Obama-Spielberg '08

I have an unconventional idea for Obama's VP: Steven Spielberg. He brings some unusual qualifitications: he's comfortable with media elites, but he's very popular in the heartland. He has military experience (Saving Private Ryan) and foreign policy experience (Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark and sequels). He has a wide range of experience with the space program (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., War of the Worlds), immigration (The Terminal, E.T.), and law enforcement (Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can). He hasn't cast a lot of prominent women in great roles, but he does have The Color Purple to his credit. His position on genetic engineering is pretty clear (Jurassic Park). His health care experience is very limited, but he already knows Hillary, so he can ask her for advice.

Supposedly Obama has problems with the Jewish vote. Problem solved! Talk about fundraising - he's got that one covered! Obviously he might have to multi-task if he wants to keep directing, but I think he would agree that only directing one movie for the next four years would be a small sacrifice for his country. Besides, he's been working as a director and producer at the same time for years - he can clearly handle more than one job at a time. They would have to figure out exactly what the deal is with DreamWorks, but that just makes the negotiations that much more interesting!

Spielberg would do a lot to bridge the generational divide. He's a bit older than Obama (turning 62 this year), and many people of his generation or older grew up with his movies. He may be one of the least controversial Baby Boomers out there! A liberal from Hollywood who's also a highly successful capitalist! Resolves the left-right divide rather nicely!

And talk about the new economy! I don't think we would have to worry about maintaining our technological superiority with Spielberg as VP.

All in all, I don't see any downsides to an Obama-Spielberg ticket. We need a man who can inspire millions, but knows how to get things done. A pragmatic dreamer. A man respected both at home and around the world. I think the choice is clear.

Obama-Speilberg. Because hope is the ultimate special effect.

Opposing Term Limits, #1

The NY Times has an editorial about term limits, prompted by Michael Bloomberg's forced retirement from being Mayor of New York. I haven't lived in NY under Bloomberg, so I'm not really in a position to judge how well he's done, but damn I'm sure he was better than his nutcase wackjob predecessor Rudy G.

The Times editorial board, composed of sensible, rational people, is not a fan of term limits:

Term limits are undeniably seductive. They seem to promise relief from mediocre, self-perpetuating incumbents and from gridlocked legislatures in places like Albany. They also diminish democracy, arbitrarily deny choice, reduce accountability and squander experience.

I agree with all of that. Imagine if we had term limits in any other part of life. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Smith, but you've had Dr. Jones as your personal physician for 10 years, so you're at your end of your term limits with him as you doctor. It's too bad that you've developed a rapport, he's seen you and your family through many diseases and such, but we have term limits on how long you can have one doctor."

Or how about this? "I'm sorry, Mr. Jordan, you've been playing for the Chicago Bulls for 6 years, which is the maximum allowed under term limits for basketball players, so you've got to be traded. I realize that you enjoy playing under Phil Jackson and with Scottie Pippen, but that's the law."

Apart from the pragmatic issues of experience, etc., my primary issue with term limits is one of principle. Term limits restrict my freedom. The Constitution places three restrictions on who can serve in various offices: age, residency, and citizenship. I realize that there is an Amendment which places limits on how long Presidents can serve. Since it's an Amendment, there's nothing I can do about it. But I still find it objectionable. If I want to vote for the same person for 30 years in a row, that should be my right as an American. The right to vote for my candidate of choice is my sacred right as an American. So that's my primary objection to term limits: they are unAmerican.

Hillary's Great Speech

I just watched Hillary's concession. I now forgive her for not conceding on Tuesday, and I'm actually very glad that she didn't. I can see why she needed a couple of days to get ready.

This was one of the best speeches that I have ever seen from a Clinton, either her or Bill. It touched on all of the standard talking points, she endorsed Obama wholeheartedly, gave thanks to her supporters, etc., etc. All pretty much expected. But what really surprised me, and why I give it such high marks, is that she worked a bit of political magic that I did not even remotely expect: she endorsed Obama from a position of strength, not weakness.

Every endorsement that I have seen from a losing candidate has been as an act of necessity, but Hillary almost made it look like it was her choice. All of those previous endorsements that I have seen have had an undercurrent of pain and disappointment, but Hillary did everything she could to work some amazing alchemy, and transfer as much of her campaign enthusiasm as she could to Obama, with a minimum of pain and disappointment. She made it clear that whatever hurt feelings there are from the past few months pale next to the challenges Democrats face on many fronts, from just beating John McCain to cleaning up George Bush's mess. She reminded everyone of why she's in this - not for herself, but for the cause. Sometimes when a politician uses that kind of rhetoric, they're just masking their own ambition, and God knows the Clintons are ambitious. But Hillary was preaching to the choir, and they bought her message today, that everyone there has to remember that they have sworn allegiance to higher causes than her campaign. And everyone believed it, because they have.

Yesterday I went to the Barack Obama Web site, and Obama was asking his supporters to congratulate Hillary Clinton and her supporters. So I did. I clicked on the link, and filled out an email that was as gracious and encouraging as I could write. Looking back on this campaign, I have been disappointed and disillusioned by the Clintons, but the disagreements were not as deep as those between me and the Republicans. I think Hillary made some tactical errors, some strategic errors, and said some things that were, at best, ill-advised. I don't have as much respect for either of them as I did at the beginning of this race, and I doubt I ever will.

But I have more respect for Hillary as a politician and as a leader. The issues that I had with the Clinton campaign were mostly, although not entirely, tactical, of the moment, stylistic, rather than substantive. Hillary has definitely come into her own as a politician as a result of this campaign, and emerging from the shadow of Bill Clinton, even with his full encouragement, is a phenomenal achievement in and of itself. She has done a remarkable job of inspiring millions of people, particulary women.

Yesterday, as I was hearing about her speech and processing getting over the campaign just past, I checked my email, and saw an email from Hillary (I signed up for her campaign email a long time ago, long before I started campaigning for Obama). As with just about every email that shows up, from either campaign, these days, she was asking for contributions. This was before I watched her speech today. In the spirit of healing the wounds and letting bygones be bygones and letting water flow under the bridge, I made a donation. Not much, mostly because I still don't have a lot of money to give to candidates these days, but something. I am glad that I decided to campaign for Barack Obama. But, after watching Hillary's speech, I'm glad that I gave her a donation.

Here's the speech (from TPM):

More props for Hillary

Gail Collins has a good take on Hillary in today's column. She drops her usual gently sarcastic tone, which I love, and writes it straight. Which, this time around, I also love.

This is one of the things you have to admire about Hillary Clinton. She still enjoys the work.

Yes she does, and that is something I admire about her. I think I've only seen Hillary in person once. It was in DC, in some kind of office building, and she was on her way to some official event. I remember she walked down the hallway, surrounded by aides, as if she were in total control. Which she was.

By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

Which is one hell of an accomplishment.

Her campaign was messy, and it made some fatal tactical errors. But nobody who sent her a donation could accuse her of not giving them their money’s worth.

This was clearly money very well-spent. I might donate to her campaign.

For all her vaunting ambition, she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it’s the presidency. She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish, and she never forgot the women’s issues she had championed all her life — repair of the social safety net, children’s rights, support for working mothers.

It’s not the same as winning the White House. But it’s a lot.

It's huge.

I haven't watched Hillary's concession speech, because I'm at work today, and I think I might cry.

Hillary Clinton's great legacy

Marie Wilson writes a paean to the legacy of Hillary's run for the presidency in the WaPo. She runs something called the White House Project, which "aims to advance women's leadership." She's very optimistic about the impact that Hillary has had, both on America in general and women in particular. Hillary has changed the game, she argues, and inspired many, many women to reach higher, and to do it faster. I completely agree, and I find myself getting choked up at the idea. I've had some serious disagreements with Hillary (and Bill), over political strategy and execution; I have been and probably always will be disappointed with how she ran some parts of her campaign. But I'm very glad that she did run, and damn did she give it her all.

Wilson's piece is chock full of great lines, but the last paragraph puts it best:

This race does not end with Hillary Clinton's campaign. By helping to fill the pipeline with a critical mass of diverse, well-equipped women, Clinton's candidacy has changed everything about the future of leadership in this country. And that is a legacy of which she -- and our nation -- should be proud.

I concur wholeheartedly.

I'm with Megan on this one

Megan McArdle, one of the bloggers at The Atlantic, has a post with this title:

Happy, happy, joy, joy

Why is she so excited?

At long last, I can start covering policy again. There was no point in covering candidate policy while the main race was between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; other than foreign policy, there's really very little daylight between them.

I'm still a little addicted to the horse race, but I am also very much looking forward to thinking more about policy. Big relief.

Not a classy move by Hillary supporters

I've been thinking I should say something positive about the Clintons, maybe reminisce about what it was like to be in Washington back in late 1992-early 1993 when Clinton came into office. Let the healing begin, etc. It sounds like Hillary has accepted defeat; she and Barack met last night, she is going to be giving a concession speech on Saturday, and, on a particularly hopeful note, there's this:

Clinton hosted a conference call Thursday with her national finance committee, urging them to shift gears and begin raising money for Obama and for the Democratic National Committee, which will be coordinating fundraising efforts with the Obama campaign.

That's good, and it's what I expected. I've been wondering about why Hillary is taking so long to concede. One downside for her has been that other people have jumped into the void and defined her as being self-centered, because she didn't concede to Obama when she should have. That was my feeling as well, although I have also heard that Clinton supporters need time to decompress. I can understand that. Anyway, it's just four days. It will all work itself out. So good things are happening. Healing has begun.

But then I read this, at the same TPM post that I quoted above:

DNC Chairman Howard Dean has already reached out to some major Clinton fundraisers, urging them to put aside any lingering bitterness over the primary and come aboard to help Obama. Dean dined with several top donors in Boston on Wednesday night.

"He clearly made the case to this group of people that he needed them very badly and asked for our willingness to reach out and join up with the campaign as soon as possible," said Steve Grossman, a former DNC chairman and a Clinton supporter.

But in return, the group had asked Dean to relay to the Obama campaign "how very focused they are on Hillary being on the ticket," Grossman said.

Earlier this week, Clinton's national finance chairman, Hassan Nemazee, said he was also pushing an Obama-Clinton ticket, claiming that together they would be able to raise $200 million to $250 million for the general election.

Dean is doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing: bridging the gap, mending fences. Good for him. He knows how to do his job well.

But do Hillary's supporters have any idea how incredibly tacky they look? Yes, they will support Obama, but they have a price. Do they realize how much they are hurting her chances of actually becoming VP? By implying that they will support Obama more if Hillary is on the ticket, they look like they're twisting his arm (at the very least). Do they think they can roll him? Don't they realize how bad it would be for Obama politically if he looked like he was being rolled? Guess what, folks, the smoke-filled back room now has a video camera in it. The more pressure they apply, the less are her chances.

The Vice President is one of only two offices that is voted on by all Americans. The Vice President is not the Vice President only of Hillary's supporters. Bill Clinton actually established a good precedent for how to pick a VP. He choose Al Gore because Al Gore was qualified to be President, and he made a good Vice President. That should be the only criteria: how well they can serve as VP over the next four to eight years, or, if the worst comes to pass, as President. Not how much money they can bring in in the next five months.

The Vice Presidency is not for sale. To even suggest that it might be is extraordinarily crass.

I hate to say it, but it looks like Hillary isn't the only one who has a problem with being a gracious loser. She should have another conference call with her supporters.

Andrew and Marc - Critique of The Table

Andrew Sullivan and Marc Ambinder, two bloggers at the Atlantic, videotaped a conversation in Ambinder's office. I like this kind of thing, particularly since it combines two of my passions, moving images and politics.

Here they are:



I have a couple of notes, and I am going to ignore, for the moment, the actual content of their discussion and talk about the production design, just because I feel like it.

I'm sure they shot this with little if any attention to details like costume or production design. Oddly enough, however, the attire of each actually matches the background quite nicely. For Sullivan, this works, but for Ambinder, unfortunately, it doesn't.

Sullivan is wearing a vertically striped shirt, and is sitting in front of a bookshelf. The books are also vertical stripes, but different enough to be a contrast. I like it; it's busy enough to be interesting, but not so cluttered that we are distracted. Sullivan has dark eyes, and the lighting on his eyes isn't great, so when he leans forward, there are slight shadows on his eyes, and you can't see his eyes as well as you can see Ambinder's. This is vaguely reminiscient, at least for me, of the opening scene of The Godfather, when Marlon Brando's eyes were intentionally hidden in shadows, which gave him a decidedly sinister look. With Sullivan, he occasionally squints when he is laughing or his brow is furrowed, which hides his eyes that much more. It's nto a huge problem, but I noticed it. Ambinder seems to be lit a little brighter, although he doesn't have a beard and Sullivan does, which might make a difference.

Sullivan has his shirt open, and the camera seems to be closer to him, and at an angle closer to straight on, so the shots of him feel slightly more intimate. Ambinder seems to be shot at a vaguely more obtuse angle. He has his shirt buttoned up and he's wearing a jacket, so, although the lighting is brighter on him, he seems a tad more formal and corporate, even though, from the conversation itself, he seems like a wonderfully open guy. Ambinder's lighting, however, washes out his face a bit, which is too bad, because Sullivan seems quite expressive, and his face seems to have more character. That's might be the beard. One little detail bothers me about Ambinder: for most of this we can really only see his left eye, with only glimpses of his right eye, which makes eye contact on the part of the audience a little more difficult.

What really caught my attention, tho, was the almost perfect match between Ambinder's outfit and the background. This does not work for me. He's wearing a yellow shirt and dark jacket; the background consists of a blank wall, which is uncomfortably close to the same shade of yellow as his jacket. It does his face no favors to see it floating between custard and cheesecake (with apologies to Jennifer Garner in Juno). What really bothers me, tho, is that the other large blocks of color are dark blue/black - the thing over his shoulder, his jacket, and the computer monitor. It's also a little distracting that the monitor changes back and forth between sleep mode and active. When it's in active mode, it's a source of brightness, like the wall behind him. Not good. It's ironic that a bright yellow ends up coming across as almost cold, but it does. I haven't seen one of Stephen Colbert's interviews with a member of Congress recently, but I associate the background with warm dark browns, like leather upholstery and a library.

This is clearly a small space, and it feels a little cramped, a tad claustrophobic. Like the cameras are as far away as possible in this small office, but that's still a little close. Maybe if they went to a Starbucks it would feel a little more open. Or maybe if they just walked down the hall.

Finally, a note about their performances, so to speak: Sullivan is very animated, bobbing and weaving, raising his hands, etc. It's fun to watch him, because he's so passionate. Ambinder is also obviously having a good time, and I like him as the interlocutor, but he's not as active.

All in all, a good thing to watch, and I hope they do it again. Next time, tho, please pay a smidgen bit of attention to the actual production. Stephen Colbert does this well when he has a guest on.

A great example of costume matching background is the dinner party scene in Notting Hill, when Anna (Julia Roberts) meets Will's (Hugh Grant's) sister and friends, particularly when they are discussing who should get the brownie. Starting at about 2 minutes into this clip, notice that Honey's bright red, flyaway hair is in front of a very busy wooden cabinet, with some red accents, while Bella (Gina McKee, in the wheelchair), is wearing a somber pattern, has her hair tied up, and is in front of a brick wall. Julia Roberts is wearing a silvery jacket, in front of mostly white. Hugh Grant is wearing a light green, and there's a plant behind him. Bernie, the stockbroker, is before a black and white window, rigidly framed. And everywhere there are candles, which flicker just enough to provide some eye candy. And it's all in the same room. That's great production design for some talking heads.



One note about content: I loved Sullivan's comment about Bush as two terms of the Republican Carter. Great line. Now just please work on the lighting, and get Ambers some poster or something.

Obama-Schweitzer?

Here's a name for Obama's VP that I hadn't heard before: Brian Schweitzer, governor of Montana. I admit I know next to nothing about the guy besides the name and a generally favorable impression, but that's probably because I don't have a whole lot of reason to pay attention to Montana politics. And how unexpected is this: he spent six years in Saudi Arabia, so he speaks fluent Arabic. That's a killer credential. I'm going to reserve judgment until I see some video of the guy in action, but at least it's an interesting idea.

hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.

Post-mortems, #2

A reader alerted me to this article in the WaPo, with yet more detail about how Obama won with his targeted-delegate strategy.

The insurgent strategy the group devised instead was to virtually cede the most important battlegrounds of the Democratic nomination fight to Clinton, using precision targeting to minimize her delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Democratic candidates rarely ventured.
. . .
The surprise was how well his strategy held up -- and how little resistance it met.
. . .
"We kept waiting for the Clinton people to send people into the caucus states," marveled Jon Carson, one of Obama's top ground-game strategists.

"It's the big mystery of the campaign," said campaign manager David Plouffe, because every delegate counts."

The more I think about it, the less I am surprised. I have felt for a long time that the Democratic party has an anti-heartland bias. I've heard far too many liberals who are from either or both coasts dismiss people from the Midwest as stupid. I've actually heard that word used - "stupid." Many people in the "flyover" states are aware of this. This is why they don't like elitists, and it's a big part of why John Kerry and Al Gore lost. As much as Hillary tried to portray herself as a regular person, she's still the Senator from New York who lives in Washington.

What I learned from this article is that Obama capitalized on this arrogance, and this is a big reason why he won. Hillary and her campaign did not think places like Idaho and Kansas mattered. And by that, I mean that they did not think those places "mattered" in several respects. They don't matter culturally, they don't matter financially, and they don't matter politically. I think Obama did well in part because he was paying attention to people who were starved for it.

The Obama campaign also had this insight going for them:

The message -- of unity and hope -- did not come out of nowhere. David Axelrod, a Chicago campaign consultant, long ago hatched the idea that Democrats' campaigns should revolve more around personality than policy.

I agree with this. I mostly agree with Obama on policy, obviously, but I couldn't tell you a lot of specifics. And I'm a person who likes policy discussions.

At its most basic, voting for a candidate is a matter of relating to another human being. We do not base most of our human relations on matters of policy. Not with our friends, our significant others, our coworkers. We may associate with them because of a general agreement, but not because of specifics. We choose our friends, our lovers, and our colleagues in large part on things like trust and empathy. Do they have our sense of humor? Do they see the world the same way? Do we admire them?

Beyond the strategy of targeting specific districts and crunching the numbers for the delegates, the Obama campaign had a unique strategy for empowering voters:

From May through the summer of last year, more than 750 volunteers learned the do's and don'ts of canvassing, working phone banks and recruiting others to help at what came to be known as "Camp Obama"

I went to a Camp Obama, and I learned some things. It was great. It was based on at least one simple premise: inspiration takes hard work. It's like that saying from (I think) Thomas Edison: genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The Obama campaign knew that it was not going to be enough to inspire lots of voters. They knew they were going to have to turn that inspiration into perspiration.

There's one point in this article that I somewhat disagree with:

"It's the story that hasn't been written yet, how Obama did everything right, targeting caucuses, targeting small states, avoiding the showdowns in the big states where he could," said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, who watched the strategy play out in microcosm in his own state, "and how in the end Clinton did so much so wrong."

That's true, insofar as it applies to this campaign. But the real story that hasn't been written yet is how that strategy will play out in the general election, and then in politics in general after January 20, 2009.