Bringing Out Obama’s Inner Harry Truman

I don’t know any more about General Stanley McChrystal's comments than what this article describes.

But I do remember, from being in the Navy a long time ago, that military personnel are prohibited from making public statements for or against an ongoing war; or anything else that’s government-related. It’s one of the longstanding ironies of being in the military: The First Amendment doesn’t apply to you; you’re just risking your life so everybody else can have it.

Oh, one other little thing: disrespecting your superior is a huge No-No. And like it or not, Commander-in-Chief Obama is senior to General McChrystal.

And I don’t remember reading any exceptions to the above rules. Nowhere in the UCMJ does it say “These rules no longer apply after you’ve been a member of the service for X years” or “After you’ve reached a certain rank, you can go ahead and disregard all this drivel.”

I hate to make political hay out of a sensitive international situation, especially when I don’t even know all of the details. But this is just Tooo Good.

THIS is President Obama’s chance to dig out from under that Michael Dukakis straitjacket — all intellect, no passion or emotion; all substance and no Elvis — and start acting more like Harry Truman.

Something about General Douglas MacArthur comes to mind…

Obama also came out swinging against the health insurance oligarchs and their skanky congressional prostitutes.

You go guy.

Barack Obama — The Twerp Factor

That's the title of this article. Shallow pointless questions like this shouldn't matter, but unfortunately, in America they do.

Here's a link to the P.J. O'Rourke article that they're referring to.

I used to love P.J. O’Rourke’s articles in Rolling Stone; and before that he wrote for Lampoon Magazine. He’s entertaining even if he’s a rightwinger.

Like it or not, shit like this is important to American voters; whether it’s conscious or subliminal. Americans want their president to be tall, well built, firm and decisive — Dirty Harry in a suit. It’s OK to be smart, as long as you don’t talk like some sort of intellectual elitist who thinks too much.

The 2004 presidential election might be the only time in our history where the shorter candidate won. The 1988 election was a choice between two ectomorphs. We elected the taller ectomorph.

Somebody once wrote that when Michael Dukakis was in high school, he probably raised his hand to remind the teacher that she forgot to give a homework assignment over Christmas vacation.

O’Rourke obviously isn’t trying to give helpful hints to Obama; but everyone can learn from negative feedback. After allowing the health care debate to rage on and on and on for a year — and here’s hoping his upcoming speeches will be more effective — maybe Obama could learn from O’Rourke’s description:

“The secret to the Obama annoyance is snotty lecturing. His tone of voice sends us back to the worst place in college…At the lectern is a twerp of a grad student—the prototypical A student—insecure, overbearing, full of himself and contempt for his students.”

I’m not saying I agree with this, but this is how a lot of people perceive Obama. I don’t want him to pretend his IQ suddenly plummeted to room temperature and start talking like Jim DeMint or Sarah Palin. But I do wish he’d start being more direct, more firm, more “of the people” in his speeches.

He’s personable and very articulate, but he sounds too much like a college professor at a faculty meeting. And this does NOT resonate with the public. He’s nowhere near as bland as, say, Bill Bradley — whom Molly Ivins described as “all substance and no Elvis.” But he should come out swinging sometimes; put more oomph into his speaking style.

There’s a lot at stake in the next few months: Wall Street reform and other raging issues, the Congressional election campaigns coming up. We already have millions of Americans who think Obama is a Communist Muslim terrorist who was born in Kenya. We don’t need a few million more Americans thinking he’s a twerp.

Why Democrats Keep Losing the White House

This excellent article by Drew Westen doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said a million times. Everything he says has already been covered in countless psychology and political science classes. And yet these basic lessons just don’t seem to sink in.

In order to win an election, you MUST reach out and connect with the voters EMOTIONALLY. All Democratic candidates — write that sentence on the blackboard five hundred times.

Republican candidates and consultants know this basic fact inside out, backwards and forwards. Bill Clinton is the only Democrat of the past 45 years who knows it. Why do you think Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush got elected to the White House? Because of a 72-point plan for security and prosperity? Most voters liked them — or at least they liked the images that their campaign managers crafted for them.

In 2004, John Kerry gave a list of logical dispassionate reasons that his policies were better than George W. Bush’s. Then Karl Rove yelled out “Gay Marriage!!!” and guess who won the election. Michael Dukakis gave crystal clear explanations of his plans and ideas. George H.W. Bush yelled “Willie Horton!” and won the election. Four years later Bush himself got driven out of the White House by the more folksy and likeable Bill Clinton. And so on…

Molly Ivins had a column several years ago saying that all political candidates should have a little “Elvis.” She said Bill Bradley’s problem was that he was “all substance and no Elvis.”

As Drew Westen puts it: “Think Michael Dukakis. Think Al Gore. Think John Kerry. They all ran on laundry lists. They never told coherent stories about themselves or their opponents. I can't for the life of me remember the narratives any of them laid out about why we should vote for them instead of their opponent. But I remember clearly the stories their GOP rivals told…Armed with nothing but laundry lists, all three Democrats got taken to the cleaners. It didn't matter that the public agreed with them on most of the issues.”

And forget all that drivel about “taking the high road” and “not dignifying an attack by responding to it.” If the Rightwing Noise Machine launches a smear campaign, Fight Back Goddamnit! Westen says:

“Consider the case of George W. Bush, whose life story telegraphed everything voters needed to know to make an informed decision about him: He had dodged the Vietnam-era draft while avidly supporting the war; he had drunk his way through much of his adulthood, even while he had young children at home; he had shown extraordinary incompetence in the business world; his campaign had smeared Sen. John McCain with stories about mental instability and an allegedly illegitimate baby to get Bush through the South Carolina primary in 2000; and he had mocked a fellow born-again Christian whom he put to death as governor of Texas. It was quite a story. The problem was that the Democrats wouldn't tell it…When you hear a pollster or strategist say, ‘We've got 'em beat on the issues,’ you know you're on the dispassionate river, and you know you're going under…voters disagreed with Ronald Reagan on about 75 percent of the issues. But they liked him.”

Westen describes a hypothetical successful Democratic contender for 2008: “They drink from the wellsprings of partisan sentiments, which account for more than 80 percent of votes. They tell emotionally compelling stories about who they are and what they believe in. They don't say, ‘Karl Rove needs to testify under oath about the CIA leak case because we must have a transcript.’ Rather, when the president invokes executive privilege, they ask, with righteous indignation: ‘Mr. Bush, just what is it about ‘So help me God’ that you find so offensive?’”

So how does our current crop of White House contenders look? Is there anybody out there who reaches out and grabs you?