PEter – I did read the piece you directed me to (quickly) – it didn’t speak to me. Abuse like this -”The Obama phenomenon reflects the hysterical temperament of a huge segment of the American public, temperament prone to adolescent over-excitability and willful self-deception bordering on self-hate.” – isn’t really worthy of a considered response. Any # of conservatives – more neos than paleos I’ll admit – have been wowed by O’s speeches in the past even if they wish now they’d been a little more circumspect in their praise. Are they all recovering hysterics?? Peter – there’s no argument here – just snotty attitude… So I thought I’d zero in on something which I could respond to – the mag/editor. You called “Chron” a paleo-con thingy. When I hear paleo-con, I think of, say, Robert TAft. I don’t think of celebrants of the Lost Cause. And when I hear the phrase “states rights” – I think Of George Wallace. Not humane traditions of popular sovereignty. Maybe that’s a generational thing. But, believe me – “states rights” has a very particular resonance to Americans who were around during the Civil Rights Movement. Just recalling something now – one of the most devastating measures of the intellectual left’s response to 9/11 was that it dovetailed pretty closely with David Duke’s. Do you know where Tom Fleming and Chronicles came down on the day after?

Nahncee – “To vote is to piss on someone’s shoes” some dead rocker once said. Not my pov exactly but my “obsession” as you call it with Obama goes beyond pulling the lever for him. If/when he stops incarnating liberal-mindedness, I’ll stop defending him here. Might still vote for him…Remember your pop? – Fam counts! Certainly worth a vote…

Wade – eyes wide shut. If you go into the Game, you KNOW your hands will be dirty. Did O cross the line to become a hack? – was he after that State Sen sinecure? Or was he thinking big. Figuring he might be the One -because of his one-of-a-kind background and sympathetic imagination to become the tribute of everyday people whose lives will not be transformed w/o a long-term NATIONAL campaign of reconstruction…I understand you don’t believe in such a campaign – but just take housing – check the recent history of the pub’s corrupt HUD man Jackson and then decide whether you want to call out the State Sen or the GOP’s great refusal of the idea of governance.

Re Iraq – Did you dig what O said about Petraeus/Betrayus? Why go for the gotcha – he’s jsut a “flip-flopper” etc. Look – he was AGAINST the war from the jump. He’s NOT the equiv of Hillary/Kerry who voted for it and then began to complain when shit got hard. Forget me – you should cut O some slack. Think back a bit, his national interventions have already spurred you to do some pretty serious thinking about your own personal history of the American dilemna. What other American pol has provided that sort of intellectual stimulus in your/our lifetimes. Don’t dismiss your own movements of mind. That’s just another version of narrowing of politics that O is trying to resist. We should all hold O accountable for failing to walk the hallways of those projects after he stopped organizing – or campaigning – there. He’s not a hero or a saint. Or a community organizer (i.e. a secular saint) any more. He’s a politician w/ an imagination. A rare bird. We’ll see if he’s a black swan…