Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton (Again!)

By Si Dunn

They both want to serve, and the current predictions are, they each will reach the Democratic Convention with no clear advantage over the other.

So here's the proposal: Let them both serve. It will take both of them to help straighten out the enormous messes that the current Administration will leave behind.

By convention time, whoever has garnered the most delegates should be the candidate for President, and the other one should be willing to run for Vice President. No angry arguments, no bitter backroom deals. Drop the balloons; start the grand speeches.

Glass ceilings will be shattered, greatly minimizing race and gender as future issues in American politics. Two very good political camps will be melded into one unstoppable November steamroller. And both candidates will end up in the White House in positions of leadership, power and influence.

With such an agreement in place and known, Senators Clinton and Obama could stop the negative bombing runs on each other. They could focus harder on giving us their visions for our future and let us simply compare them and decide.

Individually, they are very vulnerable to savage attacks by Republican "swift boats." The GOP's "more of the same, only slightly different" message will not resonate with voters this fall. So the inevitable strategy will be to make endless torpedo runs:

"...And, when Obama was eight years old, he grew fascinated with the changing shapes of clouds and soon became a card-carrying member of the Weather Underground. "

"...And, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was six years old, one of her classmates punched her on the playground, and she cried and started espousing liberal causes. Do you really want a crybaby liberal as Commander in Chief?"

Together as running mates, however, Senators Clinton and Obama would be the Republicans' worst nightmare. The GOP swift boats would steam in and start blasting away at a wide array of targets (both Clinton and Obama do have plenty of baggage that reflects political radar signals). But the swift boats ultimately would sink themselves (and John McCain), because voters quickly would tire of the constant explosions of negativity and just tune out the strident yammerings.

Hope and change. Those are the two main messages that will resonate this fall. John McCain and the Republicans can't offer those visions this time. Together, however, Clinton and Obama can...no matter whose name is listed first on the ticket.

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My Baggage Can Beat Your Baggage

By Si Dunn

Yawn. Another Democratic “debate.” Another rash of unscientific online polls claiming Obama “won.” More newspaper articles contending Clinton put Obama “on the defensive.” And major television journalists still harping on flag lapel pins, angry pastors and invisible snipers.

One more voice of opinion won’t matter in this cosmically insignificant scale of things. But here it is, anyway-- just another tiny crackle in the rising, roaring, utterly unfocused static of the blogosphere.

In the Philadelphia television event, Sen. Clinton came across as more competent—and advised and rehearsed—particularly on matters of international affairs, while Sen. Obama came across as more genuine but a bit less ready to serve, particularly on matters of international affairs.

Hillary’s main credibility problem is that her face still lights up with a “Gotcha!” little smirk and smile when she gets an opportunity to score a political dig against Obama. It’s at least partially her inability to disconnect from old-style politics that keeps her low in the polls of personal likeability.

Barack’s main problem is that he is still—bottom line--more smooth political style than actual political substance. Of course, in America, style almost always wins over substance, because most people don’t like to pay any attention to details until after something happens that that they don’t like.

Hillary Clinton may yet squeak out a win in Pennsylvania. However, she may not win the nomination unless she learns very quickly how to come down to the level of talking with (not just to) voters directly across a kitchen table, over coffee and cookies, with absolutely nowhere else to go for a few hours on a rainy afternoon.

She does have baggage; she’s right about that. Countless people have rummaged through it, and some are still rummaging through it, desperately looking for any nuggets of undiscovered dirt—or any new clues as to who she really is behind that policy wonk facade.

But we all have baggage that we struggle to deal with or hide or ignore or wish away.

As our potential leader and commander in chief, Hillary Clinton needs to sit down with us now and tell us honestly, in unflinching depth and detail, how her famous baggage has affected her, how she deals with it, and, most importantly, how she will keep dealing with it if she returns to the White House next January.

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Bush on Climate Change: Better Never Than Late?

By Si Dunn

With barely nine months left in his lame-duck presidency, George W. Bush is set to propose a “new strategy” for reducing greenhouse gases.

Details have not yet leaked out. But some pundits predict Bush will proclaim that making his tax cuts permanent is the only way to save the planet from thermal runaway. Others speculate that he will call upon all environmentalists to “surge.” Or, he may send Condoleezza Rice on a secret mission to meet with dissident Chinese climatologists.

More boldly, however, Bush may order a preemptive nuclear strike on water vapor, which causes more of the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide does. That way, if we can’t have victory in Iraq, maybe we can at least have some serious shock and awe… in the stratosphere.

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Water, Water Nowhere? And Who Can Afford to Drink It?

By Si Dunn

Texas writer Joe Nick Patoski perhaps is best known for his books and articles about famous musicians. His latest work, for example, is Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, published by Little, Brown & Company.

But Patoski’s real passion is water. “Water is life, period. We can live without oil; we can’t live without water,” he told attendees at “Writing a Wide Land: A Conference on Texas Nature Writing,” held April 11, 2008, at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.

“Water is the most important issue of the 21st century in Texas—period. The price of water is going up. And it’s going to go way up,” Patoski warned.

Patoski, who lives with his family on a modest plot of land along the Blanco River in the Texas Hill Country, regularly practices water conservation, including capturing rainwater for use in his home and on his “ranchette.”

He also is an active environmental journalist, writing on water issues and other topics for The Texas Observer and Texas Parks & Wildlife, as well as national publications. Some of his other books include Texas Mountains, Texas Coast, and Big Bend National Park.

“Generally, people don’t care unless their tap is not producing water. All I want is for people to care,” Patoski told the conference attendees. “If they don’t, it (water) will go away. The one thing we can do about that is conservation.

“I am being a steward the way all of us can be," he emphasized. By working together and individually to conserve water, "every one of us can make a difference.”

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Memo to Obama, Clinton and McCain: Shut Up (Again!) About Each Other Already

The political idiocy just never stops.

In the seemingly neverending--and endlessly stupid--game of campaign "Gotcha!", now we have Sen. Clinton accusing Sen. Obama of looking down his nose at weary middle-class voters. We have Sen. Obama responding by criticizing Sen. Clinton for voting for a bankruptcy bill backed by credit card companies. And we have Sen. McCain's campaign accusing Sen. Obama of being "elitist" and "condescending" and "out of touch" in his views.

Can someone kindly explain how any of this (and its accompanying mini-firestorm in the weekend news media) has helped any voter anywhere learn anything new and useful about any of the candidates and where they stand on any issue?

"Gotcha!" politics is utterly useless, except that it gives the news media a convenient excuse for avoiding more substantial reporting. And it is totally insulting to voters who want to give fair consideration to all candidates.

Indeed, the whole campaign process now is broken and needs to be scrapped and replaced with a long series of public and televised forums where the candidates have to explain themselves and their hopes and proposals for America--without any mention or implied criticism of other candidates in the race.

American voters are smart enough to pick their leaders without the "help" of campaigns that try constantly to undermine their opponents or make them look stupid.

It's the campaigns and their candidates--every one of them--that end up looking absurd.

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Democrats for McCain? Few Will Remain

A new poll is raising flags of hysteria and giddiness among some of the political candidates’ supporters and opponents. And once again the media is focusing mainly on how those flags, metaphorically, are rippling and popping in the wind.

We still aren’t being told enough about who the candidates really are, what they really believe, where they get their advice and counsel, how they really define the major issues facing the nation, and why they really think they can make a difference.

According to CNN, a recent Associated Press poll shows that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain are essentially tied, and McCain may be “benefiting from the drawn out Democratic primary race.”

The AP survey also supposedly found that “[c]lose to a quarter of Obama supporters reported they will back McCain if the Illinois senator fails to get the nomination, while a third of Clinton backers said they'd vote Republican if Obama is the Democratic nominee, “ according to the CNN story.

Actually, it’s difficult to believe that that many supporters of Obama and Clinton would throw over either Democrat in favor of at least four more years of rip-off economics, Middle East quagmire, and political stalemate.

In many other news accounts and blogs, there have been numerous reports of Republicans saying they have had absolutely enough of their party’s hard rightward drift and economic decline under Bush-Cheney and see little hope of meaningful change under McCain. They would rather vote for Obama or Clinton than bear any further responsibly for the possibility of a John McBush Administration.

It’s a safe bet that most Democrats who say they will back McCain if their candidate loses are just trash-talking to hear their jaws flap during the run-up to the Democratic Convention. Once their candidate does lose, and they realize it’s the other one vs. John McBush-McCheney, they’ll likely eat their threats and vote, even if grudgingly, for real change.

Yes, it would be something of a change to have an older Caucasian male succeed George W. Bush. Of course, given the history of the American presidency, that would scarcely count as any difference at all.

Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama--either combo would represent the all-time breakaway ticket for change in American presidental politics.

It will take a mega-change like this to start reviving the national economy and, more importantly, the national spirit, in January, 2009.

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