Obama: "a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament"?

Charles Krauthammer

(Image from Jewish World Review)

Charles Krauthammer, generally considered one of Neoconservatism's proponents -- though he prefers his views to be known as "Democratic Realism" -- has some interesting remarks about John McCain and Barack Obama in a Washington Post column, "Hail Mary vs. Cool Barry" (October 3, 2008).

Krauthammer sees McCain as a gambler. He doesn't call McCain a gambler in the column, but he compares him to a quarterback repeatedly throwing a Hail Mary pass -- first with his support of The Surge in Iraq, then with his choice of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, and most recently with his suspension of his campaign to help solve the financial crisis -- and each of these throws was a quarterback's desperate gamble.

Unfortunately, there's something called "Krauthammer's Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game."

McCain's gamble on the financial crisis lost him the ball. Barack Obama, whose temperament is to leave nothing to chance and whose intellect is suited for calculating every possibility, intercepted and laconically observed that a presidential candidate ought to be able to do "more than one thing at once."

Krauthammer grudgingly acknowledges that Obama's campaign strategy is working. After McCain's second Hail Mary pass, which Sarah Palin caught, the Republicans looked situated to win, and Democrats -- in panic -- were urging Obama to get passionate, to turn on the charisma. Instead, he made himself ordinary:

Obama understood that the magic was wearing off and the audacity of hope wearing thin. Hence the self-denial perfectly personified in his acceptance speech in Denver. He could have had 80,000 people in rapture. Instead, he made himself prosaic, even pedestrian, going right to the general election audience to project himself as one of them.

This wasn't how "Spengler" -- commenting in the Asia Times, "How Obama lost the election" (September 3, 2008) -- saw the speech at the time:

On television, Obama's spectacle might have looked like The Ten Commandments, but inside the stadium it felt like Night of the Living Dead. The longer the candidate spoke, and the more money he promised to spend on alternative energy, preschool education, universal health care, and other components of the Democratic pinata, the lower the party professionals slouched into their seats . . . . The Democrats were watching the brightest and most articulate presidential candidate they have fielded since John F Kennedy snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The often insightful "Spengler" couldn't fathom why Obama would choose to be so boring, but I think that Krauthammer has nailed it. Obama knew that the moment to be ordinary had arrived.

Neither "Spengler" nor Krauthammer supports Obama. Both prefer McCain. But they acknowledge Obama's intellectual gifts, albeit differently, for "Spengler" adds a slap: "Obama . . . is long on brains and short on guts." Krauthammer gets in a few slaps as well, but concludes rather differently:

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

Mixed, but more positive than "Spengler" on Obama. As for Obama lacking 'guts', on that point, I also have to differ with "Spengler" and side with Krauthammer, for no candidate lasts this long in a presidential campaign without 'guts'. What "Spengler" took as 'gutlessness', Krauthammer understood as intellectual calculation and temperamental coolness.

In my opinion, the financial crisis has sealed McCain's fate. The great bailout is an act of a big, interventionist government committed to managing the economy. Whether this proves a good or a bad thing, only time will tell, but for now, the bailout undercuts what the Republicans ordinarily stand for and supports what the Democrats have long believed.

Listen, I'm just the messenger here.

Sarah Palin's Acceptance Speech

Sarah Palin

2008 Republican National Convention
(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm coming late to this topic and have nothing of significance to add, no great insights, just some impressions and observations from watching Sarah Palin give her acceptance speech, which I finally saw on You Tube yesterday.

In my opinion, Ms. Palin gave a competent speech, a bit uncertain at the beginning -- her voice a little tense and nasal at the start as she acknowledged the cheers:

"Thank you."

"Thank you.

"Thank you."

The most-effective line that she delivered was a sly insinuation about Barack Obama:

"The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery'."

This remark was effective because there's a sense in which it resonates with some truth. Obama's two autobiographical books are stories of self-discovery. At least, the first one, Dreams of my Father, is. I haven't read the second, so I'm making an assumption. Anyway, a story of self-discovery is a very American sort of narrative, and I'll bet that Ms. Palin will have a story to tell after this is all over.

The question is . . . is that all there is? To Obama, I mean. Just a voyage of self-discovery? I don't think so. He may have been discovering himself in community organizing, for example, but that work does have responsibilities even if they're not exactly gubernatorial.

A related question that I have about Obama, however, is probably the same that many other voters have: What else did he learn besides something about himself? Where does he stand at this point in his self-discovery? Is he to the left, or in the center? I'll have to listen to Obama's acceptance speech soon and start paying closer attention to the campaigns now that the two main parties have selected their candidates. I also have yet to hear McCain's speech.

But let me get back to Ms. Palin. The most touching moment, for me, was her depiction of the North Vietnamese prison camp for captured American soldiers in which a recently tortured McCain is described as giving a thumbs-up and grin to a fellow POW to let him know that they would get through the horror together.

Palin's earlier allusion to Obama and her later anecdote about McCain achieved precisely what she will need to do consistently if she wants to contribute to an effective Republican campaign, namely, raise doubts about Obama and give assurances about McCain.

Of course, she will also need to prove that she is no Dan Quayle. I remember Dan Quayle well. I've listened to Dan Quayle speak. Ms. Palin is no Dan Quayle. Thank God for that. Her speechwriters want to make sure that she doesn't come across as that sort of 'Quayling' candidate, but they also want to make sure that she doesn't speak like George Bush and pronounce "nuclear" as "nu-kyu-lur," so -- as my mysterious friend JK notes and Malcolm Pollack reports -- they are going to spell it out for her:

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines . . . build more new-clear plants . . . create jobs with clean coal . . . and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources.

And -- in a swipe at Obama -- they spell it out again:

Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay . . . he wants to meet them without preconditions.

I don't want to make too much of this, for all of us have accents, whether we know it or not. My family back in the Ozarks certainly has a strong one. My sainted maternal grandmother, for example, always pronounced "Batesville" as "Batchville," and I used to pronounce "wash" as "warsh" (and even spelled it that way). Nonstandard accents don't offer proof of either ignorance or stupidity.

But what the quasi-phonetic spelling "new-clear" does reveal is the degree of Republican concern about crafting the right Palin image. She can't appear to be some country bumpkin who doesn't even speak proper English, so the speechwriters will make sure that she makes sure to say things the right way. On that point, she succeeded, for I listened pretty carefully to her speech and didn't hear any "nu-kyu-lur."

The speech, as I noted, was competent. Palin didn't stumble, and she didn't appear overwhelmed to be standing exactly in the center of national attention. But from what I saw of her performance, she doesn't compare to Barack Obama or Bill Clinton in their ability to hold an audience spellbound. Nor does she merit comparison with good speakers like Hillary Clinton or Margaret Thatcher. She still has room for improvement. The cheers that she received were genuine, of course, and enthusiastic, for she said the right things for a Republican vice-presidential candidate to say -- raising doubts about Obama, offering assurances about McCain -- and she didn't blow her chance by giving a poor performance. But it wasn't masterful.

Now comes the hard part. The campaign trail, which will offer plenty of opportunity for proving herself . . . or proving herself inadequate.

We'll see.