The Deficiency of Obama

The "Exasperation of the Democratic Billionaire' quotes M. Zuckerman,

It's as if he doesn't like people," says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman of the president of the United States. Barack Obama doesn't seem to care for individuals, elaborates Mr. Zuckerman, though the president enjoys addressing millions of them on television.

The Boston Properties CEO is trying to understand why Mr. Obama has made little effort to build relationships on Capitol Hill or negotiate a bipartisan economic plan. A longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, Mr. Zuckerman wrote in these pages two months ago that the entire business community was "pleading for some kind of adult supervision" in Washington and "desperate for strong leadership."

This appears in the Oct. 15th WSJ.

The Structure of Street Logic

Freddie, if I recall correctly, the racist complaint arose in the following context. McCain made a criticism of Obama’s position; Obama responded that ‘they’re going to criticize me for not looking like the presidents on the dollar bill.’ It went on further as you suggested. This exchange was something like the recent exchange where McCain said Obama had said the surge was wrong, had voted against funding it, now recognizes violence is down (implication: it succeeded) but still won’t recognize the error. Obama responded that ‘it’s improper to question his patriotism.’

In my practice experience ‘street’ logic or argument goes as follows:

I. ‘I like you and sure wouldn’t want to see aggression (which would be detrimental to you) happen.’

II. ‘My arguments a1, a2, a3 lead to my desired result b.’

III. ‘Not b however will result in the aggression referred to in I above.’

IV. ‘So grant me b and we’ll allow that it was due to the sequence of a arguments above.’

This is the formal structure of what Obama has been telling us and McCain.

Obama and the judiciary. Also I think of 2 young men I never knew; Lt. Fresques didn't want to be in debt; we are in his.

you, With your fresh thougths care for, can you?

Ann Althouse reads a letter from 'Obama.' I comment with a quote of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins and link to a professor form the national Univ. of Ireland with a great insight into the method of his poetry. As seniors at Jesuit in Dallas, we were presented with the poem Spring and Fall . It was disorienting, comprehended in part but frightening. I love it more now.

Senator O is a 'bargainer' in Shelby Steele lingo. So, for those of us 'typical whites' that are afraid of black anger (and America's original sin), that's nice. This is like an experince of the Messiah. Was it March he said, 'I don't think my Church is all that controversial (he's like one of us);' in early April, 'I can more disown Rev. Wright that I can disown the black community [heh, I'm the real deal (black, you know)].' Monday, a mild disagreement with the idea of Rev. Wright's remarks or maybe the distraction. Tuesday, after seeing 'his gestures' (like you know he expected him to stand without moving his arms like Senator Biden), "I denounce those remarks; they no more reflect me.." What a weatherman.

Weatherman, will the wind blow you into a man?

Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman asked rhetorically, 'Why doesn't the Bible say, in the Commandments, Love your children.' Appropriately dumbfounded, I found his answer more cogent. It was, 'The Bible doesn't tell us to do what comes naturally.' 'We love our children.' I am reminded of this in the controversy over the Weatherman Ayers. Aye, there was a time in American student history when the Weathermen were 'like Wow.' Faced with the arduous complexity of adapting to America's involvement in VN, it was, I think, easiest for us to think, 'OK, I give up. I'll be superior to the President and the Generals. I'll settle for the happy solution that their picking on me too.' That's where the 'like Wow' comes in in relation to the Weathermen. The usual title of this blog 'A Psychiatrist who learned from Veterans' suggests my evolution in relation to this issue.

So the child gets mad at the parents, the country, and yet still accepts that the parents, the country love him. That's what I see in the Weathermen.

Got Virginity?

Obama made a good psychological point that people who experience shame may relieve it by demonizing others, and 'Anglos' have gotten used to accepting this. Oddly enough, my family has a history of experiencing the anger of black people in Chicago; my grandfather Hubert was mugged for his WWI bonus money as he was passing through Chicago. The demonizing anger may be a kind of narcissistic manipulation. As an example of narcissistic manipulation, Jack Kerouac wrote of riding on a bus across America that a 'young virgin started talking to me, and I didn't talk to her for 2 hours until I had her and then I began to tell her about herself,' and she was eager to yield herself to him. In his method, he made himself unapproachable until her neediness and his grandness was accepted. This is how the 'racist' is to deal with the anger celebrated and institutionalized by Jeremiah Wright.

A good article on Obama as a uniter.

Forget the Ways of Washington?

Mr. Obama was recently interviewed with his wife about his candidacy. Asked if they were worried for his safety as a candidate, his wife responded, 'A black man could get killed going to the gas station in this country..' That seems to me unchristian. The Lord's Prayer, says 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' Admittedly one reading of it is that we should forgive anybody anything. This usually means forgiveness of a favored class of transgressors in practice. A more nuanced reading is to see an analogy between the way God forgives us and the way we forgive others. God forgives us as we recognize sin and in doing so make an effort to reform our ways. Thus as God has forgiven us, we should not hold a grudge and, analogously, forgive others who have made an attempt to reform. I believe this country has made an attempt to reform in its race relations. The easy recourse to the cudgel of guilt is unchristian and in fact is an attempt to hold the rest of the nation in bondage. As Abraham Lincoln said, 'no man should own the labor of another.' White folks do look forward to the day when we can say, "Free at last. Thank God, I am free at last."