Charlie Cook: “This is the classic kind of inside-the-Beltway, process story that politicos and reporters get in a lather over but that resonates very little with average voters. Most Americans don’t know or care what happens to the old emails of public officials. But chasing shiny objects is an occupational hazard for political journalists during odd-numbered years, because of the infrequent developments of real significance. And, for that matter, Clinton’s fate won’t hinge on Benghazi either…”
“No, Hillary Clinton’s challenge will be determined by how she performs, what image she projects, how she is perceived—whether she comes across as likable and relevant to the future, someone who can plausibly address the challenges facing the country. Having been largely out of the game of politics since losing the Democratic nomination to President Obama in 2008, she is akin to a professional athlete who has been sidelined by injuries for several seasons. Does she still have—to borrow a phrase from the legendary political author, the late Richard Ben Cramer — ‘what it takes,’ or Tom Wolfe’s ‘the right stuff’?”
A particular passage in President Obama’s remarks in Selma yesterday rings powerfully true today. “Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest that Ferguson is an isolated incident; that racism is banished; that the work that drew men and women to Selma is now complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the “race card” for their own purposes,” he said. “We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes, and our ears, and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us.”
Less than 24 hours later, the nation’s eyes, ears and heart are offended by a video allegedly showing members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity at the University of Oklahoma leading a racist chant. …
University of Oklahoma president David Boren wasted no time taking action. He banished SAE from campus and ordered the fraternity house shuttered by midnight Tuesday night. The fraternity’s national headquarters, calling itself “disgusted” and “embarrassed” by the video, suspended the entire Oklahoma university membership and promised to permanently revoke the membership of those responsible for the incident. Boren’s statement on the racist display was blunt. “To those who have misused their free speech in such a reprehensible way, I have a message for you. You are disgraceful,” he said.
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That’s something we don’t hear a lot about, the values of blue America. No, it isn’t because we don’t have them. It’s that we don’t parade them in the public square quite as much as conservatives do, while conservatives aren’t exactly shy about caricaturing in public their version of liberal values (we love sodomy and baby-killing and so on).
But there are liberal values. Some, we all know about–tolerance, diversity, etc. But another central one has to do with the way in which liberals love our country, and it goes like this: Yes, of course this is a great country. But it is change that has made it so. It’s a country that was founded on the highest ideals of the day, many of which are eternal, but it was also a country where ownership of human beings of a certain race was legal. So no, it wasn’t so great. It had to be made great. And by the way it’s not really as great as it should be yet. That’s a process that, the human condition being what it is, will never have an end.
Tomasky says Obama defines those who are the truest Americans: “the protesters, the outsiders, and the agitators who read the words of the founding texts and forced the system to live up to them.”
What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?…That’s America!”