Obama couldn’t deliver on his own.
With a classically Clinton address –on message and a bit too long –the former president cleared a path for Obama to be forward-looking and aspirational in the convention-closing address Thursday night,and he defined the race better than Obama is capable of.
Damn. This guy watched with a jaundiced eye. That was not the speech I experienced, no where near the negatory meter the Repubs are capable of. In fact, Bubba was inspiring and most of all, truthful. This writer is really showing his bias and, like the Fox commentators, really stretched to find fault.
Obama supporters need to know what they and the President are up against. I had the same response to Britt Hume’s description of Clinton’s speech. But as Clinton said, “there’s Republican fantasy and reality.” Swing state voters will ultimately choose reality.
Not even on my best day will I be able to abuse the First Admendment as well as Number 42, but here I go trying again.
WHY DREAMS OF A REPUBLIC HAD TO SETTLE FOR DEMOCRACY
Dale Benjamin Drakeford
9-7-12
When leaders limb in and trip over their feet and words, earn names like “Dollar Bill” Clinton, Shelton “Sneaky” Silver, Charles “The Rascal” Rangel and tarnish further the last hope for public servants to serve as opposed to cower behind the superior inaptitude of their colleagues, we retreat to citizens mentally ill in thoughts of inferiority to those elected to run dummy non-profits, erect monuments to their egos and flaunt their good time on the taxpayer dime.
The hope of each citizen being sovereign and capable of accountable social action is assigned a wishing well in favor of representatives void of clue of whom they represent. More likely, void of interest, in favor of special interests, to which the masses huddle in disconnect. We know why hopes hobble and dreams die, because people fail to think themselves deserving. People relinquish their natural right to lead themselves, thinking someone with the same lack of squabbles can do it better, feeling inadequate before a microphone into which pretty words and ideas are expected and acting as spectators because watching (not doing) is suddenly a favorite sport of the species.
Democrats limped into North Carolina with a long line of scandal choking the aspiring republic, but any mention of Haiti relief being mishandled, power in high places being misdirected (let us say to the pleasure palaces of NY, for example) or fat cat retreats on the surviving beaches of the poor Haiti (charity favored, but abandoned) Dominican Republic while (let us say, Harlem re-birthed) was thumbed south. We lay no fault here on the First Lady, she glowed in making the sovereign points on her mind, nor on a twin (metaphorically ourselves) or second son doing a precious good deed basking in the glory of a loved one, but of the elected choosing not the high road of issue-starved republic because deceased democracy was too familiar, we have only distain. A convention of the comfortable and convenient is too easily convertible to a convention of the corruptible and corrupted.
Democrats could have walked in strong with the honorable service examples of their own Dennis Kucinich or perhaps robust with a counter surprise guest of (lute-warm Republican) libertarian Ron Paul. What a storm of courage either would have brought. Both of these critical sovereign thinkers have been banished to side shows where they break their backs to get attention. Potent nerve would have posted them straight up, but potent nerve is not the stuff of capitalistic calculating deceased and deviant democracy. It prefers the limp lame crawl but sure to a win, over the less definite walk straight and true to integrity. What a moment it could have been for sovereignty if Number 43 had been invited to recall his finest moment (not how he misapplied 9/11 but how he showed executive leadership) in addressing the fools that would attack Islam and calling for a united America trusting in diversity. That would have surely dispelled any notions of an empty chair unable to fulfill the promise of change.
At this stage in national development there should have been more of the intolerance of the intolerable, less of the asking someone else to resign, when resignations should start with oneself, more of the “you did this,” and a lot less of the “I am and I support this ad.” I am therefore I exist is not the right to reign as my representative, but the IQ of the donkeys animate as if it is. There should have been more, “I am and I do not support an ex-navy seal writing a book about secret missions, because such employment voluntarily gives up sovereignty to disclose any such matters when the employee takes on the title and the service.” There should have been more of “I am and I am disturbed by the gaming, racing, and casino racketeering for education that is birthing throughout America as government backed democracy promising social bankruptcy.” There should have been more of Biden’s book fact bite, but less of actors blurring still further the lines between celebrity and noteworthiness. There should have been less of the perceptional mental-illness of political convention as only marginally different from Entertainment Tonight and more of the might of what has been accomplished the last four years against a national neurosis of immediate satisfaction.
Former State Assembly Person Michael Benjamin blogs it right when he rages that “Mental-illness” is the culprit behind shootings and killings around the country, but not one word was spoken on the collective troubles of our collective mind in charged up Charlotte, psyched to the prospect of winning, but losing an action step opportunity in the battle for social and mental wellness. It is a national mind not just full of harming but salivating over risky gunning, entertainment, gambling and pornography. Not one word was said on any of these conditions either. It would not have been popular. It would not have guaranteed victory. It would have been a non-entertaining risk of alienating and fracturing the clubbers. Donkeys hide behind the separation of what is private versus public even when what is private is a public danger and a growing national epidemic. Not one democrat had the nerve to say, “The proof of national public illness is right here in this chamber with public officials unable to keep their deficient moral IQ out of the national spotlight.” The party of Lopez, Espada, Seabrook, Spitzer and Patterson deserves no allegiance. It smacks of easy sleaze, greed and cover-ups in a deceased democracy. It smacks of ignoring that power corrupts so that power can be retained, while it should be vigilant of what it takes to keep power contained. This is not about the indictment of any particular person, this is about indictment of a system that fails to indict. This is about indictment of a mind-set that is condoned in passivity, by its very nature, contrary to public service: The idea that the mindset of the public servant must be healthier than that of the mass collective. To date, it is not and to date the public is not requiring it to be. The donkey “He-Haws” in the presence of an accepting public in view full of other donkeys.
Dreams of a republic had to settle for democracy because the former requires that each bi-partisan one stand up, speak up, call out, take action, sacrifice and compromise only in the finer details, not the greater good of human enterprise, while the latter stands down, not for the greater good, but for the perceived greater partisan few.
When I vote for Barack Hussein Obama and Joe P. Biden, Jr. in November, I will be voting for leaders that I will lead to stand up and call out, not a party or club lacking sorely in private or public parts and credentials. I will be voting for a strong republic based on my individual fortitude and backbone and the “change…hope…and I can attitude” that they continue to work on as promised four years ago. I will not be voting for a convention of like-minds festering in the flow of self-preservation. I will be voting for a republic still hanging on by the strength of this (Gawker, Wiki-links) and other transparent public debates. I will be voting for people I believe smarter than me, more capable than me, more willing than me, more moral, ethical and determined than me, and so I request that someone with a higher IQ than a donkey recognize that my contribution to Obama-Biden had nothing to do with donkey clubbing and they can stop sending requests for more money.
When the donkeys circle the wagons of deviant democracy, advocates for the republic must garner their individual will to hold them to account. How can Jimmy Carter, the noble former president of idealistic service merit, not be on the radar when the middle-east peace with a ruinous democratic Egypt and capital democratic Jerusalem is omitted? Weather can change a venue, but it is unethical IQ that omits greater values to be butchered like a kicker stuck in the path of a left tackle or a storm gathering second wind. How does deviant democracy get there, if not for the aid of deviant ideology? Deviant democracy outsources individual agendas to a selected surrogate, but the rigorous republic requires individual vigor that can never be subjugated, dismissed, assigned or allocated to someone’s back room or closet of ulterior motives.
I will vote for Obama because he had the guts in public to recognize that Russia is not an enemy and England an ally worthy of respect. I will vote for Obama because he recognized that the troubles today go back decades of donkey thinking and elephant memory loss. I will vote for Obama because the sovereign power of the individual still requires the might of energy looking forward to better decisions and choices for all jackasses and dinosaurs alike. We must settle for deviant democracy for now, but with the caveat, that the rigorous and responsible republic is still on the radar because of the possibilities and collective personae we embrace come November.
When next you pledge allegiance to the republic recall it is you at issue to protect liberty; lead the debate on justice for all things animal, vegetable and mineral. Obama emphasized YOU, not him, not the donkey, but the temperament and determination “Not to defer” the “nation building” envisioned by an argumentative founding paternal club of a few change agents. “To tell the truth…” the oligarchy of 1776 understood its frail self, and had few that envisioned a kingship or aristocracy. The majority of powerful men wanted a “government of the people,” that would morph painstakingly and naturally to include others unlike themselves into a republic of sovereign individuals equally argumentative as they sometime in the future. That future must be caught by us. It is this sovereign’s opinion that “four more years” of Obama-Biden will move US a little closer to catching up to that future. It will move still closer, if you participated in holding them to account. A republic of rigor awaits YOU.