Special Edition

For those of you interested in politics, if you are not reading the Newsweek Special Edition, you are missing out.

Newsweek Special Edition

Basically, campaign people tell Newsweek a lot of junk on the condition that Newsweek wait until after the election to print it. It's always fascinating, and frequently horrifying. I tend to be of two minds on the ethics of holding the types of information involved with the Special Edition back. On the one hand...it's competition. Secrecy is an essential component of government, politics and certainly of campaigning, and it should be. That being said, some of this stuff should probably have been brought into the light ahead of time, and not just the items that are ostensibly "bad," but also those that are "good." Do I really need Newsweek to tell me that Sarah Palin was hard to manage, pretty ignorant, and not a great candidate? Not really. Do I need Newsweek to tell me that Bill Clinton was a drag on the HRC campaign who complicated shit? Not really. But I can't help but feel that we as a political community would be able to choose our candidates in a much more intellectual way if the revelations about the good, and the upstandingness about these men were allowed to see the light of day.

The Special Edition is full of revelations about Obama's character and reason, but more importantly (to my mind, anyway), about the reason and character of John McCain. He resisted much of the dirty politicking that went on, and that really impresses me. I don't know that this is that revelatory for me, since I've been complaining for a while that the McCain campaign had been showing me a very un-John-McCain-like McCain, but it's nice to see proof of that. Let's be real about this...there's nothing in the Special Edition that makes me wish I'd changed my vote. I voted for Obama because I had serious reservations about John McCain's ability to end this particular war, to handle effective domestic policy and to face a modern world against jihadism that will be with us for a very long time. I've talked about my concern regarding the particular military experience that McCain has (i.e. that experience required for successful Presidential command is different from that required for successful on-ground operations), and moreover, I doubt McCain's ability to adapt enough to successfully fight the new enemy, which is ununiformed, disparate, extremely fluid, and almost completely impossible to fight through conventional military tactics. Nothing in the Special Edition makes me think that this is incorrect, but the behind the scenes view is fascinating. I highly recommend it.

PS - New blog format, and thanks to Celia for tipping me off to the Cutest Blog on the Block people, even though their blog title makes me want to start puking and never stop. Like, no like, ambivalence?