Monthly Archive for December, 2007

So much for Pakistan

Published
by
Gary
on December 28, 2007
in News and Thoughts
. 0 Comments

Benazir Bhutto is dead.

[Bhutto] was assassinated Thursday evening as she left a political rally here… plunging Pakistan deeper into political turmoil and igniting widespread violence by her enraged supporters. [She] was shot in the neck or head, according to differing accounts, as she stood in the open sunroof of a car and waved to crowds. Seconds later a suicide attacker detonated his bomb, damaging one of the cars in her motorcade, killing more than 20 people and wounding 50, the Interior Ministry said. (IHT, “Assassination of Bhutto sparks disarray“)

I’m not going to lionize Bhutto, just say that—as the leader of Pakistan’s largest political party and also as it’s most pro-Western politician—she was an incredibly crucial counter-balance to General/President Musharraf’s desperate desire to grasp power.

At the core of Musharraf’s problem is a widespread perception that he did too little to protect Bhutto or that his government carried out the killing itself, analysts said. On Thursday, members of Bhutto’s party accused Musharraf’s government of exactly that. And Musharraf’s own supporters blamed the government for lax security. (IHT, “Musharraf’s political future appears troubled“)

The argument is that Musharraf’s government implicitly assassinated her by allowing sufficient access to the seething forces moving for her murder. This isn’t JFK in Dallas—Bhutto nearly escaped fate upon stepping foot in Pakistan two months ago. Musharraf wanted Bhutto gone, he simply let mysterious terrorists do the work for him. Perhaps in his mind he could simply blame “the terrorists” and thus strengthen the rationale for his earlier state of emergency—the idea that de facto military dictatorship can effectively handle terrorism where democratic government can’t.

The primary potential benefit to Musharraf is that he’ll be running essentially unopposed during the January 8th elections, thus a sweep is guaranteed. But what’s an election without legitimacy worth? Bhutto’s now a martyr for Pakistani Democracy, an even greater threat dead than she was alive. Now, how civil will their war be?

The Suprapolitical President

Published
by
Gary
on December 19, 2007
in News and Observation
. 0 Comments

In a succinct New York Times editorial, “The Obama-Clinton Issue,” David Brooks gets to the core of what sets Barack Obama apart in a field of post-Nixon Presidential Candidates:

But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.

Obama would be the healer, the rationalizer, the thinker and the listener that we’ve been deprived of for seven years. As Brooks puts it, Obama “has a core”—he’s “an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones”—in turbulent times he would be his own rock.

Obama at Harvard

(Photo by “Barack Obama“)

El Nino’s Back

Published
by
Gary
on December 18, 2007
in News
. 4 Comments

The illustrious Dean of the YSOA is back for round three. See, his second term was up, and the rumors were flying wild—everyone from ready-for-the-mortuary Richard Rogers to everyone’s fuzzy ‘rilla Peazy Eisenman—but in the end we all know in the first place it was Bob Stern who turned this ship ’round and he’s still the best to steam full-’head. The
NYT reports:

‘Who’s got the mojo to lead the fabled school into the 21st century?’ wrote Reed Kroloff, then the editor of Architecture magazine. ‘Are you sitting down?’ He then went on to describe Mr. Stern as a ’suede-loafered sultan of suburban retrotecture, Disney party boy and notorious academic curmudgeon.’

Dean Robert A.M. Stern

I have to admit, when I first read that Mr. Celebration was running The School I damn near wrote Yale off. Now I realize that it’s connections that make an architecture school rotate, and for an institution so on the lips of New York Stern’s got us connected like Edison t’ Watson.

(Photo by maximolly)

It’s snow

Published
by
Gary
on December 15, 2007
in Declaration
. 9 Comments

First snow this afternoon. It came down in a huge torrent around 3 o’clock. Weird. It’s the same ol’ buildings and roads I see every day, except under four inches of white fluff.

Update: It snowed again, this time waaay more.

Old Campus on a snowy day

Back in wit’ ‘bama

Published
by
Gary
on December 13, 2007
in Declaration
. 2 Comments

After four-months with Hillary, I’m back in wit’ ‘bama. Earlier I reasoned that Hillary’s ability organize, clarify, politick, and straight-up play the game versus Obama’s ambiguous policy statements and general grayness during the early debates overrode Obama’s overwhelming likability and authenticity.

Now I realize that’s someone else’s rationale. What do I want, above all else? To believe in my government. I want a taste of that pre-Nixon, pre-McCarthy love, when the Federal Government stood for American virtues that had yet to be dragged through the mud by half a century of Republican Presidency. Obama is the only candidate I can really believe in: a politician determined to be more than just a politician, a fellow who will lead with a conscious as a well as a will.

By contrast, Hillary ain’t anything but politicking. Ladies and Gentlemen, politicking isn’t the same as leading. It’s important to be able to push your policies through Washington—it’s also important what those policies are, and if it’s simple pandering populist dreck then we’ve got a problem.

Hillary behind Obama

Incidentally, how is “Clinton Aide Sees Problem for Obama” news? First of all, I’m sure all of Hillary’s aides see problems for Obama. Second, the “problem” itself (mysteriously revived months after Obama’s admission) demonstrates why Hillary will never rise above being an impressive piece of political machinery:

A top adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that Senator Barack Obama’s admission of illegal drug use as a young man could threaten his electability and be seized on by Republicans if he won the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama’s willingness to admit to his faults and so-called mistakes is why he’s so refreshingly human. More than that, he has a sense of perspective that’s downright Presidential: he realizes that, you know, in-and-of-itself smoking a joint is hardly a big deal. Furthermore, he knows that any Republican attempt to make a mountain out of a molehill will just look petty and pointless when the country’s facing an international collapse of credibility, a trade balance of -$805 billion, a looming recession, the death of the middle class, and other things that are more important than what Obama inhaled 30 years ago.

Update:

Looks like Bill Shaheen—the NH Clinton campaign co-chair—is stepping down over his Obama comments.

I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorized by Sen. Clinton or the Clinton campaign. I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the co-chair of the Hillary for President campaign.

The NH Obama Campaign is, of course, playing this exactly the way they should be:

Sen. Clinton’s campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he’s talked about the lessons he’s learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country.

The Clinton campaign attacks are in response to Hillary slipping in the Iowa polls against Obama, yet those attacks merely serve to reinforce the popular conception that Hillary is kind of a bitch an unpleasant person.

(Photo from the Drudge Report, uploaded to Flickr by nata2)