Meet The Press and Defense Secretary Gates

At the end of his interview with Defense Secretary Gates, David Gregory asked him a throwaway question that I thought ended up being very revealing. After asking him what the major difference was between working for President Bush and President Obama, the Secretary took a long pause and responded thusly:

"President Obama is somewhat more analytical and he makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue, and if they don't speak up he calls on them.

President Bush was interested in hearing different points of view but didn't go out of his way to make sure everybodt spoke if they hadn't spoken up before."

This response really grabbed my attention, and increased my respect for the President significantly. President Obama follows a style of leadership that I truly believe is essential to bringing out really good ideas and, if my former Kellogg professors who've come from high leadership positions are correct, it's the best way to lead a corporation, and, I should think, a country as well.

Meet the Press - Race in America

I suspect I was overly critical of the Chief of Staff, again, due to my natural antipathy towards his political style. That being said…

I agree with your take on Smiley vis a vis his interaction with Gregory. He’s a man who doesn’t want to acknowledge that his time seems to be passing (incidentally, you’re mistaken in maligning Anthony Evans. The Ambinder article incorrectly identified him in the first draft you read; they’ve since issued a "Sorry, our bad" retraction).

Interestingly enough, the strongest takeaway I had from that discussion came from Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. Mayor Fenty related a story to Gregory of an Obama fundraiser he was attending at some point during the recent campaign. A white gentleman in his 50s was speaking to the crows and said "You know, to all of us he'll be the first black president. But to our kids and the younger generation, he's just the president."

Now, I readily acknowledge that President Obama’s victory most assuredly resonated with the African American community of all ages (as P can attest to after our many discussions on the subject), and I won’t argue that there wasn’t a certain amount of "hey, just watch us; we _can_ elect a black guy!" chutzpah from the under 35s, but all in all, I agree with the unnamed gentleman's sentiment. I know it's certainly how I view our President.

In the article, Cornell Belcher asserts that we're not yet a post-racial society, given the red-swath crescent across the deep South that I first saw discussed on Sullivan’s blog shortly after the election. However, I have a different takeaway here than does Mr. Belcher, and it ties back into P's point that the Blacks-As-Eternal-Victims ideology that's been peddled by so many self-appointed African American may now be on its way out. I think that our country is moving towards the post-racial society (at least as it pertains to the classic Black and White dynamic) as the nation’s demographics slowly but methodically shift, and I would hold that the deep South holdouts are simply emblematic of a time now passing into history. I view it as akin to Sparta during the closing century of the Roman Republic (and presumably through part of the Empire period as well), during which the Roman elite came on vacation to gape at the oddly anachronistic Spartans as they continued their ancient ways; a people who time had passed by.

Generation Y, whatever they're calling the newest generation, and parts of Generation X all have come of age of will come of age in an era when the battles of Dr. King are as much ancient history as World War II, and certainly The Great War was for the Boomers. I think all three of us began really following the vagaries of national politics during our High School years of the mid to late 90s, which means we've spent almost 15 years watching the Boomers fight the culture wars (yes, this is something of a tangent. Sorry). The reason those issues have less poignancy now isn’t because one 'side' has conceded defeat. It’s because more and more voters are coming of age who simply don’t care about these old issues. Those many decades of battles created a social dynamic that’s a mix of the ideals of both sides, and on which we came of age. A middle ground was long ago reached on most of these issues, it’s just that the warring factions didn’t notice. Put more simply, Hippies are as deserving of Cartman’s wrath as Christianist zealots are of our disdain. In the same way, the era of Creflo Dollar and Jesse 'Whack-a-Nut' Jackson is finally passing, thanks both to the demographic shift and to new leaders, most prominently the President, who refuse to play this tired, old, damaging, and divisive game.

Rahm Emanuel on Meet The Press

I'm watching Rahm Emanuel on Meet The Press, and I'm reminded of why Triple P dislikes the man so intently. Emanuel is coming as close as I've ever seen to a guest on MTP telling the host to go (as crass as it sounds) screw himself.

I was particularly incensed by his response to Gregory vis a vis Roland Burris. Gregory brought up the hypocrisy of Obama's , followed by Burris' being sworn in a week later. Emanuel parroted (repeatedly) that Secretary of State White had signed the papers, so the last roadblocks to now Senator Burris' inauguration had passed. He very carefully avoided acknowledging that Burris was seated specifically because President-elect Obama told Senator Reid to, in essence, hurry up and roll over, as the Democrats are so notoriously good at doing. He proceeded to point out that he wasn't qualified to offer an opinion on whether Governor Blagoevich may be a tad corrupt. He then got angry when Gregory pushed him on the Burris issue.

I keep contrasting the political styles alongside, presumably, the philosophical underpinnings and base-level emotional states of the President-elect and his Chief of Staff, and am surprised by the degree to which I deeply respect the one and abhor the other. On the flip side, President-elect Obama undoubtedly needs hard-nosed men and women to help push his agenda, and now that Emanuel seems to have dropped his quest to find a placeholder for his congressional seat allowing him to return to the House in two to four years, he can be a very effective head of the administration and pointed tool in the Presidential arsenal.

At the great risk of rambling (now known, I've decided, as mission creep) perhaps my distaste for Emanuel is simply a result of the man's embodying two of the qualities I personally find so disquieting; his purposeful lack of civility and tendency to demonize his opponents, alongside his support for a man, Senator Burris, whom I hold in complete and total contempt due not to his unimpressive record in public office, but rather to his decision to accept the Senatorial appointment, apparently, simply because he so very much wanted to be able to add the honor "Senator" to his resume. I respect Rep. Danny Davis a great deal for refusing that same appointment due to Blagoevich's corruption and imminent impeachment.