DemocratDad

Two Candidates, Two Very Different Techniques of Power

So finally we will have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, just the two of them, all to ourselves. Tonight they debate in Los Angeles, carried live on CNN to our homes.

The media story which follows from this debate will likely change the results on Super Tuesday. This is a big deal.

My wife and I will be busy putting the kids down to sleep, but we'll record it (and then try and fail to resist the temptation to peek at the post-debate commentary before we finally watch it).

Here's what you should look for in the debate tonight:

When it comes down to it, the difference between Obama and Hillary is one of technique. Their policy positions are very close. But these two candidates propose for the occupant of the White House -- and use in their respective campaigns -- two entirely different techniques for achieving their goals.

The question for the night will be which technique is controlling the debate: clarity or drama.

Obama's efforts are directed towards achieving clarity. He is the great explainer. This does not mean that he speaks in sound-bites. On the contrary, sometimes to get clear you must get complicated. In his efforts to describe and respond to the slew of issues facing all of us, Obama sometimes even delves into nuances. Which frustrates Hillary.

An example from the last debate in South Carolina is illustrative of this. Midway through the debate, Senator Clinton complained that Obama "never take[s] responsibility for any vote." When the audience booed this, she defended herself: "Now, wait a minute... anytime anyone raises [an issue], there's always some kind of explanation... It's just very difficult to get a straight answer, and that's what we are probing for."

I believe that Hillary is genuinely baffled by Obama's refusal to give what she considers "straight answers," which in the language of contemporary politics are answers which either take the form of flat-out denials, or which alternatively throw the question back at the one asking them. She's used to political sparring that resembles a tennis match: Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thupp. (Cheers from the crowd.)

Instead, Obama actually gives, as she says -- gasp -- "some kind of explanation." Often his explanations are detailed, and they may require an appreciation of cost/benefit analysis, trade-offs, process, timing, and other factors that go into actual votes. But these are not straight answers in Hillary's playbook. Seeking clarity is not the goal for her; winning is.

Which brings us to Senator Clinton's technique: drama.

The Clintons, as everyone knows, seem to attract drama wherever they go, and they are doing it again in this campaign. All that is missing is the dancing bear. Dramatic episodes -- a stand-off over gays-in-the-military, Robert Reich's refusal to go along with welfare reform, the shutting-down-the-government game of chicken with Newt Gingrich, the Monica Lewinsky affair, the whole hyperbolic and sanctimonious presentation of the (entirely reasonable) Kosovo campaign -- marked Bill Clinton's years in office. And Hillary Clinton's campaign has started to proliferate with mini-controversies involving misstatements and smokescreens.

The advantage that Hillary Clinton takes from this drama is that it requires a champion to set things right again. Emotions get riled up, and we need a leader to tell us where to go from here.

Whoever sets the tone tonight -- clarity or drama -- establishes their imprint on voters' ideas of leadership. Whichever technique prevails -- clarity or drama -- may well signal that this technique will become a familiar mode in the next five years in the life of the American Republic.

My Problem with Hillary

I have written favorably about Hillary Clinton in the past. I praised her (and her husband's) commitment to a "rights narrative" of American history here, and I described her as a "seasoned warrior" here.

But the last two weeks have soured me on Hillary so much that I will find it very difficult to vote for her in November if she is the Democratic candidate for President.

What is my problem with Hillary? In a word, character.

We know about the manipulation of Obama's words throughout this campaign. The mostly recent egregious example was the TV ad that her campaign aired in South Carolina claiming that Obama had supported Ronald Reagan's ideas (when, as she well knew, he actually made a fairly commonplace observation about the transformative role Reagan played, and how the ideas of the right about limited government and individual responsiblity have dominated the national discourse since Reagan's ascent in 1980). Simply put, she believes that the conscious manipulation of voters is acceptable in the effort to get elected. I would guess that among her friends she would go further and say that Obama's refusal to do so betrays him as lacking what it takes to be effective in politics.

But let's just take the non-event, the drummed-up media tizzy yesterday, about the supposed "snub" of Hillary by Obama at the State of the Union address on Monday night. The macrocosm is in the microcosm. How did Hillary Clinton respond to this? She lied. In an interview with ABC yesterday she said "Well, I reached out my hand in friendship and unity and my hand is still reaching out."

The facts, of course, are different -- and again, she knows it. Photos clearly show that Senator Kennedy initiated the handshake with Hillary. Simultaneously, Obama turns away to answer a question, or otherwise engage with Senator Claire McCaskill. Senator Clinton never did reach out her hand to Obama. She might have, if the occasion had presented itself. But it didn't, and she didn't.

Now, admittedly, this is a non-event. I feel somewhat silly even writing about such a trival media tizzy. So why did Hillary's commentary yesterday on the supposed "snub" stick in my craw? Because it points to something deeper than politics; it points to her basic character. Anyone with a sense of dignity, anyone with an instinctive refusal to fuzz facts, anyone with class, would simply not be able to pretend that he or she "reached out...in friendship and unity" when the occasion simply did not present itself, and she never in fact did reach out. If she had just said, "Of course I would always reach out to Senator Obama, but there are more important things to discuss," or something like that, she would still have scored political points with me.

But she had to take the extra step and lie.

I don't know that I could bear four (or eight) more years of that kind of weak character in the White House. I certainly would be shocked if someone I knew lied directly to me that way. It would change the relationship forever.

I truly don't know if I could vote for Hillary Clinton for President. Third party, purely symbolic votes would, for the first time in my life, interest me.

And even though it is my own thought, that scares me.

The Verb "to Cherish"

In all of the fear that my wife and I have confronted over the past week, I want to share with you the word that has helped me. I have felt a need to describe the feeling in our home. The word that works for me is "cherish." We cherish our children, and we cherish each other.

I know that the children feel it too. In turn, I can see that, already at their young ages, they cherish one another, and us, as well. This verb feels right.

Of course we love one another. But "cherish" captures for me some of the care that we have for one another too.

Think of the people in your life whom you cherish... Isn't it somehow satisfying to say it?

Dealing with Cancer

My wife was diagnosed with colon cancer on Friday of last week, so our family is dealing with that. Thank you to all the readers of DemocratDad. I will write more when I can.

Cass Sunstein on the "Visionary Minimalist"

Cass Sunstein is one of the foremost legal scholars in the country. He has written a great explanation of Obama's approach to politics and policy-making, called The Visionary Minimalist. It's worth reading.

Worrying about the Teenage Years (Already)

My children are small. They still let me hold them.

They cry in my arms sometimes.

Someday they will be big. They will hold others.

They will probably make me cry sometimes.

Check out this video for a good laugh and a good dose of worry about what's to come in the teenage years:

Why do I find myself siding with him by the end?

Memories of When I Used to Be a Polite and Thoughtful Person

Since I became a dad, my social skills have gone into a steep decline.

Last week I learned that I am no longer a polite person.

On Friday, two friends came over to our house for dinner. Everything went as planned. The kids fell asleep just before their arrrival, the dishes tasted great, the wine flowed. And the conversation was lively.

Then, as the four of us were just enjoying a post-dinner cup of tea, I happened to glance at my watch: 11 pm.

I did a quick calculation of how many hours of sleep I would get before our youngest awoke if I went to sleep that very minute: 7 hours. Not too bad! Oh, but there's the dishwashing...

I did another quick calculation, but this time checking on my physical condition (I had felt a cold coming on all day): Sore throat. Fatigue. Possibly slight fever.

The voices of my wife and our guests danced around me. That's when I blurted it out:

"Well..." I said in a loud voice. "I'm really tired. I'm going to go to bed."

I heard the words as they left my mouth. I saw them register on everybody's faces.

Silence. My wife glared at me. Then she said, "Tom!" and put her head down into her hands.

Our friends looked as if I had just literally kicked and shoved them out the door.

Everyone tried to recover. "That's cool," said our friend sitting to my left. "No. That's cool. I understand. Yeah." His tone showed that he was instinctively trying to smooth things over but he did not understand. His partner, her mouth in an involuntary frown, was folding up her napkin and beginning to rise.

"I'm sorry," I said, hearing my voice again as if in a dream. "I... I... I didn't mean to just say that all of a sudden. It's just, I'm not feeling that well. And --"

"Tom!" my wife said again. Then she turned to our guests: "That's my husband..."

We suffered through another 15 minutes or so of attempts by all of us (most of all, me) to make things okay. But there was no getting around it. I had messed up the end of a very nice evening because I had become confused and thought for a moment that I was my own dad.

My only defense is that I thought I was sending myself upstairs to get my pajamas on.

As a parent, I have learned to act this way. I will interrupt if necessary to start the next phase of the evening. When it is time for dinner, sometimes you just have to announce it, and the farm animal puzzle, or the wind-up plastic fish-catching game, just has to stop. When it is time to go upstairs to sleep, then we go right away, no dilly-dallying allowed.

But adults move in a different, more graceful, more euphemistic way through the world. We generally seek consensus, or at least tacit approval, for the major events of an evening. We don't eat until everyone has a plate. We wait until everyone is done to get up. We stick to schedules. We avoid whining.

Since I spend much of my time these days around a 3-year-old, a 2-year-old and an 8-month-old, this distinction between adult and chlld behavior is getting lost to me.

Case #2: When a friend dropped by last night, my first impulse, seeing him walking in the door, was to spring up and do the dishes as we talked. That way, I could get that out of the way. Before I was a parent, of course, when a friend dropped by my first impulse was to drop everything and look after his or her needs. Which person would you rather drop by to visit?

But it's not selfishness I'm talking about; it's habit. I have fallen into the habit of being sudden, direct, efficient, and not terribly concerned with appearances; I'm also in the habit of guarding, like a dragon, the hours I have left to sleep.

The end result is that I find myself a social neophyte again when I get together with other adults. I need to learn my social skills all over again.

And this time I have to learn them on less sleep.

Evolution Is Not a Bedtime Story

So Mike Huckabee, a candidate for President of the United States in the first decade of the 21st Century, does not believe in evolution.

It boggles the mind.

When you watch him dismiss the scientific consensus of our age so cheerfully, so casually, you realize that his mind was boggled long ago by the the ancient sky-god religion of his upbringing.

It makes me reflect on what boggling I am doing to my children's minds.

Last night, for example, I boggled my son's mind.

I had run the King Arthur's court story I had been telling into the ground... Something about Merlin riding a white horse, with a random Prince behind him, who had been tied up by an evil "Mordrake," who had drunk a potion which an eagle had carried for a Princess but dropped... It wasn't working. The pieces had become too unwieldy for both of us. And anyway, the Prince seemed like a bit of a dolt.

So I closed it out with a quick marriage between the Prince and Princess, and even a "happily ever after," to seal the deal.

Searching for an alternative story to tell, something with a clearer trajectory, I landed on the story of evolution.

I started by telling about "this one fish" who tried to walk on the sand... Then, after some intermediate steps, the fish, or rather, its descendents, grew arms!

They lost their scales. They grew fur all over their bodies. They became monkeys!

Then they lost their fur. Their arms grew shorter. And they became people!

"And that's how we became people! Aren't you glad that you are a person and not a monkey?"

At this point, from the look on George's face, it was clear that I had boggled his mind. And not in a good way.

He was, shall we say, concerned.

After a long pause in which he eyed me suspiciously, George lifted his head from the pillow.

"Dad, dad," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me the story where the fish stays in the water."

He was basically asking me to reverse-engineer this whole evolution thing. He would rather stay a fish, thank you very much, than have to worry about slipping back to being a monkey, or looking down to find short, scaly arms, or any of the other, completely unscientific oddities I had conjured. I couldn't blame him.

"Sure," I said. "There was a fish, and he just kept swimming around in the water, and he never even tried to take any step on the sand. And he swam down to the bottom of the water with his family and they all ate some... moss off a rock."

I began to back out of the room.

"Is that what fish eat?" George asked, his curiosity back. We had taken a walk the day before and I had pointed out moss ("Look, George, grass that grows on walls -- that's called moss!"). It was all coming together.

"That's right," I said confidently. "Underwater it's called algae. They also eat little shrimp."

And with that I left the room before I did any more damage.

Next time I talk evolution with the kids, I think I'll avoid the bedtime story format. Maybe I'll even have some visual aids ready.

Much unboggling to do.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking Dad

As a dad, I second-guess myself often...

Should I have just read "one more" story, as my son requested, or was it right to insist that it was time to go to sleep, despite the tears that provoked?

What the hell was I thinking when I made that joke about "not putting your bombom (bottom) in my face!" one time during the bedtime, getting-into-pajamas madness, thereby establishing a rich vein of "bombom" humor in our house which no doubt will bring disapproval upon my boys when they test it out at their preschools?

Am I too harsh on the first-born, blaming him for fights with his brother, just because he is more verbal?

Is it selfish of me to try to get my children to watch football on TV on Sunday afternoons, when I know they would be better stimulated if we did something else?

...The truth is, you never play your perfect game.

So the second-guessing is pretty useless. Just as in sports, however, it is useful in one way: if you actually learn from your mistakes.

So this post is an attempt to list some of the mistakes which I have learned from so far:

1. Never begin to remove a diaper without first checking that wipes are ready at hand.
2. Never look away from a child when you are standing next to him on the sidewalk of a busy street, even for a moment to adjust his seat inside the car or pick up that dropped boot. (Get him or her to hold onto your leg so that you can feel the contact at all times.)
3. Go out and purchase rubber sheets for your child's bed before you start toilet training him or her.
4. Never shout at your spouse in front of the children. You will spend the rest of the day regrettting it, even after the children (and your spouse) move on.
5. Always double check if you are using children's Motrin or infant Motrin (I never made this mistake, but I had to include this anyway since it terrifies me every time).
6. Never advise your wife on breastfeeding issues (accept that you have no idea what you're talking about -- I did, and now I feel better).
7. Believe the counterintuitive instruction in that Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child book, which says that the earlier to bed, the longer your child will sleep.
8. Always call the pediatrician immediately if it is Friday and you think your child might be getting an ear infection (which could take you into the weekend after the doctor's office closes).
9. Never make hasty judgments about your child's behavior patterns without considering that they will entirely change in another week. (The development phases come and go so quickly!)
10. Always listen to your child when he or she resists a school or other program -- he or she knows better than you.

Any others leap to mind?

Political Labels and Political Philosophies: Take the Test

See where you come down on the electoral compass. It's a great way to test your political self-image against the actual policy positions of the candidates in this election year.

I fall squarely in the upper left quadrant, and my answers are closest to John Edwards and, after him, Barack Obama. So I guess I am an unabashed lefty after all...

What's curious about my electoral compass-point, though, is that in terms of my political philosophy I am actually a conservative -- in the sense that I believe in anti-Utopian, gradualist change, and lower-case meaning derived from contingent cultural traditions.

But I happened to be raised in Berkeley, so the values that I want to conserve are lefty values, emphasizing freedom of expression and equal opportunity for all, instead of religious authoritarianism or private property absolutism. Other people come to liberalism through a different path -- they break away from their upbringing and embrace a transformative, radical position in support of abstract human rights or the rejection of the Powers That Be. I come to my liberalism the way that 18th century "liberals" like Jefferson did: because it seems to me that it allows the maximum of human flourishing, while responding to our deep down sense of fairness. I do not need to believe that it will ever create a Perfect Union, only that we are always striving together, as the Constitution has it, towards "a more perfect Union."

Where do you fall on the electoral compass? What is the political philosophy that lurks behind your specific policy preferences?

Parents Getting Their Way, the Angry Child and the Results in New Hampshire

My two boys, 3 and 2, are just getting to the age where they will directly test their wills against mine.

The boys will want something -- say, to soak "just one more minute!" in the bubble bath -- and my wife or I will insist that, no, they can't have it.

You know what comes next: a loud and unruly protest rally. Chants and raised fists. Outrage from all sides. The inevitable divisions and recriminations within the movement. And finally, a plastic frog thrown hard at someone's brother.

Grabbing the culprit and lifting him out of the bath, I feel like "the Man." Part of me wants to join them. A vision flashes before my eyes of myself suddenly plunging into the bath next to them, throwing bubbles in the air, calling for more plastic bath toys. "No justice, no peace!" we'd all scream at their mother as she came running in to see what was going on.

But I resist. I mean, I really want them to get in their pajamas.

Sometimes, as I lift them out of the bath, or deny the refill of apple juice, or separate them without asking for a report of who started it, I see a look in their eyes that seems familiar. I remember being a child myself, and having no say as to the final outcome of a confrontation.

When Mom or Dad laid down the law, when it was time for me and my sister to go to our rooms or get in the car to go to school, there was no arguing. Or rather, there was arguing, but it was a foregone conclusion who would win the argument.

Even in the best of worlds, even if it were possible for the parents to be right and reasonable, under all circumstances, it hurts to be the kid. It makes you feel helpless. You recognize the limitations of your own power to change outcomes. It makes you mad, righteously mad. Door-slammingly mad.

That is exactly what many of us felt on Tuesday night, watching the Hillary Clinton victory speech in New Hampshire. And I'm not alone. It felt as if our parents were winning once again.

And it makes us particularly angry because we've had a lot of that over the past eight years. There was the decision by the Supreme Court (parental figures if there ever were such, in strange "grown up" black gowns, talking to each other in sophisticated language about unfamiliar issues) to hand over the Presidency to George W. Bush, despite clear indications that Gore had... I don't know, just possibly received more votes from the good citizens of Florida than anyone else on the ballot.

Then there were the "adults" who, back in 2003, told us that questioning the drumbeat for war and the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was childish. In fact, Dick Cheney's main persona, from the beginning of the administration to the present, is that of the wiser, more responsible parental figure who tells it like it is to the rest of us squirts. And one of the most notorious "grown ups" in the lead up to the Iraq disaster, Bill Kristol, now has a column in the New York Times, along with that other cheerfully enabling grown up, Tom Friedman.

We're still listening to their lectures, suffering from their hand-slappings, sitting for their pep talks.

In New Hampshire, there was a moment when the younger generation seemed to announce itself. Reporters on the ground talked of Obama rallys which were confident, positive, forward-looking -- celebrations of our new unity as an extended family of Americans. It seemed as if, maybe this time, we would speak for ourselves.

But the grown-ups, the over 40 voters, leaned to Hillary. The over-60 voters stampeded to her. And it was enough to send us to our rooms all over again.

I still feel angry. It reminds me of how my boys must feel sometimes.

So what can we learn from our experiences as children and parents to ease the pain?

No, I will not acknowledge that the grown ups are usually right, and that Hillary Clinton, despite my resistence, is best for the family. No, I will not come out of my room and say "I'm sorry." Is there any other lesson to draw from parenting?

There is one: This too will pass. Kids grow up. As you enter your teenage years the conversation with your parents starts to involve more give and take. You may even convince them on occasion to take your side. And then suddenly, shockingly, you find yourself responsible for your own destiny.

I hope that this is the year for Obama. I resent the results in New Hampshire. I am nervous about the prospect of the so-called "Greatest" generation and their children, the Boomer generation, rolling the rest of us kids once again on February 5, "Super Duper Tuesday."

But at least I know that if not now, then soon. We're growing up, Mom and Dad -- Hillary and Dick -- and we're going to finally get the franchise.

I pledge right now to listen to the political views of my adult kids when I'm 60 and holding on to the status quo.

Barack Obama and the "Experience" No One Is Talking About

Dear Barack Obama,

I am writing with advice. Hillary Clinton's campaign surprised everyone yesterday in New Hampshire, and I'm sure your campaign is taking a fresh look at how to respond to the Clinton "comeback."

Here is my advice, short and sweet: You must challenge her claim that you lack "experience."

So far, your campaign has pretty much conceded that point and offered instead the alternative of choice. But you can't simply let her win on experience. You can still emphasize choice, but you need to chip away at the voters who are concerned, above all, about life history, qualifications, resumes, connections.

From what I gather, you do have the experience which equips you for the Presidency.

I don't just mean the story that your wife Michelle tells so movingly on the stump: how you turned down offers from prestigious law firms so that you could become a community organizer in South Side Chicago; how you brought bipartisan coalitions together in the Illinois State Senate and passed important legislation; the impact you have already made in the U.S. Senate, such as your efforts with Dick Lugar to deal with the threat of nuclear warheads in the former Soviet Union. These are important parts of your experience, but they are not the full story.

I would urge you to discuss, with your characteristic eloquence, your experience teaching Constitution Law at the University of Chicago. Tell voters what that experience means for your qualifications to be President at this moment in history.

Under Bush -- in "war on terrorism" era -- we have seen the erosion of some of the legal safeguards in this country: signing statements, invocations of executive privilege, and a reversal of the welcome trend towards transparency in government. We have also seen the Bush administration dismiss many of the long-held (and hard-fought) commitments of international law and human rights law: the advocacy of torture (under another name of course), the outright evasion of the Geneva Conventions, pre-emptive war. We have seen too, with the Patriot Act and numerous executive orders, direct threats to our rights as citizens: the denial of habeas corpus under certain conditions, the wiretapping of our private phone conversations, insistence on access to information on the books we choose to check-out from public libraries.

It will be incumbent on the next President to know the Constitution well, to have grappled with its clauses, its interpretations, its amendments and its "penumbras." It will also be crucial for the next President to know intimately the precedents of the Supreme Court, decisions which have shaped the boundaries of our political and personal lives, from those written in longhand by Justice Marshall all the way to those word-processed by Justice Thomas and his clerks.

I know that Hillary Clinton is a lawyer too. But she did not teach Con Law. I believe that you can make the case that this is perhaps the most important experience the next President will need domestically: that you know our Constitution and its accompanying body of law. You can make the case -- not legalistically but with honest, straightforward and soaring words -- that you will be the greatest defender of our cherished Constitution, and from no less a powerful seat than the one behind the desk in the Oval Office. This cuts through party lines. It is in every American's interest.

Best wishes for Nevada and South Carolina -- and beyond,
DemocratDad

Hillary Clinton and the Curse of the "Double Self"

Dear Senator Clinton,

I am writing this letter with a feeling of genuine sympathy for you, concerning the difficulties you are facing in the campaign. Let me be clear: I am a supporter of Barack Obama. But this letter is not written to score political points or with tongue in cheek; I truly wish to convey my respect and sympathies.

I also want to try to explain to you what is happening in New Hampshire at the voting booths and all around the country in the polls.

I know that you have dedicated much of your life to the advancement of your political goals -- including health care reform, education and preschool programs, and a more progressive tax structure. You worked closely with your husband during your years as First Lady both in Arkansas and Washington D.C.. You led many initiatives and commissions into many important policy areas in those years. And then in your subsequent career you delved deeply into the minutia of legislation addressing all manner of economic, military and social needs and endured the endless wrangling in the Senate. Many of your colleages -- Republican as well as Democratic -- have attested to your civility, your thoughtfulness, your obvious intelligence, your fortitude. You won them over, just as you have won over the voters in New York.

But Democratic voters all around the country are now going in a different direction. You and your campaign, by all reports, are reeling.

Why are voters -- particurly young voters -- turning to Obama in droves? Why does experience seem a liability these days? Why do people constantly reference the "likability" factor when contrasting your candidacy to Obama's?

There are many explanations of course. For one, there is Obama himself. We could also speak of "Clinton fatigue," gender stereotypes, the Republican noise machine and its villification of you over the 15 years, demographic shifts, celebrity culture, your fateful vote to authorize the war in Iraq, your personal style of self-restraint, the infinite power of Oprah, and on and on. But I want to focus on just one of these many explanations, the one which I think is (other than Obama himself) the fundamental one:

Hillary, the nature of public discourse is changing.

People are getting savvy. They recognize what people in public life are doing, behind the masks. They know how to read motives. We are, each one of us, saturated with images of other people in the media. And we have become, each one of us, highly advanced critics, expert detectors of duplicity, pretense, hypocrisy, inauthenticity, ambivalence. Microexpressions have macro-consequences.

I believe that you are truly dedicated to your political goals. The charges -- the Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh line of talk -- that you are driven by avarice, revenge, or ambition are silly and hurtful. But in your long time in the public eye you have developed a habit of speaking which hides more than it reveals.

You purse your lips into a half smile. You focus-group your hair style (I am assuming that it has at least been discussed, for its political import, in your inner circle). You speak in measured cadences with a subtext which consistently advances your agenda, be it tactical or strategic.

This is no longer suitable in the media-driven culture. People see too much.

This change first began to have consequences in the 2000 election. Voters judged Gore and Bush on the basis of their personal style, regardless of the content of their speeches. While Gore -- dear, brilliant, sincere Gore -- spoke in his slightly condescending, calculated way to the voters, George W. Bush spoke from his heart. He has, over a lifetime, developed a consistent, down-home Texas-style delivery, which relies on the talismanic power of short, simple words (You're a "good man"; people want "freedom" -- see my earlier post on Bush's... unique way of speaking). Voters responded to this. Whatever his policies, whatever his values even, they recognized a person speaking to them without artiface.

When I say that George W. speaks without artiface, I know that you and many others may reflexively disagree. Of course he is a blue-blooded New Englander who is pretending to be a Texan. There is a certain artiface in his whole persona. But the important point is that he has genuinely adopted it as his own. So he may recite the cues given to him by Karl Rove, and he may have invented his down-home style back in his childhood, but he believes it now. Gore, on the other hand, is famously different with his friends in private -- cutting, sharp-witted, even irreverent -- than he is in public, where he is serious, self-deprecating, and yawn-inducing. (Though I have to admit I still love the guy, even when he drives me crazy.)

My point about you, Hillary, is that you have a double self. So do I for that matter, when I present myself to the world. I hide my goofy side and get very serious (not unlike Gore, I'm proud to say!). There is nothing wrong with this traditional style of self-presentation, this double self, on the face of it. But it is a serious liability in today's politics.

Voters today -- especially the young -- want someone who is a fully portable package, and someone who allows any voter, anyone watching on TV, to inspect the contents held within. The age of secrecy is over. Love him or hate him, George W. makes no bones about who he is and where he stands. Love him, Barack Obama does the same.

Again, my sympathies are with you. You are a gifted person, and you have done and will no doubt continue to do much good. But the culture has shifted, Hillary.

In your emotionally revealing moment yesterday, your voice broke when you spoke of how hard it is sometimes to continue on with the campaign, and why you do it. Let's forget the supposed risk of crying, considering our country's hang-ups about "showing weakness." I was with you as I watched it. For a moment, you seemed to drop your mask and let us see the contents within. But then, before our very eyes, you put the mask back on. You transitioned, almost effortlessly (I only saw your eyes drop for a moment as you made the switch), into a political speech about how "some of us are right and some of us are wrong... some of us are ready, and some of us are not."

It broke my heart to see you do that. For I knew then, that this dual awareness, this calculation of the words you speak for their effect instead of their capacity to represent your inner reality, is your default position. You cannot help it. You cannot break the habit. And for this, voters cannot forgive you.

I will vote for Barack Obama on February 5 in California. But I will think of you too, Hillary, and I will wish you well in your continuing career as a Senator from New York. There are many of us who struggle with this new era, which demands exposure to all of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all the time.

Best wishes and be proud of all you have done,
DemocratDad

Update: Clinton won New Hampshire! Congratulations, Senator Clinton. This will certainly be an interesting month ahead.

What Lies Behind the Youth Vote -- Obama, Huckabee and the "Secondary Orality"

The world is changing. Faster than any of us can track. And one of the ways it is changing is to make us far more accurate at assessing the multiple sources of information demanding our attention every day.

We have to be more accurate. We have to be more selective. If not, we would be swamped with a time-wasting, distracting, confusing barrage of information, and we would go to sleep at night wondering what the hell that was all about.

(Well, okay, sometimes I go to sleep at night wondering what the hell that was all about anyway, but usually there is a specific cause -- say, I happened to land on Fox News for too long before clicking the TV off. It's not a general state of mind...)

We've learned to be choosy about what we let into our heads.

One reason we've had to do this is that our culture is becoming an audiovisual one -- instead of one based on the written word.

This is somewhat threatening to those of us who value the old culture -- those of us who still read for pleasure. An article in the New Yorker last week terrified me on this topic of our changing culture.

The article, Twilight of the Books, discusses the rise of a post-literate culture -- a so-called "secondary orality." The author, Caleb Crain, lists some of the findings of research into the ways in which an oral culture -- one without reliance on the written word -- functions. These findings happen to match up almost exactly with our emerging 21st century culture in the U.S.

Here's the most hair-raising passage from the article:

"[T]he best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to 'think memorable thoughts,' whose zing insures their transmission. In an oral culture, cliche and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk. There's no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument. Opponents in struggle are more memorable than calm and abstract investigations, so bards revel in name-calling and in 'enthusiastic description of physical violence.' Since there's no way to erase a mistake invisibly, as one may in writing, speakers tend not to correct themselves at all. Words have their present meanings but no older ones, and if the past seems to tell a story with values different from current ones, it is either forgotten or silently adjusted...[I]t is only in a literate culture that the past's inconsistencies have to be accounted for, a process that encourages skepticism and forces history to diverge from myth."

Doesn't that describe our current political and popular cultures with eerie accuracy?

I brooded about this for a week, until I realized that this culture of "secondary orality" will generate new skills, new adaptive behaviors, new talents, in the coming years. My children will have abilities far beyond mine to selectively choose what goes into their heads, and what new synthesis they make of it all.

And that brings me to the youth vote.

As is becoming increasingly apparent from the floundering of Clinton and Romney, young people don't buy the old schtick of politicians. When they start with the rhetoric, or dwell too long on their resumes, young people turn their attention away. This is the secret behind the popularity of the satire on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or the Colbert Report, or the Onion. The old written-word style of communication, mimicked by habit even in the speech of older politicians, has become a joke.

Elevated language, and the unreflective role playing that goes along with it (message: "I speak in this self-important manner because I am an important leader of men!"), simply don't translate well into an audiovisual culture.

This is why Obama and Huckabee have a special magic for young people. They may be readers themselves, but they belong -- in every syllable they utter, in every casual, natural smile they flash -- to the new culture. They are authentic, finite, recognizable. And most importantly, they are hearable and watchable.

Barack Obama, the Watershed Waterfall in Iowa, and the New Man

Yes. Yes. Yes.
Obama!
OBAMA!
OBAMA!!!!

Now he's knocking at your door, America.

What struck me most about the amazing speech Obama gave following his decisive win in Iowa last night was his complete lack of giddiness. He was warm, eloquent, authoritative, full of conviction, but he never seemed lost in the moment.

Here he had accomplished something truly historic: an African-American candidate came in first -- beating two seasoned pols -- in rural America, in the heartland, in Iowa for godsakes, which surely competes with Idaho for the title of Whitest State in the Union -- and a red state to boot. (Does that make it pink?) And yet he was perfectly composed and self-aware.

This is a watershed moment in so many ways. In fact, last night we witnessed a watershed waterfall.

Here is a list of some of the watershed moments we witnessed in Iowa:

1. Largest turnout of new voters ever in the Iowa caucus.
2. A campaign that never resorted to negative attacks (the lowest Obama stooped to was questioning whether "Washington experience" is really that important to serving as President -- harsh!)
3. First ever presidential candidate who openly admits that his religious faith represents "a choice, not an epiphany."
4. Second ever presidential candidate who has a parent who was born in a foreign country (the first and only other, as far as I know, was Thomas Jefferson -- father from Wales, mother from England).
5. A new model of manhood for our time.

The last one perhaps needs some elaboration.

I see in Obama, beyond the political accomplishments, a significant cultural marker in terms of our contemporary idea of what consitutes a strong man -- and for that matter, a strong person, regardless of gender.

His opponents -- and the right wing media machine -- have attempted to define him as soft, as naive, as "Obambi," as too young and too inexperienced, but these charges seem to bounce off of him as soon as he speaks. He is slender, polite, quick to smile, even gentle in his way. Yet his impeccable control of what he is saying projects strength beyond question. What's going on here?

If we think of the panoply of ideas about manhood in our culture they tend to cluster around two poles: warrior/chieftan/cowboy or scholar/gentleman. The first group is rough-and-ready, agile of mind when needed, but mostly agile of body. These men bow down to no one. The second group is decorous, high-minded, confident and morally unimpeachable. These men, in many cases, inspire others to bow down to them by their sheer understanding of what lies before us.

Obama belongs to neither group -- or rather, both but more than both. He is tough like a warrior/chieftan/cowboy -- he refused jobs at cushy law firms after Harvard and instead dedicated himself as a commnity organizer to the streets and housing projects and churches of Chicago. We can imagine the icy-cold morning spent in dingy rooms drinking tepid coffee out of styrofoam cups fending off accusations and hacking coughs and disillusionment. No one can fairly accuse him of taking the easy way out.

Yet he is also obviously capable of inspiring a following. President of the Harvard Law Review (and universally loved, apparently). Wildly admired, early in his career, by his colleages at the University of Chicago Law School (Obama taught Constitutional law, a subject which I can safely say is one of the most mentally demanding of any area of expertise I have ever encountered. One of his colleages, Larry Lessig, who taught me Contracts when I was at U of C Law School in the mid-90s, is perhaps the smartest professor I ever encountered in my life -- and he recently endorsed Obama and attested to his brilliance). And, if anybody needed further proof of Obama's ability to inspiire, they need only look to Iowa.

But Obama does not fall neatly into the scholar/gentleman group either. He inspires, yes, but he does not take on the mantle. He remains visibly uncomfortable with the megalomaniacal side of running for President -- see my discussion of his Christmas video. And last night, flush with victory, he spoke to the crowd convincingly of the "movement" they had created together, and not his own path to the White House. Like Lincoln, he seems to draw inspiration from inside, from his own core values and his own visions for the future, and does not require the crowd's roar of approval. (Though, like Lincoln, he appears to thrive on connecting to people in all of their particularity -- again and again he writes of individuals and their influence on him in his memoir of growing up, Dreams From my Father.)

So what is this new pole, this third pole, of manhood which Obama represents?

I would argue that we see in him a model of how to be a strong person in the Information Age. We know now that our world is too large, too full of talent, for any one person to stand heroically above everyone else. We know that if anyone appears to, it is the result of a brilliant marketing strategy more than anything else. We know now that there are Abraham Lincolns and Elizabeth I's everywhere, in small villages in China and far-away cities in Estonia. We see them represented in film; on TV; in throw-away news stories or profiles; in internet vidoes; and when we travel.

So strength is not about fame or worldly success. Nor is it about brute force. In this new era, where the world has both shrunk and expanded, strength is about composure and self-knowledge. This is the only way to navigate the barrage of data in the Information Age; this is the only way to weave together the multiple identities needed in every one person these days (each of us juggles them: world-citizen, American-citizen, perhaps parent, worker, athlete, intellectual seeker, spiritual seeker, pragmatist, consumer of culture, creator of culture, friend, leader, follower, sometimes mentor, sometimes student).

Barack Obama is possibly the next President of the United States. He is also, already, an admirable person.

What I Learned about Sadness from my Children

Our cat, Milky, died in early December. She had already lost her ears, a few years back, and the skin cancer had eaten away her nose. She was in pain. It was time.

So with my wife holding Milky, and the kids upstairs taking their naps, a vet administered the injection which put her to sleep.

A few days passed, and the children hadn't said anything. But we felt we had to tell them. So, one night around the dinner table, we exchanged looks. My wife signalled for me to start.

"George and Cole," I said cautiously. "I have something to tell you that is kind of good and kind of sad too." Cole remained intent on some obscure design he was making with his food on the table. But our three-year-old Georege's face dropped, and he stopped clicking his spoon against the edge of his bowl of noodles.

I continued on, speaking slowly and carefully. "Milky had to go away. She was in pain. Now she is in a place where there is no more pain."

He looked shocked.

"Where is Milky?" he asked, as if he had only just thought of it and I had yet to say anything.

Seeing me hesitate, my wife took over. "Milky is gone, sweetie," she said. "Her nose was hurting her so much, and she went to a place where she won't feel any more pain."

"What place did Milky go to?"

By this time, George's little 2-year-old brother Cole was also paying attention. He must have caught the unusual tone in our voices. Or, more likely, knowing Cole, he just so happened to have reached a good stopping-point in his design work -- the noodles were properly mushed into the edge of the table. Now he was giving us his trademark sideways look from his seat.

My wife and I waited for the other to answer. What else do we say?

Finally my wife carried on. "She's in a place called Bubbling Springs." That was in fact the name of the place the vet mentioned where Milky's ashes would go. I have avoided thinking too hard about what Bubbling Springs actually looks like, aside from its enticing name.

And with that -- the mention of that single data-point of "Bubbling Springs" -- the boys seemed to drop it. George went back to his noodles. Cole slid off his chair and started the nightly ritual of running around the table holding something aloft -- a spoon, a pretzel, a piece of cheese -- and yelling, "Parade!"

But five minutes later, it happened.

First George, and then Cole, ran to the window looking out on the night sky, trees, and neighborhood houses.

"Milky! Miiiiiilky!" George cried out. "Milky come home!" Cole joined in too: "Come 'ome Miiiwky!"

We sprang from our seats, got on our knees and held them. The obvious next line, "Milky isn't coming home," sounded a little Hollywood, so we just held them.

That night, as I was putting George down to sleep, he started crying. I lay down next to him and he shook with sobs.

"You're sad because Milky is gone?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, wiping tears from his eyes while still more came out.

"I'm sad too," I told him. "What do you miss about her?"

He stared at me for a moment, as if he hadn't thought about specifics until just then. I was about to withdraw the question, or add, "Everything, huh?" when he reached out and grabbed my arm.

"I miss petting her."

*

The experience of seeing the boys grieve for our cat Milky stayed in my mind for all of December. Over the next few weeks both George and Cole occasionally still called out to her from the window. But I kept thinking about the tears and sadness that George showed on that first night when he heard. He was not following some prescribed behavior; we had never told him to cry at the death of a cat, a mouse, or anybody else. It just welled out of him.

It reminded me again how naturally, without effort, the most tender emotions arise in human beings. It reminds me that below the outrages and cruelties and prurient proddings of our politics and our pop culture, there are children -- all of us -- who just want Milky to come back so we can pet her again. That's it. It's not complicated.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Happy New Year! DemocratDad is back.

Just a quick post today. I'm so nervous about the Iowa caucus tomorrow that I can't sit still long enough to write much.

*

We took down our Christmas tree today, and my 3-year-old George had some questions.

I was standing on the step ladder, straining to get the final strand of lights off the top. George watched me from below.

"Why are you taking the lights off the tree?" he asked.

"I have to take them off because we want to use them again next year." With a sharp lassoing motion I yanked the strand of lights off that last stubborn branch. In the process I nearly swung myself off the ladder too. But I was okay. I glanced down at George and smiled to reassure us both.

George hadn't even noticed. "Why do we want to use them again next year?" George asked. He was working on the mystery of the tree.

"Because it will be Christmas again! And we'll put the lights on the new tree."

I stepped down from the ladder, gently lay the lights in a loose pile on the floor, and then lay down on the floor myself. Without hesitation, George lay next to me. It seemed like the thing to do.

Lying flat on my back now, I reached under the tree and began unscrewing the bolts which held the tree in its stand.

"What are you doing?" George whispered. He had seen that concentration look on my face before.

"I'm unscrewing these things down here, so that I can pull the tree out. Then we're going to leave it on the sidewalk where we leave the garbage. Some men with a big truck will come to pick it up."

Silence. He considered. I unscrewed another bolt.

A few minutes later and I had pulled the tree out the door, where it lay flopped like a beached whale -- only one which just happened to have green branches. That's when I spotted the colored lights I had wrapped around the thick branch of an avocado tree just outside our door in early December. Without hesitating I stepped over and began unwrapping this strand of lights too.

George looked up at me with what can only be described as an ironic expression.

"What are you doing?" he asked, beginning his cross-examination with a deceptively simple question.

"I'm taking these lights off the tree."

A sly smile crept over his face. "And then you're going to pull it out?"

"No!" I said. "This is our avocado tree! This isn't the kind of tree we pull out."

He studied its thick waxy leaves, its smoth bark. "This isn't a Christmas tree," he agreed. "Then why did you put lights on it?"

He got me. I turned to him. I realized I had to make a distinction for him. But what exactly was it?

Do I make it "trees in the house vs. trees outside"? No, that's not it. Or is it evergreen trees vs. deciduous trees? No. Then I realized what it was.

"We only throw out the Christmas tree. The rest stay stuck in the ground."

He gazed around at the trees surrounding us. He looked pleased. They weren't going anywhere. We weren't either.

Out with the old, in with the new, but we there are some constants. The trees stay stuck in the ground, and we're here all the time.