Person of the year
Time Magazine's person of the year is an obvious choice, but
there are still loads of good reads in there. I should go get a copy.
The cover was done by the same artist who
created the iconic Obama posterLabels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Rahmbo
My favorite character from one of my top-five TV shows,
The West Wing *, was Josh Lyman, the abrasive Deputy Chief of Staff in Aaron Sorkin's fictional White House **. He had a special gift for getting the dirty work done (with his fine political mind) and for pissing people off (with his cockiness and sarcasm), and his antics are among the best things about the show. The character was based on Bill Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel has been back in the spotlight for his recent appointment as President-Elect Barack Obama's White House Chief of Staff. With the announce of his second WH tour-of-duty, there have been numerous profiles detailing his colorful personality. A Salon article called
Obama's Designated A--hole painted Emmanuel as a tenacious negotiator with a proclivity for profanity. An
older story noted, "he raised millions of dollars by browbeating donors and candidates with cellphone calls that invariably ended, '
Fuck you.
I love you.'"
Off of that alone, the television character that seems closest to Emanuel's personality wouldn't be Josh Lyman, but
Entourage super-agent Ari Gold. And it's probably not a coincidence because the character was based on real-life Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel--who happens to be Rahm's younger brother! Yep, Obama's new Chif of Staff is Ari's big bro ***.
Speaking of
The West Wing, the final season of the show back in 2005 experienced a revival of sorts with its focus on the elections for the new US president. The fictional campaign featured Democrat Rep. Matt Santos from Texas (Jimmy Smits), who had won a hard-earned primary against the establihment candidate (the incumbent VP), opposite Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), a moderate Senator from the west who has had a record of going against his party. Santos, the charismatic minority newcomer who ran on a message of hope, ended up winning the election.
While molding the character, the show's writers looked for a model on whom to base the character. They found a young, promising politician whose star was beginning to rise on the national scene and crafted their imaginary presidential candidate after the politician.
The politician?
Barack Obama.
Funny how
life ended up imitating art that imitated life ****.
* - My list, in no particular order:
The West Wing,
Veronica Mars,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the post-Angel years),
Friends,
The Office (I'm cheating and putting both the British and the American versions, though
Tim will always be the man)
** - Bradley Whitford was so good in the role that Sorkin wrote the part of Danny Tripp for Whitford in his next project,
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
*** - Their eldest brother, Zeke, is one of the foremost experts in healthcare policy.
Wonkette had a funny quiz about the brothers. Can you imagine how Thanksgiving Dinner at their table must be like like?
**** - Matt Santos' White House Chief of Staff? Josh Lyman.
Labels: barack obama, politics, rahm emmanuel, television, us elections, west wing
Post-mortem
Here's an interesting tidbit from the New Yorker's
report on the Obama campaign:
Obama, who is not without an ego, regarded himself as just as gifted as his top strategists in the art and practice of politics. Patrick Gaspard, the campaign's political director, said that when, in early 2007, he interviewed for a job with Obama and Plouffe, Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, 'I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.' After Obama's first debate with McCain, on September 26th, Gaspard sent him an e-mail. 'You are more clutch than Michael Jordan,' he wrote. Obama replied, 'Just give me the ball.
The piece itself is a great look at the people behind the campaign, how they matured and adjusted over the course of the campaign, and how they ultimately won the elections.
Newsweek has a much longer report, in seven parts, that came out this week. The magazine's reporters had previously negotiated for total access with the Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain campaigns with the condition that the stories wouldn't be published until after the elections.
- Part 1 -
How He Did It- Part 2 -
Back from the Dead- Part 3 -
The Long Siege- Part 4 -
Going Into Battle- Part 5 -
Center Stage- Part 6 -
The Great Debates- Part 7 -
The Final DaysHaven't read all of it yet. I printed out the whole thing (22 pages in 6-point type) to read for the weekend.
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Obama wins!
Slate
calls the race for Obama. A few moments later, Salon
follows suit:
After his win in Ohio, and with victories in blue states like California assured, Salon is ready to project that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.
As the election currently stands -- and assuming the calls on Ohio and Pennsylvania hold up -- Obama has 207 Electoral College votes, 63 short of the 270 needed for victory. But with California's 55 votes sure to follow, along with Hawaii's four votes and Washington's 11, it's now clear that Obama will get to the magic number and win the presidency.
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Michelle
Just watched
amazing Michelle Obama's speech live tonight/this morning. It was just as good as Barack Obama's speech four years ago, and you should watch it if you get the chance. It was intelligent and emotional and moving, and it struck all the right chords. A lot of people at the Democratic National Convention in Denver were in tears. It got really, really dusty here in my living room too.
Labels: barack obama, michelle obama, politics, us elections
Joe Biden
I was rooting for Obama to pick Biden when
the shortlist for his VP picks came out (prior to that, I was hoping he'd pick New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who'd been a congressman, an ambassador to the United Nations, and Bill Clinton's Energy secretary, but Richardson wasn't on the list). During the early part of the Democratic primaries, Biden drew heat for some statements he made about Barack Obama, but he also made one of the funniest cracks during the campaign about Rudy Giuliani: "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11."
Anyway, Biden's profile is inspiring, a foreign policy expert as well as a career politician who has remained one of the poorest members of the United States Senate. Then there's the heart-rending tragedy that
befell him soon after he won his first term in the Senate:
In 1972, Biden's wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident. His two young sons were hospitalized with serious injuries. The accident happened a week before Christmas and six weeks after Biden had been elected one of the youngest U.S. senators ever.
One of his sons, Beau Biden, now 38, the attorney general of Delaware and the father of two children himself, recalls that his father said at the time: "Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can't get another dad."
"Those weren't just words," he added. "He lived them."
Beau Biden remembers that his father stayed constantly at the hospital with him and his brother. The boys recovered, and Biden's sister, Valerie, moved in to help care for them.
Biden wrote in his memoir that he told the then-Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, that he wouldn't become a senator, but Mansfield persuaded him to give it at least a six-month try.
He began a daily commute by train — 80 minutes each way between Wilmington and Washington — rushing to get home in time for dinner, or at least dessert, and to tuck his children in at night and be there when they woke up. His son said that Biden put his children first, making sure he got to ball games and other important events.
Biden has never had a home in Washington. He's always made the commute.
Labels: barack obama, joe biden, politics, us elections
Obamanomics
I thoroughly enjoyed
this piece from the New York Times Magazine about Barack Obama's economic plan. Apart from providing a nuanced, in-depth look at the plan, it also goes into detail about historic economic policies by previous Democratic administrations (Clinton's in particular), and the solutions the plan offers in today's context. Surprisingly readable, if you're into this kind of thing.
Labels: barack obama, economics, politics, us elections
Obama in Berlin
Watching the Obama speech in Berlin live right now. Damn. I mean, damn.
I've had my misgivings about some of his recent decisions, but this is a hell of a speech. It's brave and it doesn't pander; the tens of thousands of people in Berlin cheer furiously and wave little American flags, and I don't think all of those were American expats. When was the last time this scene happened in Europe?
He doesn't just look like the next President of the United States. He looks like the Leader of the Free World.
UPDATE:
The full text of his speech.
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here -- what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?
Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Obama
It was hard not to become an even bigger Barack Obama fan after reading his memoir. Sure, everyone knows how the story goes by now, but it was still fascinating to read about the details, not least of which is because he writes so well, balancing his stories and his reflections delicately. It was a thoughtful but not sentimental, articulate but not boring. It also held some treasures for a Filipino reader, not just for the cameos of Filipino neighbors in scenes from his early days in Hawaii. He describes life in rural Indonesia, sleeping under the
kulambo, playing with
tutubi on a string. He writes about Kenya, a steady procession of second and third cousins, all of whom still count as family, just it does here in the Philippines. They're poor, yes, but they can't help but throw a big banquet for the
balikbayan Barack. It's fun to imagine that in a few months' time, this man who's had something similar to a Pinoy life will become President of the United States.
While I was finishing the book, the blogosphere was abuzz with disappointment about Obama's support for the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The controversial provision involved retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who helped the US government spy on phone conversations. It was such a disappointing, disheartening decision by Obama, and it provided such a gulf between the man from the book I was reading and the man in the spotlight.
Fortunately, there was this incisive article from
the New Yorker provided a better look at Obama the politician, and how he cut his teeth in the tough world of Chicago politics.
Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.
This was, by the way, the article that accompanied the even more controversial cover that featured Obama as a Muslim and his wife an AK47-toting commie. You ought to read the whole thing.
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
RFK
Nick Hornby posted
an excerpt of a speech by Robert F. Kennedy before his presidential campaign was tragically cut short by his assassination.
"Our gross national product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but the GNP - if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead….and the television programmes which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage…it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
Does that fierce rhetoric, and the pride it inspires,
remind you of anyone? Bobby is
the spiritual precursor to our favorite hopemonger. This might be why there was so much flak a few months ago when Hillary Clinton brought up RFK's asssassination during the heated primary campaigns.
Labels: politics, us elections
