Barack's Mother Makes An Appearance

Barack Has To Talk Much About His Mother

This is a great move. This humanizes the candidate. Obama campaign staffers and volunteers might not realize this, but most of America does not know Barack Obama. A few months into 1992, most Americans thought Bill Clinton had a rich father. They confused him with Jack Kennedy in more ways than one.

I would not be surprised if many voters start out by confusing Obama with Jesse Jackson. They might not realize he is biracial. They might think he is from the South.

Most of America does not know the basic facts about Barack Obama's life. That just is the fact the campaign has to deal with. That does not have to be our end point, but that is the starting point, we like it or not.

The American people have got to know you as a person before they will vote for you.

After Howard Dean's I Have A Scream speech in Iowa, his wife was out on television saying how Howard Dean simply never, never gets angry. She did not remember the last time he got angry. That was the truth about Howard Dean. But to this day a large chunk of America thinks Howard Dean is some crazed guy, if not wholly, then partly, if not all the time, then part of the time.

They might not be able to demonize you, but curious things can work against you. You can end up looking too bookish and smart. The guy went to Harvard, after all. That is not necessarily a good thing in everyone's book. He went to Harvard, and he taught at Chicago. That can be a double negative.

Why is Hillary beating Obama in the lower income brackets? You got to think. His Columbia, Harvard, Chicago stuff - glad that we are that they are there - has to be balanced out with Indonesia and the South Side.

Life story and policy have to go hand in hand.

Barack Obama can better tackle the war on terror because he has spent some years of childhood in Indonesia. Anti-terror policy is good, but spicing it up with his life story makes it more palatable.



Race

Frankly it is also about race. Barack's mother was white. He is biracial. He can not be anything else. He can not be only white, or only black. The reason I know my first language so well is because that is what I grew up around. Similarly Barack grew up around his white mother and white grandparents. His biologically defining experiences have been white.

The politics of race is there. And Barack transcends that with his political style.

Barack's mother has to be talked about not because she is white, but because she is the mother Barack knew. That mother impressioned him more than anyone else. And that story has to be told.

In telling the story of that mother, you make the candidate come alive.



Story, Policy

Stories have to be told. Stories from Barack's life. But also other stories. Like the story from South Carolina of "Fired Up!" and "Ready To Go!" The people need narratives to better understand the policy.

The weaving of story with policy has to be constant.

You tell stories, you talk policy. The two go together.



In The News

Obama uses mom's image in new ad Chicago Tribune Debuting his second new television ad in Iowa this week, Sen. Barack Obama is using an image of his deceased mother to try to make the case that he is the best qualified to bring change to the way the nation delivers health care. Called "Mother," the 30-second ad briefly shows a picture of Stanley Ann Dunham, who died at 53 of ovarian cancer in 1995. In her arms is a young Obama. Scheduled to start Friday, the ad arrives during a week in which Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has received extensive coverage for unveiling her health-care proposal. "To fix health care, we have to fix Washington," Obama says in the ad, after explaining that his mother spent her final months "more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well." It's an anecdote Obama had been recently field-testing on the campaign trail. "She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality," he said in Santa Barbara, Calif. "She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn't sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a pre-existing condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it's like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health-care system. And it's wrong. It's not who we are as a people." In the ad, Obama promises a health-care plan that will "cover everyone."
Obama Cites Mother's Illness in New Ad The Associated Press
Obama Cites Mother's Illness in New Ad The Associated Press
Obama's mother in new ad Baltimore Sun, United States

Not Allowing President Of Iran To Visit World Trade Center Is A Mistake

40% or more of Republicans to this day believe it was Saddam who was behind 9/11. That just is not true. It was Bin Laden. Saddam and Bin Laden did not like each other. Bin Laden always fantasized about toppling Saddam and erecting an Islamist regime in Iraq, like everywhere else. That is not any way to get along with a dictator.

But Bush-Cheney peddled the lie hard and that is how the war on Iraq was launched.

Ahmadinejad might not be a nice guy, but he also had nothing to do with 9/11. Like they say, just the facts, mam.

The CIA toppled a democratic regime in Iran and put in place a monarchy. That started the bad blood between the two peoples. The US backed Saddam to the hilt during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, just like it backed Bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

I am for democracy, and Ahmadinejad, although an elected leader, is only partly elected. There is this supreme council of hard core mullahs in Iran. Only those candidates approved by those mullahs get to run for president. But that still makes Ahmadinejad one step ahead of the Saudi king, Mubarak and Gaddafi.

And I don't see the nuclear crisis in black and white. If all the poor countries of the world were to want to grow at 10% a year as they should, there is no option but to harness nuclear energy to the hilt. And so there is a need to have a strong international body that will apply uniformly across the globe standards that all nuclear power plants including those in the US and France and Russia and China and elsewhere would have to meet if they can be allowed to operate, and that in a framework of a total nuclear disarmament, a goal that gets complicated by not all states being democracies. Perhaps the conversion to democracy will have to happen first. But there is no postponing the energy part.

The Energy Solution: Nuclear Energy

It is tough for women in Iran like in all the other Muslim countries. And Ahmadinejad will have to take some responsibility.

But this is not about analyzing the Iranian president or his country.

The state of Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. And that is reason enough to not bar this guy from going to visit the World Trade Center. He wants to go pay homage.

He might be responding to Obama's call that he will, as president, hold direct talks with the president of Iran. Reagan talked to Gorbachev, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev, Obama will talk to Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad responded by wanting to visit the World Trade Center. He wanted to send a message out directly to the American people that he feels their pain, that he is on their side, even though it has been impossible for him to talk to the leadership that just does not believe in dialogue and diplomacy.

This guy should be allowed to talk to the American people and reach out to the American people if he wants to.

Iran is a state with a standing army. America is a state with the most powerful standing army in the world. Ahmadinejad is many things but not stupid. The state of Iran would not get involved with something like 9/11. They did not for a fact. And that fact has to be stated.

There are those who imagine that in the long run Iran and America are going to be two democracies who get along with each other just fine. The two peoples get along just fine. I am one of them. As to how long a wait that will be is anyone's guess right now, but I believe that time span can be shortened through strong, but engaged leadership, an informed leadership that does not peddle the prejudice that it was Saddam and perhaps Ahmadinejad who were behind 9/11. To knowingly fudge the truth on 9/11 is a disrespect to those who died that day.

Like Rice said once, Iran is not Iraq. Well, Ahmadinejad is not Bin Laden.

Just like in America, there is a political spectrum in the Arab world. Bin Laden and the Islamists are the extreme right. They are the Arab KKK. Then there is the right wing. That would be the unelected leaders like the Saudi king, Mubarak, Gaddafi and the all and sundry monarchs. Then there are the semi-elected right wingers like this Iranian guy. You move further to the middle and you meet reformers. Sadly these variants of the right occupy a large chunk of the spectrum leaving little room for democrats and reformers.

To not be able to see the richness of the spectrum is to tie your hands behind your back in the political solutions department. To be able to see the richness gives you the ability to drive wedges between the various segments.

American right wingers also try to demonize China to the hilt. China says it is just a poor country trying to feed its people. Iran is also a poor country. Ultimately they need to get along with America. Deep down that is what they want. So small measures of trust building are a good thing.

The Arab masses were not behind 9/11.

In the mean time Ahmadinejad gets to watch this video of mine that has received more views than any other of the 600 plus videos I have uploaded at Google Video.



Video: World Trade Center

In The News

New York bans 'photo op' visit to Ground Zero by Iran's president Scotsman
Controversy swirls around Iranian leader's visit to New York AFP
Ahmadinejad heads to Columbia in NY Jerusalem Post
Iranian President Says He Will Not Insist on a Ground Zero Visit New York Times, United States Ahmadinejad said he just wanted to pay his respects at the site and was “amazed” by Americans who viewed his plans as insulting. ...... Mr. Pelley: Sir, what were you thinking? The World Trade Center site is the most sensitive place in the American heart, and you must have known that visiting there would be insulting to many, many Americans. Mr. Ahmadinejad: Why should it be insulting? Mr. Ahmadinejad: Well, I’m amazed. Mr. Ahmadinejad: You are representing a media and you’re a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there. ....... Bloomberg said it would be “inappropriate” for the Iranian leader to visit ground zero. .... particularly this guy who has expressed views that I find totally abhorrent” ..... Bloomberg said: “I think who Columbia invites is up to them. That’s what academic institutions do. ..... questions remained over whether the city had the legal authority or practical ability to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from going to the publicly accessible areas around the World Trade Center site. ....... But the city has evidently been defining “ground zero” narrowly, as the World Trade Center site itself, which is not open to the public because of the construction under way. ....... The police commissioner said that a visit to ground zero by Mr. Ahmadinejad would “adversely impact” public safety. ...... As the head of his country’s delegation to the United Nations, Mr. Ahmadinejad would ordinarily have the right to move fairly freely within Manhattan. The United States broke off relations with Iran in 1980 during the hostage crisis, but Iranian diplomats at the United Nations are permitted under diplomatic protocols to travel within 25 miles of Columbus Circle. Lower Manhattan is less than 5 miles from Midtown.
Iranian president still wants to visit WTC site Xinhua, China
Iran Spokesman: Ahmadinejad Won't Visit WTC WNBC, NY
Decision 2008: Iran's request has candidates speaking out WPTV, FL
Israel's friends are calling for the arrest of Iran's president in ... Jewish Telegraphic Agency, NY
Iran Case Shows Ground Zero Access Tight The Associated Press
Ahmadinejad's Ground Zero Ploy TIME The shrill reaction to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's request to visit Ground Zero is playing right into the Iranian President's hands. ..... his power base is made up mainly of Iranians who participated in the 1979 revolution, among whom the loathing of the U.S. runs very deep. Nothing energizes them more than the sight of their leader being excoriated by the hated Americans. ..... When TIME interviewed him last year, we asked if he had visited the site. His response: "It was not necessary. It was widely covered in the media." And he once wrote a letter to President Bush, suggesting that the attacks on the towers were the work of unspecified "intelligence and security services." ...... a transparently political stunt, aimed at the audience back home. ..... New York's tabloids hyperventilated. The Daily News shrieked: "If you even think of setting foot near Ground Zero, you can GO TO HELL!" The paper went on to describe Ahmadinejad as a "madman," and "an enemy of the U.S. in particular and of civilization in general." ...... American politicians — especially presidential hopefuls looking to score easy points — lit into the Iranian President with a candor they rarely show on the campaign trail. "It is unacceptable for [Ahmadinejad], who refuses to renounce and end his own country's support of terrorism, to visit the site of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in our nation's history," said Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani — who was New York City mayor at the time of the attacks — thundered: "This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring bin Laden's son and other al-Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons." His fellow Republican candidate Mitt Romney described Ahmadinejad's request as "shockingly audacious." ...... It allows him to tell his fellow Iranians: "Look, I tried to be a nice guy, I wanted to lay a wreath on Ground Zero, but these Americans don't appreciate our compassion." And to the conservative mullahs and hard-liners of Iran, Ahmadinejad's stock rises when Americans put him down.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad banned from Ground Zero Times Online, UK
Local outrage over Ahmadinejad WTC request Newsday, NY
Ahmadinejad denied access to Ground Zero The Carpetbagger Report
Columbia University: Ahmadinejad Yes, ROTC No Yahoo! News
Ahmadinejad Is Not Allowed to Visit Ground Zero eFluxMedia
Furore over site visit Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Bush backs decision to reject Iranian leader's Ground Zero visit People's Daily Online, China
New Yorkers Try To Get Audience With Ahmadinejad WCBS-TV New York, NY
Anger as US uni lets Iran's Ahmadinejad speak Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
University urged to cancel Ahmadinejad speech Reuters
Iranian president's request to visit Ground Zero denied Resident Publications, NY
Ground Zeroout of bounds for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Bolton: Ahmadinejad's Proposed Ground Zero Visit "Nothing But ... National Review Online Blogs, NY
Iranian President Ahmadinejad Can't Go to Ground Zero, But He Will ... Gothamist, NY
STOP Ahmadinejad: Calling 1000's to Ground Zero Monday 10am! Town Hall, DC
New York: Iran's leader can't visit ground zero CNN International
NY nixes Ground Zero visit by Iran's leader USA Today
Iranian President's Visit to Ground Zero Denied FOX News
No way, no how New York Daily News, NY
US Denies Permission To Iranian President For 9/11 Site Visit AHN
New York Police Deny Ahmadinejad Ground Zero Visit (Update1) Bloomberg

Police deny Iran president's visit to Ground Zero Newsday
Nepal PM fails to woo Maoists back into govt Times of India his party would start collecting signatures for a campaign to convene parliament, bring a no-trust motion against Koirala and have two-thirds of the MPs declare Nepal a republic with the abolition of monarchy.
Jackson says Obama 'acting white' on civil rights case Newsday
Edwards' Wife Bashes Clinton Health Plan The Associated Press
Obama Face-to-Camera With Iowa New York Times In Mr. Obama’s successful Senate race in 2004, he heavily utilized the face-to-camera format.
Elizabeth Edwards: Hillary Clinton's health care plan 'remarkably ... Atlanta Journal Constitution