But Can he Play?

I appreciate Obama's election has great meaning to black Americans and even white Americans. As a child, I grew up living and dieing for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was just too young to have remembered the Brooklyn Dodgers. My oldest memory of rooting for the Dodgers was 1958. In 1959, they won their first LA World Series. It had only been 12 years prior that Jackie Robinson broke the "color barrier" playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I loved baseball and reading old stories about baseball.

Of course I read Robinson's biography. The telling of his story was riveting and emotional as his teammates supported him against all attacks. He was one of my baseball heroes. The times were really different then. There were no black CEOs of Dow 30 companies, no black head coaches or managers, no black cultural icons that "crossed over" into national stardom, no black university presidents of non-black universities. He was one tough guy and one great baseball player.

There was a very long distance camera shot last night on Fox News that I thought must have been an illusion. It was truly remarkable. No one commented, as these election shows have become an exercise in maximizing the amount of noise, lights and nonsense that can be delivered per millisecond. They can hardly hear themselves think--these shows are awful.

The camera was focused on Reverend Jesse Jackson in the middle of the huge throng in Hyde Park. I really did a triple take. The Fox guys did not notice, although obviously one of the producers did. Jackson was crying. But it was more than that. It was as if he saw his whole life in front of him in a flash. I imagined he was remembering the day back in 1968, when he was with Martin Luther King on that hotel balcony in Tennessee. I imagined he thought of all the struggles, the marches, the jailings and now a black man is elected president. I am sure he thought of things of a personal or "selfish" nature too, given he ran for president as well. Who knows, he may have thought how ironic it is that the first black man elected president is a first generation Kenyan/white Kansan, not a descendent of slaves. The picture was beyond poignent.

So yes, I can very much appreciate how people may feel. But Jackie Robinson still needed to know how to play baseball and Barack Obama still needs to know how to be president. Black, white, whatever, if his policies are a disaster then do we really care if our president is black? If Obama does not work out, maybe next time we can try an American of Italian descent, we haven't had one of those as president either. My grandparents would be happy, if they were alive that is. And if that does not work out we can cycle through the Government's entire ethnic checklist. I think it must be up to 20-30 or so categories.

Charles Krauthammer said it well. He too was caught up a bit in the emotion of the evening. Still, he reminded his audience that never has America elected a president about whom we have known so little. I half concur. What we do know is he has stated beliefs in a hodge podge of economic and social left wing policies which have been proven failures throughout the years in country after country. Krauthammer's point was, does he really believe that stuff, or are they just beliefs of convenience to get him to this point? The Fox news folks were falling all over themselves in a fantasy of wish fulfillment about Obama's true beliefs. Juan Williams said something about how the country is still a "right center" country. One of them even said something about Obama being a check on the more liberal congress! I need to get what those guys are ingesting.

He has been pretty clear to me about what he believes. Pelosi and Reid are pretty clear about what they believe. The good news is they "won't have George W. Bush to kick around any more". They now have only themselves to credit or blame as they seek to bring about Change for the Ages. Obama was already hedging his bets last night. It definitely will "take more than one term" to make this all work out. Great. We will all certainly find out.

A "horse race" footnote. While it was a large turnout last night, it was not one for the ages apparently. Drudge has 118 million votes counted so far. It may or may not reach 2004 levels, but certainly not 1960 or 1908 levels. The major pollsters had it wrong (Gallup in particular), but it was still a big win. A topic for another day, but the Republican Party better figure out how to get a reasonable percentage of the African-American vote. This is the 3rd election in a row where 90-95% of black Americans voted Democrat. If the Republican party were able to persuade just 30% of black people that their policies are better for them, the Democrats would have a hard time winning the presidency again.