Post-election potpourri

Some have noted how the McCain we saw concede last night reminded us of the old, moderate, actual-maverick we knew before this campaign began. I wish that guy could've beaten Bush in the 2000 Republican primary. Think how differently things might've transpired.

Though I wish the Bush presidency had never happened, you've also got to wonder whether Obama could've ascended so quickly if people weren't so dissatisfied. This is just a serious consideration of what someone else already pointed out in jest.

Speaking of the 2000 election, get this: the way things look right now, Ralph Nader might actually have won enough votes to span the difference between McCain and Obama in the very tight Missouri race.

Ted Stevens possibly WON? A week after he was convicted on seven felony counts? And Stevens isn't the only 84 year-old who was reelected to the Senate. This was a good year for very old Senators not named McCain.

In my home district, NJ-07, the Republican won with no incumbent in the race. He defeated Democrat Linda Stender, who also lost when she challenged for the seat in 2006. Stender pulled 48% of the vote in '06 and only 41% this year. I'm not sure where to look to do this research, but I am curious: could she be the only Democrat to fare worse in a congressional race in 2008 than she did in 2006? What happened there? I guess a rising tide doesn't always raise all the ships.

On a celebratory note, here's a bunch of videos of people dancing in the streets in DC, and a couple newspaper covers from historically significant cities.

My prediction

Electoral Votes: Obama 344, McCain 194. I think Obama will take Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and even North Carolina, but I don't think he will win Ohio or Indiana. Even though he's polling higher in Ohio than he is in NC. I'm just going with the gut here.

Though 344 to 194 seems like an unbelievable landslide when compared to 2000 and 2004, remember that Bill Clinton won 366 EVs in '92 and 376 in '96. Bush won 420 EVs against Dukakis in '88. And Reagan won every state but Minnesota in 1984.

I'm going to miss this kind of stuff.

Without the campaigns, where will I find joy in my life?

Here's a final "gotcha!" aimed at the liberal mainstream media, who had been pestering the McCain-Palin campaign for Sarah Palin's medical records ever since the Convention. The campaign was happy to provide Palin's medical information to the public ... forty-five minutes before Election Day. Now, the health records aren't that big of a deal to me, especially when we're talking about a 44 year-old candidate. That's why I find this such an amusing move by the Republicans, and that's why I'll be just a little sad to see the 2008 presidential election draw to a close.

On Campaigns, and Telling the Truth

We all know that the currency of a presidential campaign is not reality, but perception. The most important way of measuring the time between now and election day is by counting down the remaining news cycles. The whole goal of a campaign is to put out a persuasive message that will be amplified in the echo chamber of 24-hour news networks.

Something peculiar happens, though, when someone speaks an actual, uncomfortable truth that people don't want to hear. If you disrupt a narrative that is already being stitched into the conventional wisdom, the response seems to be, "Don't distract me with the facts." This has happened at least three times during this long campaign, when surrogates for Obama have spoken the truth, but have either chosen poor words or spoken too bluntly for America to actually consider what they'd said.

Wesley Clark, June 2008: "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." Translation: "Wesley Clark has criticized John McCain's patriotism!" His real point: military service is not the same thing as command experience, and does not entitle one to the presidency.

Jeremiah Wright, 2003 sermon: "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." Translation: "He said God damn America!" His real point: in the Bible, the prophets pronounced God's damnation on Israel when they did not care for the widows and orphans, or when the rich would grind the poor beneath their feet.

John Murtha, October 15, 2008: "There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area." Translation: "How dare he accuse his own constituents of being racists!" His real point: Ummm, actually, most parts of the country are racist. Perhaps all areas. Murtha might've been speaking more truthfully than he imagined when he made this comment. The point is, let's not kid ourselves about the incredible uphill battle that Obama has been waging to win the confidence of working-class whites in rural areas.

So the next time there's a big media dust-up over someone's crazy comment - and you know it'll happen again soon - just pause for a second, and try to think through whether there might be any truth lurking beneath the surface-level outrage.

Every President is a War President

"Christian Anti-War Movement Must Prepare for an Obama Presidency," via Steve's shared items. Long, but an important, sobering consideration of what might await us in 2009 and beyond.

Palin and Disability

In the Vice Presidential debate, Sarah Palin said that she and McCain have agreed that her policy portfolio in the White House will include energy policy, government reform, and issues facing families of children with disabilities. That last issue, of course, is one of personal importance to the Palins, and it's encouraging to hear it raised for the first time at such a high level in the public square. (I assume it is the first time someone anywhere near the White House has said that issues of developmental disability will be a part of their work?) As several L'Arche friends have said, you gotta give her credit for that.

I also had a hunch that Sarah Palin's noble interest in helping disabled children & their families might end up becoming a policy bludgeon to be wielded in the campaign, because that tends to happen with just about everything in our elections. (Think of body armor for troops, or prescription drug benefits for the elderly.) Such a development would seem particularly tragic with something as tender as developmental disability. The last thing we want to see is the replacement of "Joe the Plumber" with "Trig the Happy Down Syndrome Kid".

So, here I am voicing my fear about what might happen, in hopes that I will somehow jinx it into not happening. That being said, Palin will deliver her first policy address of the campaign (!) on Friday, and it will be about her commitment to families of children with special needs. Do good, Sarah.

Mayberry!

I'm hoping this is the tipping point that sends North Carolina blue:

Can a Good Christian be a Good President?

Back at the beginning of the month, I attended a panel discussion that was put together by the Duke Pathways Program. They're the religious vocational discernment program at Duke, funded by the Lilly Endowment. The provocative title of the program was "Can a Good Christian be a Good President?" I missed the name of the panel's moderator (an English professor) as well as that of one of the panelists. The other four on the panel were Peter Feaver (evangelical; Political Science; served as an adviser to the Bush NSC from 2005-2007), J. Kameron Carter (National Baptist; Christian Theology; author of a new book), James Joseph (UCC; Public Policy; U.S. Ambassador to South Africa under Bill Clinton), and Sam Wells (Anglican; Christian Ethics; dean of Duke Chapel).

Because people from different academic disciplines speak in different languages, the panel seemed to have a bit of a difficult time engaging one another. Nevertheless, the individuals on the panel made a lot of interesting points. Ambassador Joseph spoke out of his experience as a civil servant, a liberal mainliner, and a Democrat. He also won the award for "Most Alarming and (Arguably) Least Christian Statement of the Night". When a student asked a question about the inherent compromise of voting as a Christian ("both candidates have policies that are diametrically opposed to what Jesus says..."), the Ambassador bristled. "Jesus lived in a very different time," he said, "and I don't know how you know what he would've said in these times ... I don't know that Jesus would comment on strategies." Ouch.

Dr. Feaver was, as usual, very engaging. He took a couple swings at Jim Wallis, lumping God's Politics along with the later Moral Majority platforms as "blasphemy".

I'll wrap up just by posting paraphrases of a couple of the things Sam Wells said, because they're worth relaying:

• "There is the presumption that politics is about how to deal with our problem of scarcity. Politicians are a type of theologian who deal with the hole we're in since God didn't do a good enough job of creating and redeeming us."
• "There are two broad strands in American religious history: one that seems to think of the Bible as a sort of constitution, and another that sees the Constitution as a sort of bible."
  

Who is the real Barack Obama?

You may have noticed that things have gotten a lot more dicey on the campaign trail the last week or two. If you haven't heard about some of the anti-Obama vitriol that's been bubbling up at McCain events (or if you have, but are still in the mood to be alarmed) check out this article and watch the video. To McCain's credit, in this video we do see him forcibly take the mic from a woman who said she was concerned about Obama because "he's an Arab." Although he came back with the typical, vaguely racist reply that knows no party boundaries: "No, no, he's a decent man."

I don't know if it's the proximity of the election (25 days) or the total economic upheaval that has people skittish, but it seems like the "foreignness" of Barack Obama is returning to the surface. No real indication of whether this is the kind of thing that will influence undecided voters, or whether it's mostly at play among people who are already decidedly pro-McCain.

Along these lines (but digging into a lot of different issues) is George Packer's article in this week's New Yorker: "The Hardest Vote: The Disaffection of Ohio's Working Class".

Hip aesthetics = electoral votes?

Go to http://www.pentdego.com/obama.aspx and you can make an Obama poster that says whatever you want it to say. I'm just waiting for someone to program a utility that will take a picture of me and make it look like this iconic high-contrast, tricolor poster.

Bring it.

Due to the financial crisis, McCain is suspending his campaign for the week, and calling on Obama to do the same. This includes Friday night's debate.

The Obama campaign needs to release a statement like this right now: "The current financial crisis makes a conversation between the two men vying for the presidency even more necessary -- not less. We look forward to seeing Senator McCain for our scheduled debate on Friday, and in light of recent events we are prepared to spend the entirety of the debate addressing the current financial situation and our plans for the future."

I'm hoping for an exchange like, "Let's clear up a couple of things. First of all, 'unfunded mandate' is two words, not one big one."

Round-up

There's a lot of curious stuff happening in the campaign these days:

• In the bastion of logic and erudition that is The Late Show with David Letterman, Obama explained that, if his pig metaphor had anything to do with Sarah Palin, she would be the lipstick and the pig would be McCain's policies -- not, as McCain and the echo chamber supposed, that Palin was the pig and the lipstick was ... lipstick, or something?
• The National Journal went and found a politician who actually HAS been called a pig during a political campaign.
• I do miss the freewheeling Lincoln Chafee ever since he was voted out in 2006.
• To those of you who live in DC, an ABC reporter spotted this car on the streets. If you see it, pop an extra quarter into the meter; just be sure to report it to the FEC.
  

Changing Whom We Believe In

I only occasionally read the Sojourners blog, but I was pretty pleased with Jim's post on Friday about the "Country First" language that prevailed in St. Paul last week (and was just as explicit in Denver the week before).

The high-powered and, frankly, militaristic rhetoric kept telling us that "country" should be put above everything else -- including family and friendship. But what about faith? Should country be put ahead of faith, too? I kept wanting to yell back at the people yelling at me about putting the country first and say, "No, not me, I'm a Christian."

In the spirit of putting "faith first," in Jim's words, Heather is talking about starting a group at school called "Duke Divinity students for Jesus (and in the meantime, for Barack Obama)". I predict that this will appall some of our colleagues, but it's at least an effort to explicate the nuanced position of a politically engaged Christian in America.

It's important that we continue to imagine and practice ways of working for good through the political system while making clear to everyone that our citizenship is in heaven. It's a problem that putting an Obama button on my backpack, or a Jesus fish on my car, or a Mets sticker on my laptop, all seem to carry the same valence: those are my allegiances. I don't know whether to blame politics for being so absolutist ("Obama supporters agree with him in every way") or Christian culture for being so simplistic ("All you have to do is say you believe in Jesus, and then you're in") but I'm looking for more nuanced perspective in political discourse and more genuine depth in Christian discipleship. Is that too much to ask?

I'm wondering if Heather's new group might find a willing member in her academic adviser, who just wrote a rather unenthusiastic book review of a new volume of essays by Christians who choose not to vote.

I mean, everyone's teenage years are awkward, right?

I was thinking that the most uncomfortable man at the Republican National Convention must be Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who it seems was as surprised as everyone else that McCain's running mate is not Tim Pawlenty but Sarah Palin. From the department of salt-in-the-wound, someone referenced her from the podium as "Sarah Pawlenty". Surely, the Convention couldn't get more awkward than that for anyone.

I was wrong. His name is Levi Johnston, and they made him fly to Minneapolis to be on the tarmac when McCain arrived in town today. Rick Davis is probably going to try to stage a prime-time wedding at the convention, with the Reverend Huckabee presiding. Always think carefully about the consequences of your actions, kids.

Not a good sign

Nobody's called for a GOP ticket change, and I don't expect we'll see one. But the fact that anyone -- even the wry, trivia-obsessed Slate Explainer column -- would be asking questions about the technicalities of replacing a VP candidate from a presidential ticket is yet another reflection of the simple fact that nobody knows what to do with McCain's selection of Sarah Palin. There's a YouTube video from P.Diddy that I won't link to because of the f-bomb, but I believe he speaks for many of us when he surmises that John McCain must be buggin'.

The McCain campaign knows what to do: find a way to make her look both human and eminently qualified.

Hope is a thing that floats, gets votes.

I watched Obama's speech tonight at Dain's with Heather and Jill. It somehow heightened the feeling that we were watching something historic to be viewing it in a public place. It might not be remarkable to watch a political speech with the sound cranked up in a bar in Washington. But in Durham, you know something unusual is happening.

I was pleased with the speech, though not blown away. He has set the bar pretty high for himself, so it is sufficient praise to say that I thought his speech fit the occasion and met my expectations well.

I must say, unfortunately, that I was alarmed by the biblical reference he jammed in to the conclusion of the speech:

At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess. Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America.

That's Hebrews 10:23, roughly. In the NRSV, it says "Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful." Now, the object of this sentence is Hope, and Hope is one of the central buzzwords of Obama's campaign.

I hate to admit the possibility, but it kind of sounds like Obama used a line of Scripture and substituted his own campaign platform for the gospel of Jesus Christ as the ultimate good for which we strive. This echoes the egregious error that George W. Bush made on 9/11/02, when he described the U.S.A. by saying that "...the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it." America is not the light in the darkness; Jesus is. And the hope we confess as Christians is not the American promise, but the eschatological promise of the risen Christ.

Coincidence?

Obama/Biden

By late last week, a lot of people thought it was Biden, which takes some of the joy out of having called it. But I've been trying to think about how those two fit together as a team. Of course, this week's DNC convention is all about shaping that narrative. If they're smart, they will co-opt a simple tagline: Obama/Biden '08: The Redeem Team.












The U.S. Olympic men's basketball team was nicknamed "The Redeem Team" because they were going to bring home the gold medal after four years of disappointing U.S. finishes in international play. Obama's most compelling argument, usually shrouded behind the dangerously vague banner of "Change," is that a new leader is necessary to restore America's position in the international community. Plus, what could be more messianic than promising redemption to the masses?

(Of course, there is the small problem of USA Basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski's political leanings.)

Your guess is as good as mine.

Seems that the pundits have narrowed Obama's VP shortlist down to Rep. Evan Bayh (IN), Sen. Joe Biden (DE), and Gov. Tim Kaine (VA). They've been breathlessly following every move: Evan Bayh's wife got her nails done! Joe Biden, a sitting U.S. Senator, was seen ... wearing a SUIT! Tim Kaine and Obama actually SPOKE to each other prior to a previously scheduled joint appearance!!!

There are a couple other names still being floated, like Hillary Clinton, Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, and Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. (I don't know who that is, but someone saw the Secret Service in Providence. Gasp!)

Seems like there are a few key criteria to consider:

1. Demographic appeal. Use the VP to diversify your ticket. Usually this means geographic diversity, although that conversation is a lot more wide open this cycle. If Obama needs a Southerner, I don't think Tim Kaine is the answer. Give this category to Sebelius.
2. Complementary Experience. Choose a VP whose strengths offset your weaknesses. For Obama, this probably means choosing a person with better foreign policy credentials. In other words, Joe Biden.
3. Fitness for the presidency. Remember why Jed Bartlett said he needed a good man as his VP? "Because I could die." Nobody's talking about this reason very much, because it doesn't really impact the election as much. But who on this list would be ready to serve as president? Clinton, yes. I don't know how you gauge any of the rest of them, but I'd lean towards Biden.

The announcement is due Saturday. No leaks yet, amazingly, but I expect that we'll know before the person walks out on stage in Springfield. Looking at my three criteria, I think the choice is clear: he should pick Brett Favre. Seriously, I still think it should've been Bill Richardson all along. But some people have asked for it, so here's my gut prediction: Obama will choose Joe Biden.

Other predictions?

Within reach

Only 95 days until election day!