Politics, A-r-r-g-h!

Let me add my voice to the ones pointing out how the hurricane is being politicized!

I am most disturbed by the way Sen. McCain and President Bush feel they have to be present among the people who are working on preparations for and recovery from the hurricane.

When a major political figure shows up in such places, the disruption is incredible. Each of those men has with him Secret Service who have to disrupt what is going on to assure security. In addition, all the staff each brings take up space which emergency activities need to be left open. On top of them, are the press who will not only take up space but be asking questions of emergency personnel for their stories.

Maybe worse is that all transportation around the visit has to stop for the reason of security along all travel routes of the two politicians and around where they are.

Every stop the President and the Republican nominee makes along the route of the storm increases the disturbance to the efforts!

Sen. Obama has been wise to stay away even if that does not seem as "Presidential." It is just a lot smarter. He (and the President and Sen. McCain) should stay at a place where communications are excellent to keep up with what is going on and from which they can "call in" their concern and support during the storm itself without causing logistical nightmares for the people on the ground.

The disruption of the people who are trying to organize relief and response to the storm just to get photo ops for political reasons is an absolutely unnecessary stress.

Tire pressure and Newt Gingrich

I understand from a variety if sources that Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told a national audience via FOX new that Sen. Obama's tire pressure talking point really benefited Big Oil because air pressure pumps at gas stations were not free and the profit went to Big Oil.

How silly can such an allegedly intelligent man get? Quite silly, as a matter of fact.

Remember how George H. W. Bush lost a lot of credibility when he went into a grocery store and had no idea what the scanner was where the clerk checked out the customers. Silly.

The wealthy have no idea what is going on in the world where people buy food and gas and clothing every day.

Soon after our current President was elected, George W. Bush said he'd talk to his friends if gas prices went up. He was asked more recently to do that and he said, "I tried." Silly!

Sen. McCain owns ten multi-million dollar homes so he will not be able to really understand what the foreclosure situation is. I expect he will say something silly soon. I may already have missed it!

And here is Speaker Gingrich too rich to know better telling us something stupid. Big Oil has its name on local stations but the local stations are independently owned and operated by local business people. By the time the local dealer finishing paying for gasoline off the tank trucks, Big Oil has already got every penny it is going to get. Actually, every dollar! The dealer gets pennies by how much s/he marks up the price to cover the business expenses.

If s/he decides to put in an air pump, that is a business expense to that dealer. The air that is pumped is free. Big Oil has not got its hands on that yet. So the profit, if any, for pumping air into tires goes to the dealer and not Big Oil.

I love it when some of these rich politicians say silly things. Folks in the backwaters of the country, in the slums, in the small towns, in the neighborhoods, even in most suburbs, know dealers and how their costs work. We learned when we fussed with them about the rise in prices two years ago when gas went to TWO dollars a gallon.

Rich folks don't even buy their own gas so they never notice.

Sen. Obama knows these common kinds of things. Properly inflated tires cut into Big Oil profits.

Maybe the best ones to help Sen. Obama in his campaign for President are the rich politicians trying to run him down. Their own ignorance will sound silly to everyone else.

Democratic Presidential Debates

Barak Obama is different.

I watched the debate the other night and saw something I rarely see among those debating for political office. He listened and gave credit for points well made. He even admitted a mistake no one had considered bringing up.

In contrast, Senator Clinton seemed to need to be defensive of her points, never admitting that Senator Obama might have been right on something.

One could say that he is using a calculated device meant to hide his inadequacies compared to more experienced debaters and politicians.

I’m not even sure I should have offered that view of what Dr. Obama did. It is really quite cynical. Cynicism is easy in this day of politicians who say one thing (e. g. “family values” devotees who actually have been caught in sexual misbehaviors and crimes) and do another. Hypocrisy reigns . . . sometimes.

What we as citizens need to do is pay attention, get more information (not cherry-picked by ourselves or our favorite news sources), and see what makes the most sense before we make an opinion.

The more I think about what I saw, the more I think that Professor Obama is acting out in the debates what he says he will do as President and what he says he has done as a state and senatorial legislator: listen, take the best of what he is told by another, and give it credence by taking it into his current position. He doesn’t just accept anything. He stands up to what he sees as errors. But he doesn’t slash and burn in response. He tries to lay out why he has taken the position he has.

In the next President of the United States, we desperately need someone who does not feel s/he has to be right. We desperately need someone who understands why s/he thinks the way s/he does and presents those facts and ideas as an opportunity for others to see, respond, recognize common ground, and want to keep trying to come to a workable agreement.

That bodes well for a kind of Presidency that will bring people together. When someone pays attention and listens to you, you feel a lot better about working with that person.

Based on the way he has conducted himself in these debates, I believe Barak Obama will learn very quickly what the various sides of a problem and possible solutions are and maintain respect for those who are honest with him so that he can work with them to develop a reasonable resolution.

And if he is willing to listen to the experts who differ with his advisors, he will not fall into the trap most of the rest of us do, thinking we are on the right track and don’t need to listen to other alternatives.

Finally, for my purposes in this essay, add to that way of operating the fact that he can go back and see a mistake he made, he could be one of the wisest Presidents we’ve ever had.

The Latest Nastiness in Politics

You have to know how impressive it is in the current campaign for the White House that THOUSANDS of people are showing up when Barak Obama speaks.

In any setting, it is unusual for anyone to get thousands of people to come for s SPEECH, let alone a POLITICAL speech. In my life time, which goes back to watching my brother take campaign material for Wendall Wilke around to neighbors' homes, I have never seen anything like it.

As a professional public speaker (I am an ordained minister), I'm envious of Obama. Billy Graham needs weeks of preparation by local pastors beating the hustings on his behalf to fill a stadium. Obama has been doing it overnight. I don't think Ronald Reagan could do that.

And how have the media "talking heads" responded? Just as you would think jealous people would respond: by twisting the phenomenon to look like something else than the curiosity, appreciation, and hope that it is.

Instead of realizing that Obama has real class, good manners, and a way with words, they say he is "all words and no substance." They obviously have not looked at his website where there are all the details of his current proposals.

Instead of seeing the obvious enthusiasm for a politician who actually knows something and who speaks with much more respect of his opponents than they do of him, the "wise ones" now think he is some kind of mystical cult figure.

The point of their jab is to put down something they cannot engender with their own public speaking. They explain away something they cannot do themselves, get large numbers of people excited and moving into the political process.

They want to turn a political movement into something lesser, a "quasi-religious" movement.

Now they are trying to discuss something I know a little about.

A cult is a closed movement surrounding a manipulative personality. A cult has a central character who is the father-figure for the followers. That central person has to control how his followers will behave and will try to separate them from the real world where the cult's ideas would not stand up to scrutiny. The leader of a cult takes on almost divine traits. He wants to be the center of his followers' lives.

Do any of those characteristics sound like they are true of Barak Obama?

The ones who are trying to strike at Obama's vulnerabilities now are attacking those who come and end up cheering him on.

I don't think that strategy is going to work. It just offends me.

There are even worse things that are happening. In particular, someone has said he is like Adolph Hitler in his charisma. Hitler used the brownshirts, youth willing to do violence in his name, to get support. And Barak's middle name (Hussein) is used to try to associate him with Iraq's dictator and with terrorists in general.

Such nastiness revs up more than the partisans who want to win by any means. It revs up those who think they should cleanse the earth of such people. It provides a culture that is so poisoned that it allows people to feel they are serving the common good by assassinating the Obamas of the world.

It reminds me of how it was in Dallas in the early 1960s after John Kennedy became President. I was in Seminary there at the time. It was so bad that when one of the area's major high schools put on SOUTH PACIFIC, the most crucial song in the whole musical, "You Have to be Carefully Taught," was edited out of the performance.

Just after I left, Kennedy was assassinated. Students in many of the schools in Dallas heard the news and cheered.

Is the political atmosphere becoming that bad? Will it be that deadly?

Whether or not we prefer Barak Obama as our candidate for the Presidency, a whole lot of us are holding our breath and hoping the Secret Service is completely successful.