Capt. Kirk for President: Bring it on!

. . . is what I got after reading this convoluted article by Professor Akhil Reed Amar on how Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), and Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), could serve a co-presidents, or something like that.

But which should it be: Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton? In fact, voters in November could actually endorse both versions of the ticket—truly, two presidents for the price of one. How? The Constitution’s 25th Amendment allows for a new paradigm of political teamwork: The two Democratic candidates could publicly agree to take turns in the top slot.

Then, at some agreed upon point, the President would cede power to the vice-president and, with Congressional approval, become the vice-president. The same team would then run for re-election four years later and four years after that, after which one of them would have to drop out because they would have been elected president twice. The remaining person could then run for president on his her own power.

Akhil Reed Amar teaches constitutional law at Yale University and he wrote “America’s Constitution: A Biography.” He is also a winner of the American Bar Association’s 2006 Silver Gavel Award. He is, in other words, a very smart guy and he said this could be done.

Whether it should done is, of course, another matter entirely.

Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway/U.S. Air Force, via Associated Press. Senator John McCain at Baghdad’s airport on Sunday. The presidential candidate arrived in Iraq for meetings with Iraqi and American officials.

This should be an impossibility but slowly but surely you can see the swagger returning to Republicans.

They can sense that victory is now more than a possibility in November. After George W. Bush’s calamitous presidency, no Republicans should have a ghost-in-hell of a chance of coming close to the presidency.

But Democratcs are, seemingly, deadlocked. This does not help the Democrats in any way. But you’ll find no person in America more certain about McCain’s fitness to lead this nation than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He’s had “crossed the Commander-in-Chief threshold,” she famously said.

And then there’s the question of self-inflicted wounds in Florida and Michigan, Democrats’ racist rhetoric, visiting the alleged sins of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Sen. Barack Obama.

The Iraq war is five years old.

Hillary and McCain voted for it. No one would count Iraqi deaths, especially its civilian dead.

The shame of our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), could still win the so-called “beer track” Democrats. I don’t see Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), making much headway with Mr. Obama’s core voters, the so-called “wine track” Democrats. So, where do we go from here? A fight to oblivion?

From the desk of Lewis Blain:

Some of you might not care….Let’s take a closer look at who’s really qualified and or who’s really working for the good of all of us in the Senate. Obama or Clinton.

Senator Clinton, who has served only one full term - 6yrs. - and another year campaigning, has managed to author and pass into law - 20 - twenty pieces of legislation in her first six years.

These bills can be found on the website of the Library of Congress but to save you the trouble, they are posted here for you.

1. Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site.

2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month.

3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

4. Name courthouse after Thurgood Marshall.

5. Name courthouse after James L. Watson.

6. Name post office after Jonn A. O’Shea.

7. Designate Aug. 7, 2003, as National Purple Heart Recognition Day.

8. Support the goals and ideals of National Purple Heart Recognition Day.

9. Honor the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton on the bicentennial of his death.

10. Congratulate the Syracuse Univ. Orange Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.

11. Congratulate the Le Moyne College Dolphins Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.

12. Establish the 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution Commemorative Program.

13. Name post office after Sergeant Riayan A. Tejeda.

14. Honor Shirley Chisholm for her service to the nation and express
condolences on her death.

15. Honor John J. Downing, Brian Fahey, and Harry Ford, firefighters who lost their lives on duty. Only five of Clinton’s bills are, more substantive.

16. Extend period of unemployment assistance to victims of 9/11..

17. Pay for city projects in response to 9/11

18. Assist landmine victims in other countries.

19. Assist family caregivers in accessing affordable respite care.

20. Designate part of the National Forest System in Puerto Rico as protected in the wilderness preservation system.

There you have it, the fact’s straight from the Senate Record.

The following are those of Obama. The list is too substantive, so they are categorized.

During the first - 8 - eight years of his elected service he sponsored over 820 bills. He introduced

233 regarding healthcare reform,

125 on poverty and public assistance,

112 crime fighting bills,

97 economic bills,

60 human rights and anti-discrimination bills,

21 ethics reform bills,

15 gun control,

6 veterans affairs and many others.

His first year in the U.S. Senate, he authored 152 bills and co-sponsored another 427. These inculded **the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 - became law, **The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, - became law, **The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate, **The 2007 Government Ethics Bill, - became law, **The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill, In committee, and many more.

In all, since entering the U.S. Senate, Senator Obama has written 890 bills and co-sponsored another 1096.

An impressive record, for someone who supposedly has no record according to some who would prefer that this comparison not be made public.

He’s not just a talker.

He’s a doer.

Obama is the HYPE!

Pass it on….people need to know.

Transcript:
“It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
But there’ s a phone in the White House and it is ringing.
something is happening in the world
your vote will decide who answers that call.
whether it is someone who already knows the world’s leaders,
knows the military
someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
its 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
Who do you want answering that phone?”

This is inadvertent but former Pres. Bill Clinton just showed why his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), is not only not the person you want answering the phone, she might not even answer it if she gets the opportunity.
Mrs. Clinton has mentioned often in this campaign her “35 years of experience,” which she says has put her “across the threshold” to be commander-in-chief. Well, the phone rang in 1994 regarding Rwanda. It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. No one answered.
Bill Clinton spared no effort trying to stop genocide in the former Yugoslavia republics. This was admirable. But close to a million people were killed in the genocide when Hutus decided to kill Tutsis in that African nation.
Bill Clinton said his wife had urged him to take military action to stop that genocide. History will record that, even if it is true that Mrs. Clinton did offer that advice, and there is no record whatsoever to prove she did, she was in ineffectual. Mrs. Clinton was just as ineffectual trying to ram a health care overhaul through the U.S. Congress.
That was when she became a full-time touring first lady. She visited many countries. This is part of the experience that she says qualifies her to be president and commander-in-chief. It is the lifetime of experiences that she says qualifies her and Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), to be president but not Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL).
If we know anything at all about Bill Clinton, besides the fact that he’s a political animal, it is that he is an inveterate and pathological liar. This advice that he remembers Mrs. Clinton giving him is clearly a political memory that he’s fantasizing now to help his wife’s candidacy.
Sen. Clinton, in her many statements lately, is also showing herself to be power-hungry.Not only did Sen. Clinton cross a threshold that qualifies her to be president, whatever that means, but she broke a golden rule of politics when she gave Republicans ammunition to use against Sen. Obama, should he be the party’s nominee.

This kind of infallible logic is exactly how you become a big city newspaper columnist.

Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), has won 11 straight Democratic Party primaries and caucuses in the contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), for the presidential nomination. During the past month, Mr. Obama has won states big and small, won some of them by landslide. He has won so-called ‘blue’ and ‘red’ states. In other words, he has won in every way imaginable.

This puts Sen. Obama exactly where Sen. Clinton wants him, according to New York Daily News political columnist Michael Goodwin:

You hear it everywhere: Tuesday is Hillary Clinton’s last stand. If she can’t win Ohio and Texas, she’s history.

True, mostly. But it’s not the whole story. The rest goes like this: This is Barack Obama’s third chance to knock her out. If he can’t close the deal this time, maybe he can’t close the deal, period.

Either the third time is the charm for him, or it could be strike three against him. Any result tomorrow that doesn’t finish her off lets her argue that Democratic voters’ love affair with Obama was just one of those flings. She’ll say buyer’s remorse has set in, and it’s time to get serious about winning the White House.

This must be a natural extension of the Clinton campaign’s weekend argument that Obama not only has win all contests on Tuesday because he spent more money than she did, but that he has to win all contests by comfortable margins. Why? Because she’s the underdog and he’s spent more money than she did.

Talk about turning weaknesses into strength.

Alex Moni of New Jersey was working for the Obama campaign in Corpus Christi.

Photo: Michael Stravato for The New York Times

At the end of the day, I like the profile of the Obama Democratic Party. It is young, diverse, resourceful, and self-generating. That bodes well for the future of the party. If Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), ends up the party’s nominee, she is going to have to harness the energy of the primary to govern.

The fear, of course, is that we’re going to be so busy fighting old Clinton wars, including whatever Bill is up to this time around, that we won’t have time to address and of the issues facing the nation.

Anna Scott of Montana, the Bowie County campaign field coordinator for Barack Obama, helped Ruth Blackwell, 83, with her e-mail address last week in Texarkana, Tex.

I have to give Mrs. Clinton props for how well she has fought back in the last few days. It has not been an easy campaign for her and people are so quick to see fault and write her off. Many of the problems are of her making. She seems to be coming back from them, however.

I hope she puts some of the lessons learned to good use if she ends up the nominee.

It has come to this.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY), needs to throw in the towel before she causes any more mayhem. The Smoking Gun tells us that a supporter of hers viciously stabbed his brother-in-law, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), in the stomach during an argument over their respective candidacies.

Come on now, can’t we all get along?

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton debating in Texas on Thursday. (Photo by Deborah Cannon)

Washington Post Columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote a column on Wednesday questioning the Barack Obama phenomenon. We will see more pieces like this, especially if Sen. Obama, (D-IL), becomes the Democratic Party nominee.

Let me attempt to refute some of his more salient points.

I don’t want to say Samuelson’s column is ridiculous. He does raise some interesting questions about Obama. He says in The Obama Delusion that he came away from an encounter with Obama at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention “deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship.”

Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I’m dealing with known quantities. They’ve been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

By Samuelson’s standard, only people who have held national office and are well known should put themselves forward as candidates for President of the United States. Although George W. Bush came from a prominent family and was governor of a state, not much was known about him (we still don’t know about his going AWOL from his Air National Guard units during the Vietnam War; his drug use during much of his adult life; and other criminal behavior and activities before he allegedly found religion). His entire adult life (besides drinking and drugging) was spent as his father’s enforcer in the deep background.

Hillary Clinton is known to the whole world, which is both her strength and weakness. Many voters are rejecting her precisely because they know her so well. Obama, besides being a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer, was a state legislator for eight years.

Samuelson criticized the plans that Obama has put forth about what he would like to do in office.

If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

He is right. Obama’s ideas are quite pedestrian. But Mrs. Clinton’s plans are only slightly less so. Obama’s supporters either cannot see, or refuse to see, the conventional politician right before them. They think it’s a revolution when, in fact, all it is is an election and a man running as hard as he can to win an office.

But, that said, I don’t believe it’s Obama’s job to lay out a plan on what he intends to do as president. That’s not part of the job description. I think most people trot out these plans because they think it’s required of them.

Did Bush talk about ‘unitary executive’ doctrine when he ran for President? No. He talked about being a ‘compassionate conservative’ and ‘a uniter, not a divider.’ We know now that both tropes are blatant lies.

A lot of people remember now Bill Clinton’s presidency fondly (willingly forgetting the impeachment and other assorted sordid goings on during those eight years) but what plans did he run on and did he implement them?

One of the things that a leader has to do is inspire and any other year I would have been inspired by Mrs. Clinton. Next to Obama, however, she depresses me.

I think Obama will be a better president and part of the reason is that he’s new and fresh and does not carry the scars and baggage of two decades of warring with Republicans. With Mrs. Clinton, we’re going to have to refight all the old fights.

And it helps that Obama is an inspirational leader.

Please, don’t get me started on McCain. As you all know by now, I think Sen. John McCain is a corrupt and immoral hypocrite.

Senator Barack Obama at a rally in Houston on Tuesday night. Photo (From nytimes.com is by Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

An impressive tenth straight victory for Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL), in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He cut across every demographic in Wisconsin and bested his opponent in areas that were once weaknesses.

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), hasn’t thrown in the towel. Not Yet. Remember the Alamo! She said. See you in Texas, she said. She’ll work the night shift, she said. It’s about deeds, not words, she said. Besides, don’t listen to those sweet words because Obama plagiarized some of them, she said.

Hmmnn.

An argument could be made that all these victories suddenly put Ohio in play and Texas may even be winnable for Sen. Obama.

Mr. Daniel Henninger, who writes the Wonder Land column on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, has been listening to Illinois Senator Barack Obama and, surprise, surprise, he found Mr. Obama “insanely” eloquent but the message a downer. The America that Mr. Henninger knows is not nearly as bad off as the good senator makes it out to be.

As a result, Mr. Henninger has a hopeful message for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY): Hang in there. America will soon get tired of the Obama message and then she can coast in to the nomination.

Mr. Henninger’s reason for this is that he found a poll that says Americans, especially those who are supporting Mr. Obama, are generally optimistic about the nation and, they will naturally reject Mr. Obama when they realize he has not been telling them the truth about their beloved country.

The conventional critique of Sen. Obama has held that his pitch is perfect but at some point he’ll need to make the appeal more concrete.

I think the potential vulnerability runs deeper. Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar. It’s a downer.

Up to now, the force of Sen. Obama’s physical presentation has so dazzled audiences that it has been hard to focus on precisely what he is saying. “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” Can what?

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

I have to say this is quite a novel take on the campaign, a trial balloon perhaps of how Republicans plan to attack the senator’s message in the fall. For instance, Mr. Henninger listened to another speech after Sen. Obama, this time by Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), the presumptive Republican nominee. He found Mr. McCain speech more to his liking.

The contrast with Sen. Obama’s is stark. The arc of the McCain speech is upward, positive. Pointedly, he says we are not history’s “victims.” Barack relentlessly pushes victimology.

For Sen. Obama the military and national security is a world of catastrophe welded to Iraq and filled with maimed soldiers. Mr. McCain locates these same difficult subjects inside the whole of American military achievement. It nets out as a more positive message. Recall that Ronald Reagan’s signature optimism, when it first appeared, was laughed at by political pros. Optimism won elections.

Prior to reading Mr. Henninger’s column, the chief complaint I’d read and heard about Mr. Obama’s speeches were that they were relentlessly positive and that Republicans will swiftboat and make mincemeat of him in the general election because he’s too nice.

One shouldn’t blame Mr. Henninger for this column. After all, it was on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. It could have been worse. This was a good try. It must get tiresome hearing all those hosannas from Republicans and independents praising Sen. Obama, the so-called Obamicans, even calling him Reaganesque.

Mrs. Clinton has been tearing her hair out trying to figure out how to counter Sen. Obama’s positive mien. Up to now, she has had to settle for being the the anti-hope candidate. Here’s an answer. Why not accuse him of being too negative for being so positive?

Over at The Politico, they see dark days ahead for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Some of the reasons they pointed to:

While Clinton’s campaign gloated about having the most total delegates for the cycle so far, her staff nevertheless recognizes that Super Tuesday was no triumph.

She lost the delegate derby. Pure and simple, this is a war to win delegates, one that might not be decided until this summer’s Democratic convention. And when the smoke cleared this morning, it appeared that Barack Obama had ended up with slightly more delegates in the 22 states.

She essentially tied Obama in the popular vote. Each won just over 7.3 million votes, a level of parity that was unthinkable as recently as a few weeks ago. At the time, national polls showed Clinton with a commanding lead — in some cases, by 10 points or more. That dominance is now gone.

She lost more states. Obama carried 14 states, six more than Clinton, and showed appeal in every geographical region (including an impressive one in bellwether Missouri).

She lost the January cash war. Money chases momentum, so Obama crushing’s 2-to-1 fundraising victory last month is revealing (and Obama is on pace to duplicate this money-raising feat in February).

The calendar is her enemy. For the foreseeable future (Washington, Nebraska and Maine are caucus states, which plays to Obama’s organization strength, followed by D.C., Maryland and Virginia, then followed by Hawaii and Wisconsin) Obama may see victory after victory after victory, potentially sweeping all those states. By the time Texas and Ohio roll around, Obama may have too much of a head steam to be denied the nomination.

Obama could, of course, fall flat on his face, but the immediate future looks very good indeed.

Obama says he will bring change to America. Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and rival Hillary Clinton traded victories in an epic struggle from Connecticut to California on Super Tuesday.

I was pessimistic about the outcome of yesterday’s races, maybe overly so. Newspapers and others are calling the day a virtual draw.

Barack Obama, as usual, frames the argument for change expertly and with grace. Hillary Clinton is herself beginning to find a measure of grace that she had earlier been lacking. On to this weekend, next Tuesday, and all the way to the convention, I guess.

Barack Obama is winning some states but Hillary Clinton appears to be winning the significant ones. California is not in but, based on what’s gone on so far, I just don’t expect Obama to win there. I don’t know why I thought he could win in New Jersey and New York. Clinton not only won here but also in Oklahoma and Tennessee.

I know I sound ridiculous but, from this point on, Obama is running for vice president if he stays in the race. The sort of magic he packs shrivels in a vice presidency. Besides, with Bill as a virtual co-president, Mrs. Clinton won’t need anyone substantial as her vice president. Is there a Joseph Biden clone out West or in the South?

Obama could be President Clinton’s first nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I found this New York Times story very fascinating. The Sanchez sisters’ story was affecting but the story that affect me the most was the one involving Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste.

Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste, a married couple who met while serving in the Clinton administration, have actually started debating each other. Not just at their kitchen table, but in front of audiences across California and on television.

“It’s not easy,” Ms. Echaveste, who is a paid consultant to Mrs. Clinton, said in a joint telephone interview with her husband, who advises Mr. Obama. “You’re having a discussion and your husband is basically saying that your candidate doesn’t have a moral compass.”

With that, Mr. Edley broke in. “Or your wife is saying that your candidate isn’t smart enough to figure out where the bathrooms are,” he said.

“I never said that,” she replied.

The couple has relived some of the campaign’s most rancorous moments, such as when Ms. Echaveste, echoing Bill Clinton, told her husband that Mr. Obama was “naïve.” The word conjured up racial stereotypes for Mr. Edley, who is black, and has known Mr. Obama since he taught him in law school. “There’s the childlike Negro,” he explained. “There is the superficial but glib minstrel.”

Ms. Echaveste, who is Hispanic, now understands why her husband exploded in response. “Regardless of being dean of a law school” — at the University of California, Berkeley, where both teach — “he’s still in a box called being a black man,” she said. Still, she said, “I ought to be able to make that point and not trigger these reactions.”

And with that, Mr. Edley responded, his wife countered, and they started to debate once more.

This couple’s conflict played out for me this way:

I was open-minded about Hillary Clinton’s campaign for nomination and could have seen myself voting for her. Then, in a Jan. 13 appearance on ‘Meet the Press,’ she refused to answer Tim Russert’s question about whether Obama was qualified to be president. Obama has more years in elected office than she does and he’s the exact same age Bill Clinton was in 1992. So what is the problem? And this was going on at a time when Hillary and Bill were channeling Lee Atwater in South Carolina by turning Obama into “the black candidate.”

Call me sensitive, thin-skinned, but it became hard for me to support her after that. I started wishing John Edwards had been a stronger candidate, that his message had resonated with the voters more. I did not want Obama to benefit from my disappointment with Hillary Clinton.

So, this is where we’re at.

Poet Maya Angelou says make for Hillary Clinton President of the United States.

She said recently: ‘I made up my mind 15 years ago that if she ever ran for office I’d be on her wagon. My only difficulty with Senator Obama is that I believe in going out with who I went in with.’

She announced her support in a poem she apparently gave to the Guardian, a newspaper in London. Here’s a portion of their story:

The 79-year-old poet was the centrepiece of Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 when she read her poem On the Pulse of Morning, playing on the idea of a new political dawn. Last week she handed this new poem over to the Clinton campaign.

Angelou says that she has had many long telephone conversations with Winfrey on the subject of Obama versus Clinton. ‘She thinks he’s the best, and I think my woman is the best,’ she has explained. ‘Oprah is a daughter to me, but she is not my clone.’

Here’s a portion of Angelou’s poem:

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Although some insist that Latinos are too racist (the Clinton campaign inexplicably fanned this idea early in the campaign) to vote for black candidates, this man begs to differ and these two guys give better reasons why Latinos could support Hillary Clinton without being racists.