"Do I think she's ready to be Vice President? Absolutely not! ... [Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices."
"Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say. "
"And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception."
4 comments:
I must say Obama is quite a meverick. He votes with the democrats 96% of the time and is the most liberal senator in congress. I've never seen him take on his party but that may be because he has only been there 143 days so hes still probably learning names. But seriously what has Obama done to cross party lines or challenge the democrats on. Mccain however has and will.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. First, the "most liberal" rating for 2007 from the National Journal is based on an incomplete record ... Obama missed 1/3 of the votes because he was campaigning. (Meanwhile, McCain missed half the votes, so the NJ doesn't even rate him.) Second, he's been in the senate for almost 4 years now, not 143 days as you claim. Third, he voted for the FISA bill and has a track record of reaching across the aisle in the state senate, which is something you have to be a senior member to do without committing political suicide. Finally, McCain won't reach across the aisle as president because he's going to lose! ;)
Maybe thats true for that poll, but in every poll he is consistently one of the most. Being in the senate for 4 years is bogus. He logged 143 days before he started campaiging, which is not experience. So yes he does have 143 days of experience. Voting for the Fisa bill does not make him a maverick. I dont see how you could not vote for it. Although I disagree with many of them, Mccain is actually a maverick. If he is a senior member as you suggest why didn't he make a big deal to the democrats about the Fisa bill as Mccain did on many many issues?
So what is the virtue in his being a maverick if you disagree with most of his positions?
McCain is so maverick, in fact, that he contradicts himself on virtually every major issue from gay rights to abortion, immigration, campaign finance, offshore drilling, and renewable energy.
Your assertion that the last two years don't count toward experience is totally disingenous. He still participated in 2/3rds the senate votes, which is more than McCain did. Plus, the process of travelling the country, talking with voters, meeting with the nation's leaders, forumlating a plan for the country, and participating in debates and interviews, are all unique and invaluable experiences, IMO.
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