All over the place I have been amazed at the new sense of decency and the absence of rancor. Both The Bush Family and the Obama Family have set the tone for how people behave in a civilized society. They have shown America what it is like to have good manners.
No one was arrested yesterday despite the fact that probably a million and a half people were on the Mall. Many of those people were struck for hours because streets were closed and many simply were lost. Again, no one was arrested.
Senator McCain called for a rapid confirmation of Hillary Clinton. Now he, of all people, probably has the most reason to be rude. But he wasn’t. Quoted in the Washington Post, he said,
“We shouldn’t delay,” McCain said in a Senate floor speech yesterday morning. “I don’t have to remind you or anyone else in this body, we’re in two wars. There’s a very fragile cease-fire in Gaza now between Israelis and Hamas. The situation in North Korea seems to have deteriorated again.”
McCain continued: “We had an election, and we also had a remarkable and historic time yesterday, and this nation has come together as it has not for some time. I pay attention to the president’s approval ratings. Very high. But more importantly, I think the message that the American people are sending us now is they want us to work together and get to work.”
I think we need to listen to Senator McCain’s words and heed them:“Work together and get to work.”
The confirmation hearings certainly are going smoothly. Is this a new trend in Washington or am I just basking in the afterglow?
John McCain will continue to be a quintessential statesman and bridge builder in the United States Senate, hopefully for 8 more years. I don’t really agree he has a “reason to be rude,” however, because he has the character to accept the will of the American people.
He ran for President for many of the same reasons Obama did. He wanted to unite the country and lead us to economic renewal, to restore our Constitution and the rule of law, and restore the purity of our democratic ideals. If we can achieve these goals with Obama as President, then John McCain will be every bit as happy as he would have been were he the one to occupy the White House.
For all of those who would want to blame Senator McCain for an electoral defeat in 2008: recall, the reason he won the nomination was that he was the only candidate who even had a chance of winning in the wake of the Bush Tragedy. Any of the others would have lost in a landslide.
MH,
It is something of a minor miracle that not a single person was arrested, isn’t it? But then again, that was sort of the nature of the whole thing. It was certainly something to see. I can’t sign on to McCain has a reason to be rude, though. He’s more of a Democrat than most Democrats. To McCain, he’s just supporting a team member. I really don’t think anyone, and I mean ANYONE, could have really challenged Obama. He was the right person in the right place at the right time. I can’t think of a single Republican who could have beaten Obama. As a conservative, I just hope the Republicans realize that except for Arizona Senate, McCain has lost everything he’s tried to do. I can’t for the life of me figure out how many times a guy has to lose before Republicans stop nominating him.
WHWN…….uhhhh, yeah.
Many people are rude when they lose. Just look around. Past. Present. Probably future. I did not mean to imply that Senator McCain would have been justified being rude, just that I would understand if a loser were rude since it is a common occurrence to see sore losers.
Slowpoke, you might very well be correct about Obama being unbeatable. I felt the 2004 Democratic Convention was a harbinger on that one.
U.S. Issues Scathing Report on Immigrant Who Died in Detention:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/us/16detain.html?_r=1&ref=us
Here is the new decency
youtube.com/watch?v=i2H97SpZlkI
“If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans
are just like everyone else – fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage
and patriotism – then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble
of political criticism experienced by his predecessors … Every American president
must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a
a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.”
Juan Williams
WSJ op/ed (1-20-2009)
After our giddy honeymoon, the real world will soon intrude. I think Obama may
become one of our truly great Presidents, but none – none – of the 43 that
came before were perfect or able to escape criticism. Hopefully, most of
the public (including the talking heads) will grant him an even playing field.
I agree Poor Richard. The White House press corp was pretty tough on the new Scott McClellan today. I don’t know if Obamamania is really a race issue though. I think it’s about who he is and what he means and can mean for America. So antidote may not need to have any racial tinge. Does that make sense? The racial milestone is a different issue not to be confused with Obama’s many essential leadership skills for the type of democracy we aspire to have.
As for McCain, remember when he used that awful campaign line “who is the real Barack Obama” and the idiot racists in the crowd yelled “terrorist”? McCain was visibly shaken. I don’t think he ever meant to make the campaign into a culture war. I think he is a good man.
I agree, Poor Richard. And I would like to say I think Obama would agree with you.
At the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency in January 2001, the web site The Onion
declared “Our national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.”
The Onion looks equally astute when it says of the latest transition
“Black man given nation’s worst job!”.
Did anyone hear Rush Limbaugh say he hopes America fails under Obama? Perhaps our local hate clones are not as bad as all that.
Wow, I thought the Onion was just a spoof paper, but they were dead on when Bush replaced Clinton, except the nightmare part was only beginning.
Shellyb, they have probably said the same thing.
Well said, WHWN.
I too thought John McCain and Obama had very similar goals and both are centrists more than radicals. I only voted for Obama after I saw both McCain’s and Obama’s Bio’s, and realized Obama was smarter and less of a partier, more work oriented and less personality facade hiding his true nature and lifetime character flaws than McCain. They are both good men, and genuinely want much better for the country, and have much, much less greed than most in Congress today. It is the parties that are both run by radicals, and in the case of the Republican party, greedy religious radicals than are full of hate, but maybe that is changing as the Centrists takeover the democratic party.
What I fear most, is that America will focus on global war crisis, in terms of punishing terrorists (continuing the hatred and anger that creates even more terrorists), rather than getting to the heart of the problem, terrorists are religious radicals that have been taught to be radicals by religious leaders full of hate. I think the world’s religious leaders need to hold each other accountable for violence as a product of religion, and unite to condemn it, re-teach what religion means, remove it from government and put it into the home and personal accountability where it properly belongs.
If Obama cannot lead this critical dialog as a world leader, he will be little more effective than Bush was in creating new terrorists more than discouraging old ones.
The key is international dialog and world conferences on decency in religion.
His second big problem, the economic meltdown, is how to put ethics and morality back into society from an economics perspective. We all know that overpopulation, primarily from “illegal” immigration into this country over the past 25 years, led to a huge demand for low cost housing in increasingly poor communities over the past 25 years. That same over-population has led to a loss of jobs, exportation of jobs, and lowering of wages, as the skills in that population growth distribution declined over the past 25 years. As population increased, wages decreased for a shrinking pool of available jobs. The ethics of the overall current population of 306 million people also declined over that period. When people get loans they cannot afford they create economic risk. (you can call them stupid, but I think they knew they were getting illegal, unethical, and controversial ARM loan oppotunities provided to them politically, ethnically, and financially (by overzealous section 8A mentality (favoritism based on race) and increasingly criminal social structure).
WHAT I find apalling is that the failure to continue to pay these loans DEVASTATED THE ENTIRE WORLD, because the borrowers were n ot accountable in the forst place, the loans were not affordable in the first place, and were obtained under dubious circumstances, and the risk was not accountable to lenders and re-packagers, the borrowers were not accountable, and the loan officers were not accountable as a direct result of the lack of ethics distribution in a significant population increase by almost 50 million people in the last 25 year. Ethnic collusion within the population increased significantly over the last 25 years, accompanied by a decrease in social ethics and legal accountability to the law, THAT effect when it collapsed like a house of cards, AFFECTED THE ENTIRE WORLD.
Imagine that a lack of ethics of some 20 million people colluding to make questionable loans, and a huge population bubble of some 50 million people, can BRING THE ENTIRE WORLD TO ITS KNEES, and they (the victims in the rest of the world) don’t understand HOW IT HAPPENED TO THEM, OTHER THAN THE ROOT CAUSE IS IN AMERICA SOMEWHERE.
These victims around the world, in deseration and exasperation can only “BLAME THE GOVERNMENT” for not bailing them out.
If Obama cannot control our population, and put a sense of ethics and morality back into the financial sector, and commerical sectors, and private citizen sector to obey laws and maintain a sense of honor rather than “honor among thieves”, he will likely fail to reverse the economy, and will only spend more money, that will only result in more economic collapse, increased taxes, greater collapse of the US dollar through printing of money, and continued declining of social ethics. We will see a continued rise of financial criminals and criminal financial organizations and social conspiracy between ethnic groups, rather than decency, ethics and morality between individuals, each accountable to the other for wrong doing.
The rest of the world should be furious, and punish those who actually caused them harm rather than just “blame the government”.
I just hope Obama can control our economy or at least get it back on the right track.
I doubt if the people who really acted immorally and unethically and helped cause the economic meltdown will ever fact consequences. In their minds, they have done nothing wrong. they feel they have been practicing capitalism.
President Obama probably feels like he has been in office 5 years rather than 5 days.