The early days of a better nation

I’m living in Germany now, and was recently asked to explain Obama’s appeal. I said, “He shows us at our best, and challenges us to live up to it.”

I don’t know if that’s enough to get him to the White House, but goodness I hope so.

Obama’s terrific fundraising and organizing will get him to the White House. The fact that he’s intelligent, thoughtful, decent, liberal, and interested in unglamorous but important policy issues is a rare and happy coincidence which might make him a great president.

Terrific speech, with subtlety and delicacy in dealing with issues that most politicians would regard as radioactive. But then he’s lived his whole life on the uneasy boundary between black and white culture, so he’s almost uniquely qualified to address these issues.

I went to Obama’s rally in Boston 1.5 months ago, and that speech was about halfway between all the other campaign speeches of his I’ve heard, and this speech of today. I had been a supporter before, but the day after, sent in $25, and will be hitting the streets in PA next week.

This most recent speech was incredible. I’ve just been reading Toqueville this week, and damn, it will be nice to finally have a president who “gets it” in a way that none in my lifetime have.

Neil: I think perhaps even more importantly a candidate who will challenge individual Americans to participate in making those policies (and those broader visions) a reality instead of saying ‘send me to DC, I’ll take care of it for you.’

I think it’s a test for America, whether we engage with his message in the same grown-up way he delivered it, or distort, simplify, deny, or invert the message in our usual stupid discourse.

Exactly. I’ve been inspired and relieved to see the reaction so far from the NY Times editorial board and, more importantly, from Maureen Dowd. It’s almost as if Obama shamed Dowd out of her usual snide schtick. I think for anyone with a sense of seriousness and responsibility about journalism and politics, to see him take those kind of risks in this speech commanded a certain level of respect and commensurate seriousness in the response.

Neil: it’s all about the person(ality) and character. Obama alone can help bridge the gap. Clinton is way too divisive; she’d likely only make things worse, and frankly, it seems she likes it that way.

Um, harl, Henry’s post was an example of a rhetorical strategy which probably has some Greek name but which in the TV business we just call a “cliffhanger”. The close of the first paragraph sets you up to wonder: did he hate the speech? Did he love it? Then you find out: not only did he love it, he loved it so much it made him want to change his citizenship.

So, yeah, he still would like to vote for Obama if he could.

But is there any defining difference between the domestic policies of Obama and Clinton that would indicate that either would do that much better than the other in making the US a better place?

Maybe, maybe not, but as a non-US citizen I am mostly concerned with US foreign policy and in this regard Obama looks like the best bet. Without doubt there are interdependencies between domestic and foreign policy, but a liberal domestic policy doesn’t necessarily translate into good foreign policy (cf. Kennedy/Johnson).

Neil: No.

The Clinton supporters make the argument, and this seems in my experience to be their main argument, that Clinton will a) be more experienced at fighting the Republicans on their own terms and at handling crises, and b) she’ll be able to effectively cut back-room deals to get a Democratic legislative agenda past, whereas Obama will supposedly be unable to stand up to the Republicans, will cave under pressure, and will just make pretty speeches while the “real policymakers” undermine him.

Obama supporters argue, by contrast, that Obama will move the country away from a discourse focusing on the trivial and divisive, will stop arguing every policy issue in Republican political frames, will stop ceding the “values debate” to the right, and will instead re-infuse American dialog with a clear explanation of liberal values, will actively encourage grass-roots participation instead of promising a paternalistic government which can watch out for all our needs, will explain why government action is legitimate and desirable, why government regulation is good for citizens and for businesses, etc.

If you think that both campaigns and their supporters say the same thing, you are probably not listening carefully to either side.

further to which, Henry, mate, this is what we all thought about Blair in 1997 and look how that turned out. What you’re actually feeling is the euphoria of the imminent end of Bush.

As a non US citizen living outside the US I’ve come to feel that Obama would be best, for many reasons. My only fear is that in order to prove his toughness he’ll launch his own Bay of Pigs – his repeated remarks indicating he’ll strike Pakistan if he thinks he might get Osama Bin Laden don’t sound good to me.

By the way, krhasan, we’ve already been launching missiles into Pakistan. Not to say that it’s a good thing, or that it was okay for Obama to have advocated it, just that it’s actually becoming rather routine.

I have that feeling things will never be the same again as regards race in a Presidential election. No matter what happens, I think Obama’s candidacy will never be forgotten.

A Y Mous, I have a bit of bad news for you, at least if you dwell within ICBM range of the United States. The US became a monarchy a long, long time ago, and its monarch-President has the authority to declare war against whoever he goddamn well pleases. If the legislature doesn’t like it, they can suck eggs.

And, no, it is not an enlightened despotism.

And as for Obama as philosopher-king, puhleez.

But, to be fair, compared with the septic-tanks that the US and the rest of the West has to put up with, Obama actually doesn’t look quite so bad as they are. I will even stick my neck out and say he might be at least no worse than Blair seemed to be. (By the way, before the post-election euphoria, I seem to recall Blair was not especially massively admired.)

I was floored (and moved) by that speech. A successful mainstream American politician, in the heat of a tough campaign and fighting for his political life, reacts by giving by far the most thoroughly adult, nuanced, historically grounded, wise speech I’ve ever heard from a major candidate? And by the way, on the most explosive and most often demagogued topic in American life? OK, I’m convinced now- this guy is something special.

dsquared: I was responding to Neil. The main differnce between Obama and Clinton is not their positions on issues (which was Neil’s main point: they aren’t that different on the issues), it’s that Obama’s personality and character will allow him , IMHO, to do much more good than she is capable of. I thought this was clear.

McCain will be less of a pain than Bush

Don’t bet on that. His foreign-policy views are of a bellicosity that would make Cheney blush, and they are unaccompanied in his head by even the tiniest sliver of actual information about the world.

I’ve always found Blair to be shockingly poor speaker, though- he sounds like a nit-wit to me, like someone from an old “upper-class twit” sketch

To be honest, Obama sounds to me like a management consultant who’s listened to Eddie Murphy tapes, but he apparently goes down well with his target audience. Blair in his day had an absolutely huge impact, and there are any number of posts hanging round the internet where someone had their mind totally changed (ie: was talked onto the end of the shaft) “because of that speech”.

“a management consultant who’s listened to Eddie Murphy tapes”

Trans: Obama’s too black white black white black white black white black white aw, ffuck it, let’s talk about Wales.

#32:

Dsquared’s comparison with Blair does worry me, and he’s right that “character” and “personality” are often over-emphasized. These are real things to worry about.

That’s the built-in evil of a presidential system, and the danger of the tendency to try (as Blair was quite obviously doing) to transform parliamentary systems into American-style leader personality cults. We’re stuck with it because of our benighted worship of a piece of 18th-century parchment, but one would hope that others would try to avoid repeating our mistakes.

#37:

I have been saddened by Hilary’s apparent need to be hawkier than everyone in order to prove she’s not soft.

Would that it were just Hillary. The dominant faction of the Democratic Party is completely sold on this way of “thinking”. Even Obama has had to promise that he’d increase the size of the armed forces, which is insane considering that they need to be cut by at least two-thirds to even begin approaching a size with any rational relationship to actual defense needs (as opposed to imperial pretensions).

One significant difference between Obama and Blair, as I understand it, is that Obama has at this point a substantial history of legislation (both sought and achieved) that actually does rein in executive and legislative power, particularly with simple but effective measures to document just what the authorities are up to. He’s also been good on trying to look ahead and forestall various kinds of trouble before they become crises. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has done the most thorough linking on this, so I’ll just wave at her work.

I admit to not knowing much about Blair’s pre-PM career, and I never rule out the possibility that someone may move another rung up and turn their back on all that’s come before. It happens often enough. But the thing is just that in Obama’s case it would be a turning in a big way. He’s got a real history worth respecting.

The other reason I’m favoring Obama is just that he has a demonstrated gift for getting people out and voting who haven’t before. The US doesn’t suffer from excessive citizen involvement, to put it mildly, and a lot of Americans feel – with depressingly good reason, a lot of the time – that there’s no point in wishing for more responsiveness than they’ve got. I am strongly in favor of getting more of us feeling that we are indeed entitled to expect more than we’re getting now, and working together to push for it. Obama himself is a pretty moderate liberal in actual policy, so nearly as I can tell. But people roused to get some justice may end up taking things quite a bit further than that – maybe even to real health care, for instance. I don’t know where all it might go, but citizen involvement strikes me as a darned good thing, and if Obama’s the one to get it rolling faster, then that’s good with me.

I’m with dsquared on the Blair comparison… on the other hand, thinking like that really does never change anything. Enjoy your adventurous expectancy and, if he wins, some euphoria. The bump’s bad, but not as bad as never seeing the view from the top.

If there’s really an uncloseabe gap, I don’t think you can expect Obama to “bridge it,” but if he’s half as smart as his speeches suggest then he might be able to keep attention on actually solveable issues for a while.

I think the back-room deals will be his undoing, and mostly because he’s not, AFAICT, a member of the right clubs.

Yes. The US is a monarchy, and better at preaching enlightenment than delivering it. Always has been. But even monarchies have complex power structures. Given this fact, the monarch might as well look good, and can sometimes appeal directly to the people over the heads of his courtiers. Bush routinely tries to do this, and has been failing more and more as time goes on. Obama seems quite a bit better at it, perhaps because (counter the Bush strategy) he doesn’t insult his audience’s intelligence.

Oh, missing from #40: I don’t think the Democrats will get 60 votes in the Senate, particularly not 60 reliably not Republican in drag votes. Which means that practical response to the country’s big, huge, growing needs is largely going to be screwed up one side and down the other. In light of that, I’m looking for a chief executive who can at least do something about the rule of law and general administrative competence, and who isn’t an enthusiastic warmonger, and like that. I would probably think less of Obama if I thought a serious liberal agenda had the slightest chance in Congress; much of the preceding comment assumes that it does not. I would be happy to be wrong about it, and to take up the burden of much more serious pressuring on both legislators and the executive to use the opportunity well.

I have time and I’ve spent the last few hours reading/listening/watching his campaign (Yes. That speech was what made me interested. As I said, a nice speech). A very interesting gentleman. Respect, dude. Respect.

But he seems to have made it clear that he truly believs that winning is beneath him. Can this work? I fail to see the American citizenry (I am told that there are some power brokers called “super delegates” who are the deciders of Obama’s fate. Still. The general election victory for the democrats is anyway decided.) actually comprehending that sentiment. And crucially, the cynical gentry that do understand, are of the kind that overthink and would label him as “coward cowering under magnanimity”, which is what some posts in this thread suggest.

Simple guys you grok. Simpletons you prefer. Complicated real-politicking dealmakers you kneel before. But genuine good men?

which is what we did with Blair and my oh my, weren’t the rest of Europe pissed off when they found out that said signal was not true.

When he says “the rest of Europe”, Daniel doesn’t mean to speak for about 25 countries and over a quarter of a billion people; he’s actually referring to the leaders of France and Germany which, unbelievable as it may seem, is not at all the same thing.

Kevin “Working families working families working families working families working families” Rudd wasn’t that great a speech writer during his election campaign, but then I generally don’t like political speeches. (And if I do, I prefer them printed out.) I wasn’t expecting much from him – someone who would roll back Workchoices, and govern at least a little bit to the left of Howard.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised in the last few months – ratifying Kyoto, giving a good “Sorry” speech in his first week of parliament, and actually showing an interest in competent government. This was the man who was dubbed “Me too” before the election, for appearing too similar to Howard for his own good. How times have changed.

Dsquared could be right – Obama could be Blair Mk. 2. Or he could be wrong. Not that America has got much of a choice – Clinton is too cynical, McCain is too senile, and I don’t know if it makes much difference – the country is looking at a nasty recession/depression with peak oil mixed in. At least Obama has a chance of turning out ok – unlike the other two.

Mathieu,

You ask, “What about the Reagan Democrats–the white working-class.”

I’ll just say,first, that this is the first speech I’ve ever heard from a Democrat that acknowledged that the white working-class has legitimate grievances with racial policy. Second, the religious white working-class wasn’t that upset to begin with–the idea that your pastor and fellow congregants might have off-the-wall views is so entirely normal that it was somewhat hard to see what the fuss is about. (For example–I’ve heard a sermon in my church by someone who was once, and may for all I know still be, part of the Army of God–of whom my opinion is, “couldn’t you all find some other side to be on?”) And Jeremiah Wright’s “controversial comments” are common in the black community–I would have been more surprised if he’d said the opposite.

Bruce @ #48- I actually feel sorry for anybody who wins this fall. The “winner” will be able to do nothing except take the initial steps to clean up the enormous pile of crap Bush is leaving behind. And in consequence (since many of those steps will be unpopular) said person is likely to be a one-termer. I actually worry that Obama would be wasted in this situation- even if he is a real progressive (and I don’t actually think he is- just a good guy, which by itself is definitely a hell of an improvement, though) he won’t be able to DO anything progressive. I’d almost rather save him for a day when progress rather than just damage control might again be possible. The hell of that though is that long-serving Democratic Senators never make good Presidential candidates- they have too long a paper trail for the Fox News slime machine to attack. God our politics are depressing these days. At least Obama provides a momentary breath of fresh air.

dsquared,

There is an important difference between Obama and Blair. If Obama gets the job you won’t be able to say he’s “a sparrow sitting on top of an elephant pretending to be giving directions.” For better or worse he’ll be the real mahout.

Is there any chance that Mel Brooks will make a movie based on all this? I keep getting reminded of the scene in Blazing Saddles where the good people of Rock Ridge are waiting to welcome the sheriff while the old-timer on the roof, acting as lookout, tries to alert them to the fact that there’s a problem.

For those familiar with British and Irish politics, where (from what I would guess) the politicians are much better speakers and arguers than they are in the US, how good is Obama as a speaker relative to them? dsquared has already expressed his low opinion of Obama’s speaking skills (at least, that’s what I got from his comment about comparing him to a management consult who listens to Eddie Murphy–maybe dsquared is really high on management consultants, though?); what do others think?

Henry,

Why after that speech? I can understand being inspired by Obama but why after that speech?

Did we read the same speech?

As you note the speech was primarily about race.

The ideas Obama presented about race in that speech are fundamentally conservative. Not Republican or right wing but conservative in a philosophical sense.

Obama removes racism from the mortal sin column and places it in the venial column.

Belief in racist stereotypes and racist rhetoric are no longer defining characteristics.

So a long time ago WFB spouted some racist rhetoric and the Reverend Wright very recently used racist rhetoric but that doesn’t define them. After all they were and are products of their times. How we treat other individuals is what matters. The decency and charity we daily show other people is far more important than any peculiar notions we hold about race.

That conservative message about race is what inspired you to think about becoming a citizen?

Or did you hear something else?

Hearing Obama speak made me feel for the first time that I genuinely want to become a citizen of this country and a part of the larger project that he talked about

Don’t worry, if the gushing enthusiasm of this post is anything to go by you are already 90% yank… :)

For those familiar with British and Irish politics, where (from what I would guess) the politicians are much better speakers and arguers than they are in the US, how good is Obama as a speaker relative to them?

The quality varies, but I can’t think of any prominent politician in Britain or Ireland today who is in Obama’s league. OTOH it would be hard to find anyone quite as bad as Bush, even on a town council. But a parliamentary system makes a real difference when it comes to debate – if America had something equivalent to prime minister’s question-time we might all have been spared Bush.

Jim: is the figleaf use of “one” there supposed to echo some twitch of British English? The trouble is, it only works for the royal family and radio broadcasts from the 20s and 30s, and not so well in any era for the Irish. You can still get a smirk out of “innit” among those who traveled to the UK after 1970, though, if that’s what you’re after. “Begorra” may be more your line.

Changing citizenship is not easy, and often not desirable. You also can’t do it until you’ve held a green card for, I think, 10 years. God knows, I wanted to head ‘back home’ at times for the first 8 years I lived here, and not always because of the actions of the INS/DHS.

Jim’s remark was clearly silly, at best, but to clear up confusion you can apply for citizenship after 5 years of legal permanent resident (green card) status in most cases and 3 years if your LPR status is via marriage. Nowadays it often takes up to a year or more for the citizenship process to grind forward. Most LPRs don’t naturalize until well after they are eligible, and it’s certainly far from obvious that even all who are eligible ought to want to since the reasons for living in a country other than one’s own are so various.

Dsquared says ‘further to which, Henry, mate, this is what we all thought about Blair in 1997 and look how that turned out.’

It’s not how I ever felt about Blair, at least not after he became Labour leader. The rhetoric was just so weird from the get-go, the vapourings of a man not all that connected to reality:

‘A hundred days of New Labour for a thousand years’- dear God.

‘Britain is a young country’. Sure, we industrialised last week, invented Common Law a few months ago, and will hold our first Parliament tomorrow. No problem with an ageing population, either.

‘We are the first generation that has never had to think about going to war’. Had he been asleep while the Gulf and Bosnian conflicts were on? And of course, if you’ve ignored the previous wars in your lifetime, your judgement is likely to be pretty screwy when you need to make a decision about war yourself.

‘My priorities are education, education and education’, because of course every Government can just ignore those other priorities that pop up from time to time. The man was a dangerous fool from the start.

There’s a certain amount of vacuity in Obama’s speeches, sure, but I rather like a guy who said, *when it mattered* before the invasion, that he opposed dumb wars like Iraq. Simple, plain, right. Show me a Blair speech from his period as Leader of the Opposition, or his early years as PM, which had those qualities.

Good oratory is decidedly not a feature of Irish politics I’m afraid.

Oh god it’s all coming back now “a foreign policy with an ethical dimension”, how we lapped it up. Thank Christ the internet didn’t exist in 1997[1] or it would be chock full of me furiously jerking away over all this sort of thing. I even considered joining the fucking Fabians, thank christ I pulled back from the brink of that one.

[1]yes yes blah blah, well it didn’t for normal people you bloody geeks.

wait – dsquared, are you sighing ostentatiously and displaying you jaded skepticism?

Samchevre,

I hope you’re right about poor whites liking the fact that Obama supported his preacher. But will that be enough to bridge the class / racial divide? Also, recognising that poor whites have legitimate concerns about inequality as well as poor blacks does not mean that they will hear the message.

Previously Republicans have been successful in shifting the topic from economic domination to cultural domination; poor whites could feel they were getting back at cultural elites by rejecting someone like Gore or Kerry and embracing “someone you would like to have a beer with” (plus GW Bush was an upstanding born-again christian unlike the adulterous Clinton).

If Obama’s attempt to universalise his christian morality can connect with poor whites, and if he can hammer through the media an economic message which criticises the excesses of corporations this might constitute a coherent “frame” that poor whites will feel comfortable supporting.

Thank Christ the internet didn’t exist in 1997 … well it didn’t for normal people you bloody geeks

And yet I clearly remember enjoying posts from a certain Daniel Davies on various email lists well before then. LBO-Talk only started up in May 1998, but you were on PEN-L and various others before that. Perhaps we should take a stroll through the archives….

No, getting rid of Clause Four really was nothing: the chance that any Labour Government elected in the 1990s was going to implement Clause Four, be it led by John Smith, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or any candidate the party might conceivably elect, was zero. Ditto the chance of the Labour Party refusing to ditch it and thus gifting their hate figure John Major a ‘Labour split’. Above all, realising that the nationalisation of everything a) wasn’t possible and b) wouldn’t achieve anything worthwhile had been realised by anyone with half a brain years before: rejecting Clause Four really didn’t mean that you had any great understanding of what social democratic policy should be.

Blair, Campbell and Mandelson, however, presented the Clause Four decision as a mixture of Churchill’s 1940 speeches and the bolder moves of the Attlee Government, and a credulous media lapped it up. Obama is not perfect, but he got Iraq right when most everybody else got it wrong.

Second Blair-Obama difference: Blair was always about the professionalisation of politics, elections in which the most important people were the media advisers: and in his first two elections, turnout fell to a level not seen except in 1918, when much of the electorate was still in Flanders. Obama has the slick media people but- like Howard Dean, and unlike Blair or the Clintons- his strategy is about upping turnout and increasing grassroots involvement. If that does succeed, it becomes a force for change in its own right: just as the reinvigoration of the Democratic Party after FDR’s first victory led to a great many things that Roosevelt himself did not initiate.

90:hmm, I don’t agree with this version of history

No, getting rid of Clause Four really was nothing: the chance that any Labour Government elected in the 1990s was going to implement Clause Four, be it led by John Smith, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or any candidate the party might conceivably elect, was zero.

After fifty years with no real success, the writing was on the wall for it, agreed.

Ditto the chance of the Labour Party refusing to ditch it and thus gifting their hate figure John Major a ‘Labour split’.

Absolutely disagree. Blair took a genuine risk on this one, as evidence for which I advance the fact that ten years later he still felt enough of a debt of honour to John Prescott for the famously logorrheaic conference speech to not sack him despite manifest incompetence.

Above all, realising that the nationalisation of everything a) wasn’t possible and b) wouldn’t achieve anything worthwhile had been realised by anyone with half a brain years before: rejecting Clause Four really didn’t mean that you had any great understanding of what social democratic policy should be.

Oh tee oh aitch, it was actually a major and substantial change to the constitution of an actual political party, while Obama’s call on Iraq – while he was totally correct on it, was a more or less consequence-free act by a guy who wasn’t even a Senator at the time. So you pay your money and you take your choice. And the “Clause Four Moment” wasn’t just important because of getting rid of Clause Four – it was the big symbolic break with the socialist left (and thereby with the industrial North of England) and was recognised to be such at the time. The one thing I will ever give Blair credit for (and I still suspect it was more Brown/Balls) is jumping on the “Cool Britannia” bandwagon and thereby being the first UK prime minister to recognise the importance of the creative industries which are the UK’s only genuinely world-leading sector.

Blair was always about the professionalisation of politics, elections in which the most important people were the media advisers: and in his first two elections, turnout fell to a level not seen except in 1918, when much of the electorate was still in Flanders

Turnout fell but the number of Labour votes (and party membership) was up 16% in 1997 versus 1992 – the main reason for low turnout was the total demoralisation of the Tories. This was also the time when Blair was claiming, and people were believing him, that Labour would have a million members in short order.

If that does succeed, it becomes a force for change in its own right: just as the reinvigoration of the Democratic Party after FDR’s first victory led to a great many things that Roosevelt himself did not initiate.

Forecasting the future is always a mug’s game but I don’t think my analogy breaks down on this point at all – this is exactly the reinvigoation of the Labour Party that Blair thought that he was going to carry through with his 500,000 new members that didn’t show up.

phoee, by the way, reduced to having to moderate my own posts. that’s the price of being a multiple reply nutter I suppose.

by the way I am such a [expletive deleted – I do seem to be swearing a lot at the moment don’t I? – dd] geek that I have just checked that 1923 and 1935 both had slightly lower turnouts than 1997, a point of no materiality at all and barely marginal interest even to myself.

@93 I see what you mean. CIA factbook says there are 200 million Muslims in your front yard.

I do actually have a fair bit of sympathy for Daniel’s view here. Because I well remember when Blair ousted that woman, and I was in the throes of ecstasy in a very real and religious sense the night, and in fuckin heaven for days thereafter; and I’m not even British.

But Templeton is going to be wrong one of these days, and it might as well be now.

The Blair comparison’s not a surprise, and I’m sure it’s crossed the mind of every British expat, or anyone who remembers 1997. As mentioned here before, I’ve had the ‘just what’s all the fuss about?’ conversation a few times with friends back home. And like dsquared, I look back on Up For Portillo Night with some ruefulness, not least because I may have put money indirectly into Oliver Kamm’s hands.

(I have thought for a while that 2004 was quite like 1992 in Britain — a poison chalice election, as Robert Harris put it at the time — and I’ve seen nothing to convince me otherwise.)

But presidential elections are different from British general elections, no matter how Blair tried to president it up: James Bryce was right a century ago to say that they reward mediocrity and inexperience, because the experienced, talented politician has generally made too many enemies to be elected. The other side of that coin is that Obama hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to go stale.

That doesn’t mean, though, that you should flinch from idealism just because you got conned by the last glib bastard. And as down & out @54 says, it’s not as if there’s much choice here. You just take that once-bitten mindfulness and don’t make excuses on Mr Idealism’s behalf.

Also: Obama uses verbs.

(Seriously though, you have to have lived in the US for the past four years, not just looked from afar, to appreciate just how fucking wearying it is to be presented with Bush’s Chauncey Gardner act every damn day.)

I well remember when Blair ousted that woman

That’s not a nice way to describe John Major. (The ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ moment, and the ‘getting pissed after the ’92 election’, were the two big political memories of sixth form.)

Changing citizenship is not easy, and often not desirable.

Oh, yes. It took Christopher Hitchens about three years, after decades as a permanent resident, and there was an incentive for the USCIS to not put him through the usual wringer. But thanks, trollboy, for showing how most Americans think their immigration system works.

@98,99,

your comments (“who was that woman?”) have, of course, the trivial virtue of being factually correct.

Be that as it may, Major always struck me as an empty shell, an animated stick figure, during whose unhappy tenure the malevolent spirit of his predecessor still stalked the corridors, quarens quem devoret. (I imagine Major thought the same). And Labour’s first triumph under Blair felt to me like an exorcism. Her own party knifed her, but it took that election to put a stake through her heart.

Perhaps that may explain my remark. Also, it was late, I’d been out at a work-related function, and drink may have been taken.

what are you talking about?

gosh, I must be wrong then.

Having actually heard Scargill speak, I can assure you he could not only charm the birds out of the trees, but persuade them to go and lynch a cat.

Labour’s first triumph under Blair felt to me like an exorcism.

That’s exactly the ground on which I object to the ousted that woman line though: subsequent actions showed her ghost to be still highly active and if anything, ever more rapacious. Railways? PPIs? It’s like one of those interminable supernatural thrillers where you just keep going over the Psycho curtain moment again and again.

I actually think that the better comparative case with Obama is not Blair, but JF Kennedy. It so happens that I am not into the Cult of Kennedy. The man coined the word “counterinsurgency”, had that horrendous hawk (and modernization nut) Rostow as his NS advisor, and during his brief tenure was responsible for the Bay of Pigs and a deepening of US hegemonic _and_ coercive power throughout the world.

As a citizen of the US I do see Obama’s attraction, but what worries me at the moment is the extent to which the power of the US, deployed via the gun or hegemonic multilateralism, is shaping the world in ways that are more destructive than the British and French empire’s works put together.

As a citizen of the world, I’d almost rather have the wolf in wolf’s clothing, rather than in the garb of a well-spoken, obviously intelligent, obviously inspiring character.

Laleh,

You have a point there. When Bush won a second term I took solace in the thought that the more he misused America’s power the more rapidly he frittered it away. I’m not saying that’s a good thing on the whole, but it has some good aspects.

Similarly, a McCain presidency might drive Henry back to Ireland where perhaps he can find a way to deal with Bertie Ahern. Americans, I call on you to vote McCain and halt the Euro brain-drain!

Dsquared says ‘Absolutely disagree. Blair took a genuine risk on this one (Clause Four), as evidence for which I advance the fact that ten years later he still felt enough of a debt of honour to John Prescott for the famously logorrheaic conference speech to not sack him despite manifest incompetence.’

Sorry, but you are entirely wrong on the facts. The famously logorrheaic conference speech that John Prescott made in defence of a Labour leader about to lose a vote on a major motion was when he came to John Smith’s aid on One Member One Vote, in 1993. Margaret Beckett, then Smith’s Deputy Leader, actually refused to support him and there was a real chance that he would lose the vote and his job.

Prescott supported Blair on Clause Four but there was no big conference showdown, no fighting speeches. Plenty of evidence, but try reading this contemporaneous Guardian piece, by Michael White: ‘Tony Blair seemed likely last night to pull off the most sensational political coup for a generation as the Labour conference embraced his unexpected call for an overhaul of the party’s time-honoured aims and objectives – including the controversial Clause Four commitment to nationalisation.
If the initial response of most MPs, trade union leaders and delegates is confirmed – and opposition to the move confined to the hard left – a draft which would revise Labour’s 1918 constitution could be ready by December and put to next year’s party conference after widespread consultation…
‘A measure of the conference’s acceptance of Mr Blair’s calculation came last night when the traditional Tribune Rally passed off with scarcely a mention of Clause Four and no rhetoric of betrayal.’

Engels for President!

Thanks to all for one of the smartest discussions of this speech I’ve seen anywhere. And OMG I can’t believe I just read a thread where BOTH of my obscure heroes — Theodore Sturgeon and Oysterband — were cited. I’m used to blank stares when I mention either one. Obviously, I need to hang out here more often.

Don’t do anything you might regret, Henry.