My mom, who tends to share my wariness about religious extremism of any sort, had this to say about the front-page story in today's NYT about Obama, his pastor and his faith (I agree with her entirely):

Although I do not share Obama's religious beliefs, I find them reassuring in terms of a strong sense of values and moral convictions.  I like the idea that he does not necessarily agree with his pastor or just accept all of his church's teachings without putting them through a serious intellectual assessment.  I am especially appreciative that he believes that tolerance of another's religion (or lack thereof) is fundamental and to be respected.  In addition, the input in his life of so many different religions has helped make him much more understanding and appreciative of the many ways that people in the world worship god -- by whatever name s/he is known.  And like John Kennedy, whom so many feared as a Catholic president, I think that Barack Obama's religion would not interfere with his presidency.

------------------

A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith

By JODI KANTOR

Published: April 30, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html

CHICAGO — Members of Trinity United Church of Christ squeezed into a downtown hotel ballroom in early March to celebrate the long service of their pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. One congregant stood out amid the flowers and finery: Senator Barack Obama, there to honor the man who led him from skeptic to self-described Christian.

I think Brooks is right -- which is great news for Democrats:

In sum, Republicans know they need to change, but they have closed off all the avenues for change.

The tale is not entirely hopeless. McCain seems now to be throwing off his yoke. Newt Gingrich is way ahead of his colleagues when it comes to new ideas and policies. The libertarians and paleoconservatives have been losing for so long they are suddenly quite interesting. There are even a few of us who think it is time to revive the Alexander Hamilton-Theodore Roosevelt legacy.

Change could, miraculously, come soon. But the odds are it will take a few more crushing defeats before Republicans tear down the self-imposed walls that confine them.

-----------------

April 29, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Grim Old Party

By DAVID BROOKS

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/opinion/29brooks.html

At the University of Chicago there’s a group of scholars who are members of what is called the Rational Expectations school of economics. They believe human beings tend to anticipate unpleasant future events and seek in advance to avoid them. Their teachings do not apply to the Republican Party.

The Republicans suffered one unpleasant event in November 2006, and they are headed toward an even nastier one in 2008. The Democrats have opened up a wide advantage in party identification and are crushing the G.O.P. among voters under 30.

Moreover, there has been a clear shift, in poll after poll, away from Republican positions on social issues and on attitudes toward government. Democratic approaches are favored on almost all domestic, tax and fiscal issues, and even on foreign affairs.

The public, in short, wants change.

Candidate Giuliani Shifts His Tone on Immigration

This is a perfect example of what Brooks is talking about:

A decade ago, as mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani used that historic backdrop to champion the cause of immigrants, calling attacks on people who came here legally a blow to “the heart and soul of America.” And from City Hall he often defended illegal immigrants, ordering city workers not to deny them benefits and advocating measures to ease their path to citizenship.

But now he is running for president, and the politics of immigration in the post-9/11 world is vastly different, with the issue splitting the Republican Party and voters peppering Mr. Giuliani on the campaign trail with questions about his current thinking. Perhaps more than any other candidate, Mr. Giuliani has a record on immigration with the potential to complicate his bid for the nomination.

It would be one thing if I though Giuliani had genuinely changed his views based on new information or further reflection, but it's so obvious that -- just as he did with regard to the flying-the-Confederate-flag issue -- he's just pandering to the far right.  Doesn't he realize that the main thing he has going for him is that he's has a fairly well deserved reputation as a straight shooter?!  He's destroying that reputation -- and he's not getting anything in return because the far-right folks surely aren't stupid enough to believe he's really had a change of heart on this and other issues! 

 

This reminds me of something Obama said -- I think it was at the March 9th event: he is going to run his campaign on his terms, present himself honestly to the American people, and that he would rather lose doing that than win by being a phony or taking the low road.  Hallelujah!

-----------------

Candidate Giuliani Shifts His Tone on Immigration

By MARC SANTORA and SAM ROBERTS

Published: April 22, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/politics/22giuliani.html

DES MOINES, April 16 — Rudolph W. Giuliani is a long way from Ellis Island.

A decade ago, as mayor of New York, Mr. Giuliani used that historic backdrop to champion the cause of immigrants, calling attacks on people who came here legally a blow to “the heart and soul of America.” And from City Hall he often defended illegal immigrants, ordering city workers not to deny them benefits and advocating measures to ease their path to citizenship.

Oh man, what a snoozer!  I'm glad I didn't watch this -- I Tivo'd it and and feel no pressure to watch it...

The setting was the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, a surprisingly sedate and meandering affair, filled with as many moments of awkward humor as memorable insight into the qualifications of the candidates or the policy differences among them.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, the two most closely watched candidates of the night, did not tangle at all. They were as likely to address each other politely by first name as to discuss differences between them.

It fell to their rivals to take cuts at them, and even those were modest.

------------------------

In Debate, Democrats Show More Unity Than Strife

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

Published: April 27, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/us/politics/27dems.html

ORANGEBURG, S.C., April 26 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was professorial and emphatic as she spoke Thursday night about health care, Iraq and whether Wal-Mart was good for America (a “mixed blessing,” she decided).

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, by reputation a dynamic performer, was reserved and cautious as he talked about a donor with a shady past, how he would respond to a terrorist attack on American shores and his biggest mistake (not doing more to stop Congress from intervening in the Terri Schiavo case, he said).

Nice to see the enthusiasm Obama's generating in California:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wowed California Democrats at their annual convention on Saturday, drawing a more passionate welcome than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton received hours earlier in this state that carries new clout in the presidential primaries.

More than 2,000 party activists frequently rose to their feet in cheers as Obama, who has served just two years in the U.S. Senate, talked about his desire to end the war in Iraq and usher in a new political era in Washington.

Obama's smart to keep reminding people that he, alone among the major Presidential candidates, had the wisdom, courage and judgment to make the right call on Iraq, back when pretty much everyone (myself included) thought we should invade and that it would be a cakewalk.

"I am proud that I stood up in 2002 when it wasn't popular to take a stand and urged our leaders not to take us down this dangerous path," Obama said, contrasting himself with Clinton and others. Obama was not in the Senate at the time.

------------------------

Calif. Democrats warm for Clinton, wild for Obama

Sat Apr 28, 2007 7:36PM EDT

By Adam Tanner

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2834546320070428

SAN DIEGO, California (Reuters) - Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wowed California Democrats at their annual convention on Saturday, drawing a more passionate welcome than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton received hours earlier in this state that carries new clout in the presidential primaries.

Obama Vows to 'Turn the Page' on Iraq

This really underscores a huge difference between Clinton and Obama.  Here's Clinton:

Clinton unleashed an unusually personal critique of Bush, accusing his administration of ignoring scientific evidence about global warming and stem cell research and lying about the effects of toxic dust at the World Trade Center site.

And here's Obama:

He also renewed his call for the parties to find common ground where they could and declared it was time to ``turn the page'' on issues like health care, education and energy independence.

In the past few weeks, I've been to small (150-person) group events for both candidates and, while their policies are very similar, their tones are polor opposites.  Clinton is constantly on the attack, bashing Bush, his administration and the Republican Party in general, and contrasting her positions from theirs.  Obama, in marked contrast, refrains from harsh attacks and simply lays out his views, letting his listeners come to the obvious conclusions about how different they are from Bush's.  Clinton, at every opportunity, attacks, while Obama, at every opportunity, calls for Americans and the two political parties, to come together -- even when speaking to the rabid faithful, such as at the event in California yesterday.

 

This difference in approach and tone is a major reason why I support Obama, why I think he's more likely to win if he's the Democrats' candidate, and why I think he's more likely to be able to govern effectively if he's the next President.  I think most Americans share my concern that, as country, we're splintering and that the two parties do the country a major disservice by highlighting and exacerbating our differences.  Kudos to Obama for trying to chart a different course!

------------------------

Obama Vows to 'Turn the Page' on Iraq

Sunday April 29, 2007 12:31 AM

AP Photo CALI121, CADP105

By BETH FOUHY

Associated Press Writer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6594864,00.html

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Wooing influential California Democrats, presidential contender Barack Obama vowed to ``turn the page on this Iraq disaster'' while Hillary Rodham Clinton denounced President Bush's conduct of the war as ``one of the darkest blots on leadership we've ever had.''

Wow...  Think for a moment how our current President would answer this question (a blank stare), or how Hillary would (I honestly don't know, but not like this):

Out of the blue I asked, "Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?"

Obama's tone changed. "I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers."

So I asked, What do you take away from him?

"I take away," Obama answered in a rush of words, "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away ... the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism."

I suppose Brooks is right that some might think this is vacuous, but I sure don't:

When I asked him to articulate the central doctrine of his foreign policy, he said, "The single objective of keeping America safe is best served when people in other nations are secure and feel invested."

That's either profound or vacuous, depending on your point of view.

--------------------

April 26, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Obama, Gospel and Verse

By DAVID BROOKS

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/opinion/26brooks.html

Sometimes you take a shot.

Yesterday evening I was interviewing Barack Obama and we were talking about effective foreign aid programs in Africa. His voice was measured and fatigued, and he was taking those little pauses candidates take when they're afraid of saying something that might hurt them later on.

Out of the blue I asked, "Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?"

Obama outlines a vision of a new U.S. approach abroad

A very solid speech:

Delivering his presidential campaign's first major address on foreign policy to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Obama said the U.S. must resist the temptation to turn to isolationism in response to the losses the nation has suffered in Iraq. And he declared "The American moment is here.

"America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America," Obama said. "We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission."

Obama presented the challenges of terrorism, nuclear weapons and global warming as an opportunity to enhance America's influence over the world by stressing moral leadership, strengthened alliances and a vigorous U.S. engagement around the globe.

His address provided a withering critique of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as "based on old ideologies and outdated strategies." He said the Bush Administration's uneasy relations with allies and public scandals over mistreatment of prisoners have done long-term damage to the nation's ability to counter the terrorist threat.

"The President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it's time to fill that role once more," Obama said.

--------------------

Obama outlines a vision of a new U.S. approach abroad

Illinois Democrat sees a new "American moment"

By Mike Dorning
Tribune national correspondent

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-070423obama,0,1708439.story

April 23, 2007, 8:36 PM CDT

Sen. Barack Obama accused President Bush Monday of weakening America's global leadership with a "squandered" response to terrorism as the Democratic presidential candidate committed himself to repair relations with allies and the nation's standing around the world.

The Illinois senator pledged to double U.S. foreign aid if elected president, arguing that improvements in stability and living conditions in poor nations would reduce the appeal of terrorism abroad and bolster the security of Americans at home.

Seeking Clues to Obamanomics

I agree with this, even though an Obama Presidency would undoubtedly cost me more on tax day...:

While Mr. Obama's economic platform is still in its formative stages, interviews with his aides and a review of his congressional record and speeches suggest that Obamanomics may place him somewhat to the left of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but to the right of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, another rival for the 2008 nomination. Mrs. Clinton seems to be cultivating the centrist mantle her husband won during his presidency, while Mr. Edwards is courting the party's labor and grassroots activist base.

Mr. Obama's views seem to be tempered by President Clinton's strong push in the 1990s to steer the Democratic Party toward the center, away from the party's prior support for protectionism and rhetoric about class warfare. Yet Mr. Obama has voted against a trade agreement and backs policies that redistribute income by taking revenue from the wealthiest to fund programs for middle- and lower-income households. Like most Democrats, he favors rolling back at least the portion of the Bush tax cuts that favor upper-income families.

"His view is not that the rich are doing too well," says one economic adviser. "But he wants to finance some of the programs to help the poor do better -- and the resources have to come from where people are doing better."

--------------------

Seeking Clues to Obamanomics

Democratic Candidate
Is Just Beginning
To Fill In the Blanks

By DEBORAH SOLOMON
April 24, 2007; Page A4

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117737514082179798-search.html

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is known mainly for his biography, his charisma and his early opposition to the Iraq war. On many issues, particularly economics, the Democratic presidential candidate is just beginning to fill in the blanks. The emerging picture shows a politician willing to use the government to intervene in markets to further core Democratic goals, though careful to avoid hard-edged liberal rhetoric.

One example of how the Illinois Democrat might approach economic policy is an unusual bill he first introduced to little notice shortly after entering the Senate in 2005 -- and reintroduced last week. The "Health Care for Hybrids" proposal would offer federal assistance to car makers struggling with hefty retiree health-care costs in exchange for their building more fuel-efficient automobiles.

Cory Booker's Battle for Newark

A great article about Cory, the enormous challenges he faces, and the equally enormous integrity, smarts, energy and determination he brings to the task!  I've seen and/or had dinner with Cory four times in the past six weeks and, while I've always thought this, I'm even more convinced that he ROCKS -- the greatest mayor in America, bar none.

-----------------------

Cory Booker’s Battle for Newark

A bold reformer takes on entrenched crime and corruption.

Steven Malanga

City Journal, Spring 2007

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_2_cory_booker.html

 

Some politicians shape their election strategies on the campaign trail. Others develop them while poring over poll numbers or plotting with advisors. Cory Booker found his on the streets of Newark. One day in 2004, as Booker strolled near his apartment building with his father, the pair heard shots ring out, and then watched chaos erupt as a pack of teens ran past. Booker rushed toward the source of the gunshots and saw a young man staggering toward him. “I caught him in my hands and saw that his chest, his white T-shirt, was filling with deep rich red blood,” Booker remembers. Though Booker urged the boy to “hold tight” and “stay with me,” 19-year-old Wazn Miller died in his arms, gunned down in broad daylight by a hooded assassin.

Holy cow!  These are AMAZING numbers!

a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Mr. Obama trailing Mrs. Clinton by just 36% to 31%; 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards runs a solid third with 20%. Last month, Mr. Obama lagged behind by 12 percentage points...

 

In the match-up featuring the most vivid contrast on views on Iraq, Mr. Obama leads Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a steadfast supporter of the war effort, by 45% to 39%. That's a reversal from December, when Mr. McCain led by 43% to 38%.

--------------------

Obama Narrows Gap With Clinton

Majority of Americans Side
With Congressional Democrats
On Troop Pullout From Iraq

By JOHN HARWOOD
April 25, 2007 6:49 p.m.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117753516047082551.html

ORANGEBURG, S.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama has pulled close to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

As all Democratic candidates gather here for their first televised debate Thursday night, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Mr. Obama trailing Mrs. Clinton by just 36% to 31%; 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards runs a solid third with 20%. Last month, Mr. Obama lagged behind by 12 percentage points.

Obama's Rise Strains Loyalty on Clinton Turf

More great news:

Only a few months ago, the vast majority of black elected officials in New York were expected to support the presidential candidacy of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. But no longer.

In a series of interviews, a significant number of those officials now say they are undecided about whether to back Mrs. Clinton or one of her main rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the only black politician in the race.

The officials described themselves as impressed with the strength of Mr. Obama’s campaign in recent weeks, saying it reflected a grass-roots enthusiasm for Mr. Obama that many noticed among black voters in their own districts. And that could signal trouble for Mrs. Clinton, forcing her to devote precious attention to her home state, where blacks made up 20 percent of the Democratic primary vote in 2004, just as she has had to scramble to keep black support nationwide.

It sounds like Obama just needs to make a few phone calls:

The vacillation among black leaders in New York was all the more striking as neither Mr. Obama nor his advisers appeared to be spending much, if any, time in the state trying to round up their support before the Feb. 5 primary.

Indeed, many of the leaders interviewed said they had not heard from Mr. Obama or officials in his campaign, though the state had moved its primary to the first Tuesday in February from the first Tuesday in March.

Mr. Obama even turned down a recent invitation to address the New York State Legislature’s black and Hispanic caucus. Still, in some cases, the political leaders said they had been hearing from constituents who support Obama.

--------------------

Obama’s Rise Strains Loyalty on Clinton Turf

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

Published: April 24, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/us/politics/24clinton.html

Only a few months ago, the vast majority of black elected officials in New York were expected to support the presidential candidacy of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. But no longer.

She's Not Buttering Him Up

Maureen Dowd is so off base here.  Obama got more hype than he knows what to do with -- but that doesn't win elections.  At such a critical time, voters want SUBSTANCE, not hype.

The Obamas are both skeptical of hype. Michelle dryly told a reporter at her husband’s Senate swearing-in that perhaps someday, he would do something to earn all the attention he was getting.

But it may not be smart politics to mock him in a way that turns him from the glam J.F.K. into the mundane Gerald Ford, toasting his own English muffins. If all Senator Obama is peddling is the Camelot mystique, why debunk the mystique?

Besides, the coolly detached candidate, striving to seem substantive, is good at turning down the heat himself. He manages to tamp down crowds dying to be electrified. He resists surfing his own wave of excitement.

And of course Dowd can't break her string of 5,000 consecutive snarky columns, so she ends with a cheap shot that Obama long ago said was a mistake and apologized for:

In order to get a bigger yard for their new house on Chicago’s South Side in 2005, the Obamas got into what the senator now confesses was a “boneheaded” real estate arrangement with a sleazy political dealmaker named Tony Rezko, who has been indicted on influence-peddling charges.

On Monday, The Chicago Sun-Times reported more shady Rezko news: “Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems,” from a lack of heat to no lack of drug dealers and squatters.

Mr. Obama riposted that “it wasn’t brought to my attention.” But isn’t that where a dazzling, tough, smart and connected wife could help a guy out?

--------------------

April 25, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

She’s Not Buttering Him Up

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/opinion/25dowd.html

Usually, I love the dynamics of a cheeky woman puncturing the ego of a cocky guy.

I liked it in ’40s movies, and I liked it with Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel, and Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis in “Moonlighting.”

So why don’t I like it with Michelle and Barack?

America's 'Seinfeld' strategy in Iraq

Perhaps the most hilarious, insightful skewering of this Administration's disastrous foreign policy I've read...

The Iraq policy pursued by the Bush administration satisfies the Costanza criterion: it is the opposite of every foreign policy the world has ever met...

In “The Opposite”, George breaches the most fundamental laws in his universe – for example, the age-old principle that “bald men with no jobs and no money, who live with their parents, don’t approach strange women”.

Similarly, in its geopolitical incarnation, adherents to the Costanza doctrine cast aside many of the fundamental tenets they learnt at staff college or graduate school. Let me name a few.

-------------------------

America’s ‘Seinfeld’ strategy in Iraq

By Michael Fullilove, Financial Times

Published: March 29 2007 17:46 | Last updated: March 29 2007 17:46

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f1874316-de08-11db-afa7-000b5df10621.html

The history of US foreign policy is punctuated by a series of doctrines. The Monroe doctrine (1823) declared that European powers would not be allowed to intrude into the western hemisphere. The Truman doctrine (1947) committed Washington to assisting free peoples in the fight against communism. The Nixon doctrine (1969) warned that America’s allies would need to assume primary responsibility for their own defence.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

What a great rant/call to action by Lee Iacocca!  Here's the beginning:

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

And here's the ending:

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.

While he doesn't come right out and endorse Obama, it sure sounds like he will.  On his "Nine Cs of Leadership", Obama may not get a perfect score -- there are some question marks no doubt -- but he sure scores a lot higher than any of the other Presidential contenders!

-------------------------

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wherehavealltheleadersgone

---

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

Obama Addresses Question of Experience

There's not much more Obama can say:

Wooing black voters while tackling questions about his experience, Democrat Barack Obama said Saturday that his years as a community organizer and accomplishments in the Illinois state Senate have prepared him well for the presidency.

Addressing the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Obama touted his successes as an Illinois lawmaker in providing health insurance to children and reducing the price of prescription drugs for senior citizens.

He also told of passing legislation to monitor racial profiling and to require that police interrogations of suspects in capital cases be videotaped.

"I haven't just talked about these things, I've actually done them," he said, adding that he'd worked well with the Republicans who controlled the state Senate for most of his tenure there.

If voters think that the relevant experience for President is how many years one served in the Senate, then Obama's toast.  But I -- and I think most voters -- look at the vast resumes of, say, Rumsfeld and Cheney, and conclude that the more years one has spent in Washington, the most likely one is to have: a) become corrupted by an inherently corrupting system; and b) completely lost touch with average Americans and their needs and concerns.

 

I think Obama has more of the important experience -- and less of the bad experience -- than any of the other candidates.  I can't say it any better than Nick Kristof did in this March 7th NYT Op Ed (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html):

In foreign policy as well, Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.

“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them...

Our biggest mistake since World War II has been a lack of sensitivity to other people’s nationalism, from Vietnam to Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his background, Mr. Obama has been unusually sensitive to such issues and to the need to project respect rather than arrogance. He has consistently shown great instincts.

Mr. Obama’s visit to Africa last year hit just the right diplomatic notes.

Tom Friedman's spot-on here as well (4/18 NYT Op Ed; http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/opinion/18friedman.html):

when was the last time you saw a U.S. president or politician being held up as a role model abroad? It's been awhile. And that got me thinking about Mr. Obama. It seems to me that the strongest case one could make for an Obama presidency right now is rarely articulated: it is his potential to repair the broken relationship between America and the world...

I think Mr. Obama has the potential to force a new discussion. For now at least, he has a certain moral authority because of his life story, which makes him harder to dismiss. And while he is a good talker, he strikes me as an even better listener. It's amazing what people will let you say to them, if you just listen to them first.

-------------------

Obama Addresses Question of Experience
By BETH FOUHY 04.21.07, 3:01 PM ET

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/21/ap3637972.html

Wooing black voters while tackling questions about his experience, Democrat Barack Obama said Saturday that his years as a community organizer and accomplishments in the Illinois state Senate have prepared him well for the presidency.

A nice article about Michelle Obama from tomorrow's Chicago Tribune:

-------------------

MAKING OF A CANDIDATE Sixth in an occasional series

Barack's rock

Obama calls wife Michelle 'an unbelievable professional, and partner, and mother, and wife'—and integral to his campaign

By Christi Parsons, Bruce Japsen and Bob Secter
Tribune staff reporters

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-070422michelle-story,1,5447838.story?coll=chi-news-hed

April 22, 2007

The featured speaker at a luncheon, Michelle Obama is about to ask a crowd of influential Chicago women to commit their hearts and wallets to her husband's presidential campaign.

But first she's going to make sure they know that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama forgot to put the butter away this morning.

"I'm like, 'You're just asking for it,' " she says, sending an exasperated look toward the candidate. " 'You know I'm giving a speech about you today.' "

Ultimately, she praises her husband as a gifted leader who deeply understands the struggles of American women, and she asks far more directly than he does for the crowd's financial and political support.

But Michelle Obama, 43, has a reputation for telling it like she thinks it is—whether about the butter, her husband's ongoing effort to quit smoking or his political priorities. And though she's lighthearted in her critiques, she never plays the role of the deferential political wife.

"He's a gifted man," she tells the audience, "but, in the end, he's just a man."

The fact that the crowd responds with laughter and a long, warm ovation is a good sign for the Obama team.

One of its most formidable tasks, after all, is to win over Democratic-leaning women tempted to help make Sen. Hillary Clinton the first woman president, and Michelle Obama figures prominently in the promotion strategy. She's a charismatic public speaker, an accomplished professional whose life as a working parent looks familiar to all kinds of women.

Fundraising Breaks Political Alliances

More evidence of Obama's remarkable success drawing support from major Democratic fundraisers:

But Clinton was less successful than Obama in courting new, younger high donors just starting to be active in politics - an oversight her fundraising team vows to correct this time.

She was also less successful than Obama in courting a group of well-connected donors who had pledged their support to former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner. Almost all of his national fundraising leaders decamped to Obama after Warner withdrew from the race.

Don Beyer, a businessman and the former lieutenant governor of Virginia under Warner, said he was drawn to Obama as someone who could repair years of political polarization.

"Even Bill Clinton, whom I very much admired as president, didn't get 50 percent of the vote either time he ran," Beyer said. "And the whole Monica Lewinsky thing - it was a divisive period in political life. I'm hungry for a president who will bring this country together."

 

-------------------

Fundraising Breaks Political Alliances
By JIM KUHNHENN 04.21.07, 12:55 PM ET

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/21/ap3637911.html

Not long ago, Washington lobbyist Wayne Berman and California investor Tom Tellefsen shared the same goal: Raise as much money as possible for George W. Bush. Now they are in opposite presidential camps; Berman with John McCain and Tellefsen with Mitt Romney.

Alternate Titles to Barack Obama's Book

I got a kick out of this:

 

Possible titles if The Audacity of Hope had been written by President Bush

The Impertinence of Facts

The Insolence of Public Sentiment

The Nerve of Congressional Oversight

The Hubris of Habeas Corpus

The Effrontery of Climate Change

The Nucular Hope

Friedman with two spot-on points: a) How widely hated this administration is around the world -- and the enormous damage this does to our national interests:

As I travel around, I have never seen a president and a vice president more disliked in more places than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Some of the animus arises from an attitude they project of not caring much about what the world thinks. Some of it is spawned by Bush-Cheney policies toward Iraq, Kyoto or the Geneva Conventions. Some of it is unfair: President Bush, for instance, has been at the forefront in combating H.I.V.-AIDS in Africa. And some is nonsense: foreigners blaming America for their own ills. (It annoys me no end to read about how China is now more popular in Asia than America — China, which censors Google and has supported a Sudanese regime engaged in mass murder in Darfur.)

But in some ways, that's the point: The Bush-Cheney team, by its own hand, has undermined its ability to talk about American principles in a way that foreigners will take seriously. They have moral clarity and no moral authority. Foreigners just have to say "Abu Ghraib" or "Guantánamo," and that ends the discussion. It also lets the foreigners off the hook.

And b) How Obama becoming President is our best hope to reverse this:

when was the last time you saw a U.S. president or politician being held up as a role model abroad? It's been awhile. And that got me thinking about Mr. Obama. It seems to me that the strongest case one could make for an Obama presidency right now is rarely articulated: it is his potential to repair the broken relationship between America and the world...

I think Mr. Obama has the potential to force a new discussion. For now at least, he has a certain moral authority because of his life story, which makes him harder to dismiss. And while he is a good talker, he strikes me as an even better listener. It's amazing what people will let you say to them, if you just listen to them first.

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April 18, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Help Wanted

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/opinion/18friedman.html

While in Kenya last week, my wife, Ann, a teacher, visited Mukuru-Kayaba Primary School in a Nairobi slum, where the U.S. helps finance a lunch program that keeps kids coming to class. When she returned from the school visit, she remarked to me that there was a poster on the wall of the school showing Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, during their visit to Kenya last August. The poster said: The Obamas know their H.I.V. status. Do you know yours? The senator and his wife had volunteered to be tested while in Nairobi.

Money Chooses Sides

This is a very insightful article about the race among Hillary, Obama and Edwards.  (I was one of the co-hosts of the event that the pictures below were taken at.)

 

A good summary:

That Clinton will knock the cover off the ball in the second quarter is a lead-pipe certainty. For all the ambivalence about her in some quarters, in others there's adulation—and Clinton is disciplined and relentless enough to track down every fan. And McAuliffe and Mantz are right to say that her first-quarter showing was stellar. Mismanaged expectations aside, the real story of the money primary so far isn't that Hillary underperformed. She did not. The real story is about how Obama killed—and what it means for his candidacy and the race ahead.

This is so true!

Other Obama bundlers simply found the prospect of plumping for Clinton too depressing to bear. "Hillary has the same problem that Gore and Kerry had," says one. "There are people who believe passionately in her, but a lot have reservations about her electability. I can raise a lot of money for Barack because people are enthusiastic about him. But if I go out and raise money for Hillary, it's like I'm taxing my friends."...

If Hillary wins, I guess I won't get my dream job of ambassador to Burkina Faso! ;-)

"There are some people the Clintons consider Clinton people who have gotten behind Barack," a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary's explains to me. "And there will be total retribution if the opportunity presents itself."

Total retribution? You're joking, right?

"I'm not joking. They're not going to audit somebody's tax return or anything. But once you've been in the Clinton camp, once they think you're part of the team, once you've helped them and they've helped you and you then go somewhere else—I just think it's very hard to crawl back into their good graces. I'm not saying it won't happen. But they won't forget. They may take you back eventually, but they won't forget."

I love Axelrod's comment:

"The most gratifying thing about our fund-raising success isn't the bottom line," Axelrod says, "but the number of people who have contributed and the number who are small contributors. The people we're targeting are new to this; they're not constrained by old loyalties. There's a lot of energy in that world, and it gives us enormous potential to grow." When I ask if he's implying a contrast to Clintonworld, Axelrod offers up a pointed aperçu: "There's a difference between grabbing low-hanging fruit and planting trees."

THIS is quite an interesting scenario to contemplate:

That someone will deliver a knockout blow that day is the assumption of all three campaigns. But what if they are wrong? The possibility is tantalizing, and has led at least one Democratic savant to put forward a titillating scenario. "I may be the first idiot foolish enough to say it out loud, but we could be looking at something unheard of in the modern era—someone going into convention with only 30 percent, 40 percent of delegates," Dean's campaign guru, Joe Trippi, said recently. "Edwards, Hillary, and Obama may have enough cash before Iowa even happens to go all the way. The polls are basically all dead heats … What could happen is that we're headed for a brokered convention."

The brokered-convention scenario is the political equivalent of the fantasy of a Beatles reunion (back when they were all still alive, that is): "The obsession of nostalgia buffs," as Axelrod puts it.

-----------------

Money Chooses Sides

In a barn-burning, record-smashing fund-raising campaign season, Barack Obama tapped a new breed of Manhattan donors and won the expectations game. But because of the new primary schedule, excess is barely enough.

• By John Heilemann
• NY Magazine
• http://nymag.com/news/politics/30634/

The investment banker Robert Wolf first met Barack Obama one afternoon in December in a midtown conference room. Obama was in town to deliver a speech at a charity dinner for children in poverty at the Mandarin Oriental—but also to pursue another, less high-minded, but more momentous, objective: to begin the process of attempting to pick Hillary Clinton's pocket.

Donors Linked to the Clintons Shift to Obama

More good news from the front page of today's NYT.  No wonder Hillary's campaign didn't want to release the breakdown of how much she raised for the primary vs. the general -- Obama smoked her:

Mrs. Clinton raised $19.1 million for the primary, and $6.9 million for use in the general election (accessible only if she wins the nomination).

Mr. Obama raised $24.8 million for the primary and $1 million for the general election.

---------------

Donors Linked to the Clintons Shift to Obama

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ARON PILHOFER

Published: April 16, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/politics/16donate.html

WASHINGTON, April 15 — As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks to reassemble the Democratic money machine her husband built, some of its major fund-raisers have already signed on with Senator Barack Obama.

Among the biggest fund-raisers for Mr. Obama’s campaign are as many as a half-dozen former guests of the Clinton White House. At least two are close enough to the Clintons to have slept in the Lincoln bedroom.

At minimum, a dozen were major fund-raisers for President Bill Clinton. At least four worked in the administration and one, James Rubin, is a son of a former Clinton Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin. About two dozen of the top Obama fund-raisers have contributed to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaigns or political action committee, some as recently as a few months ago.

Obama on Letterman

Obama was great on Letterman last Monday.  It's on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTOi3Tqg6uA (part 1) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOG0hFtnV6I (part 2)

Good to see Media Matters (a great site, which initially picked up on Imus's comments) holding the mainstream media to account for "rehashing debunked Obama rumors":

----------------------

Couric's "Notebook" rehashed debunked Obama rumors

http://mediamatters.org/items/200704130003

In the April 12 edition of her "Notebook" video blog, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric asked, "Is America ready to elect a president who grew up praying in a mosque?" and proceeded to repeat debunked rumors surrounding Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) childhood years in Indonesia.

Couric claimed that Obama's "background sparked rumors that he had studied at a radical madrassa, or Quranic school -- rumors his campaign denied, declaring that Obama is now a practicing Christian." However, in noting simply that Obama's campaign "denied" the rumors that he attended a madrassa, Couric ignored the fact that these allegations have been thoroughly debunked.

Kudos for quickly fixing this -- even though it was obviously inadvertent, the media surely would have made a stink had it discovered the problem first!

----------------------

Obama Returns Lobbyists' Contributions

Saturday April 14, 2007 2:31 AM

AP Photo SCWG112

By JIM KUHNHENN

Associated Press Writer

www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6556463,00.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has returned more than $50,000 in political contributions after discovering the donors were lobbyists.

Obama, who has pledged to change the ways of Washington, has repeatedly said he will not accept money from lobbyists or from special interest political action committees.

``I am concerned about the role of lobbyists and campaign donations generally in our politics,'' Obama told The Associated Press while campaigning in Florence, S.C. ``That's part of the reason I don't take PAC money and I'm not taking federal lobbyist money in this campaign.''

As the campaign prepared to file its first quarter finance report to the Federal Election Commission, it noted that it has given back $50,566 from 49 donors whom the campaign identified as lobbyists.

It's always good for Obama when other candidates are exposed as pandering, gutless weasels on an issue...

----------------------

Giuliani Accused of Pandering on Confederate Flag

NAACP Official: 'Giuliani Is Posturing Himself to Try to Get the Conservative, Right-Wing, Southern White Vote'

By JAKE TAPPER

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=3041867

April 14, 2007 — - A civil rights leader in Alabama Saturday accused former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani of flip-flopping and pandering on the confederate flag during his visit to the state capitol earlier in the week.

Giuliani, currently the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, has in the past seemed to voice personal opposition to the flag, which to many African-Americans is an offensive symbol of bigotry and slavery.

But when the former New York mayor visited Montgomery, Ala., on Tuesday he said simply that the matter was a state issue.

Gotta love this, from Maureen Dowd in today's NYT.  She's been snarky on Obama, but nothing like this on Hillary!

Except for Larry Birkhead, all the “Who’s your daddy?” brio this week belongs to Senator Barack Obama, who told David Letterman he would not be Hillary’s second on a ticket, and who remarkably managed to beat her on primary fund-raising with a more democratic and recyclable pool of donors.

That feat of strength led to the hilarious spectacle of Terry McAuliffe, who had been using the Bush-Cheney line of you’re-with-us-or-agin’-us to try to bully Democratic fat cats into giving solely to Hillary, telling ABC’s Jake Tapper: “Ultimately, forget the money. You’ve got to get the votes. And right now, Hillary wins in that category.”

Like the panic in the Daddy Party, the crazed sputtering in the once-dominant Mommy Camp is something to behold.

Hillary has been wielding Bill as a bludgeon on support and money. If you were ever behind him, you’d better fall into line behind her. But doesn’t that undermine her presentation of herself as a self-reliant feminist aiming to be the first Madame President? If you can only win by leaning so heavily on your man for your muscle, isn’t that a benign form of paternalism?

--------------------

April 11, 2007

Daddies in a Panic, and Mommy, Too

By MAUREEN DOWD

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/opinion/11dowd.html

Washington

The mind reels at the mind.

The Times’s science section devoted itself yesterday to the topic of Desire, the myriad ways in which the human mind causes the body to get turned on.

Obama: Fire Imus

Kudos to Obama for taking the lead on this.  I was torn on whether firing was too harsh -- I was thinking maybe a few months' suspension plus a $1 million donation to Rutgers' scholarship program -- but he's convinced me.

---------------------

Obama: Fire Imus

Obama First White House Contender to Call for Imus' Firing Over Racial Slur

By JAKE TAPPER

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/print?id=3031317

April 11, 2007— - In an interview with ABC News Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., called for the firing of talk radio host Don Imus. Obama said he would never again appear on Imus' show, which is broadcast on CBS Radio and MSNBC television.

"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."

Obama said he appeared once on Imus' show two years ago, and "I have no intention of returning."

Obama's Big Night in Town

I was one of the co-hosts of a fundraiser for Obama on Monday evening, which went spectacularly well.  Obama was amazing, esp. during the Q&A.  I happen to agree with nearly all of his views/positions, but even those who don't I think would have been very impressed with his answers on really tough issues like school reform, Iraq, gay marriage, etc.  It's so clear that he's really thought through the issues and that his views reflect his genuine beliefs, rather than what's politically expedient (no surprise to any who's read his books).  What a breath of fresh air!

 

I was quoted in this story in today's NY Observer:

During one question-and-answer session at the home of retired investment banker Steven Gluckstern, a guest asked bluntly whether Mr. Obama was street-fighter enough to become President. It was a question, according to one of the event’s co-hosts, money manager Whitney Tilson, that the candidate warmed to.

 

“He responded by pointing out that he came to Chicago many years ago with nothing—no assets, no political whatever—and he had a meteoric rise,” Mr. Tilson recalled. “And I think his concluding comment was, ‘I think I’m pretty good at this game of politics.’”

This was also from me -- the audience applauded this line:

Mr. Obama responded to a question about one of his opponents by saying, according to an attendee, that he was not running against Hillary Clinton, but against cynicism.

---------------------

Obama’s Big Night in Town
He finds three-stop adulation, but also questions about his readiness

Lizzy Ratner, NY Observer
4/16/2007
Page 9

http://www.observer.com/20070416/20070416_Lizzy_Ratner_politics_newsstory2.asp

On Monday, April 9, less than a week after the Obama team announced that he had all but matched Hillary Clinton’s first-quarter fund-raising totals, Barack Obama was back in New York—epicenter of Democratic campaign cash and Clinton support—to get started on the second quarter. Making his way to affairs from Soho to Central Park West in a hulking Chevrolet Suburban, Mr. Obama covered three events in less than five hours.

Inside Clinton Campaign, A Potent Political Machine

(From the front page of today's WSJ) You gotta tip your hat to the well-oiled Clinton machine -- that's why they're the team to beat.  In fairness, the Obama team is doing a remarkable job -- most incredibly, by nearly matching Hillary's fundraising -- despite, as one person I heard said, "trying to bolt on the wings of a 747 while it's barreling down the runway."  Amidst a number of stories about the Obama team being a day late and a dollar short, this is the most positive part of the article for Obama:

One area where Mr. Obama has outpaced Mrs. Clinton is Internet donations, a reflection of the appeal of his messages of generational change and to Web-savvy activists opposed to the Iraq war. Mr. Obama's campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, points to a recent student-organized rally at George Mason University outside of Washington that drew 3,600 attendees, without support from the campaign. That shows the "grass-roots energy that Sen. Obama has inspired," Mr. Burton says.

Dave Tiffany, a 59-year-old retired computer entrepreneur from Hollis, N.H., came to a town-hall session with Mrs. Clinton in February with a sign reading, "Quit Stalling, Bring Our Troops Home." He says a security guard told him Mrs. Clinton would take a question from him if he turned over the sign. He did, but the message apparently didn't get through and he had to shout at the end to get his question in. "I was definitely left with the impression that it was a scripted event and that we were all being spun," Mr. Tiffany says.

He had a better impression of Mr. Obama after an event last week. Mr. Tiffany says Mr. Obama "was very open and forthcoming. He seemed to be presenting himself for an interview for the most important job in America."

------------------------

POWERHOUSE ON THE TRAIL
Inside Clinton Campaign, A Potent Political Machine

Veteran Team Masters
Tactical Nuts and Bolts;
Lagging in Web Money

By BRODY MULLINS
April 9, 2007; Page A1

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Bill Shaheen has been a kingmaker in Democratic politics here since helping Jimmy Carter win a surprise victory in the 1976 presidential primary. In 2004, he helped John Kerry carry the state, and was expected to work for him again in 2008. Then, in January, Mr. Kerry dropped out -- and Hillary Clinton pounced.

"John Kerry said he was out at 10 p.m. At 11, she's on the phone saying she wants to meet with me," Mr. Shaheen recalled in an interview. No other candidate called for more than a week.

An interesting article in today's NYT from a fellow Hawaiian.

There is, in this crowded paradise, a slot for everybody.Or almost everybody.

For Mr. Obama, fitting in at Punahou could have been hard, given its reputation as a cliquish school dominated since missionary days by the rich white people who founded it. Mr. Obama, a scholarship student, wasn’t rich and didn’t look white.

Beyond that, his parents — University of Hawaii graduate students — and his Kansas grandparents, who helped raise him after his father returned to Africa, had no roots in the local culture. He lived in a state that, then as now, had a minuscule African-American population. He seems to have been surrounded by people who knew just enough about black America to be stupidly insensitive, and his family couldn’t help him.

“I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle,” he wrote. “I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.”

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April 9, 2007

Editorial Observer

For Obama, Estranged in a Strange Land, Aloha Had Its Limits

By LAWRENCE DOWNES

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/opinion/09mon4.html

Reporters have been shuttling across the Pacific lately in search of the early chapters of Senator Barack Obama’s life story. Their guidebook is his memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” in which he describes his adolescence in Honolulu — where he was born and lived through high school, except for a few years in Indonesia — as a difficult time marked by drug use, disaffection and a painful search for identity.

The New York Times listed the ingredients of his young psyche as “racial confusion,” “feelings of alienation” and “disquietude.” The Los Angeles Times suggested that it was not just angst, but boiling angst.

Sounds oddly bleak, doesn’t it? Angst boils up in most people at some point in life, but if there were any place the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan could have fit in, wouldn’t it have been Hawaii? If there is a heaven, it probably looks a lot like Oahu, and the happy souls in it probably go around talking like our national spokesman for racial relaxation, Senator Obama.

An article from tomorrow's NYT about how Obama is taking a different approach with small groups in Iowa.  A strategy, as the article below makes clear, that's not without risk, but ultimately a smart one I think, as it helps people connect with him and vice-versa...

For most Democrats, Mr. Obama is the Illinois senator who riveted the Democratic National Convention with a keynote speech that marked him as one of the most powerful speakers his party had produced in 50 years. But as Mr. Obama methodically worked his way across swaths of rural northern Iowa — his tall figure and skin color making him stand out at diners and veterans’ homes, at high schools and community colleges — it was clear that he is not presenting himself, stylistically at least, the way he did two years ago when he gripped Democrats at the Fleet Center in Boston.

He is cerebral and easy-going, often talking over any applause that might rise up from his audience, and perhaps consciously trying to present a political style that contrasts with the more charged presences of John Edwards, the former trial lawyer and senator from North Carolina, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

He rarely mentions President Bush, as he disparages the partisan quarrels of Washington, and is, at most, elliptically critical of Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton when he notes that he had opposed the war in Iraq from the start; the two of them voted to authorize the war in 2002.

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April 8, 2007

2 Years After Big Speech, a Lower Key for Obama

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/us/politics/08obama.html

COLO, Iowa, April 6 — Senator Barack Obama is not big on what he calls red-meat applause lines when he campaigns in small communities like this one, 45 miles northeast of Des Moines. He does not tell many jokes. He talks in even, measured tones, and at times is so low-key that he lulls his audiences into long, if respectful, silences.

Mr. Obama likes to recount the chapters of his unusual life: growing up in Hawaii, living overseas, community organizing in Chicago, working in the Illinois legislature, though not his years as a United States senator. He talks — more often than not in broad, general strokes — about an Obama White House that would provide health care to all, attack global warming, improve education, fix Social Security and end the war in Iraq. His campaign events end almost as an afterthought, surprising voters used to the big finishes typically served up by the presidential candidates seeking their support.