Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Ferraro, Wright, and Iran
I haven't commented on the political campaign for a while. It has gotten boring ever since the last primary, in Mississippi, happened. Pennsylvania is not until April 22. There are now three candidates, which are going to be petrified in a state of limbo for five months, until the end of August. What are they going to do in that time? What are their supporters going to do? What is the media going to do?
Plenty. The media unearths all sorts of things and slings them on our face, saying this candidate did this and that at such and such a time, and then the candidate has to come to terms with that. I've already commented on Samatha Power saying that Hillary is a monster, saying that means with Hillary as President we will have more jobs. Well at least she does not want to build polluting coal plants, as Virginia Power wants to do.
The next was Geraldine Ferraro, the vice presidential pick of Walter Mondale, who won one of the biggest landslides in history, over Ronald Reagan, getting 91% of the vote. (OK, I mean with black voters). She said that Obama is where he is because he is black, throwing race into the race. The least thing we need now, with a big crisis coming up, is a race race. She later apologized and quit the Clinton campaign, and I don't think Hillary was affected much by it.
Then there was Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the fire and brimstone minister of Obama's former church. Mediots uncovered some tapes of some of his sermons near the beginning of this millennium. In one of them he said "God Damn America!", and he said that because of the way America has treated black people in the past. Well, if I were black, that is what I would think of this country. He said nothing that much out of the ordinary. He also said of the 9/11 attacks, that we have sponsored terrorist attacks on other countries, and that "the chickens have come home to roost", reminding me of the title of Ward Churchill's article. The pundits all ganged up on Obama because this was his minister.
Obama gave an excellent response to this uproar. In a talk on 2008 March 18, he condemned Rev. Wright's remarks but said he could no more separate himself from the Reverend as he could from the black community. He pointed out the tremendous gains that blacks have gained in the past half century on rights, and recited his own life and the wide range of ancestry and experiences that he has. To me, Obama is a ray of hope in a cloud of deception, mendacity, and belligerence. If he were President, many of the conflicts that nations have with the United States, especially in Africa, the Middle East, and Indonesia, would be defused.
Now today it's John McCain's turn. Earlier, he remarked to a request to send an airmail to Tehran by singing the doctored up old Beach Boys song, "Bomb Iran". He said, "Bomb bomb bomb…". Today he said that Iran was supporting Al Qaeda, and an advisor quickly pointed out to him that that was incorrect. Al Qaeda (which should be called The Base), is Sunni and has no relation to Iran, which is Shiite.
And now it is my own minister that is the subject of a controversy. Rev. AC Miles, author of the Auspicious Jots blog, says she was quoted once as saying that she heard dying people in a hospice giving advice to others: have more sex. She says, "Wait until CNN gets a hold of this". This comes about two weeks after she whisked a spider off her pulpit, saying "Beat it". That was the subject of one of my blogs on Blogtrek, "The Spider Theory".
So what does all this matter about the Presidential Campaign? Absolutely nothing. There is no way that Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Iran, or CNN is going to select or eliminate a candidate. Who is elected is based on more fundamental principles; according to Allan Lichtman, a Presidential election is basically a referendum on the previous administration. Such things as the disruption in our economy, the 2006 Congressional elections, the war in Iraq, the charisma of the candidates, and the lack of any real policy changes by President Bush have far more of an effect on who will get elected. And so far, these things say that our next President will be either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, with greater odds on the latter. And maybe someone from my congregation will be elected President in 2012.
Plenty. The media unearths all sorts of things and slings them on our face, saying this candidate did this and that at such and such a time, and then the candidate has to come to terms with that. I've already commented on Samatha Power saying that Hillary is a monster, saying that means with Hillary as President we will have more jobs. Well at least she does not want to build polluting coal plants, as Virginia Power wants to do.
The next was Geraldine Ferraro, the vice presidential pick of Walter Mondale, who won one of the biggest landslides in history, over Ronald Reagan, getting 91% of the vote. (OK, I mean with black voters). She said that Obama is where he is because he is black, throwing race into the race. The least thing we need now, with a big crisis coming up, is a race race. She later apologized and quit the Clinton campaign, and I don't think Hillary was affected much by it.
Then there was Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the fire and brimstone minister of Obama's former church. Mediots uncovered some tapes of some of his sermons near the beginning of this millennium. In one of them he said "God Damn America!", and he said that because of the way America has treated black people in the past. Well, if I were black, that is what I would think of this country. He said nothing that much out of the ordinary. He also said of the 9/11 attacks, that we have sponsored terrorist attacks on other countries, and that "the chickens have come home to roost", reminding me of the title of Ward Churchill's article. The pundits all ganged up on Obama because this was his minister.
Obama gave an excellent response to this uproar. In a talk on 2008 March 18, he condemned Rev. Wright's remarks but said he could no more separate himself from the Reverend as he could from the black community. He pointed out the tremendous gains that blacks have gained in the past half century on rights, and recited his own life and the wide range of ancestry and experiences that he has. To me, Obama is a ray of hope in a cloud of deception, mendacity, and belligerence. If he were President, many of the conflicts that nations have with the United States, especially in Africa, the Middle East, and Indonesia, would be defused.
Now today it's John McCain's turn. Earlier, he remarked to a request to send an airmail to Tehran by singing the doctored up old Beach Boys song, "Bomb Iran". He said, "Bomb bomb bomb…". Today he said that Iran was supporting Al Qaeda, and an advisor quickly pointed out to him that that was incorrect. Al Qaeda (which should be called The Base), is Sunni and has no relation to Iran, which is Shiite.
And now it is my own minister that is the subject of a controversy. Rev. AC Miles, author of the Auspicious Jots blog, says she was quoted once as saying that she heard dying people in a hospice giving advice to others: have more sex. She says, "Wait until CNN gets a hold of this". This comes about two weeks after she whisked a spider off her pulpit, saying "Beat it". That was the subject of one of my blogs on Blogtrek, "The Spider Theory".
So what does all this matter about the Presidential Campaign? Absolutely nothing. There is no way that Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Iran, or CNN is going to select or eliminate a candidate. Who is elected is based on more fundamental principles; according to Allan Lichtman, a Presidential election is basically a referendum on the previous administration. Such things as the disruption in our economy, the 2006 Congressional elections, the war in Iraq, the charisma of the candidates, and the lack of any real policy changes by President Bush have far more of an effect on who will get elected. And so far, these things say that our next President will be either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, with greater odds on the latter. And maybe someone from my congregation will be elected President in 2012.
