I sympathize with President Obama as he performs the extremely difficult act of dealing with Egypt’s revolution-in-progress. I don’t know that he is doing any worse than any previous president confronted with such a chaotic situation in an important ally. That said, he has been consistently behind the curve. In the first place, events have plainly taken him by surprise. There was evidently no administration plan in place to respond to such a contingency, which everyone knew would come to pass some day. Thus Obama stumbled for a response. Over the weekend, the message from the administration was that Mubarak had to reform. Now the message is that Mubarak must not stand for re-election in September. Mubarak took that message to heart and made the announcement that was expected of him.
But does Obama really think that the vast throngs filling the streets of Cairo will stand for Mubarak remaining in office until September? That would have been a good demand to deliver a few months, weeks, or even days ago. Now it’s been overtaken by events. Clearly nothing will satisfy the demonstrators other than Mubarak’s removal from office.
The question is what comes next: who makes up the transitional government? One hopes that, behind the scenes, this question is consuming the administration and its best experts on Egypt, and that they are fruitfully engaging not only with the opposition but also with the army, which remains the most powerful power broker in the country. Liberal democrats are in a race with the Muslim Brotherhood to control Egypt’s destiny. We need to help them. We need to get ahead of the curve. For once.
Of course, this is the paradox: people want a change from politics as usual; this requires the election of people from outside the political establishment; people from outside the political establishment have no experience in politics; people want elected officials with experience; but people also want elected officials who are not politicians.
In other words, they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
But, if you were serious about wanting someone from the outside, Caroline Kennedy fits the bill. If her name was not Kennedy, but Joe the Plumber, we would have heard about the lack of experience sooner. The problem is, people without experience have no experience. Sarah Palin has loads of experience as compared to Caroline Kennedy, but she doesn’t have the right name or accent.
What do you care? It’s not like there’s any democrat who you would like instead, hack.
Eloquent? Go to the tape. It’s on the lower left side of the page. If she’s eloquent then Sarah Palin should go right to the head of the class. Caroline will be the new wizard of “you knows”, like her uncle was the wizard of uhs.
fwhffwhf calling smbd else a “hack”? Wow.
Hmm…maybe Caroline Kennedy is not the done deal I’d assumed.
I no longer vote Democratic, but I do think New York state can do better for that Senate seat, and I hope it does.
“Eloquent but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way” worked for President-Elect Obama. Why shouldn’t Caroline Kennedy do the same?
Dame Caroline is a nice lady who really is not cut out for the “family business” at all. But she does share with some of her less than nice cousins an appalling sense of self-importance and an aristocratic presumption much like that of the great Whig noble families of England two centuries back. She will wind up deeply embarassed if she doesn’t take a soft exit soon.
I’ve been commenting on this on my blog all along, beginning with this:
http://thepurplecenter.blogspot.com/2008/12/dame-caroline-deigns-to-represent-us.html
“Rich and nice and powerful relatives” and she’s had cocktails with Andrea Mitchell. What else can you ask? The saddest part is that she’s probably the best person among the potential candidates.
So, let me see if I get this.
Sarah Palin worked her way through college, started out at the bottom w/ the PTA then city council, small town mayor, commision member and then governor. Fought corruption and cronyism in her own party and achieved record approval numbers. And she was mocked and ridiculed by the media and many others as being a joke and inexperinced.
Now many of these same people consider Caroline Kennedy a wonderful choice to fill a senate seat ?
Seems a bit ironic to me. Maybe some of the Palin-bashers who frequent this site can explain this logic to me.
Come on, don’t be too hard on her. She is vague, untested, has no real opinion, no experience, no voting record? Heck guys, we just elected a President with the same issues, and it wasn’t even close. Give the girl a chance. We all know what we need is twenty more years of a “Kennedy” in public life, I mean, it’s worked out so well in the past, right??
Right?
RW