rally disruption

McCain cuts speech short due to chanting Obama supporters who were in the area. Media is playing it like he's weak and lost without his gal Palin. Ha.

After lunching with a roundtable of women at Philadelphia’s Down Home Diner, McCain shook hands with supporters and strode up to a podium to deliver a statement. But as he spoke, chants of “Obama, Obama, Obama” filled the room.

Reporters craned forward trying to hear the Arizona senator. Unfortunately for McCain — and possibly overlooked by aides who planned the event — a section of the diner opened up to a market where a crowd had gathered behind a cordon.

Also, this might be the time to link to Adam Kokesh, the "revolutionary patriot" and Vets Against the War member who busted up McCain's acceptance speech. The video linked has some comments on why he disrupted the speech - McCain refused to meet with veterans' groups or discuss their concerns. ("At least Obama pretended to listen" he says) So he decided to deliver an alternate message. Some of his ideas get pretty threatening unfortunately, but looking at things through his eyes, I would be pretty pissed off too.

The Obama Doctrine

The American Prospect interviews Obama's foreign policy team and gives him his own Doctrine. It's not just about specific foreign policy issues, but about - as he often says - "the mindset that got us into war in the first place." And more than anything, it's about Democrats finally abandoning their reflexive tendency to play Republican light because they fear looking weak.

Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. It cuts to the heart of traditional Democratic timidity. "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right." (The Democrat who counseled that Americans wanted someone strong and wrong, not weak and right? That was Bill Clinton in 2002.)

That's a bit unfair to Clinton, I think, because it comes off as if he's advocating being wrong. I think he was just observing, accurately, the reason Dems got pummeled that year: they hadn't stood up for their beliefs. But of course his wife is Exhibit A of that, as are most of the Boomer Dems in leadership over the last 15 years.

The Obama foreign-policy team describes it as "the politics of fear," a phrase most advisers used unprompted in our conversations. "For a long time we've not seen much creative thinking from Dems on national security, because, out of fear, we want to be a little different from the Republicans but not too different, out of fear of being labeled weak or indecisive," another top adviser says. Identifying that fear as the accelerant of the Iraq War mind-set is the first step to a new and innovative foreign policy. John Kerry was not able to argue for fundamental change in foreign policy because he was consumed by that very political fear. Obama's admonition to Democrats is much like Pope John Paul II's to the Gdansk shipyard strikers -- first, be not afraid.

A good start for a new century. If a few years too late... but it's never too late!

generational theory of Obama

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais have ripped off the Strauss-Howe generational thing and are pimping their own generational theories about American politics. It sounds so great until you look into it... then it becomes way too simplistic and massaged to fit the narrow reality of the late 20th century.

This WaPo op-ed might make interesting assignment for its practical applications. ("The Boomers Had Their Day: Make Way for the Millennials") Even if it is idiotic:

Nor does the millennials' rhetoric reflect the cynicism and alienation of Generation X, whose philosophy is, "Life sucks, and then you die."

Thanks, boomers. Way to swallow a stereotype you created and think it's true. Part of the problem with hyping the Millennial Generation's takeover at this moment in time is that we GenXers get our turn at bat first. What happened to us? Oh, I guess our boundless cynicism removes us from the equation altogether. We are "reactive" "nomads" who don't trust anybody, are just out for ourselves, and I suppose can't be bothered to get involved in politics at all.

The whole project is just so fuzzy on terms and definitions as to make it worthless... just like the "historical" model it's based on.

Turkish military coups

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has an interesting post about recent Turkish political struggles, which include the army's hints that it may mount a coup. His post has a good summary of past coups (four since 1954?), and also of course Ataturk's original one that founded the modern Turkish state. Includes some interesting observations about how the conditions of the original founding influence Turkish politics today.