I’m going to start doing a running set of posts on interesting Obama \/ McCain posts from here and yon. Not a lot of commentary, but a link and a snippet. There’s a lot of interesting writing going on out there…<\/p>\n
Telegraph UK – ” Obama won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lose for being black but for not being American enough<\/a> ”<\/p>\n It is that core of experience – of growing up American – which Obama lacks. His problem is not so much that he is an African-American in the modern political sense of being a black American. It is that he is an African-American in the literal sense of being half African and only half American, who spent much of his boyhood abroad and who borrowed a consciously constructed black American identity from the south side of Chicago.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n TAP – ” The Democratic Education Divide<\/a> ”<\/p>\n Ultimately it is policy makers — supported by parents — who must rise to these challenges and recommit themselves to educational equality. Teachers’ unions have a role to play, but they aren’t either the villain or the fix-all of education politics. What the unions remain, however, is a key Democratic constituency. Surely, convincing, cajoling, and encouraging are better tactics to win over grass-roots teachers than hectoring them with anti-union rhetoric. After all, if folks like Nancy Ruth White and the generations of teachers following her embrace of the Democrats for Education Reform agenda — giving up tenure in exchange for higher starting salaries and merit pay tied to student achievement — the unions will have to get with the program. If they don’t, they’ll risk becoming irrelevant to their own members.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Andrew Sullivan quoting Robert Caro on LBJ’s absence<\/a> from the convention:<\/p>\n Caro is now at work on the fourth volume of his epic biography, about Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s White House years. “I am writing right now about how he won for black Americans the right to vote. I am turning from what happened forty-three years ago to what I am reading in my daily newspaper…and the thrill that goes up and down my spine when I realize the historical significance of this moment is only equaled by my anger that they are not giving Johnson credit for it.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Joe Klein on an undecided focus group – ” Focused<\/a> ”<\/p>\n So this is Obama’s task on Thursday: To convince people that he is a man of substance, not empty promises, that he has ideas–despite his lack of experience–about running government in a way that will be more effective. A tall order, I’d say.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n