Tag: obama

Posted on

He Didn’t Inhale Enough

I noticed yesterday that one of the New York Times blogs, The Caucus, had an item on how a gaggle of right-wingers is promising to do a “documentary” that will expose the dark side of Barack Obama. ‘Bout time! Here’s a guy who for years has been leaving a trail of unpleasant secrets. He has even written books full of assertions that people can fact check to find out what a self-aggrandizer he is.

The Times itself begins the process of exposing the mendacity with a 1,751-word story this morning–“Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life“– that investigates his claims that he used drugs as a youth. That’s right: Obama says he used drugs and has suggested both in writing and on the campaign trail that his occasional pot smoking, drinking and cocaine sniffing was troubling and unwise.

But the Times is blowing the lid off those claims. The story says that “more than three dozen interviews” with “friends, classmates and mentors” from his high school and college years find that Obama is remembered as “grounded, motivated, and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug problems and seemed to dabble only with marijuana.”

What could account for the discrepancy the Times seems intent on manufacturing? Ready? Here it is:

“[It] [could suggest he was so private about his usage that few people were aware of it, that the memories of those who knew him decades ago are fuzzy or rosier out of a desire to protect him, or that he added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Continue reading “He Didn’t Inhale Enough”

Posted on

Super Tuesday Footnote

The morning of election day, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a piece by columnist C.W. Nevius recounting a story from Barack Obama’s 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate. The piece was titled “Obama snub still rankles Newsom,” it says that Obama refused to have his pictured taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom because of the controversy swirling around Newsom’s decision to allow gay marriages in the city. Nevius quotes no less an authority than Willie Brown, the former mayor and maybe the state’s last true political kingmaker, as saying Obama told him directly that “would really not like to have his picture taken with Gavin.” Brown doesn’t give a date, but says the incident took place before an Obama fund-raiser he arranged at the Waterfront restaurant. Nevius doesn’t provide offer a date, either, beyond saying the snub happened four years ago. He gives no indication whether the incident has been reported before.

This may be a footnote in most parts of the country, but in San Francisco and perhaps in Southern California, too, the story could be damaging. The gay community in the state is very politically active and at least since the first Clinton candidacy has been a major source of support for Democrats. There are aspects to the story that make you wonder, if you’ve been in the Bay Area for awhile, whether there’s anything to it. It’s not impossible imagine Brown blowing smoke to help a candidate he favors, but I don’t see that he’s on record as supporting either Obama or Clinton. And among the story’s odd qualities is that it took four years to surface and that none of the principals speak to it. A senior Obama campaign activist who happens to be gay is quoted as saying there’s nothing to it, but the story treats the episode as fact. I heard this story discussed among some news types the day after it ran and heard anecdotally that some gay voters switched from Obama to Clinton after reading Nevius’s piece. Who would blame them? Here’s a guy who enjoys solid support from and friendly relations with gay voters in his own state who is portrayed as acting as some kind of weasel when he’s out of town.

So: where did the story come from, is it true, and can you tell anything meaningful without talking to the people involved?

Well, it would be great to have Newsom and Obama on the record, naming names. But that’s beyond my poor powers this time of night (or maybe any time). Without the principals, I think the key evidence about what happened is missing. But it’s possible to track the story back to 2004.

Technorati Tags: ,

Continue reading “Super Tuesday Footnote”

Posted on

Message

Left on our phone the other night:

“Obama!

“Hey, it’s E____. I had to call you guys and share my happiness about Obama winning at least the first caucus, because we were all sitting there in pain about Gore back in 2000, and finally I have an election that I have a little bit of hope that the person I want may win. Anyway, I just had to say that and I hope you guys have a good night. Bye.”

That was a fun call to get. And E____ and I are in the same camp. Although as I told a John Edwards canvasser, I can’t spell out logically while I’m leaning this way. And after years and years and years of looking for the rationale for my votes and often coming up short, I’ve given myself permission to just go with my instinct on this one.

(One of the best pieces I’ve read about Obama recently came from David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who has played the role of centrist/conservative (the paper recently hired a real conservative for the op-ed page). Brooks argues for Obama on the basis of his personal experience, temperament and intellect:

Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though Tom DeLay couldn’t deliver much for Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, so far, hasn’t been able to deliver much for Democrats, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.

But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.

Technorati Tags: