Obama is a smart negotiator. Smart negotiators don’t teach people things to make a point. They speak at the level of those whom they want to reach out to and make the point by teaching the lesson in a subterranean fashion. He could have explained that America has always been interventionist and that he will have to work within that as president. But Americans can’t handle a perturbance of self-perception. So he told them what he thinks they were and makes points within that how he will have to change that. Smart people don’t try to show people how smart they are when they explain things. They don’t teach. They inspire. The lesson takes place between the lines and you learn without knowing how much you didn’t know in the first place. Imagine this kind of talent on a diplomatic scale and we can look forward to a whole new foreign policy paradigm. Now that’s change I can believe in.

Thanks for the information.

So Obama is not an isolationist but an interventionist. You say that this country has been interventionist and not isolationist for a long time. So then, do you actually think its possible for someone to just walk into the WH and change the whole foriegn policy paradigm and for our national and global relations mechanics not to miss a beat? We are not nor should we become Switzerland overnight. There’s always been a ball buster on the global stage and for a century it was us. We’re losing that and no matter how liberal you are, *****ody wants to live in an American that is subordinate to, say, China — or anywhere else.

There’s life between being a warmonger and being a U.S. president, even if the two have closed in on each other in the last 8 years. Obama is inside, not above, that spectrum. And what Obama is is a politician: a calculated steward of economic, domestic and foreign policy. He is so much less caught up in the messianic perception others have of him than in what are simply his goals as a candidate. What serious voters need to consider, aside from his historical undertaking, or at the very least along with it, is this very color-blind rendition of his policies, his record, what the nickels and dimes are that make up the “change.” And, for me, there is nothing here or anywhere else that I’ve read so far that doesn’t reaffirm to me that he’s the right man for the job.

No, he doesn’t want to jerk us out of Iraq on a dime – that’s unrealistic. No, he doesn’t want to turn the most powerful country in the world into a neutral island. And no he’s not going to appear at Tavis Smiley’s next birthday party or at the BET awards. But is he a warmonger? Is he another Bush? Is he an autocrat? No. He’s a hard-working, very deliberated scholar of the law, of policy, a critical thinker in the web of domestic and international politics law and an intuitive yet *****ytical reader of the moment in time we’re living in, it’s context in history and a man with an idea of how to get this country back on course. The people caught up in the fact that he’s going to turn us into Switzerland (or Sweden) and that every progressive liberal idea ever blogged about is going to materialize the minute he gets into office are the ones who are going to be very disappointed. He’s applying for a job as the President of the United States. He’s going to be tough, smart, break ***** and promises, make deals and threats, and do his best to return this country to the one most everyone respected and that even those which didn’t still relied on. Only he’ll do it in a way that makes us safer not more at risk, better engaged with the world, not more remote and inaccessible and totalitarian. He will aim for the U.S. to stand impermeable to the kind of hatred by others who could justify the kinds of acts that happened on 9/11. He will not act recklessly or expect to do so without impunity. He will listen articulately and explain contemplatively. This is what he already does. This is why he is the Dem nominee. This is what I think Obama stands for. Of course, he has to express this in a limited motto that people can understand and be inspired by (Change We Can Believe In) but that doesn’t mean he’s not a politician. He’s just a good politician. Which is a good thing. To me.

by Sheldon Richman, June 25, 2008

Why would anyone think that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is the peace candidate?

True, before President Bush sent an invasion force to Iraq and before Obama was in the Senate, he made a speech saying intervention would be a mistake. But after the invasion, in 2004, he said he wasn’t sure how he would have voted when the resolution authorizing Bush to use force to overthrow Saddam Hussein came before the Senate. Since being in the Senate, he has voted to continue the occupation.

That doesn’t sound much like a peace candidate, does it?

Obama has made speeches and written articles demonstrating his full embrace of the interventionist policy that has characterized the U.S. government’s approach to the world for many years.

What’s truly frightening is that Obama doesn’t seem to realize that U.S. foreign policy has been interventionist. For example, he said, “We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that try as we might to ignore the rest of the world, our enemies will no longer ignore us. And so we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world.” (Emphasis added.)

In the last hundred years, when have “we” ignored the rest of the world? U.S. administrations have been interfering in Middle Eastern affairs for more than 50 years. They have been interfering in Latin America even longer. Anyone who takes a close look with an open mind would know that 9/11 was a consequence of U.S. interventionism, not isolationism, which is a smear word. That someone opposes invading other countries doesn’t mean he opposes commercial or cultural relations with them. The great liberals of history (when that word meant freedom and minimum government) favored peace and free trade.

Fear of nonintervention is something Obama has expressed before. In the July/August 2007 Foreign Affairs he wrote, “After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership — military, diplomatic, moral — to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities.”

Those are not the words of peace candidate. Obama has often talked about the need for the United States to project its power around the world.

He has made it clear that he supports wars that are not strictly defensive and has expressed admiration for the first President Bush’s war against Iraq: “When we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and parti*****tion of others — the kind of burden-sharing and support President George H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm.”

Obama engages in the same fear-mongering that we have gotten accustomed to with George W. Bush. Obama says, “This century’s threats are at least as dangerous and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a m***** scale and from global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy.”

Again, he shows no understanding that it is interventionism, not “liberal democracy,” that makes Americans targets. He’s fallen for the Bush line that “they hate us because we are free.”

Even parts of the U.S. government know that is nonsense. As the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board put it in 2004, “Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather, they hate our policies.”

And Osama bin Laden himself said that same year, “Contrary to what Bush says and claims — that we hate freedom — let him tell us then, why did we not attack Sweden?”

With Obama in the White House, we could look forward to more Wilsonian military adventures: “We have heard much over the last six years about how America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom. I agree.”

With a peace candidate like that, who needs a warmonger?

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free *****ociation” at http://www.sheldonrichman.com. Send him email.

Bossip is behind it and not in front of it for the same reason they have a dumb-***** headline over the Obama/Rolling Stone story: they underestimate their readers as being so immersed in a hip-hop bubble that Nader’s comments don’t blip on the radar.

I appreciate your comments and I’d like to add that I hate it when blacks and whites make it seem like black people “own” poverty as an issue. Poverty is NOT an African-American issue. It is a national issue that disproportionately but certainly not exclusively afflicts African-Americans. It is the kind of mindset that takes ownership of something like poverty as an issue that sees it manifest as a reality. What people like Nader need to realize is that there are actually huge swaths of black people out there for whom poverty is not an option and seems as surreal and abstract as there are whites who are embedded in it, like Appalacchian whites, even for generations. This is a stereotype we should not claim.

Secondly, even if it is a legitimate “black issue”(and in reality, there are so many poor black folks that it’s almost its own demographic)that poverty exists, anybody who really wants this man elected should know that he has to keep appealing to centrist/moderate and even conservative whites who worry he may put black interest above their own. Unlike Nader, his is not a symbolic candidacy, a vote against rather than for. He can’t just say everything he may be thinking (Good God, can you imagine? Would he have even made it to Iowa if he had?). In fact, he can’t even say everything that he tries to censor and render delicately (“typical white person” flap)so how is he really supposed to go stand up for poor blacks, the group everybody skeptical about him is so afraid of, is afraid of him because of and generally disdains, and then expect to beat McCain and his “I’ve always loved my country” rich ***** wife? So he talks about the other pressing issues in this country that affect us all regardless of race and cl***** (the war, the economy, gas, et al.) and that’s “talking white” to Nader, and presumbably to others. Well if he were Rev. Jackson, he’d be accused of “talking black.”

I almost just said, “You can’t win with these people.” Then again, YES WE CAN!

“I’m like na-na-na! Laughing at you *****z like ha-ha-ha!”

very heartfelt and inspiring message. almost made me tear up a lil bit.

Obama is so handsome in this pic.

For those of you who don’t know Nader said that Barack has not addressed any “African American issues” and was “talking white”.

He also said that Barack was manipulating “White guilt” to get elected.

First of all, since Nader is so concerned about championing African American issues, I would like to know what African American issues he has taken up throughout his political career. I’m African American and one of the biggest issues I’m concerned about is the economy, which Barack has addressed. Secondly, why doesn’t he critque McCain about addressing African American issues. Barack is not campaigning to be the President of Black American he is campaigning to be the President of the United States. He wants to represent all Americans.

Obama just because he’s black’? So the older black guy fires back and says, ‘Are

you not voting for him because he’s black?

***** Why can’t I vote for him just cause he’s black? Hell in this country men are

pulled over everyday just cause their black, p*****ed over for promotions just

cause their black, considered to be criminals just cause their black, but you

don’t seem to have a problem with that This country was built with the sweat and

whip off the slaves back, and now a descendant of those same slaves has a chance

to lead the same country where he wasn’t even considered to be people, Where we

weren’t allowed to be educated, drink from the same water fountains, eat in the same restaurants, or even vote, so you damn right I’m going to vote for him!

Not just because he’s black,

But because he is hope, he is change, and he now allows me to understand when my

grandson says he wants to be president when he grows up, it is not a fairy tale

but a short term goal,

Because he sees, understand, and knows, he can achieve, withstand, and do

anything just because he’s black!