Chicago Tribune endorses Obama

[Kelly the Dog]

Significant because this is a strongly conservative newspaper that has never endorsed a Democrat for President, as in never, and it is 161 years old.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...rt-breakingnews

 

Yes, it's the paper from where he lives but they have not at all always been on his side. It's also a good article and a strong endorsement, and it seems to me that they wanted to back McCain but just couldn't after the last couple months.

[GG]

Yes, that's fine & dandy, but let's wait to see what CHICAGO Tribune has to say, shall we?

[Kelly the Dog]

Yes, that's fine & dandy, but let's wait to see what CHICAGO Tribune has to say, shall we?

It says Chicago, you must be dyslexic.

[GG]

It says Chicago, you must be dyslexic.

 

Must be drinking again.

[In-A-Gadda-Levitre]

an excellent article indeed...

 

This quote seems appropriate towards those who mock his change message:

 

The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics.

[IDBillzFan]

Must be drinking again.

Now there's a program I can get behind.

[Kelly the Dog]

Must be drinking again.

Well, damnit, if you're not, you better start quick.

[GG]

Well, damnit, if you're not, you better start quick.

 

I am awake aren't I?

[erynthered]

I am awake aren't I?

 

 

Boom? Is that you?

[GG]

an excellent article indeed...

 

This quote seems appropriate towards those who mock his change message:

The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics.

 

And yet another indictment of the Bush administration. People don't care to understand what Change is, they just want to feel better that change is coming and we'll all behave nicely.

[Kelly the Dog]

And yet another indictment of the Bush administration. People don't care to understand what Change is, they just want to feel better that change is coming and we'll all behave nicely.

This is another extraordinary examination by the conservative David Brooks, who has obviously felt that thrill up his leg.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/...amp;oref=slogin

We’ve been watching Barack Obama for two years now, and in all that time there hasn’t been a moment in which he has publicly lost his self-control. This has been a period of tumult, combat, exhaustion and crisis. And yet there hasn’t been a moment when he has displayed rage, resentment, fear, anxiety, bitterness, tears, ecstasy, self-pity or impulsiveness.

 

Some candidates are motivated by something they lack. For L.B.J., it was respect. For Bill Clinton, it was adoration. These politicians are motivated to fill that void. Their challenge once in office is self-regulation. How will they control the demons, insecurities and longings that fired their ambitions?

 

But other candidates are propelled by what some psychologists call self-efficacy, the placid assumption that they can handle whatever the future throws at them. Candidates in this mold, most heroically F.D.R. and Ronald Reagan, are driven upward by a desire to realize some capacity in their nature. They rise with an unshakable serenity that is inexplicable to their critics and infuriating to their foes.

 

Obama has the biography of the first group but the personality of the second. He grew up with an absent father and a peripatetic mother. “I learned long ago to distrust my childhood,” he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” This is supposed to produce a politician with gaping personal needs and hidden wounds.

 

But over the past two years, Obama has never shown evidence of that. Instead, he has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day.

 

There has never been a moment when, at least in public, he seems gripped by inner turmoil. It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious. Through some deep, bottom-up process, he has developed strategies for equanimity, and now he’s become a homeostasis machine.

 

When Bob Schieffer asked him tough questions during the debate Wednesday night, he would step back and describe the broader situation. When John McCain would hit him with some critique — even about fetuses being left to die on a table — he would smile in amusement at the political game they were playing. At every challenging moment, his instinct was to self-remove and establish an observer’s perspective.

 

Through the debate, he was reassuring and self-composed. McCain, an experienced old hand, would blink furiously over the tension of the moment, but Obama didn’t reveal even unconscious signs of nervousness. There was no hint of an unwanted feeling.

 

They say we are products of our environments, but Obama, the sojourner, seems to go through various situations without being overly touched by them. Over the past two years, he has been the subject of nearly unparalleled public worship, but far from getting drunk on it, he has become less grandiloquent as the campaign has gone along.

 

When Bill Clinton campaigned, he tried to seduce his audiences. But at Obama rallies, the candidate is the wooed not the wooer. He doesn’t seem to need the audience’s love. But they need his. The audiences hunger for his affection, while he is calm, appreciative and didactic.

 

He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild. His family is bourgeois. His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan.

 

This was not evident back in the “fierce urgency of now” days, but it is now. And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem.

 

Of course, it’s also easy to imagine a scenario in which he is not an island of rationality in a sea of tumult, but simply an island. New presidents are often amazed by how much they are disobeyed, by how often passive-aggressiveness frustrates their plans.

 

It could be that Obama will be an observer, not a leader. Rather than throwing himself passionately into his causes, he will stand back. Congressional leaders, put off by his supposed intellectual superiority, will just go their own way. Lost in his own nuance, he will be passive and ineffectual. Lack of passion will produce lack of courage. The Obama greatness will give way to the Obama anti-climax.

 

We can each guess how the story ends. But over the past two years, Obama has clearly worn well with voters. Far from a celebrity fad, he is self-contained, self-controlled and maybe even a little dull.

[Chilly]

This is another extraordinary examination by the conservative David Brooks, who has obviously felt that thrill up his leg.

 

David Brooks lost any credibility to me after the debate on Wednesday, when he said the election is all about Obama's demeanor. Yeah, bud, that's a great way to decide an election.

[Booster4324]

David Brooks lost any credibility to me after the debate on Wednesday, when he said the election is all about Obama's demeanor. Yeah, bud, that's a great way to decide an election.

 

Since they both lie, distort numbers, and/or skew facts there ain't much left.

[Kelly the Dog]

David Brooks lost any credibility to me after the debate on Wednesday, when he said the election is all about Obama's demeanor. Yeah, bud, that's a great way to decide an election.

I heard him speak about that on Charlie Rose. I'm not sure if those were the comments you were referring to.

 

I took them as being symbolic, (and others on the show seemed to agree). That because McCain has recently been seen as being impulsive and erratic on the economy, and because Obama's biggest hurdle has been to convince those that haven't been convinced that he has the temperament to handle a major situation and crisis, and look Presidential, his calm demeanor at the debate, especially compared to McCain's, prevented McCain from picking up (and more importantly picking off from Obama) the votes he would need to win. In other words, because Obama appeared to be the adult, he was NOW going to win because he has enough votes to win. Not at all that his demeanor was the key ingredient to his campaign.