Wallwritings

                 Obama with his grandparents after his 1979 high school graduation 

by James M. Wall

Barack Obama’s maternal grandparents,  Stanley Armour Dunham and Madelyn Dunham, celebrated with Obama (photo above) when he graduated from high school in Hawaii. 

Obama often speaks of his Kansas background. He traces those family roots to his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who was raised in Augusta, Kan.  Her husband, Stanley, died in 1992 and is buried in Hawaii. He was a veteran of World War II.

Madelyn Dunham, now 85,  was released from a hospital late last week and returned to her home in Honolulu. Her health condition is described as “very serious.”

Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, died of ovarian cancer at age 53. He has described her death as the worst experience of his life.

“The biggest mistake I made was not being at my mother’s bedside when she died. She was in Hawaii in a hospital, and we didn’t know how fast it was going to take, and I didn’t get there in time,” Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004.

When news arrived of his Grandmother’s serious condition, campaign officials announced that Obama would cancel his appearances at campaign events Thursday afternoon and Friday.  He plans to fly to Hawaii immediately after a hastily-scheduled campaign Indianapolis rally Thursday morning.

He will remain with his grandmother before flying back to continue campaigning Saturday. His wife Michelle will appear at some campaign events during his absence. 

As the Illinois Democrat recounted in his memoirs, Dunham, his maternal grandmother, acted in many ways as a surrogate parent.  A BBC profile of Dunham reports that Barack’s high school years were spent in Hawaii under the watchful eye of his grandparents:

She and her late husband Stanley raised the young Barack in Hawaii for many years while his mother, who had remarried, lived abroad.

Known within the family as “Toot”, a shortened form of the Hawaiian word “tutu” meaning grandmother, she gave him a stable home and the traditional American values brought from her own Midwestern childhood.

She was also a trailblazer in her own right, having risen from a lowly position to be one of the first women vice-presidents of the Bank of Hawaii.

In a major speech on race he gave in March, Mr Obama described her as “a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world”.

An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll announced Wednesday morning, gave Obama a ten point lead over John McCain, with 12 days left before Election Day.  Some supporters expressed concern that Obama’s momentum might be slowed by his two day absence from campaigning.

A similar criticism was raised in August when Obama traveled to Hawaii, during which time he and his family made frequent visits to see his grandmother.  The candidate explained:

“I am going to see my grandma, who I haven’t seen in almost 18, 19 months, and who’s getting to the age that I want to make sure I am spending time with her on a consistent basis and so she can see her great-grandchildren.”

          Photo above is from the Chicago Tribune, courtesy of the Obama campaign.

(Updated Sunday, October 19)

by James M. Wall

This weekend will be remembered as the time when Sarah Palin and Colin Powell gave the nation a final televised chance to choose between the past and the future.

In separate appearances on the NBC television network this weekend, Palin and Powell squared off in what may prove to be a moment in which Sarah Palin won some respect in her Saturday Night Live appearance, as she shared screen time, very briefly, with Tina Fey. 

If you liked Sarah Palin already, you would have to like the manner in which she held her own reading from a script that allowed her to interact with larger-than-life movie and TV pesonalities.

She looked appropriately pained when Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey’s co-star in the hit show 30 Rock, told her, “You are even hotter in person”.  Palin’s rejoinder was a zinger: “You know, your brother, Stephen, [a conservative] is my favorite Baldwin.”

In the closing segment of the show, Palin sat at the Weekend Update table. She calmly told her hosts that she “would not perform the skit” they had rehearsed. It was not “appropriate” for the campaign. She then watched the skit performed by a regular on the show, bouncing a bit to the music. Otherwise, she remained in her seat. Good choice for a candidate needing gravitas. 

Palin was the only adult on the comedy show. She was so serious in her appearance that she seemed to be auditioning for, well, a job in Washington.  It is a more attractive image, with a long missing gravitas, than Palin has shown in her campaign appearances and “gotcha” television interviews.  

Makes you wonder: If Palin had been allowed to grow on the American public instead of being rushed onto the ticket as a savior of a faltering campaign, she might have made a real difference for McCain. Instead, she has been forced to play a role that gave her 15 minutes of fame and, just possibly, a lifetime of ridicule. 

Palin will be remembered as a candidate who tried to take John McCain to the White House with a wink and a smile, all the while reminding increasingly angry rally crowds that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists”.  Pundits have been saying McCain is better than the smear campaign he has waged.  It is possible that the same could be said about Palin. 

But for now, all we know about Palin is that she is shouting lies about “terrorists”, trying desperately to get into the dark side of the American voter.

Those robo-calls warning us about Bill Ayers? They give voters an excuse to believe lies.  Major media outlets have begun to report on the below the radar darkness of the robo-calls.  Will the public notice this sharp criticism?  Or are racism and ignorance, both of which thrive in the darkness, still alive and well in this land of the free and the brave?

Sunday morning on Meet the Press, Colin Powell made his endorsement of Obama official, outlining the process through which he moved to reach that conclusion. It was hard, he said, to go against his old friend John McCain, but in Obama, Powell sees a change agent.  McCain’s choice of Palin for his vice president, and his campaign tactics in these final weeks appeared to close the deal for Powell.

Moderator Tom Brokaw pushed Colin Powell to discuss his “show and tell” WMD United Nations performance. You remember that dark day?  It was the negation of a distingushed military leader’s career, and the turning point that gave Bush and Cheney the cover they needed to invade Iraq.

Powell defended that appearance as the best he could do under the circumstances.  It was not a very convincing presentation, but then Powell is a diplomat who knows how to smooth off the rough edges of bad policy choices. 

What impact will the Powell endorsement of Obama have on the campaign? The careful manner in which Powell outlined Obama’s strengths, and his testimony, as a former military and government leader should give Obama a boost among those voters still not sure if Obama is up to the job. 

Powell specifically rejected the blatant lie that “Obama is a Muslim”, with the emphatic, “Obama is a Christian”.  

Then he added a dimension too often overlooked by public officials and pundits discussing this issue. He said, in effect, so what if he were a Muslim? There is nothing wrong with a Muslim running for president. 

Powell referred to a photo essay that included a picture of a grieving mother with her head resting on her son’s grave marker.  Her son was 20 when he was killed in battle.  At the top of the marker there was neither a Christian cross nor a Jewish star, but a crescent, a symbol of the Islamic faith, revealing the American soldier as a Muslim.  

Powell’s endorsement at this stage of the campaign is huge. It could make the difference in key battleground states.  And it certainly makes the Ayers guilt-by association tactic look more and more like a desperate Hail Mary pass that was batted down at the line of scrimmage. 

                                         +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THREE MORE THINGS: The Justice Department attack on Acorn in the final weeks of the campaign–which Fox News has made its 24-7 news headline–is designed to intimidate and negate Democratic voters.  But it is not a new tactic.  A similar attack on Acorn by Bush’s Justice Department before the 2006 congressional elections led to Senate hearings, chaired by (an angry) Patrick Leahy. This clip is from hearings conducted in the summer of 2007. 

Newspaper endorsements are rarely important in national elections.  But the rush to endorse Obama this weekend all suggest a trend that at least three national media heavy weights want to avoid four years of McCain-Palin. The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have endorsed Obama. Even the Chicago Tribune, which has not endorsed a Democrat in modern history, has endorsed Obama.

(A Tribune publisher sat with Bill Ayers and Barack Obama on that education board in Chicago.  Was the Tribune ticked off over the implication that its people “hang around with terrorists”?)

The US Supreme Court has ruled against a lower court decision that would have blocked Ohio voters from casting their ballots on November 4.  The case was brought by the Ohio Secretary of State, a democrat. Watch returns from Ohio on election night to see if references are made to the blow for democracy struck by a conservative court. 

The photo of Colin Powell is by Miller for the New York Daily News

by James M. Wall

John McCain came into the third debate with a determination and a faulty use of language, both slang and formal.  He proclaimed that he would “whip Obama’s ‘you-know-what’ in the debate.”

That school yard talk set the tone for the pre-debate reappearance of an old Batman television clip that swept across the blogosphere, culminating in a showing on Keith Olberman’s Countdown MSNBC program, just before the debate began.

In an uncanny mocking of the two contestants on a real stage at Hofstra University, the television Batman stands calmly at his podium as the Penguin rages against  him as a “mystery man” wearing a mask, who hangs out “with criminals”.

When McCain charges Obama with “associating” with “the former Weather Underground leader William Ayers, [he uses, according to the New York Times], nearly every argument at his disposal in an effort to alter the course of a contest that has increasingly gone Mr. Obama’s way”. 

Obama responded by listing prominent Chicago leaders, including a university president, a seminary president, and the chairman of the Chicago Tribune board, who also “associated” with Ayers as members of the same non-profit board on which Obama had served.

(The Charlie Rose program after the debate opened with Obama’s description of the Ayers matter.  The program runs for an hour but the Obama opener is at the top of the hour.)

After the Ayers exchange, Obama repeated his charge that McCain would continue George Bush’s economic policies. This led to McCain’s best line of the night, a rehearsed echo of the “Senator, John Kennedy was a friend of mine, and you are no John Kennedy” retort.  

Sparring like a well-rehearsed boxer, Obama struck back with one of his best responses, accusing McCain of carrying out more of the same failed Bush policies. The New York Times caught that moment, which was a highlight of the debate:

Mr. McCain fairly leaped out of his chair to say: “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

Acknowledging Mr. McCain had his differences with Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama replied, “The fact of the matter is that if I occasionally mistake your policies for George Bush’s policies, it’s because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people — on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities — you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.”

After this exchange McCain appeared to grow even more angry and frustrated over what he seemed to sense what was happening to him.  His “last big chance” to redeem a losing campaign was slipping away. 

Obama clearly “won” the debate on style and temperament, refusing, for example,  to sieze an opportunity to state the obvious, that Sarah Palin, McCain’s choice of running mate, was unqualified to be president. 

Obama met McCain’s anger with a coolness that appeared to push McCain’s to further anger. No wonder he was angry.  After his years in prison and a long career in the Navy and the US senate, he was “entitled” to a place at the top far more than his opponent.

You could see that, at some level, McCain felt that what was rightly his, was not to be. No wonder he feels such empathy with Hillary Clinton, whose name he evoked in the debate in a futile effort to grab female Clinton voters.

That constituency could not have been pleased with McCain’s hardline anti-abortion statements. Obama was prepared to drive that point home, repeating his cautious language on abortion while McCain was left clinging to his hard line Right to Life rhetoric, which will not play well in the land of independent voters.

McCain tried unsuccessfully to attack Obama’s health care and tax proposals by evoking the name of Joe Wurzelbacher, a plumber Obama had encountered during a campaign event. The name of “Joe the Plumber” was repeated 24 times in the debate in exchanges which became, frankly,  too complicated to follow.  

McCain tried to use Joe as that metaphorical small business man who would suffer under an Obama administration. He contended that under Obama’s plan, Joe would be paying more taxes and more for health care for his employees in his plumbing company.

Why?  Because the creation of his new company would push Joe into the $250,000 small business income bracket, the line at which more taxes would be demanded of individuals and small businesses under Obama’s proposed tax revisions.

Obama responded by speaking directly to Joe: “Joe, you won’t be paying more taxes”.  Obama insists his tax plan takes care of small business owners like Joe. It is hard to see how the 95% of voters who do not reach the quarter of a million income level will identify with this exchange. (A New York Times post-debate Caucus Blog story appears to confirm Obama’s explanation.)

This did not play well with a focus group of independent voters, as reported by Time magazine’s Amy Sullivan:

In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were “audibly snickering” at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to “Joe the Plumber.”

The group of 50 uncommitted voters should have at least been receptive to McCain—Republicans and Independents outnumbered Democrats in the group by almost 4 to 1, and they started the evening with much warmer responses to McCain than to his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

But by the time it was all over, so few of them had declared their support for McCain that there weren’t enough for Greenberg to separate them into a post-debate focus group. Meanwhile, the Obama supporters had to assemble in two different rooms to keep their discussion groups manageable. 

Less than three weeks remain before November 4.  There will be no more debates. Several crucial swing states are already voting and polls indicate electoral college totals are mounting against McCain. The Penguin gave it his best shot, but Batman stood his ground. It is difficult to see how McCain can turn this one around.