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Quote Of The Day: An American Abroad’s Awe Of Post-Election America

November 22nd, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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Our political Quote of the Day comes from author Carol Guild, who writes via Pajamas Media of her awe as she looks at post-election America from London:

Over the past two weeks the outpouring of British newspaper, radio, and television punditry has been staggering in volume. Staggering in variety? No. One theme that seems to obsess British journalists has been a grim, humorless regurgitation of the most negative aspects of American history. One would think that a hundred years’ war between white and black Americans has been unfolding on the streets of every corner of America, that a truce has been declared with the Obama victory, but that any moment now the war will resume. It is truly mind-boggling that commentators in Britain, some of whose knowledge of American history and cultural evolution borders on the comical, and some of whom rarely visit the United States, have used the election result to condemn every aspect of American interracial life. I simply will not accept that the black experience has not improved since the days of Jim Crow of my childhood; nor will I buy the picture generated by the British media of a nation of despicable racists hell-bent on oppressing every person of color from sea to shining sea.

In my play, A Room at Camp Pickett, written in early 2004 and performed in first-draft form as a “rehearsed reading” at the London Africa Centre in August of that year, I provided a narration. It is unbelievable but true that I mentioned Barack Obama in this part of the text, saying he could be “the one” black America has sought since the assassination of Martin Luther King. What British commentators do not grasp is that Americans like myself, who grew up in James Baldwin’s “fire this time,” see the Obama election as a natural progression following on the ascension of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to international distinction within the context of a Republican administration, for heaven’s sake.

Read it in full.



This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under Condoleezza Rice, Britain, Colin Powell, Quote of the Day, United Kingdom, Barack Obama, Europe, Race, Democrats, Republicans, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    Meanwhile, grown-ups like me share the views of writers like the following, who understand the real issue here -- it's going fully Dem and liberal in Washington and they have no more (bogus) excuses if they continue to fail. I actually welcome the change, but remain skeptical of how much they'll accomplish in Washington. I'm actually impressed and intrigued by how Obama is building a good team, and the power consolidation by Pelosi as well as modernizing (in Waxman's replacement of Dingell; may there be other such kinds of change to come) the Congress to clear the path for more liberal activism from Washigton, actually is a refreshing kind of exposure and for now, almost entertaining source of anticipation. (And the Dems were smart enough not to stupidly bail out Detroit without first getting at least a recovery plan! What a relief that was.)

    In other words, we don't gush stupidly over Obama, but see the more broad, serious issue here, namely liberalism's fully open route (rather than constrained and often concealed) in Washiongton.

    "With the election of Barack Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress, liberals must now practice something other than the politics of nostalgia and what-if.

    This is a politics that has been in the making since at least 1968 ...

    Now the long wait is over, and the liberal ship has come in. In Mr. Obama, liberals have a president who seems to have stepped out of the last episodes of the West Wing. He has the Congress in his left pocket, the news media in his right pocket (or is it the other way around?), and he floats on a tide of unprecedented international enthusiasm.

    ... Succeed or fail, this time there can be no excuses.


    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122697207170735...
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    Related to the (real) picture the clear-headed are seeing:

    "Like George Miller, Barney Frank and the other liberals produced by Vietnam and Watergate, Mr. Waxman belongs to a cohort whose power has been checked -- one way or the other -- by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton's New Democrat tendencies, the Republican sweep of 1994 and George W. Bush. Now with a new Democratic President and a crisis to use as a lever for a sweeping expansion of government, they aren't about to let an old warhorse with scruples about the costs of regulation interfere with their moment to govern.

    ... Meanwhile, in another sign of the Waxman ascendancy, President-elect Obama has named Philip Schiliro, a Waxman loyalist and his former chief of staff, as the new White House director of Congressional relations. Robert Sussman, who leads the transition's Environmental Protection Agency "review team," has been an astringent critic of Mr. Dingell on carbon regulation. And Carol Browner, Al Gore's protégé turned Clinton EPA administrator turned director of Mr. Obama's "energy working group," is another old Dingell foe."

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122722722366746...
 
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