posted on April 22, 2007 10:35:46 AM new
Help Wanted
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 18, 2007
While in Kenya last week, my wife, Ann, a teacher, visited Mukuru-Kayaba Primary School in a Nairobi slum, where the U.S. helps finance a lunch program that keeps kids coming to class. When she returned from the school visit, she remarked to me that there was a poster on the wall of the school showing Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, during their visit to Kenya last August. The poster said: The Obamas know their H.I.V. status. Do you know yours? The senator and his wife had volunteered to be tested while in Nairobi.
A few days later, my friend Robert Kerr, the U.S. Embassy public affairs officer, told me: “Each of the section chiefs in the embassy was asked to submit names of key contacts to bring to a reception for Obama at the ambassador’s residence. Mine included Rose Kimotho, at the time the leader of the Media Owners Association, and Moses Mwangi, founder of the Martin Luther King Foundation for Africa. In recent visits to their offices, I was struck by the prominence they gave to their photos with Obama. Rose had it prominently displayed on the table next to her visitors book. Moses had it on the wall near a photo of [Kenya’s] President Kibaki.”
Yes, Mr. Obama’s father was Kenyan, but nevertheless, that poster and those pictures got me thinking: when was the last time you saw a U.S. president or politician being held up as a role model abroad? It’s been awhile. And that got me thinking about Mr. Obama. It seems to me that the strongest case one could make for an Obama presidency right now is rarely articulated: it is his potential to repair the broken relationship between America and the world.
As I travel around, I have never seen a president and a vice president more disliked in more places than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Some of the animus arises from an attitude they project of not caring much about what the world thinks. Some of it is spawned by Bush-Cheney policies toward Iraq, Kyoto or the Geneva Conventions. Some of it is unfair: President Bush, for instance, has been at the forefront in combating H.I.V.-AIDS in Africa. And some is nonsense: foreigners blaming America for their own ills. (It annoys me no end to read about how China is now more popular in Asia than America — China, which censors Google and has supported a Sudanese regime engaged in mass murder in Darfur.)
But in some ways, that’s the point: The Bush-Cheney team, by its own hand, has undermined its ability to talk about American principles in a way that foreigners will take seriously. They have moral clarity and no moral authority. Foreigners just have to say “Abu Ghraib” or “Guantánamo,” and that ends the discussion. It also lets the foreigners off the hook.
I think Mr. Obama has the potential to force a new discussion. For now at least, he has a certain moral authority because of his life story, which makes him harder to dismiss. And while he is a good talker, he strikes me as an even better listener. It’s amazing what people will let you say to them, if you just listen to them first.
But being a good listener starts at home. I got back from Africa for the climax of the Don Imus controversy, a show on which I’ve appeared. It underscored how much work we have to do here at home in learning how to listen, talk and, yes, joke with one another across racial, gender and religious lines. My instincts on speech are always to keep the boundaries really wide and to cure speech with speech — and with sunlight — not censorship.
But, I must say, reading the reactions this past week by some of our best African-American commentators has impressed on me how much hurting has been going on inside those wide boundaries — and how much, with our increasingly diverse society, we need to have a talk about where the line should be today, from morning radio to hip-hop and the Internet.
I wish the whole nation could have heard the conversation between Mr. Imus and the impressive Rutgers women’s basketball team. We would all have learned something. But now it’s gone and there’s no president to moderate a wider discussion. Mr. Bush has been such a divider that he’s in no position to lead. So people just fire off reactions and go back to their corners and nothing positive is built.
Which brings me back to Mr. Obama. I believe that what has propelled his candidacy up to now — more than anything — is that many Americans have projected onto him their hunger for community, their hunger for a president with the voice, instincts and moral authority to make it so much harder for foreigners to be anti-American or for Americans to be anti-one-another.
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Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
posted on April 22, 2007 11:33:28 AM new
Another good article about Obama he is a positive man for the U.S. in our hour of need after the worst ever.
Obama Hears Tearful Plea to End Iraq War
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer
Published April 21, 2007, 12:54 AM CDT
NASHUA, N.H. -- A woman's tearful plea to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to end the Iraq war momentarily caught him off guard Friday at a New Hampshire town hall meeting.
The Illinois senator vowed to end the unpopular conflict if elected, a position that later earned him thunderous applause during a 5,800-person rally in Boston.
Obama fielded questions about health care, gun control and energy during a midday appearance before some 200 people at a Nashua senior center. The residents politely applauded, and then Jean Serino of Hudson told the candidate her nephew was heading to Iraq to serve.
"I can't breathe," she said, her voice breaking with sobs. "I want to know, when am I going to be able to breathe? Are you going to get us the hell out of there? Promise us you will get us out of there. That's the most important thing."
The crowd's applause as she finished gave Obama time to compose an answer.
"I can only imagine how you feel, as a father and as a parent," he said. "I don't go to a single town-hall meeting where I don't meet a mother or father who either is seeing a loved one go over there or has already lost someone, or has a loved one who has come back injured.
"So I make a solemn pledge to you, as president we will be out of Iraq," Obama said to loud applause.
Democratic presidential contenders have repeatedly faced questions from voters about the four-year-old war during stops in New Hampshire. New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has dealt with pointed questions about why she won't apologize for her 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to use military force to oust Saddam Hussein.
A recent poll showed that ending the war is the top priority for New Hampshire voters when considering presidential candidates.
Obama reiterated his plan to remove troops by March 31, 2008, similar to a plan passed by Congress that President Bush has vowed to veto.
posted on April 22, 2007 05:01:19 PM new
Holding my breath that this good man won't be the object of some smear campaign emanating from under a slimy rock somewhere.
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Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
