David Brooks feels the nation’s zeitgeist has changed. To Brooks, Obama’s call for voters to reject fear, partisanship and textbook politics and vote for a new era of national unity—a call in tune with our new zeitgeist—helps explain Barack’s rising popularity. Brooks attributes our changed mood to Iraq’s dropping from the headlines, the Iran threat’s possible decline, reduced Israeli-Palestinian tensions, Pakistan’s avoiding implosion, and Hugo Chavez’s reversal in Venezuela. Brooks could have added to his list North Korea’s stepping back from confrontation.Ellen Goodman worries Brooks could be right about Obama. In her weekend column, Goodman goes after Obama as could only someone worried history has passed her by. Goodman writes Obama “described boomer politics with something close to disdain as a psychodrama ‘rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago', and. . . [called] Hillary [one who’s] ‘been fighting some of the same fights since the '60s.’” Ouch!
To Goodman, those were fights worth fighting. “The '60s opened up huge and important conflicts. It was . . . about . . . black and white relationships, male and female relationships, gay and straight relationships, all kinds of authority and our place in the world.”
Goodman believes “the campaign against any Republican will take place in the fray. . . [I]n an era of ugly politics. . . [w]e don't need healing but resounding defeat. . . [That means we need a] bulldozer [who] can't be kissed into submission.”
Hillary.
1 comment:
This comment from Dick:
From the start, Obama's major attraction has been that he is the fresh face and can appeal to however many idealists remain in the voting public, or more generally to the huddled masses yearning for a change from politics as usual. In the primaries this plays well against Hillary, with her high personal negatives plus her links to Clinton-1 and related hijinks. If the cards break right (like the lower salience of foreign crises cited in the articles you mention), this difference in image and appeal could possibly make the difference in the primaries. And of course in the general election Obama offers a change from the bleak history of Bush-2 without as much partisan edge (or negatives) as Hillary and most of the other Democrat contenders. I strongly suspect that any Democrat will win in '08, but Obama would in my view be a tougher opponent for the Republicans and a real contender even in a lot of the (formerly) Red states.
Dick
Post a Comment