Tony Blair hopped a train with no money in his pocket, nor check, nor credit card, nor ticket.  That last omission near tripped him up.  His bodyguard offered to pony up the $49, but the “inspector” (we’d say conductor) said skip it. 

The whole thing led Political Diary’s John Fund to observe:

It’s one thing for the Queen to proceed through life without having to worry about carrying any of the coins or bills that bear her image. But now that he’s a private citizen, Mr. Blair should make at least an effort to pretend once again he’s a normal human being.

If he does, and succeeds, he will be the not-so-little train passenger that could.

Moreover, if I were the queen, I’d have those coins and bills ready with my picture on them.

“Meet Professor Obama,” says Chi Trib’s John McCormick.  He’s

the sometimes aloof campaigner who can come across as a bit smug and has been known to talk about such things as arugula, an upscale leafy green, in places like corn-fed Iowa.

You can feel you’re in his classroom.  He likes order in the classroom.

“Everybody have a seat,” he said . . . in Gary, Ind., as he finished a speech and prepared to take questions. “We’ve still got a little more work to do.”

He tells how to behave:

“Now, there are only a few rules. Rule No. 1: Raise your hand. Don’t shout out at me because there are going to be more questions than I have time,” he said.  . . . . 

He betrays “professorial tendencies,” which “could . . . be used against him in a general election, especially if the liberal elitist branding takes hold,” says McC. 

He was “clumsy” in San Fran when he talked of Pennsylvania job-deprived as clinging to guns or religion, he said, is irritated by accusations of inability to relate to working-class people, but things like “actuarially speaking” come out readily.

Chi Trib studied how he talks.  He’s understandable by high-school seniors or college frosh, Trib found, “two grade levels above Sen. Hillary Clinton,” who speaks to h.s. sophs or juniors.

He scolds, mocked young woman with cell phone in San Antonio: “She’s talking to her girlfriend. She’s all like, ‘Girl, I got a front-row seat.’”  Then a peremptory “Turn off your phone.”

To another in Terre Haute, about to ask him something with something in her mouth: “Take it out.“

He glared at early leavers from small meetings in Iowa. 

But he gets praise as teacher at U. of Chi law school by law prof Cass Sunstein:

“He was thought to be non-ideological, completely prepared, conversational, not full of himself, clear, respectful of all sides and completely on top of the material,”

And from former student Erika Walsh:

“He was one of the least hubristic professors I had.  . . . He’s not an elitist. He certainly has the credentials to be, but he’s interested in people and not condescending at all.”

Hubristic?

John Fund on Barack Obama and what he considers it a waste of time to discuss:

No one suggests that Mr. Obama has ever endorsed any of the actions of the Weathermen [Bill Ayers], which occurred when he was still a child. But to this day he won’t discuss how he came to know him, why he chose to associate with Mr. Ayers and what he thinks of his current opinions about the U.S. government. All that will continue to fuel questions about Mr. Obama’s associations — just as his continued relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has.

He’s a fellow Hyde Park liberal, is how he chose to associate with him.  But what O. thinks of A’s “current opinions,” which loom large in any commited-liberal mind and influences their decisions, is important. 

O. will never discuss this, and the rest of us will have to decide what we could expect from him as president.  This is standard requirements of a candidate, who is normally expected to do more than make general unexceptionable statements.

Later:  Reader Phil on the Ayers business:

To me this is a bogus issue.  What I’d rather see is someone’s asking BA …Did he ever wonder why a powerhouse political fundraising fixer named Tony Rezko wanted to be, and apparently became, his best friend?

 

Heavy tut-tutting going on among the mid-level, if not high, priests of media-dumb, per Romenesko’s daily Poynteronline, about ABC men’s questioning of Obama the other night:

Stephanopoulos “sounded somewhat taken aback” by criticism

New York Times
Jacques Steinberg says George Stephanopoulos “sounded somewhat taken aback” during a phone interview about the debate controversy. The ABC newsman said he would have approached one critical aspect of his job differently. “I could imagine moving up some of the questions. You can differ over that.” Many thought the early questions were irrelevant, but “we thought it made sense to deal with the core controversies.”

> Some praised ABC’s moderators, but the critics were far more vocal (WP)
. . . . . . .

>Clinton didn’t have a flag, but “she was spared this inane question” (TA)

> Public regard for the media’s role in democracy wasn’t enhanced (WP)

> Welcome to the “Springer Show,” presidential campaign edition (Bee)

This going after O. on his San Fran elitism, consorting with Ayers the unrepentant terrorist, and Rezko connections very much bothered the poo-bahs, who in effect poo-pooh voters’ concerns, in this case about things that tell us something important about the allegedly Something-Different candidate.

Theory about Barack Obama as candidate here: he’s the first Starbucks candidate.  He speaks to the condition of the Starbucks fan.  “You guys,” he addressed Chi Trib editors and reporters gathered 3/16 to hear him explain Rezko etc.  McCain, on the other hand, calls reporters “jerks” with a grin.

O. is also liked by those, Starbucks fans or not, who are congenitally suspicious of business success.  He’s married to one of these.  She warned low-income working mothers in Ohio in February against money-making (wealth-creating) pursuits, while herself making big bucks as a hospital executive — much more since her husband vastly increased his political influence by getting elected to the U.S. Senate. 

“Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”

This would be the Mrs. O’s formula — leverage influence (clout) in a non-profit public service job where clout can make a big difference.  Consider Rezko and the state hospital board. 

Viewed this way, she has parlayed her bitterness at being born black in modest circumstances, not into a clinging to God and guns — her God connection being grossly political anyhow, putting religion as it does at the service of ethnic complaints — but into a turning and clinging to a (wealth-consuming or -redistributing) government-public service source. 

Hey, religion itself pays, as we know from her pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s golden parachute in his gated enclave mansion in a white suburb. 

Whatever her Ohio working-woman audience should do, however, it should not be in the (wealth-creating but still evil) corporate world.  She was clear on that.

Big O. has his targets:

When I think about Obama, I am reminded of Richard Epstein’s observation that in order to remain politically viable modern socialists no longer advocate direct government ownership of production. Instead, modern socialism operates on two different levels:

“At a personal level, it speaks to the alienation of the individual, stressing the need for caring and sharing and the politics of meaning.

“At a regulatory level, it seeks to identify specific sectors in which there is a market failure and then to subject them to various forms of government regulation.” Sounds a lot like Obama’s stump speech to me.

That’s Stephen Bainbridge on the Clever Socialist and how he intends to steal private property.  Look.  O. is too clever by more than half.  He gets really serious about some specifics.  It’s the market failures, stupid.  And why not, if you mean to cripple the market?

 

 

Obama has a week to go in Pa. to repair his “bitterness” damage, which has hurt him badly there. But it will take more than waiting for Hillary to be her usual off-putting self:

If voters are going to forgive and forget they won’t do it because Hillary is being Hillary. Obama’s got to make nice with them. But he seems unwilling to do that because, at bottom, he really doesn’t think he did anything wrong. This is becoming standard operating procedure for Obama. (Associate with a racist; lecture the country on racial unity. Insult a state; lecture us about the mindset of rural Americans.) Lots of lectures and changing the subject; never a full-throated apology.

Look, if you’re smarter than everyone else, there’s no use hiding it. I said he was cocky.

Later: Good point here by Pat Hickey, as in Chi Daily Observer, in re: small-towns business:

Barack Obama was not only speaking to ‘small-town’ America, but the small towns that exist in Big Cities as well – we call them neighborhoods: Obama was talking to Dorchester, Queens, Staten Island, Pilsen, Canaryville, Brighton Park, Edison Park, Norwood Park, Evergreen Park, Morgan Park – hell every Park. Well, maybe not Hyde Park.

He has some of those big-city neighborhoods wrong, however. two of those Parks don’t belong, being separate municipalities. We call them suburbs.

Yet later: Oops, only one is a ‘burb, my South Sider wife’s home town of Evergreen Park.

In the middle of his “The McGovernization of Obama” at National Review’s Corner, Victor Davis Hanson raises a very interesting issue, whether the Obamas have much experience not just in governing, but also in politicking:

“They” [for the small towns]. This evokes Michelle’s similar “they” (as in the “they” who raised the proverbial bar on the Obamas), and likewise suggests both hostility and a certain us/they contempt for a slice of America that the Obamas apparently know very little about—but for the first time in their lives are rapidly discovering.

They don’t know enough about the country, that is, which fits with the overriding argument that they don’t know enough about anything.  This speaks to the narrow gauge of black experience.  They see less of the country, in part because of ingrained habits of staying with their own, in part because what they see, they see with black eyes. 

Whites see with white eyes, but its their culture for the most part, allowing for incursions of blackness, especially in entertainment and athletics; and they get around more.  Small towns, for instance, have darn few native Chicagoans; but white native Chicagoans visit them quite a bit.

As for Hanson’s main point, it’s a killer: O. talks the talk of the latte liberal, in this case to a quintessential example of it, the San Franciscan, and will walk the walk if elected.  And voters will catch on, and he will win two states. 

“I still believe that by August, Obama, the half-term rookie Senator, will have become the second George McGovern,” says H., before quoting O. about small towns in Pennsylvania.  He explicates the San Francisco spiel, with much attention to Jeremiah Wright, then lays it on heavy:

Let me get this straight: Obama goes to the Bay Area to an affluent liberal enclave to give a condescending take on the supposed poor fools that he is currently trying to court. This is not just hypocritical, but abjectly stupid. All of Pennsylvania surely is asking today what is so hip and sophisticated about the Trinity Church and Rev. Wright?

This is “the essential Obama,” he says,

a walking paradox between the postmodern hip-Ivy-Leaguer who sneers at middle-class America’s supposed prejudices and parochialism, while at the same time courting an anti-Enlightenment, prejudicial demagogue like Jeremiah Wright.

This dichotomy is also crucial.  O. went for his roots with a wild left-wing flair and found it in a black church.  He was already deracinated (made rootless) by his boyhood experience of serial abandonment by parents, and was ripe for ideological harvest by tenured radicals.  (Same for the wife as regards campus experience, we may presume.)

There he is, deep in the heart of two electoral contingents, snooty liberals and the leftist black church, neither of which win elections.

Here’s quite a rundown on Obama as pathological:

Leftist politicos tend to be chronic overachievers because they have suffered significant loss—often the result of the disconnect with their earthly fathers [says Mark Alexander at Patriot Post]. They subscribe to rigid doctrines and “nanny state” regimes to satiate their persistent insecurity, the result of low self-esteem and arrested emotional development associated, predominantly, with fatherless households or critically dysfunctional families in which they were not adequately affirmed.

Obama manifests all of these characteristics, and clinically speaking, there is a diagnosis. Leftists are pathological case studies of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the standard reference used for psychiatric evaluation.

He is a cocky fellow, at that.  Because his Muslim daddy flew the coop when he was two to return to his tribal wife and their kids?

Later:

Reader B. objects:

BO will make a fine president.. his family problems–which probably caused him some pain and sorrow–will make him a humble and compassionate leader.

But here’s another apt comment by this fellow Alexander:

Obama is apparently undeterred [by arguments vs. raising capital gains tax]. His goal is not a robust and free economy that rewards work, risk, and ingenuity; it is instead a socialist redistribution of money from those who make it to those who do not.

The arguments?

Every time the capital gains tax rate has increased in the last 40 years, the investment market has suffered. When the capital gains rate has been lowered, investment has increased and tax revenues have increased.

And this:

Moreover, as is true of most tax increases, the middle class gets hurt the most. Many of the people who pay capital gains taxes are small-business owners, small investors or retirees. According to the IRS, 79 percent of those who paid such taxes had incomes under $100,000; 47 percent had incomes less than $50,000.

Dems are out of sync with the nation:

If the Democrats ran their nominating process the way we run our general elections, Sen. Hillary Clinton would have a commanding lead in the delegate count, one that will only grow more commanding after the next round of primaries, and all questions about which of the two Democratic contenders is more electable would be moot.

It’s their “convoluted system of proportional distribution of delegates that varies from state to state and that obtains in neither congressional nor presidential elections,” says Princeton prof Sean Wilentz at Salon.

It is this eccentric system that has given Obama his lead in the delegate count.

Hillary C. would be “comfortably in front” were it otherwise, “1,743 pledged delegates to Obama’s 1,257.”

Instead, she has about 1,242 pledged delegates to Obama’s 1,413, per CNN estimates.

Howard Dean et al. goofed mightily in handling Florida and Michigan, yes, but Obama has resisting repairing the goof, thwarting small-d democratic procedures, argues Wilentz.

For instance, O. arbitrarily wants half the Michigan and Florida votes, a ploy that Wilentz calls “a bold power grab, worthy of the Chicago machine organizations that claimed the votes of the recently deceased, their names gleaned from the voting rolls.

(This is truly a belt below the belt, involving as it does sharp criticism of how Chicago Dems do things, not to mention O’s connection at the hip with them.  How dare he?)

Wilentz has more, in near-numbing detail, and concludes that the new, fresh-faced kid on the electoral block is using “one of the oldest ploys in the playbook of American politics.”

You mean he’s just another?  Perish the thought.