Link: http://ddjango.blogspot.com/2009/09/silence-of-freedom.html

I know I'm not the only one, but I have to ask ...

Who's watching the store? Who is leading the Cabinet? Who is corralling the Democrats? Where does the buck stop? Instead of a presidency, we've bought into nothing more than a traveling wild west variety show, complete with gunslingers and the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief. The deluge of words over the weekend was simply over the top. For once, Faux Noose had the right idea in snubbing the guy.

Maybe it just ain't so great that we got ourselves a president that can string a few intelligible words together. At least Dubbleduh tended to be hilarious on the podium from time to time and we really didn't have to listen to him very much. This Obama cat just won't shut up. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the game plan is supposed to get us.

It's not just the volume of words in his grand speechification tour. It's that the content still means no more than "hope" and "change". This man brings nothing to the table but thousands of vague generalities.

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ddjango

In my previous post (Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk), I asked, "If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012?" Let me suggest a partial response to the question ...

There is strong evidence at present that, in spite of the anger in the electorate, our choices are more limited than ever before and it will take an enormous amount of work on the part of the disenfranchised to create the necessary movement that will create cohesion around specific principles, goals, and strategies, that will result in breaking the status quo stranglehold. Such a movement is as critical as it is nearly impossible.

As one who has several times over the past decade directly agitated for a coalition of the various "parties of the Left" under a negotiated consensus platform, I find that that same Left and its parties have been further marginalized. In some cases that marginalization even takes the form of vilification, as the tide of the radical liberalism called "libertarianism" has gained momentum in reaction to the increased unveiling of the one world government and economic system agenda. The core of the traditional American Left - democratic socialism - has been all but crushed by the call for small government and the insistence of the supremacy of individual rights.

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ddjango

Twenty years ago, as a management developer, I taught a form of employment interviewing called "behavioral questioning". In this method, the interviewer does not ask, "What would you do under "X" circumstances?", but would say, "Think of an instance in which "X" happened and tell me how you handled it." The theory supporting that technique is simple: the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Within this framework, however, often the best candidate will respond by describing a situation that s/he handled badly, then will relate what s/he learned and how s/he would handle it differently or did handle it differently in similar circumstances. Applied to the 2008 campaign circus, as well as to its aftermath, we might be looking at different scenarios entirely.

One of John McPain's main stump riffs was that Obama didn't have the experience to be an effective president. He was right on with that one (too bad he didn't make the same point about his sidekick). If asked a question like, "Tell us about a time when you faced a serious financial crisis and what did you do", he wouldn't have experienced such a thing, so he couldn't tell us. He would have, as would any good politician, answered a question that wasn't asked. In fact, with little experience solving critical problems, he had to be the beauty queen and could offer only "Hope" and "Change" and a history of living through some hard times with a lot of support from his mother.

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