The Uncertainty Principle

There’s that old joke that gives you three candidate profiles: one is a drunk, one keeps a mistress, and one went to art school and served honorably in the military, etc. Please vote, and everyone picks the military hero and it turns out everyone picks Hitler, while rejecting FDR and Churchill, and everyone has a good chuckle and learns a good old-fashion political lesson.

Well, here’s another one. Guess the candidate. I’m talking about a rising star Illinois state senator, who prior to his legislative tenure worked as an attorney in the private sector. This rising young star is the hope of his struggling party, in a stressful national political climate. His only national experience is one term in the National Congress. Is this man ready for the Presidency?

If you guessed Barak Obama, you’re only half-correct. The year is actually 1859, and the nation is in the process of being torn apart by sectional strife. The incompetent Piece and Buchanan were elected because they were compromise candidates, who appeased both the Northern and Southern factions of their respective parties. Abraham Lincoln was a tall, lanky Illinois frontiersman came out of the backwoods of Illinois to national prominence, having only served in the Illinois State Legislature, and just one 2-year term in Congress.

Last week, the New York Times Columnists caught a case of Obama fever, with Rich, Dowd, Brooks and Herbert each yammering about an Obama candidacy. And this week, the Post's Charles Krauthammer also devoted his column to an Obama candidacy.Then the man of the hour himself announced on Meet the Press that he would seriously consider a run.

Obama is in a serious quandary. His book, just released, The Audacity of Hope has brought in generally favorable reviews, and he finds himself back in the limelight. He knows that being a hot-ticket item can’t possibly last through another Presidential election cycle, nor can his honeymoon with the press and bloggers continue until he acrews the necessary “more experience” that he needs for the office.

From what I’ve seen, and what I’ve read, Obama is a serious, articulate, and thoughtful individual and I would be honored to cast a vote for him in 2008. And today’s New Republic makes a a bizarre point about Obama’s smoking habit making him seem authentic rather than packaged, which is how I feel about the man, though not necessarily because of the smoking point. Yes, lack of experience will hurt him in 2008. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a poor candidate. Ultimately, his ability to captivate and move people will serve him better than hunkering down and serving in the Senate for six or more years. Ultimately, See: Civil War for more details.

Links:
The Audacity of Hope (Amazon.com Link)
Barak Obama on Meet the Press (YouTube Link)
The New Republic - Michael Currie Schaffer – Where There’s a Smoke
The New York Times – Frank Rich – Obama is Not a Miracle Exlir
The New York Times – Maureen Dowd – Obama’s Project Runway
The New York Times – Davids Brooks – Run, Barak, Run
The New York Times – Bob Herbert –The Obama Bandwagon

Posted by George Gordon at 10:24 PM | Permalink

I recently had a nasty exchange of words with a young gentleman, who shall remain nameless for the moment, on an internet message board. The problem centered around the 4th Amendment to the Constitution - he had made a blanket statement that it protected the "Right to Privacy" and I said that that was an error - it only protects against illegal searches and seizures. Further, I informed him that privacy is a nebulous concept that never once appears anywhere in the constitution and is implicitly based on a reading of several of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, including the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th, etc. I informed him that there exists vigourous debate in legal and academic circles on the subject of privacy rights, and that he should be more careful with his blanket statements.

His response was to ban me from the group, erase my comments so that he could publically have the last word on the matter, and send me taunting private messages (and then block me so I could not respond), calling me a " extreme literalist and neo-conservative nut case" to believe that the US constitution does not contain implicit privacy rights (which is not a view I actually even hold, I was simply pointing out that there was room for reasonable people to disagree on the subject).

The exchange unsettled me for a few hours, but I came to realize that extreme certainty in political discourse is never prudent, nor wise. To quote a Socratic phrase from memory: "True wisdom is knowing you know nothing." So much of politics has become a zero-sum game of winners and losers, and of parties and ideology. If one is to admit being incorrect, that is a symbol of weakness. Political leaders refuse to admit their mistakes, politicans follow the party line to the nose and talking heads saturate our airwaves. The blogosphere is too often rife with haughty arrogance, demeaning rhetoric and demagogic punditry. Compromise is at the heart of political life in any functioning republic or democracy, and with the death of mutual understanding and the ability to reach reasonable compromise comes the death of the democratic process.

This blog is an experiement. I will, of course, take a stand, often a strong one, and I will vigourously defend my ideas. However my opinions are malleable and my ideology is not fixed in stone. My positions will change over time, evolve and even reverse and contradict each other. Feel free to point out my contradictions, but understand this blog is also a personal learning experience, not simply a soapbox for my opinions.

I will run this blog as a fairly conventional short-form commentary blog, with links, comments, videos, opinions, etc. Longer form essays will be housed on a separate blog and will be cross-linked here as well. I invite you to contact me, email me, send me feedback or burn me in effigy, if you feel so inclined.

Posted by George Gordon at 4:24 AM | Permalink