If. You, Barack Obama, Were to Really, Really “Turn the Page”—

—as I think you can, and will, you will show us a model of communication that has seldom been seen since the lesser rhetorical lights (actually, dim bulbs), the Nixons, Roves, Bushes, Cheneys and their ilk, have taken over after the Kennedy style! In the first part of the letter to the Democrat Nominee Barack Obama, a “turn-the-page”, “evolved” presidential form of address was proposed. However, the change would be revolutionary, rather than evolutionary because of the sudden, dramatic contrast with the mundane, uninformed, ego-centric manner of speaking in those men.

The question is begged: what would be the specific elements of an innovative, “turn-the-page” rhetoric of presidential speaking? I acknowledge, Barack Obama already has achieved a remarkable speech-making record, no doubt about that, as contrasted with McCain, and especially George Bush. Obama’s presentations are not, as the lady said, “just a speech”. She might have made “the” speech on gender and sexism, just as Obama did for “race”, but she did not. Turning the page from his demonstrated luminosity involves consideration of some added points.

The whole of presidential communication constitutes a system, a collection of functions that can be installed in the press conference, the cabinet meetings, the diplomatic presentations, reports to Congress, mass communications.

CAMPAIGN SPEAKING: Start with the campaign speeches coming up in the general election after the party conventions. Trivia is allowed when the candidate does not take charge in a manner of speaking above the trivia of lapel pins and “elitism’. We need first and foremost to hear Sen. Obama speak for a minimum of fifteen minutes on each of the chief issues, for examples, Iraq, health care, environmental crises, economy, Social Security, energy, immigration. Each speech should be followed by a speech by his opponent on each issue. That would emulate somewhat the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. One topic for each separate meeting. That is not a “town hall” meeting.

Citing the significant shortcomings in the abilities of the people to attend, concentrate and make sense of what they have heard is selling the citizenry short, a shameful view of the people. ANY COMMENTATOR WHO SAYS THAT THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT TUNE-IN, LISTEN PATIENTLY, UNDERSTAND, AND RETAIN A CLEAR PARAPHRASE OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CANDIDATES ON THE ISSUE—that commentator should be cast out as a pariah in our society. It has been said by one commentator that the present types of debate formats and content “are generally received as very stodgy” (heavy, indigestible). Hmpf! Typical journalistic comment! Sound bit-byte-bite is what they want. Wait until he has to listen to the President speak for 10-15 minutes!

CITIZENS’ PAGE-TURNING DUTIES, OBLIGATIONS: Auditors of presidential and all governmental communications, and that is just about every mature citizen of the United States, as serious citizen audiences, should be given (by the President) what citizens should be expected to handle. The President will not be dispensing pabulum. Therefore, any page-turning by the President has a counterpart page-turning among U.S. Citizens.

Beyond the campaign speaking, we should be told how a President Obama would inform himself on the issues.

THE CABINET: For increasing “transparency, how would the President’s cabinet be selected and by what criteria?

OUTSIDE EXPERTISE: How would the President involve the world scholars who have book-length opinions on the crucial issues, tap that valuable resource, juxtaposing contrasting views?

DISPENSING POLICY DECISIONS: How would the President introduce to the people his formulations of the issues, reviewing the lead-up debate by providing the arguments on all sides, and how he evaluated and chose what he deemed the best solutions?

NATIONAL PLATFORMS: He should take his reporting to different parts of the nation, finding the region that relates most directly to the issue to be reported.

PRESS CONFERENCES: How might the President change the press conference? Could he select different small groups of three reporters for a chat about the issues, a la Meet the Press, eventually giving the whole press corp the opportunity to speak up close and personal with the President? Then confronting the whole White House press, at other meetings, would it be a good change if he came to it with his anticipation of the questions he might be asked, answering each and then taking additional questions he did not anticipate?

CHATS WITH THE PEOPLE: He should arrange to speak more informally to the nation, like the Roosevelt Fireside Chats, on problems in governing that are not critical issues. I merely suggest.

That’s what I would be pleased to see happen. What would you be pleased to see happen in any makeover of the President’s style in this  major responsibility of our national CEO?

A Letter to the Democrat Nominee-Elect, Sen. Obama

DO NOT GET TAKEN INTO THE TOWN-HALL PROPOSAL, please!! In the campaign speaking coming up, you WILL NOT (FACT #1) be speaking to a “town”. You WILL (FACT #2) be speaking to the people of the world, with some significance for every person near and remote. You WILL NOT (FACT #3) be speaking in a “hall”. You WILL (FACT #4) be speaking through the global conduits of many types, your words being picked up in every medium of communication everywhere.

Herewith, I am asking you to do something that will “evolve” political speech. It’s not an easy point to make. Bear with me.

Do not fall for the “folksy” trick of Sen. John McCain. That’s what he knows works best for him. You, Sir, will know better because you have a different intelligence, more youth, more in touch with world tendencies, more capable of learning, study, inquiry, and having a propensity for giving and taking instruction. I conclude that on the strength of your education and experience, you must stand against your opponent in a public communication and formal framework.

“TURN THE PAGE!” You said that and, I am sure, comprehended the full significance of that catchphrase.

Our ancestors have “turned the page” many times over the past four millions of years. The machinery of evolution is inexorably still in effect, a law that will never be repealed. (Check that: except perhaps through human blundering. H-m-m-m.) I wish to invoke the operation of that theory for this campaign and your presidency to follow. I mean, REALLY, REALLY turn that page. You must be up to it.

In these present times, there are more and more pressures to act under threats sensed as global, and immediate, like climate change and fossil fuels, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, the sinister changes in the nature of terroristic underground warfare. The list is very long.

People of the world will not be reached through a “town hall” of folksy “conversation”, a few sentences followed by a few sentences, skimming over the great number of issues. Presidential messages must be directed at the thousands of cultures and billions of people to be affected by the advocacy. Our president is a world leader. Messages must have a diplomatic style and a technically correct content. The special nomenclature for Presidential speaking dictates, mandates, requires an important distinction of forms and styles, requiring leaders who are carriers of the “social mutation” in the “genes” for public speaking at a higher level of consciousness. I am just saying that the next President should show qualifications to speak at a higher level of awareness, which should be apparent to us all. That carrier of the duties and skills that match the global job will be favored in this changing global environment, a change in political speech leaving behind the old model of politician in George Bush and John McCain. I sense that you, Sen. Obama, have the right stuff which will be revealed in your judgments and decisions about these campaign meetings.

Citizens must also turn the page in their attentiveness, lengthening their attention to a level of concentration that their experiences in this current society do not encourage. The citizen in any world democracy must have the opportunity and ability to receive longer, more technical speaking presentations. I am not talking about a magazine article standing on two legs. I am talking about a “communicator” with style, a higher level of diction. (Diction is a large trunk of mental and physical abilities.) The listeners’ attention must be controlled and pressed beyond a few sentences of “conversational” talk to a higher level of ability to concentrate on policies for future action in the world society.

For that reason, on those bases, we must have the presidential campaign “debates” at a higher level of structure and performance, involving a higher level of presentation and reception. “My friends” audiences are a thing of the past. “My friends” speakers are outmoded. The intent to speak down through that mode of address is not of a higher order of diction. The volume and reach is not there. The speaking amateurism of Bush and McCain can no longer be the model, can no longer be tolerated..

Audiences should be given what they should be expected to handle.

I would ask Barack Obama to lead the world with that new intellectual approach that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it’s the formal principles of “discussion” and “debate” and “deliberation”. Your political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.

I believe that there was some body wisdom operating in the body politic that nominated you, Barack Obama.

Here is the evolutionary context for my turning-the-page point. The global society gives the competitive advantage to that person with the ability to string together lengthy and complex explications of national and international policy in such a manner of speaking that nearly everyone gets to message clearly and enjoyably. That audience which survives will have had the advantage of articulate leaders who have risen to a higher concept of their communicative role. And citizen-audiences will complement their president with their abilities to concentrate being challenged and found capable. Chattting with an audience as you wander around a stage is a lower order of confrontation with the listeners and topic. The urgency of the problems demands more.

I see the wretched model of leadership we have had the past eight years. Unfortunately, a society that may be amusing itself to death and that has a poor record of electing sub-standard leaders has a long way to go to accept, understand and operate in a new communicative context that is equal to the challenges in the global context of threats to our survival. Amusement is fine, but it is the tail, not the dog.

The context for ideas for “turning pages”, to take you seriously, follows. It is certainly considerably more complex than John McCain’s understanding of “change”.

Turning pages goes back to the evolution of consciousness in human history on Earth. Certain variabilities in human development over millennia were selected by environmental pressures and proved to be advantageous for survival. Isn’t that true in our present global environment? If nature changes, human nature must change. Evolution is the mechanism. Those (people, nations) adapted to the old nature will probably not survive. Those (people, nations) adaptable by their nature will find the new environment no threat.

The hunter-gatherers developed a simple instrumental communication serving their tribal affairs, with no need of consciousness (as defined below).

In an advance toward, but falling short of consciousness, language and speech was necessary to cope with the increasing population and the complexity of larger societies wherein the voice of a leading spirit gave the rules and laws to a people in an extended social unit no longer tribal. Everything was done without consciousness, for after the chief’s death, his voice authorizing behavior would still bind together the population-at-large under stress to determine some course of action. The hallucinated voices of dead kings became gods maintaining that higher-power to authorize behavior. Even in early Greek times, the heroes were still closely tied to the commandments of the gods.

At the next turn of a page, there followed a higher-order ability of human beings to be self-directed by their own inner narratives of self-authorization. Consciousness was thus obtained. There was, of course, an overlap of those people proceeding with consciousness and those maintaining the mentality of god-speak. (The theory rests on the differential functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain.)

Presently, the number of worldwide threats to human survival creates more and more pressures to behave differently, to grow a new mentality to cope globally involving a world consciousness that surpasses the egoistic narrative. We are at a place where the self recedes into the background as global threats must be met, climate change, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, terrorism, and so on.

President-nominee Obama has to lead the world with a new intellectual focus that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it is now “discussion” and “negotiation” and “debate” and “deliberation” and “argumentation” and “rhetoric” (finding the possible means of persuasion in any given case—a definition not commonly understood: “Oh, that’s just rhetoric!”).

Your presidential political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.

You, Sen. Obama, as President, will stand on the threshold of a new regime to teach a new way of proceeding to a new set of policies. Start now by avoiding the traps set by the old fashion of communicating.

TURN THE PAGE!

Pres. Obama Sees the Whole Fabric of Mideast Conflicts

 

In his brilliant speech before the Policy Conference of AIPAC 6-4-08, an American Jewish organization, President-in-waiting Obama socialized his vision, clearly and eloquently, covering the whole cloth of interactions in the Mid-East part of the globe. In remarkable depth and breadth, his view gave many details of our involvement in Mid-East affairs that show a tortuous pathway to peace in that region.

I could not conceive of McCain or Clinton rising to the level of Obama’s broad and deep comprehension. Obama set up an intricate chain of connectedness among necessary events and consequences, how one relationship leads directly to another and how we in the country are affected. McCain and Clinton gave speeches at that time and surely enough, there was no comparison to Obama’s complex of relationships.

The audience was deeply impressed expressed in their response.

I simply could not understand how, after the speech last night, how he could perform such a feat the next morning. We have here a brilliant leader, off to a genius beginning. 

McCain Tests Obama’s Perspicacity: 10 Townhall Meetings?

McCain is attempting to entice Barack Obama into a format of confrontations that is McCain’s home field. McCain wants, as he said, “a higher level of discourse”. NO! NOT SO! He is the spider set to catch the fly. A Town Hall meeting is not a context for a higher level of discourse. “DISCOURSE”! Look up that word. It is not “my friendsy” conversation. I am sure McCain is trying to set up his agenda for what passes for political “debate” in a format that he favors and that favors him and his folksy approach, wherein he may have a chance of showing up Obama in a dialogue of conversation. McCain should definitely fear Obama’s speaking abilities and seriously attempt to bring him down to his level in order to bring him down! His style does not rise to the higher level of discourse McCain professes to desire. It is a stinky subterfuge. He is being so sly.

This issue will test Obama’s astuteness! Big time. Few people will see this desperate move of McCain’s. Few will care about the format as I do. I have written previously on the topic of debate and debate formats for the presidential debates to come. McCain siezed the initiative out of fear to meet Obama on Obama’s terms. Pres-to-be Obama: ignore my point at your peril!

A higher level of discourse means a higher level of structure, the debating in the Lincoln-Douglas style of an extended period of speaking opposed by the other candidate’s period of extended speaking. An issue is fully laid out. The opponent lays out fully the opposing view of the issue. That cannot be done by a few sentences for and a few sentences against.

Pres. Obama Sees the Whole Fabric of Mideast Conflicts

In his brilliant speech before the Policy Conference of AIPAC 6-4-08, an American Jewish organization, President-in-waiting Obama socialized his vision, clearly and eloquently, covering the whole cloth of interactions in the Mid-East part of the globe. In remarkable depth and breadth, his view gave many details of our involvement in Mid-East affairs that show a tortuous pathway to peace in that region.

I could not conceive of McCain or Clinton rising to the level of Obama’s broad and deep comprehension. Obama set up an intricate chain of connectedness among necessary events and consequences, how one relationship leads directly to another and how we in the country are affected. McCain and Clinton gave speeches at that time and surely enough, there was no comparison to Obama’s complex of relationships.

The audience was deeply impressed expressed in their response.

I simply could not understand how, after the speech last night, how he could perform such a feat the next morning. We have here a brilliant leader, off to a genius beginning.

Why Do People Continue to Vote for the Eventual Loser?

The reporters continue to ask that question. Not a good question. Shows a lack of deliberation. Then their fellows give the “blank” answers the question deserves.

Why choose to vote for the candidate that most know will lose?

Answer: functional autonomy.

The reporters must think about the individual voting, not the view they have of the voting masses numbered anonymously in the polls. People vote as individuals with a backgound of habits, which are responses without awareness and with overriding forces. They are motivated to vote in indivdual ways their affiliations, loyalties, and a number of personal habits. In circumstances changed from the original basis of their motivations, they function as if the old circumstances still exist. Their habits have autonomy. If the opponent has persuasive ways, especially if he or she has the same party affiliation, there may be a possibility of changing that loyalty with the proper appeal.

Obama: “…lost his bearings…”(?) Nah!

Barack Obama is reported to have said McCain has “lost his bearings”, as if to say he “lost his marbles”, which refers to a problem of mental decay.

I did not take that meaning. McCain was in the U.S.Navy. “Bearings”, a navigation term used shipboard,
probably was a reference to McCain having lost his direction or position (bearing).

We all know why someone would want to give the statement its most pernicious meaning, don’t we?

Hillary’s Wager

O, ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll bet I’m in office afore ye.
Then me and my colleague will never be the same on the bonny, bonny banks of Potomac.

Sore Losers in the Democrat Party?

(I say “Democrat” because they are not “democratic”—the anti-democratic, uncommitted, “super” delegate thing.)

Will those who voted for the losing Democrat candidate then defect and vote for the Republican candidate, McCain? There is that concern for the general election. The answer is, probably not.

I argue by analogy. During the regular season, my team played another that was a tough rival within the conference. But when that rival team was playing in the post-season tournament or bowl game, then I rooted for that team out of loyalty to the conference. I think it will be the same loyalty operating in the general election this fall.

The Proposed Lincoln-Douglas Debate between the Two Dem Candidates

What an interesting idea! Which would be Lincoln and which Douglas? NO MODERATORS! Best idea yet. Like a pick-up game of hoops. Police yourself. Watch their cooperative skills in action. Watch their mutual respect for the operant, emergent rules they interact with. See their management style in action. Hear the topics fly by and show their gear-shifting manners in direct, face-to-face staring match. Notice the color rise in their faces, the false and true smiles that flicker through facial micro-momentaries — you’ve got to love it! The next President’s body language on parade, facing important negotiations of national moment, in free, make-it-up-as-you-go interaction. The wind currents and the para-glide through the issues.

An alternative, better yet: sit at a table and have a discussion (not a “conversation”–very intelligent, educated people know the formal difference, which I have detailed elsewhere on this blog).

We should be so lucky! No interloper coming between them! Whoopee!

Rev. Jerimiah Wright: Wheat and Chaff

I heard the Rev Wright speech before the NAACP meeting. I heard the Bill Moyers interview. I heard the mostly negative reactions coming from all the reporters. What did I hear?

I taught intercultural communication. I would not grade the reporter-critics very high in their cultural understanding. They roasted Wright for the chaff, but did not show any understanding of the whole grains of wheat he presented. They threw out the wheat with the chaff. Pastor Wright has very personal and selfish gains to make from becoming controversial and without much care for Barack Obama’s campaign. I understand that. But Wright did make some points that teachers of intercultural communication teach, e.g., the principle that difference is not a deficit. He was both funny-ha-ha and funny-peculiar in getting across that message, wheat and chaff. Now that his credibility has been lost, he may be one who will not be listened to, to get that crucial message across.

I hope that point does not get lost in the excoriation of Rev. Wright. Good critics might have made the distinction between the constructive parts and the bad parts. WHICH PARTS WERE OUTRAGEOUS, and WHICH PARTS WERE NOT? WAS THE WOLE SPEECH OUTRAGEOUS? Absolutely not! I’ll tell you what’s outrageous. The accusation of guilt by association in many critical comments by commentators takes us back to the Congressman Joe McCarthy era of witch hunts for “fellow travelers”.

I would like to have seen one fully functional deliberative mind operating as a critic, but I heard no one except Bill Moyers in a thoughtful probing of Wright. Wright made some criticisms of the United States government’s actions. Many people have done that. Black people have much cause for many discriminatory actions by governments of the past. Those points of Wright’s speeches were not taken up in anything I heard. All I heard was ad hominem attacks, name calling. That’s outrageous! The nutrition is in the kernels, but all I saw was the vultures feasting on the chaff.

THE DELIBERATIVE MIND IS A WINNOWER OF IDEAS, CAN DISTIGUISH GOOD FROM BAD. Most speakers and writers have a mix and need readers and listeners who do not throw out the good with the bad. Be judicious!

As I have said before, this election season is in the care, almost exclusively, of the ham-handed reporters wannabe pundits. They do not know how to moderate discussions nor listen respectfully as participant-panelists. They steamroller their fellows and blur disgustingly all others on the panel. Gibbity-gibbity, yackety-yack. The McLaughlin group is the worst of the worst. Chris Matthews as a hard-baller presses hard his view onto his selected toadies. But I have heard the soft-baller Matthews (see elsewhere on this blog) where he dropped the ball.

Bill Moyers had the requisite intelligence to manage an interview with Rev. Wright. He got to the wheat and stepped over the chaff. Sound bites were coming from everyone else.

I believe that Obama needs to give a speech on religion in politics as a counterpart to his racism speech. I believe Clinton needs to give a speech on gender in politics. Obama has proven he can hold forth on a critical issue and have a very satisfying result. All that Clinton can do is perform dirty tricks. One sneaky one is the use of a red hot branding iron, burning “elitist” into the hide of Obama, putting her brand on him and now she owns him. Hillary is the master of cliche, the thoroughly mundane as her head bobbles incessantly. Mundanity. Cliche. Ascribing traits, characteristics to her opponent, and then the label hangs there like the tag on Minnie Pearl’s hat.

I believe that it is much easier to get into trouble in the U.S. if you are black than if you are a female.

(I will write later about one basic course of training I would institute for reporters.)

Empathize with the Black Woman Voting: Cognitive Dissonance?

Obama or Hillary? Which demographic is the stronger with the black woman voting, being black or being female? I wish I had a poll result that derived from a sample of Democrat white women and Democrat black women with controls of Democrat black men and white men and general population.

There was a program with three people singled out for their opinions, one pro-Hillary white male, one pro-Obama white female, and one undecided black female. The latter made me wonder about the psychological construct of “cognitive dissonance”, which is the state of being of two minds about something. She epitomized a walking definition of cognitive dissonance. She was both Obama and Clinton in outward manifestations.

I have had that personally, wanting the women to have their president and wanting to have a black president of the calibre of multicultural Obama. I was of two minds early in the campaign season between the two. Hillary’s early speeches were very good, I thought. I was impressed. Obama has had, from the start, brilliant analysis and eloquent style rising above our mundane expectancies.

Barack and Hillary went up the hill, to fetch a pail of voters; Hillary fell down and broke her crown and Barack came tumbling after.

Some black opinion has seen the blackness of Obama as a diluted black. I, being white, wouldn’t know where that is coming from, not having had the black experience except as an on-looker. Am I entitled to have an opinion, or dare I not express one? If not, then I relish the talk of Bill Cosby, among others, on that subject. In the same vein, I look for the talk of Muslims about the actions of radicalized Muslims. If I had opinions on those subjects, they would always be qualified by others’ “consider-the-source” criticism.

I liked Hillary before her tack turned her campaign vessel to the rickety-ticky tacky. Nothing high-minded there. She is a walking definition of mundanity. Listen to her and you will hear every cliche in the book of quotations. Barack is the antonym of mundanity. I like style, and you should, too; you’re going to have to listen to the President for at least four years. The fans of “American Idol”, millions of them, must appreciate the elements of style, for that is the main thing thatnts in separates the idol from the common. So do not ever knock style points in a pol.

Sportsmanship is not whether you win or lose, but how you played the game. Is that not supposed to be the mantra of fair play and Americanism, the American way? Nearly everybody now takes the view of cynics, win at all costs, the type of political game being played now.

If you are a black, female Democrat reading this, do you have such dissonance given the present situation?

The “Elitist” Charge—

—was loaded from the start with TriNitroToluene, dynamite, and gunpowder in large volume with a short fuse lit by some commentators and critics I have heard and should, by now, have EXPLODED the Clinton and McCain campaigns. How could those two, most elite candidates have ever had just one cell of their brains conceive of such a curse on Obama? And then to think that a number of critics and so-called pundits yupped and yipped the charge that issued from the desperate mouth of Hillary!!!

On the whole, the elitism charge has been turned back on the multi-millionaires McCain and Clinton.

We have the patriotism, race, gender, elitism, media, style, super-delegate, electoral college, popular vote, elected delegates, authenticity, guns and religion, John McCain, Bill Clinton, (any more?) problems.

What about the real issues?

The issue problems have been hijacked by irrelevancies. This party is not the “Democratic Party”. It is the “Democrat” Party, in back-alley cat fights. Hear the yowling in the dark? Fix the blame for that! I have!

Maybe there should have been other people if those people can’t get a good issue campaign on the road. People who vote for Democrats have passed up the two most mature and intelligent and knowledgeable leaders of stature and presence, two powerful men, A.G. and J.B. They are world class leaders. Obama, if elected, will pass the first test of his maturity as a presidential leader if he puts A.G. and J.B. in prominent cabinet positions.

There is an “elitism” of intellect and knowledge and competency beyond markers related to wealth and social position. Those two have it. The safety of the U.S. and the world should be in the hands of such people. We should be so lucky. I am betting Barack Obama has what it takes. I will bet on intellect any day.

Hillary Clinton and Misogyny: REVISITED

Since I wrote a previous entry, “Hillary Clinton and Misogyny”, I have heard Erika Falk, author of “Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns”, speak on BookTV, CSPAN2, 4-13-08. She studied the topic covering a period from 1884-present.

(At the end of this entry, I have a big BUT!)

She has uncovered some dimensions of bias against women candidates that only scholarship would reveal. The trend lines of media bias have shown systematic and continuous bias against women with no convergence to equality of treatment (with one exception) in the press. That in a society where the principle should be: People should have equal access to power. The unequal access discourages women from putting themselves in races for political offices. There are other negative consequences as well.

She cites eight cases of women who ran for President, and analyzed the media coverage in each case. (1872 was the exception.) In substantive coverage, men received %68 more column inches. Women’s accomplishments were substantially reduced. Women’s titles were dropped (Senator, Representative, etc.). Women were subjected to stereotypical treatment–physical descriptions, etc. Women received four times more stereotyping than men. Men were given three times more mentions of positive viability statements. Women received twice as many descriptions of emotionality as men. Women received significantly more arguments against their competence as leaders and their ability to handle crises. Women were represented as unnatural in the position of the presidency (as it is unnatural for a woman to hold a position of authority over the male–the Bible says so.)

The press feels compelled to remark about the novelty of a woman running, i.e., the “first” to run, forgetting that others have run in the past. The media portray women as unsalable as candidates: “America is not ready for a woman President.” “A woman can’t win.” “It is un-womanly to run for President and campaign door-to-door.” Women are essentially “mothers” .

We citizens of the U.S. do have a media problem, BIG TIME! And the media do not know it because we do not read much of their self-analysis and -criticism in the columns we like to read. Why? Because the commentators are generally promoting themselves as stars, celebrities. Who would want to jeopardize that? Criticize yourself and people will seize on that without giving credit for the highly worthy attempt to qualify something one has said or done. We have seen how difficult it is for a candidate to admit that a mistake has been made.

I believe Hillary has not campaigned well. I like “words”. She has attacked “words” because she perceives that Obama’s main appeal is “just words”. I find her words to be mundane. I want something more than mundanity in our national CEO. That is an issue for me, and a reasonable one,I believe.

Another issue is her stretching the truth to score political points.

Now, have I shown a bias against her gender? I think not. I voted for her in the caucus. But if I had it to do over again, I would not.

To me , race, gender, and age are not that relevant. I have a hard time fixing in my mind the candidates’ stands on the critical issues. That debate has dropped out of view.

However, here is my big BUT!

Much of the above about the treatment of women candidates PROBABLY IS APPLICABLE TO BLACK MALE CANDIDATES as well.

The Woman in Hillary Clinton: Do We Really Want Mundanity?

I had originally written a long essay on the qualities of women applied to Hillary Clinton and contrasted that to the qualities of men applied to Barack Obama, but it turned out to be bald-faced stereotyping of women and men. I should not stereotype anyone, even though there is a tendency in me and most people to do that, to want to do that. However, I have a strong feeling that Hillary Clinton has some quality of her gender in her campaigning that leads her to the “just words” attack on Barack Obama. She is smart. We all know that. I want to account for her saying that because therein is a key to her qualifications to be the chief power in our executive government. The words of Clinton carry the style of mundanity as she belittles Obama’s recognized power of expression in his speech and speeches.

I expect a President to have a style greatly different from that of the incumbent, George Bush. Dare I suggest that it be more “oratorical”? (I have heard respected commmentators and others sniff at that word.)

I compared Bush to the Brit Prime Minister Tony Blair and found an imposing contrast in style. Style IS substance. Style can show a more profound grasp of substantive issues because the issue has more depth and breadth in the way we conceive it and express it. Style, as I define it, is deviation from the mundane into a more varied rhetorical territory comparable to leaving behind the unalleviated flatness of the plains of the big-sky country and entering the big-earth country of the Rocky Mountains of the American West. (And, presumably, the East).

Bush is a Texan. I lived in West Texas. Mr. Bush has been roundly criticised, lampooned and cartooned for his West Texas, “good-old-boy”, plain-spoken style and illiterate mistakes. There is charm there, but it does not translate into a President’s need for the global, rhetorical currency of diplomacy and international politics. His diction is mundane and laughable, in my estimation, and does not rise to the challenge of national and international diplomacy and politics. I think the people in the U.S. have had enough of it over the past eight years.

Here is my great concern: our woman candidate cannot or will not rise to the higher style that I believe is required to evince a grand vision encompassing a better future that is the outcome of government policy. Her style is mundane. Words are the bricks in the yellow brick road to a brighter future. Why would she not esteem “words”? She said, “Just words.” Do we want that commonplace style in the highest order of our national leadership again?

 

Clinton, Obama: Please! No picky-picky, bicker-bicker, unless—

 —unless it’s on he fine points of differences and

priorities on establishing a national health care,
the education of children, alternative energy systems,
mobilizing against global warming, repairing and
maintaining infrastructure while providing full
employment, stabalizing the economy, ending
the Iraq war, promoting free trade, balancing
the national budget and resolving the trade
deficit, social security solvency, ringing peace
in the Middle East, enforcing regulation of
business and industry to provide consumer
protection, building back military preparedness
for a new style of warfare in fighting
terrorism at home and abroad, installing
transparency and accountability in government,
controlling over-population of the globe
with ZPG and then NPG, forming policies for
the preservation of public lands and the
conservation of water—it's a long list. 

There is a very large class of people
who must lean on government to provide
a safe and prosperous environment. Is
this a time for picky-picky? I don’t think so.

It’s a time for important questions: what is
the difference between a political solution
for the raq war and a diplomatic solution?

I am waiting to hear the language of diplomacy.
One of them did when he gave his disquisition
on race. Now I might expect the other candidate
to hold forth on gender, since that is the
revolution in politics she represents.

Remember the Bickersons? The comedy routine
pitted Alice Faye against Don Ameche
(real-life husband and wife) in hilarious
verbal battles between their characters,
the Bickersons.
I am reminded of that by the non-fictional
situation in which Obama and Clinton find
themselves, a situation that borders on
comedy if it were not so shattering
for the Democrats.

Charles Lamb wrote an essay, called
“A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG”, giving an account
of how the art of roasting a pig was discovered
in a Chinese village that did not cook its food.
A child accidentally set fire to a house in which
there was a pig. Poking through the ruins. the
people discovered the roasted pig and found it
to be delicious. There was then a rash of houses
burning down.

The moral of the story is appropriate to the
Democrat Party’s search for a nominee:
Do you have to burn down a house
to roast a pig?

Obama and Clinton, Sliced and Diced: A Demographic Operation

Race v. gender is a simpleton’s analysis. Instead, why not consider the whole array of factors, known as demographics, in addition to race and gender: blood (family), age, nationality, education, religion, economic status, social class, politics, occupation or profession?

Other categories to be evaluated regarding the “just words” and “speeches” issue between Clinton and Obama should be the categories of their usage in the verbal code (vocabulary, syntax, semantics, style) and the nonverbal code (kinesics, haptics, oculesics, vocalics, appearance and dress, facial expression, etc.) That judgment is much tougher than judging them on two rather obvious surface appearances. DUH!

That is, if you really want to know. Is the person we are to put in the office of President worth a thoroughgoing analysis? I think so.

Measure each factor using a scale of evaluation, a nominal, ordinal, or interval scale to rise above the simplistic analysis. Everyone right now is groping around in a dimly lighted discussion. The additional criteria are really being used but in a way that voters do not and probably cannot know what they are doing, judging without awareness. Most can only say they have a vague feeling of affinity or repulsion. Using the additional categories should brighten an awareness. Isn’t it possible that Obama or Clinton can be compared in the whole matrix of criteria and a calculation could be made into a better index of suitability for each candidate?

List the categories vertically and make two columns, three,with McCain thrown in. Assign 33⅓% to each of the three. Then adjust the percentages according to some nominal evaluation you wish to make. Such an exercise would sharpen one’s view and support a more rational choice.

I have done it, and I have made my choice. It is the one person I would choose to be the personage I would be more delighted to hear in all the ceremonies pertainng to that office, and in addition would be more likely to make the better decisions. I grew to see that candidate perform brilliantly in a diplomatic role for relations abroad and in a political role making the agenda for policies that would work for the betterment of all U.S. citizens.

On Hearing Sen. Obama’s Pastor: The Flip Side

I heard Sen. Obama’s Church of Christ pastor preaching today. I can hear the uproar now even before turning on the talk radio station or the news. I know without listening what they all are about to say. He must denounce and reject that man’s preaching against the singing of the national anthem. Well, hold on. There is a positive side that may not be heard.

Have we ever had indications from Sen. Obama that tell us how deep into the “culture of the black people” he is? Can that be judged by the voters? I know there is a domestic culture of black people that has language, paralanguage and nonverbal dimensions that most of us white folk know little about. I have encountered it and been found wanting in understanding the offenses that may innocently be committed without my awareness. (I know that political correctness should be defined as “cultural astuteness”. PC is an exhibition of CA.)

Since I believe one of our social goals in the U.S. is to have peace and understanding among all citizens of this melting pot, defeating in the long haul all vestiges of racism, sexism, and so forth, it is my obligation to continue my education in the best ways of communicating across cultural differences.

In that spirit, I see a black pastor preaching to his congregation with content I find ridiculous. But that’s his prerogative. His congregation accepts it rather enthusiastically. He is holding up the nation of “the man” as a villain to be disrespected. So that’s the status of our society. People need to know that. That feeling of disrespect is still strong. The report of his preaching puts it out in the open. And that’s the way it should be!

The kicker is that we might now have a President who will bring this society even closer to the problems of our racial divide. (Just as Hillary’s campaign has brought us all closer to an understanding of how a woman might campaign for President. Her campaign will constitute a model for future women candidates for President.)

Obama’s candidacy and perhaps eventual presidency may accomplish some additional healing, of the sort which I heard Bill Cosby and others talk about.

Hearing Obama’s pastor was not a bad thing. Hearing Obama’s pastor was an interesting event, not something Obama should have to show regret for. He should say that it was an event encouraged under Constitutional protection that we can all learn from, learn toleration, understanding, and something about a man who might be our President.

His incendiary speech set nothing on fire. He was asking, in a church building, his deity to damn the U.S. If there had been a tsunami or a tornado or a hurricane devastating our countrymen immediately after he uttered those words, that would have constituted, to the Jerry Fallwell or Pat Robertson types, proof of the deity’s retribution. There was no breaking of the rules of free speech by the pastor. How often and how many people everyday curse our government for this or that?

The Bad-Feeling Test: Obama or Clinton?

Which candidate would give you the worst feeling if that candidate lost? I found that test to be a very telling one for me.

With Hillary, It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Ninteenth Century fantasy by R. L Stevenson epitomized the idea that people can have two personalities. In two, back-to-back days, before our eyes, Hillary Clinton changed from the peace-making Clinton into an i.e.d. It showed to me a want of diplomacy. There is that higher road to be traveled. She obviously feels she must do something to deal with the advantage held by Barack Obama in the style, or “words” department. Her judgment told her to mount the attack on the campaign flyer that was so offensive, and her method was angry mommy.

Hillary is a handsome woman. But she has not done handsome. She began by denigrating “words”, and I said “Whoa, Hillary! Whoa!” Then she makes nice with her opponent. Now she makes nasty. The language of diplomacy, mediation, tact, along with the style of the poetic teacher is required in a job that confronts a wildly differentiated world of people and cultures.

Running the gamut of an election campaign, receiving the beating of a multitude of pig bladders, or whatever else the gamutees have in hand to punish the runner, can have a liberating effect, if you survive the punishment. Now is the time, at this late date when others have fallen, to show the best you can do. Hillary Clinton is faltering, and may soon fall.

I am sorry to see it. I wish she had the fortitude to give back in kind, lighting stylish backfires instead of throwing volatile language on the conflagration. And done it with a smile. A resource devoutly to be wished.

There goes the “dream ticket”!