He's Back!

I admire Senator Clinton.

I was - and am - an enthusiastic booster of her husband's years as president.

I understand the disappointment of her supporters. A year ago I assumed I would be among them, cheering her on at the Convention, beginning, perhaps against Guiliani or maybe Mitt Romney, both of whom looked formidable, especially against Hilary Clinton who has consistently scored historic high numbers of those who don't like her, as well as revving up the her own supporters.

But guess what?

This smart young senator from Illinois figured out a way to take the nomination away from her. Using the arcane system devised during Clinton's presidency (a system even Obama hopes to change), carefully counting each delegate, Obama managed to squeak out just enough delegates to win.

Somewhere in the process many of those who had supported her - whether because they were her enthusiastic supporters, or because they began to see that Obama might be a stronger candidate, or maybe because they just figured he was going to win and they wanted to be on the winning side - began shifting to him.

This is the way these things go in politics.

In addition to having been drawn to Obama early on in the primaries, I took heart that he surrounded himself with pragmatists, people who understood that getting the votes required a lot of behind the scenes, unglamorous scut work, phone calls, emails, to enlist support and raise money.

Early on, the Republican front runners self-destructed, leaving John McCain, once the fascinating maverick, now the old warhorse. I think he is an interesting man with an interesting history. Not fit for this command.

I'm not particularly concerned about the flap at the Democratic Convention this week, the sulking Hilary Clinton supporters making a fuss. I think giving her a moment in the spotlight, and going through the roll call of the states - if she really feels that dignifies her efforts - is just fine. But how soon we forget how scary it was to think about having her at the top of the ticket, no matter whom she ran against. How the Republicans, believing, rightly or not, that she would provide by far the larger juicier target for their patented attack ads.

It was inevitable that Obama's lead would shrink, and that they would come out of the conventions with what looks like a horse race.

And it may well be. Could even be that McCain will win the election.

I think that will be a sad moment for the country, but likely not the end. Just another step downward into the morass we have been sinking into for nearly a generation, caused largely by two mistaken convictions.

The first is that so-called free markets solve every problem, economic and political, and result in people choosing democracy. I say so-called, because so much of our economy - particularly at the very top - is free only until it runs into big trouble. Then, as we are seeing in the Fannies, the thought of failure makes everyone tremble and the government comes to their rescue, with taxpayer money.

The second is that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the zenith of the American Moment. The belief was that we had a window of time in which we could, and should aggressively assert our dominance in the world so clearly that no one would be able to challenge us for at least another generation.

The most glaring example - but by no means the first or only - was our invasion of Iraq. Under the cover of 9/11, we saw it as a moment to establish a presence in the oil rich middle east.

The most glaring illustration of how that belief has weakened us - but by no means the first or only - is our inability to do anything other than chide Russia for its recent incursion into Georgia. We have thumbed our nose at Russia as a fatally wounded nation, cozying up to Georgia who sent troops into Iraq in support of our effort, believing we could flex our muscles in Russia's historic sphere of influence with impunity.

So, this election is not between Barak Obama and John McCain. It is between Barak Obama and us, the people of this nation. bout whether we understand the bankruptcy of the course we have been on for a generation, both within the country and beyond, and whether we will elect a young man from another generation with a perspective no American president has ever had. Multi-racial, multi-national, Barack Obama is an elitist only if having a sense of being citizen of the world and wanting the U.S. to consider itself a member of the world community is elitist.

If it is too much for us to swallow this election, we will end up with John McCain. I don't think Sentor Clinton's supporters in Denver this week are going to make a significant impact on that.

Today I received an email from a Republican friend outraged at Madonna's most recent venture into national politics, apparently with some sort of video that links John McCain with Hitler and Obama with Gandhi.

While I am usually grateful for whomever comes down on the same side of the political spectrum as I do, this sort of thing strikes me as at best silly, and at worst, distasteful.

But hardly worthy of outrage.

I responded that I had heard on the evening news (we have no TV so I am spared the visuals) a clip about McCain making an appearance at his wife's old hight school in which he received the endorsement of some Hispanic rap star. The squealing of the high school girls - for the rapper, not McCain - seemed to stuff old me as beneath the dignity I might hope for our political contests, but 18 year old do vote now...

My friend is a very sophisticated man with a very responsible job and a history of involvement in politics nearly as long as mine. That he would be hooked into responding as he did seems discouraging to me.

I was never so naive as to think Obama could keep to his promise to run a campaign that took the high road. It's just not possible, what with the amount of money to be made by ad companies, and the level of entertainment and attention span TV culture has left us with.

So I won't moan about this as if I were some sort of high-minded person who stays above the fray.

I am as passionate and partisan as the next guy.

Maybe it's because I have never seen Madonna.

Honestly.

This weekend I ran into a woman at a wedding who told me one of those remarkable stories that set you to wondering.

Seems that she - after a two week trip to Israel (she is a devout Christian on a pilgrimage) - began to hear songs, and words to go along, in her head.

As she said, it didn't seem like such a big deal; we all hear songs.

But then she began to realize that these were not songs she had heard before, but original pieces of music, with original texts.

Hmm...

She is a lawyer by trade, having worked 30 years for the IRS, and has never been particularly "into" music. She couldn't read music and wasn't sure she could sing on key.

But the songs kept coming, so finally she began singing them into a voice recorder and - I suppose with the help of a more musically educated friend - transcribing the music and writing down the words. She told me she has hundreds of songs in her collection.

I learned all this because, after she sang a fascinating and sophisticated song she had composed for the couple who was getting married, I complimented her and asked about how long she has been writing songs.

3 years.

Oliver Sacks, the brilliant neurologist and author, published a book this year about people who hear music. The woman wrote him about what was happening to her and he contacted her and is writing her into the paperback edition that comes out this fall.

The big question: where does this stuff come from?

Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and atheist, is searching the physiology of the brain for answers.

The woman (her name, wonderfully enough, is Grace) is not arrogant enough to say it comes from God, but she wonders...

I'm not sure they are moving on different tracks.

Once you grow beyond God who gives you a leg up, or protects you, or gives you any sort of special privileges, and understand the silliness (and perhaps blasphemy) of looking for some Being somewhere who answers to the name God, what you have is a rich soup in which we are submerged and from which all sorts of mysterious moments come.

Grace spoke of the scores of Jews who lost their faith during the holocaust. I said that is a faith that needs to be lost, because it equates belief in God with being protected, safe.

If not believing in some Being named God, and not believing that belief is rewarded with special protection or favors, is atheism, then I am an atheist.

If, however, voraciously feeding one's astonishment when songs begin offering themselves to your brain, and finding the surprise such joy that you can hardly wait to offer your best creative energies to the mystery... if that is what is meant by believing and having faith, I'm in.

There is much I don't get about how we voters think.

When the so-called Swift Boat Veterans launched an attack on John Kerry's war record, I thought someone must have gone crazy.

A candidate well-known to have used his family connections to gain him a place in the Texas Air National Guard so he could fly happily around the Lone Star State during the Vietnam War, is going to raise the issue of war records with his opponent who has a chest full of medals from serving in that war?

I knew Kerry would come out the very next day and say, "Are you sure you want to talk about war records? I mean, if you do, I am very happy to do so, but surely you would rather talk about something else. But while we're at it, where were you, again, while I was fighting and being wounded and decorated?"

Silence.

When he finally did speak out, he had waited so long and his response sounded so defensive, that those who were already looking for reasons to disrespect him (maybe after seeing his photo kite skiing) that they decided his critics were right. He had somehow faked it all and didn't deserve the medals.

But I will forever wonder why he was silent for so long and what made kept him from jumping at the chance to use one of the strongest contrasts between his personal history and that of George Bush.

Now the same person who published the book that set off the Swift Boat business, has published a similar book about Senator Obama.

If I weren't so eager to see this unusual young man succeed, believing that he offers one of those unique moments in a nation's life, I would say, let the country spend its energy dragging itself into the sewer. If we let scurrilous people defame those who offer themselves, at vast personal sacrifice, for us, then we deserve the leaders we get.

I had a conversation with a European during the last presidential campaign. He said, "We understand that George Bush became president through some odd quirk in your electoral system, not by winning more votes. So we don't hold you responsible for his becoming president. But if you elect him this time, it will be on you."

It's on us.

Barak Obama is not our saviour. He is merely an unusual candidate for our presidency. The past 8 years have done more damage to our national life and to our place among the family of nations than anything in my lifetime. And that includes our being the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon in war, not once but twice.

I believe this young American, in part because of his unusual identity, in part because of his more measured approach to the use of power, may offer us a chance to begin to restore the place we have always wanted to believe we hold in the world.

John McCain is not a bad man. But he is a man who, by instinct and necessity of political affinity, represents a future much like the past 8 years.

I will not read the latest book. And I will do what little I can to further the campaign of Senator Obama. If we should fall once again for the vanity and excesses of parading our power and wealth - which are considerably diminished thanks in no small part to the policies of the Bush administration - then I will be much chastised. And, like the old man that I am, feel grateful that I have only a few years left to watch the sad decline of America's former majesty.

I'm not sure what attracted me to the title i ordered from Net Flix: Shirley Chisholm.

I remember her from the 70s when she was the congresswoman from Brooklyn, the first black woman to serve in the House. I remembered that she had run for president and that I was drawn to her as a candidate and a person.

But beyond that, not much.

So it was without a lot of expectation that I watched the DVD.

And was spellbound by the woman and by what she had done.

In 1972, Nixon running for reelection, his 1968 pledge to end the Vietnam war having proved a sham, his exercise of the presidency an embarrassment not to be endured again until the present incumbent, the country still reeling from the assassinations from the previous election, Shirley Chisholm, a young junior member of the house announced her intention to run, and crisscrossed the country insisting that her candidacy was serious.

And it was.

Unbossed and unbought was her slogan, based, not like most of today's slogans, on PR fluff created from focus groups, but describing her operation.

I was surprised and delighted to learn that she is still alive, still as feisty and attached to honesty and reality as she was all those years ago.

My wife and I watched, spellbound, as she challenged the lack of integrity, common sense and human decency that we now take pretty much as an inescapable dimension of public life.

What struck us both was the brave lady's legacy that - 36 years later - is finally bursting into reality in the campaign of Barak Obama. She apologized to no one in calling for a return of focus on the middle and lower classes, on the place of women, on the shame of racial exploitation. And, though she played to enthusiastic crowds of all sorts across the nation, she understood that her candidacy would end up as a stalking horse for those who came after her.

It will be another two months before we know whether the nation has yet absorbed her legacy completely enough to let the obviously superior candidate - who happens to be of mixed race and different background that any candidate before - can be elected.

But whether or not, the plain fact of his leading the Democratic ticket likely could never have happened had not Shirley Chisholm so fearlessly stood up and claimed her place in the American dream those many years ago.

It is an awesome film. You might want to have a look.

I liked John Edwards' campaign focus. Let's get to work on addressing the growing problem of American poverty and the disappearing middle class. Nobody else was talking about that, still isn't.

I wasn't particularly drawn to what I could see of him as a person. Some of it probably has to do with my discomfort with that whiny southern accent. (full disclosure: I grew up in NC and my old accent can reappear when I'm talking with someone from there.) Maybe he tried too hard to look nice. Although it's a good thing to like a president, I don't think we can afford a nice one.

Not that any truly "nice" person could ever get past Go in a serious political race.

The people who already hated him are going to be happy about today.

Not me.

Like every other person who has broken as solemn a vow as "forsaking all others..." he has majorly gone off the rails of acceptable behavior. And since - depending on which statistic you choose - somewhere around half of married men, and some lesser number of married women (though I read the number is growing as women claim full rights and enter the business and political world that was once patriarchal), and I don't think you need be a psychiatrist to bet that the percentage is far higher for public figures, maybe it would be more useful for us to consider what might lead a person to do such a thing.

What was he thinking? is a question one often hears when news like this hits.

Thinking is not where impetus for clandestine sex begins. It begins with animal lust, hormones, rushing of blood.

And with vanity.

When was the last time someone told you they thought you were good looking? Or a person they admire? Or smart? Or cool?

Can you remember the rush of blood? To your face if you are a blusher. And to your genitals if you are between the ages of 13 and 80.

Now one of the reasons for the explicit vow of fidelity, of forsaking all others, in the marriage service, is because we all know this is going to happen, many times, over the course of a long marriage. And we agree not to let our eager bodies trump our promise. But many do.

Now, the way we have evolved our political process, the entire business is about flattery and power. Do you for one moment find either McCain or Obama's ads or speeches to be helpful or informative in figuring out what sort of president either might be?

No, they are designed by clever ad people who do endless research to discover what sorts of lacks, longings - many unconscious - large numbers of people are feeling, and design the ads and appearances to target those specific things. Procter & Gamble and General Motors raised the subliminal ad to an art form 60 years ago. Remember David Packer's book, The Hidden Persuader?

None of this is news to any of us. But few of us have been the person who stands in for those ads and appearances. Few of us can imagine what it's like to be surrounded by sycophants who hope to further their ambitions by flattering us day after day. Who can imagine what it's like to see your face every time you turn on the TV, promising the country that you are going to make everything better?

There is no excuse for John Edward's adultery. One of the unspoken understandings of public life is that you musn't ever be publicly drunk, abusive or get caught having sex with someone other than your spouse. If you do, you're done.

John Edwards is done. He knew the rules. He broke them, He got caught. No tears.

But the rest of us best not gloat. We'll get our day in the barrel.

I've been away on a time at the beach our family has ben planning for the past year.

A unique community on Fire Island off the south shore of Long Island, NY where my grandparents had a house, my mother grew up, my sisters and I grew up, after a 20 year hiatus (we had sold my grandfather's house after he died), I went back with my wife and children for 17 years as the summer Minister.

Fast forward another 20 years, kids grown, one 4 1/2 year old grandchild, another imminent, and we g back for one more round as the church music director completes her 41st and final summer, and some of the old clergy with whom she worked over those years have been asked to come for a couple of weeks each to finish out her long distinguished career.

We were all excited.

An hour after we arrived our nearly 17 year old Siamese cat had an apparent stroke, paralyzing her back legs. She somehow managed to pull herself around and seemed in no pain, but we were knowing this was likely the beginning of her end.

That night neither Lacey nor I slept much as Jasmine was on our bed and we kept checking on her.

At 4:30 our daughter came into our room to tell us it seemed that her baby, due in 4 weeks, had decided he was going to b born that day.

We were 8 miles at sea, 2 ferry rides and a 4+ hour drive from her doctor and hospital.

Her sister hurriedly packed her while Louse consulted with her doctor. (I remember the days when there was only one phone, at the Post Office. When my grandfather, a doctor, was called, someone walking by the Post Office would pick it up and come running to our house to let him know. Cell phones are a great addition.)

Lacey and Louise got on the 6:30AM ferry across The Great South Bay, drove across Long Island to Port Jefferson and, at her doctor's request, stopped at a birthing center in Port Jeff where she could be checked out before getting on the next ferry that took a coule of hours to cross Long Island Sound.

Though reluctant to have her go, Louise insisted, Lacey and she took the ferry, her husband drove down from north of Boston, Lacey passed Louise off to him, they drove hard for home, made it in time for Gabriel to be born at 10:30 that night.

He was big enough - 7 pounds, 1 ounce, but his lungs were not fully developed, so he was moved to Children's Hospital where he spent his first week on oxygen until his lungs were ready.

Lacey returned in time to see that the cat had miraculously recovered he use of her back legs. Lacey left the next day to help get the house ready for Gabriel to come home. After she left Jasmine again lost the use of her back legs. That night I heard a big crash in the middle of the night and feared the worst.

Nope. Jasmine was back up and was leaping up to try to catch a moth flapping in the window,

Two remaining daughters and granddaughter and I had a lovely time once the jellyfish had been swept out to sea.

I wonder what our time might have been like had it been as we planned?