I think I’ll have a normal day today instead of hanging out in the mountains. (There’s just too much going on.) But this is an important moment and needs to be recognized.
Just six months ago I celebrated that the days were finally going to start getting longer. It only got warm here over the last two weeks. And now we start losing sunshine again… This is what you call a short growing season. The winter of ‘07-’08 us still very much in my memory, four long months of not being able to get around, more wood burned than ever before.
We don’t take the down comforter off the bed here in the summer. That at least is something special!
Comment by K.J. Webb
1 June 20, 2008, 2:53 pm o'clock |
John, this isn’t really a proper comment on the post above, but I couldn’t help thinking of you and wondering about your thoughts.
Re some recent Obama statements: He made a very large support-of-Israel speech (Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital forever and ever!) to a Jewish organization which had suggested he was soft on Israel; he strongly affirmed free trade in a recent speech after out-Hillarying Hillary against it in the primaries; he announced that he won’t accept spending limits as every previous presidential candidate since Nixon has done and which he himself strongly supported and even challenged the Republicans to do just a few months ago; he told a sympathetic Chicago black church (not Trinity!) that there’s a big problem with black males never growing up and accepting responsibility for their children.
Now all of this seems to me to be motivated by ordinary old realpolitik. Run for the nomination from the Left; run for the Presidency from the Center. Actually it seems like hardball Chicago politics of the sort I got used to in my time in the Windy City. I don’t mind it all. I think it’s what he has to do. I think he will do more of it. It makes me think more rather than less highly of him. He’s not a McGovern or Dukakis or Kerry. He’s running as an idealist but acting like a Chicago pol. I like that in him. It’s the ticket to the dance. He’s a smart guy, and he’ll be a smart President. But no ideologue, and as slippery as Nixon himself.
I couldn’t help but wonder what you thought, who see him in rather different terms than that.