There are too many unpleasant things floating around in my head from this weekend. I need to do a brain dump here to get several of them out of there. As you might imagine, they all relate to John McPOW.
I'll start by sharing with you this inspring image, which is apparently the winner of a poster contest on Magoo's website. I can't decide whether the irony is hilarious or just disturbing.
But it could be worse. Check after the flip for one that didn't win.
Meanwhile, something struck me about the Saddleback Forum that I don't think has been discussed here yet. People have been expressing wildly varying opinions about which voters each candidate lost and gained, and whether Obama is a hero for standing up to the RR, or a goat for letting them play him. I see it a little differently.
I think the significance of the forum was that it put into very stark relief the nature of the referendum that this election represents -- and it's not about left or right, religious or non-religious.
More on this, the losing poster, and an additional thought about the No-Cone controversy, below . . .
I. THE POSTER
Let's go ahead and get the poster out of the way first.
[In case you can't read it, it says "Peace Is Born of Wisdom."]
Is that man delusional and narcissistic or what?
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II. THE REFERENDUM
I've been reading, and responding to, a lot of wingnut reactions to the Saddleback forum. And I've realized that the typical lines we draw in seeking to classify voters are really not applicable this year.
It started when, from the early days of the campaign, Republicans were flocking to Obama in record numbers. So many of them that we had to have a new name for them: Obamicans.
A few more clues along the way: Obama's habit, often remarked on here with a sense of amazement and wonder, of speaking to voters as adults. His refusal to engage in the "ain't beanbag" variety of politics. The charges of elitism -- when clearly he has lived a less "elite" and priveleged lifestyle than either of his major opponents. The crushing primary defeats in Appalachia, among the very people who would benefit most from his election. The fact that people are cheering for drilling, even though they know it won't have any effect for a decade or more.
And then there was the forum Saturday evening. We've all seen Obama's speeches, and we've all seen McCain's speeches. But never before have we seen them talk about exactly the same topics, so close together in time.
At the end of Obama's hour Saturday, I was so proud of him. I thought he had nailed it: brilliant, heartfelt, thoughtful, honest answers. They can't hate him after they see that, I thought.
By the time McCain had been talkng for about 15 minutes, or 3 POW stories, whichever came first, I was queasy. I realized I was watching a disaster. Not because I had changed my opinion about the quality of Barack's answers, but because I realized he and McCain weren't competing in the same universe. And the hateful, ignorant, jeering comments I've read in WingerWorld for the past couple of days, about his stuttering and not being able to make up his mind about anything, have only confirmed this.
This is not a contest about issues. It is not even a contest about whether a very different Washington would serve us better than the one we have. It is a referendum on whether the American people WANT to be spoken to as adults, or whether they prefer to be entertained and inflamed by someone who will appeal to their basest fears and prejudices. It is about whether they will respond to someone who appeals to their better angels, or whether they would rather elect someone who will give voice to their pain and frustration, by talking of victory and defeating the "other," by removing the need for them to think and validating their preference for emoting.
The two answers below eloquently express the nature of the contest we are engaged in, for the mind and soul of our country. Read them. Digest them. Grok them. And then convince me I'm wrong. Please.
Q: Does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?
BO: Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil sometimes, sadly, on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who will viciously abuse their children. And I think it has to be confronted, confronted squarely. And then one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to as individuals be able to erase evil from the world; that is God's task. But we can be soldiers in that process. And we can confront it when we see it.
Now the one thing I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil. Because as you know, a lot of evil's been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.
RW: In the name of good.
BO: In the name of good, and I think one thing that's very important is having humility in recognizing that just because we think our intentions are good doesn't always mean that we're going to be doing good.
JSM: Defeat it.
Couple of points. One, if I'm the President of the United States, my friends,if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Ladin and bring him to justice. I will do that, I know how to do it, I will get that done. No one, no one, should be allowed to take thousands of American -- innocent American lives. Of course evil must be defeated.
My friends, we are facing the transcendant challenge of the 21st century: radical extremism. Not long ago in Baghdad, Al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled, and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace, and by remote control detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is. And we're going to defeat this evil. And the central battleground, according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Ladin, is Baghdad, Mosil, Basra, and Iraq, and we are succeeding, and our troops will come home with honor, and with victory, and not in defeat, and that's what's happening.
And we face this threat throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. Our intelligence people tell us Al Qaeda continues to try to establish cells here in the United States of America.
My friends, we must face this challenge, we can face this challenge, and we must totally defeat it. and we're in a long struggle, but when I'm around the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform, I have no doubts. None.
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III. THE LETTER
The last topic I was going to write about was how ridiculously full of holes the McCain camp's letter to NBC was; it seemed to be very carefully worded to not actually deny anything that mattered. But now I see that Jake Tapper is way ahead of me on this.
Not only did he point out the same holes in the letter --
The McCain campaign's responses so far are entirely focused on McCain's geography and whether or not he himself could hear and see Obama being questioned. . . .
Nothing that I've seen so far from the McCain campaign touches on whether or not any aides with McCain were getting reports on their Blackberries or cell phones....
-- but he also updated with the information that Charlie Black is refusing to say whether staff members had such access.
"There's no reason we would do that," was all Black would say, though quite obviously there is a reason.