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<p>This deserves about as much attention as His Royal Highness Obama having visited 57 states.</p>
<p>cronie - re: Mac’s VP (Horrors! My copy & paste feature isn’t working - must be exhausted):</p>
<p>I haven’t decided just yet who I’d like him to choose. I thought Romney for awhile, but after Romney’s performance in the primaries despite all the $$ he spent, I’m not sure he’d garner many votes. I think Jindall would undermine the “he’s not experienced enough” argument against Obama. Sarah Palin from Alaska might be good b/c it would attract women & perhaps show that the future of Alaska is in the forefront.</p>
<p>Charlie Crist might be good, esp. b/c I heard that he has a new Latina fiancee & that might attract the important Latino vote. Not sure about his stance on social issues. I don’t want Giuliani or Huckabee.</p>
<p>Tim Pawlenty seems to be up for consideration but I don’t know that much about his stance on issues. I’d love Colin Powell, but that might make the ticket seem too militaristic.</p>
<p>I really like Mark Sanford, Gov. of SC - he’s very fiscally conservative, youthful. w/ lots of experience (former Rep) and kinda cute! :)</p>
<p>Except for Sanford, Crist, Palin & Pawlenty, all I can think of is the detriments each of the possible candidates brings to the ticket. Of course it is of major concern just what type of voter each VP candidate might attract, but who they might repell is important too. It would be good to try to get one from a traditionally “blue state” I think - or a “battleground state”, esp. if it has a lot of electoral votes.</p>
<p>I sure hope one emerges as “the perfect VP”!</p>
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<p>Except, I’m not, bz2010. Not really. I find it discouraging and worrisome and very telling. Not funny.</p>
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<p>There are alot of rumors out there saying he’s gay. I’m not how sure how credible these rumors are, however, Crist and the RNC have gone to great lengths to disprove them: most notably a videotape of him kissing a girl and now him getting married.</p>
<p>Also, he supports the “right to die.” This is probably a popular position to have in Florida since a lot of the people there are old; however, I don’t think that it goes over too well in most other states.</p>
<p>NJ - I’d heard the rumors about Crist. I’ve also heard rumors about some guy claiming to have had a tryst w/ Obama. Wish that stuff didn’t grasp the public’s imagination/attention quite so much (of course I’m guilty of following that thread here on CC about John Edwards).</p>
<p>As I said, I hope the “perfect VP” emerges for McCain. Would rumors of Crist being gay derail the whole campaign?? I wonder. (The evangelicals aren’t going to jump over McCain to vote for Obama, are they? But turnout might become an issue if the right VP can’t be found).</p>
<p>mo2 - yeah, I thought you might have an issue w. the word “amused”. It WILL be amusing when he gets addicted to “cyber-surfing” like most people do at first!</p>
<p>BZ:</p>
<p>To most reasonable people, the claims against Obama are quite ridiculous, whereas the claims against Crist are somewhat plausible. I think that this is most evident by the fact that reputable news sources have mentioned the rumors whereas this is not the case with the Obama rumors.</p>
<p>The guy who claims to have had a tryst with Obama recently had his blog shut down because the third party thought that what he was publishing was essentially libel–which it was.</p>
<p>NJ - We’re on the same page - can you believe it! :)</p>
<p>Woodwork: Mini pretty much nailed it.</p>
<p>You can’t possibly think that Obama believes in some kumbaya moment if you’ve paid attention to his positions.</p>
<p>Have you ever heard of the Harvard professor Joseph Nye and his concepts of Hard Power and Soft Power?</p>
<p>Hard Power = military, coercion
Soft Power = the ability to influence based on inspiration, example, and moral suasion</p>
<p>In our day and age, Hard and Soft Power together beget a country the greatest power. We had such a huge store of that at the end of Clinton’s term. We had a lot of sympathy from the world after 9/11 that we could have used to accomplish a lot.</p>
<p>I have noticed that Obama understands both parts of power. Bush didn’t and as a result, his Administration thinking that all we needed was to demonstrate superior Hard Power and forget the rest, now we are weakened in relative terms in the world.</p>
<p>Obama’s asserting hopes for a world where we put apart our differences is actually a really important element of re-asserting US leadership. It is in our interest for the people of all these nations to espouse a sense that the US is about creating a larger peace. That way, in Muslim nations in particular, people will be less attracted to and swayed towards radical jihadism.</p>
<p>And on the issues of Hard Power, Obama hasn’t been stinting; consider Afghanistan. But on Iraq Obama is just right; it was a useless distraction and strategically stupid. That’s not kumbaya; that’s realism.</p>
<p>And if you look at Obama’s statements, advisors, and thinking, he’s a foreign policy realist with some touches of idealism, not some wooly-headed idealist out of touch. The fact is Brooks has a huge axe to grind; he kinda liked Obama until it started to look like Obama might win.</p>
<p>[Soft</a> power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power]Soft”>Soft power - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>Nice. I see you are making great progress. It’s only a matter of time until you recognize how poor of a choice McCain is and that you have to vote for Obama. :P</p>
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<p>That’s actually pretty good. Obama should use that.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that’s why we never deliver any aid to countries all around the world. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>We’re such a baaaaad country! If we just elect Obama, everyone will love us again! (And Iran is just waiting to hear him tell them what he thinks they should do!).</p>
<p>Last time we had a Prez w/ the attitude you’re praising in Obama we ended up with missiles in Cuba pointing right at us!</p>
<p>bz2010:</p>
<p>I think that the world is excited about Obama being the president of the United States because he better relates to them because he knows what it’s like to not be a white American male.</p>
<p>Interesting Hypothesis, Newjack.</p>
<p>There certainly are a lot of non-American, non-White, females out there. </p>
<p>I guess he’s going after their votes. :)</p>
<p>I’ll stick with the American Hero, who 's considered by most to be more experienced and more trusted. The American public favor a candidate who’s demonstrated leadership over someone who professes he possesses it. The world can’t afford a community organizer running things! IMHO!</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t say he’s going after their votes or even their endorsement. I think they are the ones who are attracted to him. My dad just got back from Nigeria and he said that everyone there is interested in Obama and hopes that he wins. They also said that they cannot believe that when presented with a leader that is as inspirational and as intelligent as Obama that Americans would even consider an alternative. To them it’s quite “foolish.”</p>
<p>I think that McCain winning in the fall would be a complete disaster. I think that the disappointment of Obama losing would be felt around the world and would reflect poorly on America. To be honest, I think that a lot of people would become convinced that Americans are bigotted/ignorant/foolish/etc.–I think they already think it but an Obama loss would confirm it.</p>
<p>Looking back on it, I think that this is the unsaid reason why Obama should not have gone overseas–even though McCain and the Republicans tried to force him to go. I think that it reaffirms how poor of leader Bush was and how poor of a leader McCain probably will be. </p>
<p>Though Bush and McCain are good guys, they simply are not cut out to make hard decisions. They lack the intellectual prowess and curiosity that is needed to make informed decisions. Though it’s comical when McCain and Bush illustrate their ignorance about technology and the “internets,” it’s also a bit disturbing. I think that it highlights the fact that these are guys who are rooted in their beliefs, don’t like change (McCain failed to acknowledge that Czechslovakia was no longer a country), and don’t have any sort of intellectual curiosity or a desire to learn about things indepth.</p>
<p>That said, I know that “experience” is important and that Obama is lacking in that department in comparison to McCain. However, I don’t really care. For one, I know that McCain will do a poor job as president while I hope Obama will do a good job as president. Second, I would not be as upset if Obama ends up doing a poor job because he’s inexperienced whereas I would be upset if McCain did a poor job because he was unintelligent. At least I would know that Obama actually thought about the consequences of his actions before he acted whereas with someone who is not all that intelligent like Bush and McCain I could not be so sure.</p>
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<p>What exactly has McCain organized? McCain has no experience of working with and helping real people.</p>
<p>Obama said it best, "When you get right down to it, what the American people have to decide is— " Is it better to stay with the Devil that brought you to the dance or leave with the other Devil that your unsure of ".</p>
<p>McCain sure doesn’t act like a “leader”. </p>
<p>Did you see the video today of McCain with the Dalai Lama? McCain was reading a statement looking down the whole time (at a piece of paper that he was reading from), mumbling… it gave the impression that the Dalai Lama had told him what to say… or else that he was saying something he didn’t care much about just for the sake of making a statement to please the Dalai Lama. See: [McCain’s</a> Day of Contrasts - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/25/ST2008072503003.html]McCain’s”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/25/ST2008072503003.html)</p>
<p>Between that and all the small-scale photos this week (talking to a woman and her 2 kids at the grocery store while cans tumble from the shelf behind him; sitting at the German restaurant with a handful of people)… he gives the impression of “phoning in” his campaign. He looks like a tired old man who has a hard time getting anyone to pay attention to him. I mean a huge part of “leadership” is the ability to attract a following. </p>
<p>Its obvious that Obama can hold his own wherever he goes and carries with him the aura of leadership, even though he is obviously a much younger man without the credentials of so many years in the Senate or a military background. </p>
<p>Do you know what a community organizer does? That is a leadership task starting from the ground up – the organizer sets the agenda and creates the constituency, and learns from the start that the leadership role has to be earned – it is not something that comes by virtue of being appointed to the job, as is the case with a military officer coming out of a military academy.</p>
<p>calmom:</p>
<p>Who’s older? McCain or the Dalai Lama?</p>
<p>Also, it seems as though the Dalai Lama had more to gain from meeting with McCain than McCain had to gain from meeting with him. I seriously doubt that most conservatives care about Tibet or know much about it and its relationship with China. The only group of people who care about this issue are the Amnesty International-types but there’s no way they would ever even consider voting for McCain.</p>
<p>As for the video, what the hell? “Genuine concern” = reading a statement off a piece of paper while making awkward hand gestures?</p>
<p>Just wondering, did you catch that McCain referred to him as a “citizen of the world?”</p>
<p>The Dalai Lama just turned 73 (born July 6, 1935). That makes him a year older than McCain.</p>
<p>What I noticed was body language - especially the way that after McCain read the statement, the Dalai Lama took McCain’s hand and held on to it… it was a kind of parental gesture, making McCain look subordinate. </p>
<p>The body language with Obama meeting various world leaders is different – Obama seems to always retain an air of being in charge, and Obama is the one who initiates body contact (hand shakes, etc.) with the others.</p>
<p>Talking about body language: Did you see the picture of Sarkozy looking like he’s trying to do a [terrorist] fist bump while Obama is trying to shake his hand? :)</p>