More Digging
Path to the driveway, path to the street, so I can go to work. It’s a regular New England nor’easter out thre, though a little lamer than forecast as yet. The snow isn’t exactly driving sideways. The kids will take care of the paths in the back so the bulldog can go do his business. He’s an English bulldog, northern variant. A New English bulldog. Beefer, legs a little longer. Doesn’t mind the cold, likes plowing through the snow. He’s still a bulldog, though, and once it gets over a foot, 18 inches, he’s starting to get in over his head. OK, have to work. Meanwhile, I dug through a couple of endorsements, so you don’t have to:
Des Moines Register endorses Hillary, praises experience, leaves some out:
From working for children?s rights as a young lawyer, to meeting with leaders around the world as first lady, to emerging as an effective legislator in her service as a senator, every stage of her life has prepared her for the presidency.
Question mark not mine. I would have put in more. Big question mark … why no mention of her experience as the wife of a pathological liar/serial philanderer? Not exactly a stage of her life, more her life’s rutted road. Surely that’s got to count for something.
Unfortunately, for many Americans, perceptions of Clinton, now 60, remain stuck in a 1990s time warp.
Well, bringing Bill out of the crypt didn’t exactly take anyone back to the future.
She?s regarded as the one who fumbled health-care reform as a key policy adviser to her husband, President Bill Clinton, or as a driving force in the bitter standoff between the ?Clinton machine? and the ?vast right-wing conspiracy.?
I think they may hit the right question mark balance in that graph. They’re a little more subtle in this one:
Determination to succeed and learning from her mistakes have been hallmarks of Clinton?s life.
If the Register hovers between unintentional irony and denial, the Globe’s Obama endorsement is a straight moonshot:
THE FIRST American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. The most sobering challenges that face this country - terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics - are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities.
The Globe and I differ on 43’s intricate age reality appreciation, among other things. Re the Globe’s desired 44, I’d suggest the sitdown-chats-with-dictators idea indicates he may be lacking a good peril instinct. Anyway, here’s where he got it, such as it is:
Many have remarked on Obama’s extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18; that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia; that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago; that, at 46, he would be the first post-baby-boom president.
At 46, I believe he is still a baby boomer. Bad math, Globe. But if living in Indonesia for a couple of years as a kid qualifies you to run this nation’s foreign policy, I should be secretary of state. Maybe secretary of war. Great title. They should bring that back. Gates seems to be the one delivering a lot of the news, good and bad, to foreign potentates these days.
Obama’s critics, and even many who want to support him, worry about his relative lack of experience. It is true that other Democratic contenders have more conventional resumes and have spent more time in Washington. But that exposure has tended to give them a sense of government’s constraints. Obama is more animated by its possibilities.
I’m guessing that’s because, having spent most of his time as a junior senator in Washington elsewhere, running for president, he hasn’t encountered any of its restraints yet. It does give Obie a certain fresh-faced, earnest, student council appeal.
Globe also endorses McCain: GOP is deranged, and McCain shares many of its insane views. But they had to pick someone, and for all his ideological failings and misconceptions, at least he shares some of theirs.
The Register also endorses McCain, with enthusiasm however, without any Globian nose-holding. Notes that McCain was once an American warrior of the air, righteously slaying our communist foe until he was captured and tortured by them for eight years, key bio points the Globe missed. (Globe misses key facts, and can’t do math? Say it ain’t so!)
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:46 am on Sunday, December 16, 2007
7 Responses to “More Digging”
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December 16th, 2007 at 10:19 am
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Dig!
OH…Watch out for the back, and the heart seziures of course.
P.S. Personally, I think you should be President. Get someone with a high degree of toughness and common sense for SoS. You see, that leaves ME as SoD…(he he he)
December 16th, 2007 at 10:24 am
The advertisement you have for the Greystone Lodge, is but a mere mile and a half from my part of Laurel Mountain.
BTW. As I type, ’tis snowing here in Gatlinburg.
December 16th, 2007 at 10:33 am
The Des Moines Register and Boston Globe issue their caucus/primary endorsements
Jules Crittenden has a rundown of the endorsements. In short, the Register endorsed Hillary and McCain, and the Globe endorsed Obama and McCain.
Probably the biggest surprise, as Captain Ed correctly points out, was the Register’s endorsement of…
December 16th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Snowing in southwest Ohio too. Ahem, we, sensibly, use a snowblower. But then we are nudging elderly.
Frankly, I wish all these presidential contenders and their groupies would just STFU until, say, August or so. I’m tired of them. Let them put their ideas and planks etc. in writing, so I can peruse them at leisure, and then I’ll listen to the sound bytes later. Isn’t that a reasonable wish?
December 16th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
More question marks!
The Register’s McCain endorsement was much better. He’s my man, on national security primarily:
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/des-moines-register-backs-john-mccain.html
December 16th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities.
Oh brother, where do they get this verbiage ?
Actually, what America needs is someone who will speak softly and carry a big (st)ick.
And what’s the agenda behind the Des Moines Register “endorsements” ? The paper may be left leaning (partisan) given the difference between the handling of the Republican and Democrat debates there last week.
But I haven’t got the time to find out.
(what Rebecca said)
December 17th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I wonder how much influence these endorsements have.
And yeah, what Rebecca said.