1 Boring Old Man

Two Little (Huge) Things Obama Said

There was a lot to reflect on in President Obama’s inaugural speech today, but there were two small points that are worth noting, two things that Mr. Obama mentioned that American politicians, especially presidents, never mention: Vietnam and atheism.

… In talking about defending the American way of life in a frightening world, Mr. Obama said: “We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.”

At another point in his address, the new president was paying homage to our ancestors, “who carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom. For us,” he said, “they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sanh”…

So why did Mr. Obama mention the battle? Perhaps because it also is a symbol of the courage and self-sacrifice of the Marines, and he wanted to include their service to America in his speech? We’re not certain. But it was interesting to note that he stopped there and did not go on to mention, say, Fallujah. As for his reference to atheists, the answer could be simple: Mr. Obama actually meant it when he said, “On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recrminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari"…

Conservative is hard to define. It depends on one’s point of view. People who see themselves as conservative seem to me to define the word in personal ways – "like I am." Generally, it means "to conserve" something like "the good old days" or "traditional ways." To non-conservatives, conservative means "resistant to change" or just plain "resistant." When they talk about our Constitution, they pay lip service to the parts we call "principles" and focus more on "powers."

Liberal is easier. To conservative people, it means Socialist, Communist, Hippie, irresponsible, naive, something not good. Liberals are frightening. To liberals, it means something like open to new ideas, creative, not constrained by what came before, the Golden Rule.

In a working group, there are usually creative people who generate ideas, and others who evaluate things and hold people to the task. It’s called balance, forces for change and forces for being careful working together. In a balanced setting, they work in harmony – "don’t get stuck in a rut" versus "don’t throw out the baby with the bath water."

We’ve been living in a conservative world for so long that we’ll jump at anything that looks like a willingness to change. Our government’s mentality has been the 1950’s post war cold war era of Cheney’s childhood. In that era, negotiations or diplomacy were "appeasement." Back then, it was democracy versus communism, capitalism versus communism, freedom versus communism. Rock and Roll was communism. Unions were communism. Hippies were communists. Idealists were communists. Liberals were communists. Anything "global" was "global communism." Caring about the unfortunate in the world was socialism communism. I grew up in that era. It was monotonous. Little wonder that we burst out of that like a coiled spring in the 1960’s [which were anything but monotonous]. So we overdid it and some of it scared the hell out of people [me too].

We weren’t Hippies. We came along between the monikers. It was neither the "drop out beatnik" time or the later "drop out" "drugs, sex, rock and roll" hippie days. It was the Civil Rights, some old folk music, disheveled but not dirty, coffee houses not pot parties, "I’m tired of wearing ivy-league suits," Pete Seeger is a god era. I liked it. Many of us are still there though we had careers as doctors, lawyers, merchants, and thieves. It was, in many ways, the best of times. We loved Kennedy, opposed the last bad war. We thought the hippies corrupted our style and our music. We wanted to be Woodie Guthrie like we felt and doctors, lawyers, merchants, and thieves too. Like me, many were "recovering frat boys." And then came Nixon. And then came Reagan/Bush[s]. And now we’re old.

But things come full circle. This week is the best of times, even with the gathering clouds of a financial Depression up ahead. Obama said that America is not defined by religion, not defined by race, not defined by class. We’re a patchwork. He got that right [we’re hungry for "right" meaning correct]. He said that my friend’s place of dying, Viet Nam, actually existed in our history. We’re hungry for that kind of honesty. And his people say we need hot new computers in the White House so they can let  see what they’re doing.