Barrel Strength

Because we could all use a good laugh.

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Your correspondent received the following from a friend.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1840388,00.html

Joe Klein has totally lost it in this column entitled “Sarah Palin’s Myth of America.”   Especially when he compares the American South after the Civil War to America today after Vietnam and Iraq.   I think his column probably captures the frustration of most Democrats, though, when he blames Americans for not sufficiently appreciating The One and his eclectic background.

Here’s my favorite part of his lament:

So Obama faces an uphill struggle between now and Nov. 4. He has no personal anecdotes to match Palin’s mooseburgers. His story of a boy whose father came from Kenya and mother from Kansas takes place in an America not yet mythologized, a country that is struggling to be born — a multiracial country whose greatest cultural and economic strength is its diversity.

The fact that Obama has no personal anecdotes to match Palin’s mooseburgers is not our problem.  Obama has to sell himself to us.  The anecdotes he does care to tell us about–Rev. Wright’s inspirational sermons, Father Pfleger’s missionary work, Bill Ayers’s community teaching and regrets that he had “not done enough”–are not things likely to grab America by the lapels with joy.  Rather, Americans upon hearing such stories feel as if they had been mugged on a cold night on Chicago’s south side.   NOT a Norman Rockwell feeling.

I have a solution for Joe Klein:  stop nominating radicals whose personal lives are out of the American mainstream and who reverse JFK’s admonition to do things for your country and not the other way around.  And tell The One that he is not the only One.

Some polls are best read in conjunction.  Here is an example.  In the first poll we learn that “Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday.   The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001….  On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator. One in four people said they did not know who was behind the attacks.”

In second poll, once again conducted internationally, we learn that “All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain….  an average of 49 per cent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 per cent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view.”

It is no wonder that Americans prefer to ignore international opinion when it comes to their elections.  After all what would one make of an opinion that “In Mexico, 30 percent cited the U.S. government and 33 percent named al Qaeda” as being behind the 9/11 attacks?