Link Banana

David Brooks seems to have captured the essence of Barack Obama’s stage presence and what good or bad it might tell us about his presidency.

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.

Timothy Noah finally said I was (unconsciously) waiting for someone to:

I have never understood why people get upset whenever Ralph Nader runs for president.

And his conclusion is great:

Nader doesn’t believe in compromise, and, yes, that would be a problem if he ever really did become president. But his stubbornness has been only an asset in his long career as an advocate, and I’m not so sure it’s a liability in his newer career as a perpetual candidate. In the current election, Nader is the sole presidential candidate you’re likely to hear about (now that Dennis Kucinich has dropped out) who stands forthrightly for adopting a single-payer solution to the health-care crisis, a stance universally regarded as politically impractical. But single payer is the only solution of much practical value in the real world, as evidenced by the experience of nearly all advanced democracies. If Nader does no more in the 2008 election than oblige major-party candidates to consider that stubborn reality for five minutes, he’ll have done us all a big favor.

But in his decision, he writes a New York Times Op-Ed more substantive than most the Times runs — that may be unfair, but this is definitely good.

WATCHING the 2008 presidential campaign, you sometimes get the feeling that the candidates — smart, all of them — must know better. They must know we can’t fix our economy and create jobs by isolating America from global trade. They must know that we can’t fix our immigration problems with border security alone. They must know that we can’t fix our schools without holding teachers, principals and parents accountable for results. They must know that fighting global warming is not a costless challenge. And they must know that we can’t keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals unless we crack down on the black market for them.

The vast majority of Americans know that all of this is true, but — politics being what it is — the candidates seem afraid to level with them.

Though the headline result of Gallup’s survey about what former presidents should be our new president isn’t too surprising, I was surprised that Mr. Clinton placed third overall. Also surprising: Mr. Kennedy was the second favorite among Republicans. Showing our short collective memory, anyone president before 1940 did rather poorly — with Mr. Lincoln doing the best among those more historic candidates.

(via The Page)

Troy Patterson, Slate’s TV critic, has a fun little essay about the hypnotic power of C-SPAN’s unblinking campaign coverage:

That night in September found Romney working the town of Littleton, N.H., at a leisurely pace. There he was in a candy store. “This should be a red state, so I’m only going to get red candy,” he vowed, plastic bag in hand, scooping up Swedish fish. “You’ve got these lids on real tight. Is that to preserve freshness?” His total was $11.52, and when it came time to pay, he reached into the leave-a-penny-take-a-penny cup for the two cents. I wondered whether to read the gesture as a proud statement of fiscal prudence or an unwitting signal that he’s apt to support socialist schemes.