O-dministration, O-Kaying images, O-verview, O-ptimism - the Obama beginning

Many are the melancholy or indignant post-mortems emerging as Bush's days draw to a close. Oh, how glad are we all to see the back of Bush.
Obama, awaiting inauguration and setting up his administration, stands in stern contrast to the invocational charm of the campaign. Well may he be stern. He has much to put to rights and already the dissent and criticism festers from the Right. As Paul Krugman says in the NY Times, the GOP needs to stop whining and look at the mess it is in.

Meanwhile, we quietly shimmer in anticipation for the Obama takeover and to see a country with this impressive family in the White House. I gather it is called the White House simply because it is white, made of white marble. Somehow the name seems as inept as it is unimaginative now that it is to hold a black incumbent.

What we will have to understand is that the Obamas are going to be given not only the unprecedented physical protection that they require because of the disgrace of death threats they have been receiving from the racist underclass of America, but also they will be spin doctored and marketed with much greater care and caution than any of their White House predecessors. Michelle's caustic ad libs will have to go. She is a role model now who makes Oprah almost insignificant. The strategists are working out the balance between gravitas and glamour, puppies and politics, not to mention comparisons with Kennedys and Clintons.

Good luck to the lot of 'em. We and they are in for an interesting and, I hope, uplifting time.

Republicans' turn to debate

Once again, this time at the CNN Republican Debate in Manchester, New Hampsire, Ron Paul seemed to rise from the Republican ranks as the most balanced and sensible of them all.
I was not at this event, choosing to stay home on this wild and stormy night and watch comfortably on the TV. Wonderful CNN, however, kept the transcripts popping into my email. What a class act.

Ron Paul is a back-runner who comes to the front every time the Repubs get to open their collective mouths. He's not the popular modern model of the conservative, but an old-fashioned Libertarian - and a straight-talker. He's forceful and vehemently against unilateral aggression, and for general equality of human beings. He spoke up against the Republican obsession with God - saying that prayers in schools and the makings of laws about religion was not the business of Federal Government. Of course, Paul was perched at the very end of the lineup, again, the outsider. But here's my five-cent bet that the viewers and voters were really impressed with him yet again. Despite the fact that he was given so few opportunities to speak.

Rudy Giuliani has the presence and acquits himself most eloquently. But as the creationist Sam Brownback so ferociously stated, there is no way a pro-choicer is going to make it.


Mitt Romney believes in himself as much as in Mormonism. He played the cameras and the people - sidestepping direct questions, reiterating what we have already heard, practised and overly confident. He played the hawk.

John McCain has lifted his act and was really quite impressive, despite a tendency to keep addressing the audience as "my friends". The more debates he does, the more fluent and articulate he becomes, the more authoritative. He is making no secret of his contempt for the Bush administration's handling of the War of Iraq.


And as for the army wife who asked a question about EYErac - stubborn ignorance or cultural insult?


Of course these events are not really debates. They are question and answer sessions, television happenings. And, like almost everything in the American news media, they are always so rushed. The clock is constantly running out on everything. So the candidats are expected to express themselves in 15 second bursts, to speak really, really quickly. This, of course, ensures that everything is comfortably superficial.

The other candidates? I am not sure they are worth the time of day. Well, not my day, anyway. Mike Huckabee on Creationism? There is an unhealthy preoccupation with God and faith and creation. This is not politics. It is religion. It is frightening.

And wasn't it sweet to see Tom Tancredo and Rudy Giulinani wearing identical ties?
And, ooh, wasn't it spooky when lightning strikes zapped static into the sound system just when Giuliani was responding to criticisms by a Catholic bishop. It was a moment of much-needed levity, although the funniest moment was when Tom Thompson said that, in giving George W. Bush a job under his administration, "I would not send him to the UN". It did not raise a laugh among the Republicans - but some of us got the joke.

But here, just for the record, are some quotes from Ron Paul on Iraq:

"If we made the wrong diagnosis, we should change the treatment. So we're not making progress there and we should come home.

The weapons weren't there and we went in under U.N. resolutions. And our national security was not threatened. We're more threatened now by staying."

"...our foreign policy is designed to protect our oil interests.

The profits, that's not the problem. It's the problem that we succumb to the temptation to protect oil interests by literally going out and fighting wars over oil."

"...you can't enforce our goodness, like the necons preach, with an armed force. It doesn't work".

Bill Richardson's six-day plan

First things first. The increasingly controversial date for the New Hampshire Primary was the subject of Bill Richardson's introductory remarks. He'd just heard that it was going to be on January 8 - in response to the impertinent move forward of Florida from March to the last Tuesday in January.
"You should be the first Primary," declared Richardson, adding that this sudden scrunch of Primary dates put great pressure on the campaigners.
New Hampshire house parties are very informal and interactive - and immediately someone pointed out that NH is first "by law". Assorted very early dates were jovially suggested.

Then the New Mexico Governor launched into his address, prefacing it with some of the ways in which he believed he was the most outstandingly qualified of all candidates for the presidency. These were not only his administrative experience as a state governor, but his extensive CV as a Congressman and the country's Secretary of Energy - not to mention his time as a UN diplomat wherein he had liaised with leaders in world trouble spots such as Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Sudan.

From these experiences he had learned the essence of making peace with enemies and turning them into friends and, indeed, the most pressing thing he'd do as new President would be to bring people together in a bi-partisan thrust to terminate the "nightmare" of the Iraq War.

As a succinct format, he cited his policies in the form of "six issues and what I would do with my first six days in the White House".
Day 1 would be Iraq. He would not only withdraw the forces but he would install diplomacy and an all-Muslim peacekeeping force and apply some of the $400 billion war into "the domestic needs" of Iraq.


Day 2, Richardson would dedicate to Energy Independence, liberating the country from the 60 per cent oil import statistic and the "stranglehold" that "unfriendly" countries have over the USA. He would call on private and public investment in a blitz of auto greening with all cars at 50mpg. "I don't care what Detroit says," he challenged. He added a list of energy alteratives including green buildings, solar roofs on schools...
"You gotta sacrifice. It's a sense of community because energy efficiency is for the common good. We generate 25 per cent of the world's pollution," he said.
Interestingly, his state, New Mexico, is the only US state which abides by the Kyoto Protocol. This man has a track record.
He gave fulsome credit to Al Gore for his service in informing the country about the urgency of environmental reform, adding: "Al, stay out of the running."


Day 3, said Richardson, would be for education. Here he absolutely soared in recognition of what the US really needs to bring itself back to the future - science and math! India and Korea have left the US, and the rest of the world, behind in these vital subjects. Australia needs to pick up its socks, too. Richardson is on the ball in knowing that this is the foundation of a knowledge economy. He also spoke of languages and, particularly, the arts - to engage "and stimulate the mind". Yes!

Day 4 he allocated to his National Health Care plan to which he gave scant outline, since, he explained, the complexities and funding thereof requires lengthy extrapolation.


Day 5 was for his job-generation plan. "The Democrats would be the party of economic growth and science and math," he underlined. "The Democrats have been the party of the poor, which I endorse, but do you what what? We have forgotten the middle class."
He went on to speak of tax incentives for new technology and employment iniatives with an emphasis on renewable energy, technology and aviation. "The future is renewable energy," he reiterated.
When someone interjected a question about nuclear power, he acknowledged that it was non-pollutant but still worried about disposal of its by-products. It was not an energy option of his choice.

Day 6 would be devoted to "restating our commitment to civil rights". Richardson strongly supported "a woman's right to choose". "If you have different sexual orientation, I'll be on your side," he added. He sought "fair immigration laws and not that wall - that's not American".
"We're a nation of immigrants," he emphasised, suggesting that immigration regulations should incorporate speaking English and passing background checks.

The American voting system was also a target. Only 48 per cent of Americans voted in the last election. "One of the problems is that we don't trust the ballot," he said. "I want a shift back to paper."
The New Hampshirites interjected that they had a paper trail here, despite an electronic ballot.

Richardson finished by saying that he knew he was an "underdog" in the Democratic Presidential candidate polls "but I've got nine months to go - and a lot of house parties".

And, just to add levity to his list of credentials, he confided that "I'm holder of the world handshaking record - 13,000 hands in 8 hours. That record used to belong to Teddy Roosevelt".

The party guests were keen to question the New Mexico Governor - and threw some tough ones at him, particularly about tax, Iraq, mental health and health funding. He fielded them all with amiable ease, at home on all issues, it seemed.



And he added some interesting snippets - insight about North Korea which he has visited no less than six times and which he still finds very different in thinking.
He told of talking to President Bush about negotiations with North Korea and the way in which using China as an intermediary was a mistake since the North Koreans hate China.
Bush replied: "Bill, I don't talk to countries that exhibit bad behaviour."
Richardson retorted: "Pretty soon you're only going to be talking to the Vatican."
He half-expected an angry response from the President, he said. But no. George Bush thought it was funny.

The Richardson campaign aides were keen to get him moving along - next stop an interview with CNN. Richardson, however, was reluctant to short-change these voters and his lingering to answer personal questions, shake hands and sign his book was clearly agitating his clock-watching aides, as we slipped quietly out the door ahead of him.

A good man, I'd say, who came across poorly in the Democrats' television debate. Gun supporter or not, he shone as an example of the extremely high quality of candidate being fielded by the American Democrats. If only politics was dominated by such people. If only.