From my point of view, President Barack Obama is the most intelligent and savvy of Democratic presidents to come to power in the post-war period. He has a sensory intuition that allows him to catch up quickly on things and he is far better at external things than internal things.
China ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr., the best of the current China hands, gives him the highest marks on his visit to China. Even the Campaign for Tibet seemed cautiously optimistic. Obama’s problem is that history has cast his role at the end of a vast epoch. History has made him the last agent of a realm of ideas that are suited to an age long past and a vastly different America.
Historian Frank Owsley said that the two most representative figures in the Colonial period were Hamilton and Jefferson. But I can’t think of anyone today who represents America better than New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. The New England team logical and decision-based, the Indianapolis team a heart-driven, consistent and persistent model of “quiet strength.” Heart won over head late last Sunday night in a game that is still talked about up here, which may have turned the tide for the season. Or longer.
We will learn one thing from Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue: She will not be humiliated; she will not be intimidated; she will meet you head on. This should be considered in answering The Hill’s Pundist Blogger Armstrong Williams’s question whether there will be a dark horse Republican candidate in 2012. Conditions are almost perfect for a dark horse because an original, new conservative theme has developed this past year and that theme has a rising spirit attached to it: Former Alaskan governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. She could well be the candidate in 2012. But this is a movement forming and not yet fully formed. When it is fully formed a new champion — a dark horse — may arise.
The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe deserve serious consideration, says the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observation.
Fox Mulder couldn’t have said it better. Has Father Funes been watching “The X Files”? The Vatican is calling in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implications for the Catholic Church.
When the great historian Robert Massie, author of Dreadnaugh, went back to find the root of the Second World War, the Great War and the rise and fall of Victoria, he found the singular warrior of Britannia who, in one astonishing afternoon in 1805, turned Napoleon’s fleet away from England, Lord Nelson. We face tough times ahead in the world again today. Unfortunately, we have no Nelson. But we do have Levi Johnston. Possibly he will save us.
Speaking of self-esteem issues, only an overweight career buffoon who proudly and conspicuously talks like a duck to display his endemic contempt for the world west of Boston would say that some of the people at the rally “appeared to have been the losers in the 'Are you smarter than Michele Bachmann?’ contest.”
Thinking we are really smart is part of the curse of being a non-Yankee in New England. Time has long passed us by, even the real Yankees. But also for us immigrants and outlanders who likewise wear the regimental tie although we bought it at Quincy Market. We have not been important since 1865. New York, the Empire State, conquered us when it conquered the South.
One key fact explains the present that has come to us in Tuesday’s election: A deeply conservative Republican explaining himself without apology has won the Old Dominion by 18 percent. Virginia is bright red. It will be this way in Texas, too, where the conservative, Rick Perry, is ahead of the moderate, Kay Bailey Hutchison, by 12 percent.
The appearance of “V,”
a refried UFO show on ABC, suggests that President Barack Obama is a dangerous
alien. What’s interesting is that this new series is by a major network that
went unconscionably gaga over Obama last year.
Whatever happens tomorrow in the NY-23 race will be anticlimactic. Now that Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate, has dropped out, there has already been a clear and historic victory for the Conservative Party.
The Republican Party is now a third party in NY-23. The Conservative Party of New York was formed in 1962, but is the focus now of national interest. And it cannot be denied that Sarah Palin was the first major national political figure to cross the river to NY-23. The new energy heading to NY-23 is formed out of the Tea Party and Town Hall movements. We can possibly see now the fledgling beginning of a third major party in America, the Conservative Party.
The generals, the policymakers, the old men in suits, do not know if President Obama possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree. So writes David Brooks in his column today in The New York Times. He is referring to the attitudes of experts in think tanks and the Pentagon he talked to about Obama’s pending decision on Afghanistan. They are looking for that one good man. Brooks and Co. have been looking for him since long before 9/11, when they sat around the offices of the Weekly Standard trying to decide which countries to invade. The tin man, the cowardly lion, all of Dorothy’s children, seeking the wizard who will save them. But finding only golem, halfway now to Jerusalem.
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