DUCKPOND

Suppose a candidate is under consideration for a responsible position, in which they would make decisions afflecting other people, would not then the “Character issue” be a top of the mind consideration for the selection committee?

The obvious answer is plainly yes. You would want to know how people make decisions, how they deal with others, and something about their temperament and judgment.

After two years of campaigning – or however long it has been – pretty much everything is known about the Obama style. For some he tends to be too cool and too over controlled, but always smart, even if too cynical in currying political favor of the powerful. Who knows how you rise in Chicago politics, but I suspect it requires “networking” and intelligence. I imagine it is a tough political arena. For some, Obama is seen as the darling of the ruling class, and that is not an observation without merit, yet while Palin, in many ways an ignorant person, may dismiss his foundation in community politics and influence and skills he brought to bear through the Democratic caucuses. It is true that while Obama has roots in Afro-American community organizing and churches, he has not the same resonance with the Euro-American working class.

There are several factors at work here, and, it seems to me, they have to do with social distance. It seems to me in the United States that more often than not there are not often demographic groups contesting the same space, but living in separate spaces, and therefore the majority not knowing about the minorities. We saw the example of Obama’s pastor’s comments being endlessly repeated and misrepresented. Therefore, Obama’s work in Afro-American Chicago does not translate into Euro-American working class experience.

Then there is Michael Lerner’s observation from his research suggesting that people experience disrespect at work, and because of that, such people might suspect that somebody with Obama’s “elitist” background would not be able to connect with them. Obama is not the exception he is the rule, consider John Kennedy as an example. Obama’s elitism is solely due to his talent, not his social origins, which while not working class are not privileged.

Biden makes up for the Obama deficiency. Despite his tendency to waffle, and his years in the Senate, he can, as far as I can tell, connect with the Euro-American working class experience. The media are more interested in Sarah Palin as a working class hero, so Biden has had the media oxygen sucked from his campaign.

Now consider the Palin selection, entirely the work of McCain, and in effect no background reseach into the person now a decided chance to be President of the United States. According to Teresa Nielsen Hayden (via Brad De Long), McCain is probably dying of melanoma. She suggests he has an advanced stage. Remember he is the bloke that plucked Sarah Palin off the bridge to nowhere, but as it turns out he knew nothing about that or troopergate. Of course, tactically it worked great. The question now is how long will the short term be. I am suspicious of the psycho-babble, but here is the description of Palin:

My instant reaction to the Troopergate chronology was that we’re looking at a clinical personality disorder, located somewhere in the immediate vicinity of narcissism. If I’m right, Palin is basically out of control, and unlikely to improve.

Have you ever dealt with a full-blown narcissist? “Self-centered” is too mild a description. They’ve got a weirdly information-deprived worldview; they can’t process criticism, failure, or noncompliance; and they have a constant need for external validation of their grandiose self-images. It can lead them to do amazingly stupid things.

What I immediately noticed was that Palin hasn’t bothered to keep track of the stories she tells. It’s not that she can’t; she’s not that stupid. Rather, it hasn’t occurred to her to do so. She isn’t thinking about other people’s reactions. That isn’t bad judgement, or an absence of judgement. It’s a pathological lack of interest in the subject.

That’s Palin, what about McCain, assuming he is not a dead man walking? Jonathan Alter is mainlining. He writes for Newsweek (via Kevin Drum at Mother Jones):

One reason for the sparse record is McCain’s history of unpopularity with his GOP Senate colleagues. Being labeled a “maverick” sounds good to the public but makes it hard to get bills passed. Besides helping pave the way for some judicial nominees in 2005, he isn’t known for forging bipartisan deals that stick. Consider the 2002 McCain-Bayh national-service bill to expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 participants. At last week’s Service Nation Summit in New York, McCain grudgingly endorsed his own bill, now called Hatch-Kennedy. But he’s rarely mentioned it on the trail or done anything to advance it.

Part of the problem is McCain’s explosive temper. He blows up, then apologizes and is quickly forgiven. The forgiveness is “directly related to an appreciation of what he has suffered [in Vietnam],” says a Democrat who didn’t want to be named talking about a colleague. “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Republican Sen. Thad Cochran told The Boston Globe in January. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.” Cochran, a McCain supporter, now says McCain has learned to control his emotions better. But I’ve spoken to four senators and two former senators in recent weeks who believe Cochran’s concerns are widely shared in the Senate. Five of the six think that McCain is temperamentally unsuited to the presidency. None would speak for the record.

And then concludes with a complementary view of Obama, contra Palin:

Palin’s right that McCain has at least tried to “use his career to promote change,” even if he hasn’t succeeded. But she’s wrong to deny the same to Obama. The faith-based community organizing Obama undertook (and that Palin continues to trash) exemplifies the very idea of putting social change before selfish career. Why else take a job for a fraction of what he could have made elsewhere? As for temperament, Obama is unflappable, perhaps to a fault.

Record and temperament. They might not be campaign issues, but they tell us a lot more about the future president than all the trivia that passes for news at the moment.

And now the problem is with the bailout of Wall Street racketeers using the proceeds of the taxpayers, just the way that capitalism is supposed to work, but to the disadvantage again of the average working person, or anybody other than the wealthy few really, who correctly cannot be called an elite, but neither are they just folks.

ELSEWHERE:

Sam Harris,via Truthdig, disses dear Sarah in Newsweek. No cut through there. This is elitist talk.