Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Change

 

 

Any teacher is an agent of change. We give a teacher a classroom full of kids and say, “Here! Change them! Give them language they do not have. Give them thinking they have not had, and make them think as never before, figure as never before, write as never before, speak as never before, live as never before, run and play and jump and swim as never before, and perform and behave and see and do as never before.” Then we gauge the kids progress and pass them on to higher levels of achievement. We change them, systematically, relentlessly.

Do you know what change does? What doing something that has not been done before does to anybody? It disturbs their self-confidence, and in some, “destroys” is the effect, and in others, it is quite a while before self-confidence at a higher level of performance is attained. So change can be very disturbing.

The president is a change agent. The presidency is not only a “bully pulpit”, it is the national classroom, and the president is the head master. S-he proposes changes in policies for future action. The president is a teacher of policy. Motivator, energizing behavior. Explicator, clarifying ideas. Marathoner, modeling endurance. All with a sense of fun, pleasure, enjoyment.

The electorate wants change and a new change-agent in the White House. For many, that change will be achieved and welcomed, but there will be a national learning curve as the new person learns the job. Maybe he or she will be a genius at it.

Which one has the best chance of making the learning/changing job rewarding and encouraging?

One principle: the President is President of all the people, of those who were winners and those who were losers. The President who can please all the people does not exist. But fair treatment of the ones who preferred another candidate should be visible in, and acknowledged by the winner.

Who is the best person to lead the change that will disturb the equilibrium of present conditions in our world?

I believe that I would not want to listen for four to eight years to John Edwards. He is a good man and has the personal agenda of a committed, good Democrat. However, his sense of history is of his own history, which he emphasizes every time he speaks, to reinforce his identity with the working man. That’s his pedestrian view of the Democrat constituency. I do not get a sense of the larger context of history beyond his place in it. In addition, he affects me like the the great song, “76 Trombones” from the Music Man, except that he is more like 76 trumpets, “Blara, blare, blare”. That seems more of a surface thing to many, but one of the items that raises the price of an egg an any restaurant is “wear and tear on the hen.” That element of style is important to me over the long haul of years of ceremonial speaking we will have from the chief. Therefore, it’s no small thing!

Regarding Hillary Clinton, in the last debate, I judged Hillary to be the clear winner on the substaniive details of issues. She expressed herself with great fluency, force, sincerity and, usually, grace. She has found her voice in the higher-education course of the campaign. During her delivery, she wanders aimlessly around the stage, flashing over-used gestures. That physical performance is tiresome, weak. She should “TAKE A STAND!” She has shown flashes of wit and passion. She should never let down on the dynamism in word and action.

I am concerned that her use of her husband, Bill, can and will be perceived as a lack of confidence in her ability to win on her own. She has probably lost command. “TAKE A STAND” against the interference by hubby.

In his recent South Carolina victory speech, as well as his speech accepting the endorsement of Ted and Caroline Kennedy (1-28-08), Barack Obama was extraordinarily fluent, the orator that a great nation needs. His oratory gives us that added edge of eloquence, defined as the marriage of heart and brain in speech that can escape the tongue and flow to command masses of people. But there’s more: the weighty element that led Caroline to compare Obama to her father, JFK. Obama is the historian and philosopher. With calm and measured tones he pulls from history and philosophy the framework for re-constructing a nation ruined terribly by the Bush ideology which “created a reality of their own contrary to all the evidence.” (Bill Moyers, 1-25-08, “Bill Moyers Journal”, PBS) His dynamism reigns in his ideas and modes of expressing them. His melding of eloquence and a grand historical perspective is where the fun is. He uses what Cicero called the “lights of speech” with great “delight”, to me and I am sure to himself.

I would prefer to listen to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, in that order, over the years. Until now I have been like the jackass equidistant from two stacks of hay and starving because I can’t decide between them.

The question is not which change to make first, the race or the gender change. NO! The task is to look past both race and gender and decide on the basis of character and competence to do the job. For me, I would choose Obama because I like that vital spark of history that rises above the present to see the long view. A race-less, gender-less decision.

The greatest change to be experienced by our population is the change in gender or race in the presidency. It is long past due for us to have that experience. Adjustments will be more painful in some quarters than in others. Many will be slow learners, slow to change. There will be new qualities to be observed in the black or female president. Both of those candidates will bring more to the office than did the wholly incompetent incumbent, and he had had the type of executive experience people seem to prefer. However, the current Democrat candidates, taken together, have demonstrated a background in intelligence, knowledge, and education superior to the incumbent’s. They have had experience superior to the incumbent’s when he took over the office.

We eagerly await the opportunity to learn and advance with the new president, remembering the experience of the first days of the new school term.

President Bill Clinton: Verbal Cartoons

1. Bill Clinton is the old political war horse, rearing and whinnying, and neighing, and snorting out of the stable stall, refusing the bit and bucking the  saddle strap. Hillary is thrown.

2. Bill is the torpedo that backfired as it left the tube, setting aflame Hillary’s campaign ship, and sinking it.

3. Hillary wants to play Zeus but Bill’s stealing her thunder.

If she has to use him, doesn’t that show she hasn’t the confidence to do it on her own?

Jargonism: The Eczema on the Language of Bloggers

 

Everybody wants to write with a compelling style. Most bloggers, it appears to me, have an itch to be “dude-ish”, “in”, stylishly profane or scatologically cool in their diction, appropriately dumbed down so their fellow adolescents will not perceive them to be out-groupy nerds. Grammar, spelling, all that English class trash is put on the sill where the birds do their thing. It is difficult to read blog entries of people who do not own a dictionary or a useage guide or who know nothing of proof-reading. O yes, I will slip up with typos and mistakes, but I think it is obvious that I try.

Style I define as an acceptable and imaginative deviation from standard English using the known rhetorical devices, metaphor, simile, irony, litotes, analogy and many etceteras more. Standard English might be a stylistic deviation for many bloggers that would be refreshing. But, as it is now, the writing accomplishments of many bloggers are to me a form of written static, noise in the message so that I can hardly follow the idea.

Most troublesome is the use of terms with no context for working out definitions, jargon, that presupposes an in-groupy reader, talking to others in this public place in a way that can exclude those who are not one of them, on a topic that may be important to a wider audience.

The fully aware and conscious person can empathize with readers and listeners receiving the message and anticipate the difficulties they may have. Look for that friendly care of the writer in everything s-he has written. You don that linguistic clothing of illiterate English-class drop-outs and you will effectively put your readers on the bench and out of the game. A response you may want, I guess, but are you preparing yourself for adaptability to the larger audience you will need when you enter the world of the big game?

Unless the style is more important than the message, where standard English becomes stranded English.

Unless the style IS the message.

I can understand that, but I probably will not be an audience for that message because it would be like going shopping for ideas and finding myself in a Halloween costume shop.

Standard English is the common currency, as good as a fifty-dollar bill anywhere you go, more acceptable than your personal check.

Candidates for President: Democrats’ “Debate (?)” (1-15-08)

Journalists, reporters, are not trained in oral communication events, as judged by the overriding influence of their journaistic habits evidenced in this “debate” event. The process suffered by that fact. It is a “fact” to those who are knowledgeable in the special nature of debate. Reporters are questioners, and they should have had the understanding of debateable resolutions and direct clash on the issues inherent in the statement of the resolution. Journalistic questions are not policy debate propositions. Journalistic (gotcha) questions derive from muddled news reports and are not germane to the central questions of the campaign. Tim Russert, for whom I have the greatest respect as a digging, probing questioner and journalist, was not right for the “debate” among the three democrats.

Being constructive, I forsee an improved and matured future for this kind of campaign event. The candidates themselves will be asked in advance to prepare the resolutions for the event (“Be it resolved that…….”), adhering to what is generally recognized as the main issues in the campaign. A chairman-moderator will read the resolution and keep the responses to a timed limit. The advocate will speak, followed by the negative sides taken by the opponent candidates. Judges, qualified in the skills of argumentation and debate, will deliver a critique and a rebuttal round will ensue.

Then another proposition will be taken up.

Such a direct clash on the issues will accomplish a more clear-cut understanding of the following aspects of a candidate’s qualifications.

Does the candidate have a vision of the future that can be summarized in a “preamble” type of statement?

How well has the candidate analyzed the problem to be solved in comparison to the other candidates?

How well will the candidate act as a change agent, implementing the changes dictated by the propositions?

Another tack on the debates might be this: Micheal Moore has produced a documentary of the health care issue, “Sicko”. Summarize the main points of the documentary and state how you would resolve the problems. The same could be done with Al Gore’s prize winning documentary on global warming. Other well known treatments of the issues might also be used to stop the tattered and unraveled approach currently taken by “journalists”.

Candidates for President: LISTEN UP!

All of you:

GIVE US THIS: An operational definition of “change”,  “experience”, “democracy”, “conversation”, “the office of president”. You may need to refresh your understanding about “operational definitions”.  Such a definition describes all the actions you take, the behaviors that go into the word you are trying to define.

In the first order of business is the question, how will you behave as president, specifically? Pack those actions into an itemized statement of aims, goals and objectives (in order of increasing specificity).

I recomend this: FACE THE SCHOLARS!

The “conversation people”, the journalists, do not have the seminnal questions to ask. They are interested in the horse race of campaigning. They give us the conversational base. By their actions in moderation of the many forums, they do not know what “debate” is. They are focused on what is happening, what has happened, but ignore what will happen. Think of the word “politics”. The stem of that word is policy, policy setting, guides for future action. What will happen rests on a deeper understanding of history and human behavior.

The talk of “change” has been superfluous. The biggest change is the advent of candidates of race and gender, different from the past. What can a woman bring to the office that no man has ever brought? What can a black man bring to the office that white men have never brought? Must a woman be judged like a man would be? Must a black man be judged like a white man would be? Separate out those contributions that come in addition to the basic human qualities of intelligence and personality. Has our female candidate separated herself from male expectancies? And the same for our black candidate. What makes them, their perspectives, unique? Then add that uniqueness to their human qualities and we, as a nation, have a chance to break the ice for future people who may continue the shut-out.

We also need to change the forum as presently defined. We need to open the door for those among us who have book-length “opinions”, which are something greater than opinions, that is, reliable knowledge, not anecdotal.  We need our candidates to stop reading the tea-leaves of public opinion and answer the probes of questions on a higher plane, those posed by the scholars and scientists who are telling us what our solar system is really like now, how it was, and how it will come to be. We need our leaders to perform on a grander stage than that of journalistic, pulse-feeling, public opinion. Not just “who-what-when-where” but more on the “why and how”.  That higher plane is that of “discussion”, not “conversation”. In addition to the  scholars, we should ask the candidates to be tested in interaction with a circle of  foreign diplomats, for that is an important arena of presidential action.  How would they behave in a discussion of issues pertinent with scientists? CEOs? Union leaders? Financial experts? We were disappointed to hear that the incumbent does not ask questions when he is engaged with specialists, showing an absence  curiosity about problems.

Must we always have the journalists on stage!?

Is the gender disadvantage greater than the race disadvantage? I have seen the shameless and obvious ganging up of the male candidates on the female candidate, Hillary Clinton. I have seen her express sincere emotions with watery eyes. They have made her dress a topic. Need she play the men’s needling game? It does not bode well for her. That’s what happens when the issues for debate descend to irrelevancies, BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHAT A DISCUSSION OR DEBATE IS, especially the journalists and columnists who play a major role in this campaign season.

We are not well served.

Face the scholars. Programs like Jim Lehrer’s, George Stephanopolous’s, Chris Matthews’s, Charlie Rose’s, Tim Russert’s, etc., need to impanel more scholars, and others,  for the stacks of history and scientific books they have written on the issues that most concern us. (Bill Moyers has done that.) Scholars and scientists have strong tendencies to proceed with tested and substantiated and qualified conclusions (reliable knowledge), compared to newspaper columnists’ anecdotal historical allusions and opinions, which may be selectively chosen or tinged with the medium owner’s bias; they may have read history or science but never conducted historical investigations or scientific studies. Perhaps an analogy comparing a butcher shop and to brain surgery is not a good idea here, but it is tempting. (Wouldn’t be prudent.)

Moderators should have credentials for moderating from, for example, the National Communication Association. Argumentation and debate is superior to “conversation” and different contexts for discussion would really test of a leader’s mettle.  After all, this is for the presidency of a world power. Our highest ranked leader should never shame the people she or he represents in all the contexts of this globe.

When the human race makes an advance, this is one area to watch in order to gauge the advance.

A response to mullah cimoc’s comment

On December 31, 2007 at 3:34 pm mullah cimoc Said:

mullah cimoc say aemriki not having him free press. for save ameriki nation usa people must to make new federal communication law:

1. each tv station and each the radio station must be own 100% by person live within physical area serve by tv station. this call the local ownership.

2. no single person to owning more than 1% of any one tv station stock certificate. this make the diverse ownership.

3. abolish him networks, abccbsnbcfox. then to letting local own station form own networks with power from bottom up (flow from shareholder to board of director to ceo), not him top down like now in usa.

4. this keep the free press and stop the rupert murdoch type man keep all ameriki so stupid if buy him corporation which to own so many station and newspaper and radio and keep ameriki the stupid people.

after follow mullah cimoc method benjamin frankling to be the proud.

for true info: stop1984now@yahoo.com

and also ameriki woman to stop be slut and not take LBT (low back tattoo) stop the meth, and stop to not smoke the cigerette, obey husband, the good mother to loving the chldren.

My response to him:

Your reform suggestions are interesting, trying to prevent monopolies that the FCC under the current administration (Republicans, Bush) want as part of their ideology favoring private enterprise to the detriment of fairness and the people’s ownership of the airwaves. I would be supporting such an effort.

As for your final items, I am seeing your ideology regarding women as “sluts” if they do some things that are their free choices in a free society, unless proven to be harmful to others. You have to scientifically demonstrate the harm exists. Tatoos on their bodies, how married people manage their relationships, and meet their parental roles are none of your business, and you may call them dirty names, if you are that kind of person. If you are such a person, I would condemn you for ignorance, not knowing the difference between matters of “taste”, of “private values of husband and wife relations(no punishment)and matters of public harm (smoking cigarettes, child abuse, etc. for which there are laws and punishment). I do not know if you live in the U.S. or not. If you do, it seems to me you have some lessons in citizenship to learn.

I understand a “mullah” is a religious leader. I also understand that you have expressed ideas that indicate you would have our government take on the character of a theocracy, where religion has captured the government and bends all behavior to its special and particular religious ploints of faith. What a tragedy if that should happen here.

Meth is illegal and the users will pay a penalty if caught. I take it that you are a Muslim adhering to the dictates of your faith.

Now you may preach those ideas and try to get them as principles of our law. LOTS OF LUCK!! It will not happen that you will interfere to such an extent in U.S. social behavior, I am confident. We are not on that track of development. If it SHOULD happen sometime in the future, due to your success at persuading the people, and your desired interruption of the secular development of our way of doing things, then you will have accomplished a monumental task. It won’t happen, I believe. Ever! And I believe the world is tending to increased secularization of all societies.

I found your diction and ideas interesting. Thank you for your comments.