Q: We know why we have to vote against the other guy—it's the Supreme Court, stupid, or any of a dozen answers like that boiling down to Romney must not be president. But do we have a reason for voting for our guy? Because I want to enjoy voting for him. I want to break out the Champagne (more likely Cava, on my pay scale) and break into a chorus of "I'm just wild about Barry". I want to party like it's 2008. I'm ready for dancing in the street, and I want a reason.
A: Are you kidding? Are you out of your mind?? Because his mother was an anthropologist! Because he paid off his school loans by writing a pretty good, better than pretty good, memoir! Because he wants to see the name and age and photograph of everybody the drones kill—like the carnivore who wants to meet the pig before it's slaughtered, look it in the eyes and ask it for forgiveness. Because he knows it's wrong, not that that stops him, but most of them don't have any idea. Lincoln knew, and that wicked old General Sherman.
Also abused are terms like "visibly angered", "troubled" and "concerned", "disturbed", applied to politicians obviously pretending to feel those emotions because they think it will bring them some advantage. Obama was in fact visibly angered at the debate the other night, and not at any challenge to his own amour-propre, either, but on behalf of the State Department and the dead of Benghazi: he was righteously pissed off at the slimy imputation that they had done something unspecifiable but not quite nice. Because of that!
Because he's a liberal Christian, with a clear sense of how an empirical belief and a faith can be different without contradicting each other, or contradict each other without one having to give way to the other, each with its own reality claims leaving the other untouched.
Because he's cunning, Macchiavellian even, for peace and for justice. Because every time he makes another deal with the Forces of Darkness and we're sitting around trembling with rage, it turns out when the dust settles that he's given away much less than we imagined; the NDAA isn't anything like the end of Habeas Corpus, the PPACA is far from being a pure gift to the insurance companies.
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Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.Because he's relatively serious! That's a much abused term, over in the Village, where it means accepting, say, as a necessity, that a president has to have a meal with Sally Quinn x many times a year, but not that the president needs to be concerned about how many people get killed, as opposed to whether it will or won't be counted as a "victory" for him. ("Is this drone issue going to hurt the president?" "Probably not, as long as he doesn't go to any weddings in Pakistan.")
Also abused are terms like "visibly angered", "troubled" and "concerned", "disturbed", applied to politicians obviously pretending to feel those emotions because they think it will bring them some advantage. Obama was in fact visibly angered at the debate the other night, and not at any challenge to his own amour-propre, either, but on behalf of the State Department and the dead of Benghazi: he was righteously pissed off at the slimy imputation that they had done something unspecifiable but not quite nice. Because of that!
Because he's a liberal Christian, with a clear sense of how an empirical belief and a faith can be different without contradicting each other, or contradict each other without one having to give way to the other, each with its own reality claims leaving the other untouched.
Because he's cunning, Macchiavellian even, for peace and for justice. Because every time he makes another deal with the Forces of Darkness and we're sitting around trembling with rage, it turns out when the dust settles that he's given away much less than we imagined; the NDAA isn't anything like the end of Habeas Corpus, the PPACA is far from being a pure gift to the insurance companies.
