Notes From D. R.

Weekend Box Office: Point Taken

Vantage Point tops the charts.

Do It Again

Ralph Nader will once again run for President. Hmmm...

Take A Good Look

An interesting story in the Boston Globe about an effort by Robert Joyce, a Boston attorney and conservative activist, to prevent the distribution of the Boston Phoenix alternative weekly in the city's West Roxbury neighborhood due to the paper's adult personals. This is a fascinating story dealing with two equally compelling interests: traditional morality and the First Amendment.

Joyce has received some heat for his effort, with allegations that he is really attempting to have the Phoenix banned because the paper supported the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling authorizing same-sex marriage. (Joyce was a vocal opponent of the ruling, and tried to defeat a state senator who supported the ruling in 2004.) I don't buy the argument that he's trying to retaliate against the Phoenix due to the paper's progressive politics: if he opposed papers with progressive editorial views, he'd try to ban the Globe as well.

Joyce has a right to petition stores to stop distributing the Phoenix: contrary to some of his critics, he is not an extremist merely because he has some socially conservative views. Having said that, I don't see his effort having any real long-term success, because West Roxbury is no longer a "conservative" community. For years the neighborhood was considered one of the more conservative areas of Boston, but the region has changed dramatically over the past decade or so. In the 2006 gubernatorial election, West Roxbury supported Deval Patrick by a huge margin! If West Roxbury's residents were still hardcore right-wingers, they would have backed Kerry Healey in overwhelming numbers.

Even if one thinks Joyce's effort is silly, one must concede that he has a right to be silly. He is right to be concerned about young children possibly being exposed to inappropriate content. His effort will likely fail, because most West Roxbury residents probably regard him as a crackpot crusader, but his concerns are not illegitimate.

The Last Word

Popular novelist Robin Moore passes away at 82.

End Of An Era

Veteran Boston talk-radio star Moe Lauzier is forced out of WRKO-AM. Lauzier is a class act, and it's a shame that his nearly 25 years of service at WRKO has come to an end.

Who Can It Be Now?

George Will on John McCain's running mate.

Land Of Pawlenty?

Minnesota talk-radio star Jason Lewis doesn't like the idea of having his governor become John McCain's VP nominee.

Settling Down

Southern Methodist University is chosen to house the Bush Presidential Library. More from Blogs for Victory.

The Uncrowned Champion

Barack Obama is already the President of the United States.

The notion that America will not vote for Obama because the country is fundamentally conservative is patently absurd. America hasn’t voted based on issues in years; it always votes on emotion, and whoever captures the emotion of the day is guaranteed to go over in the general election.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy captured the emotion of the times—an emotion that demanded ”change” even though the country as a whole wasn’t suffering. Eight years later, Richard Nixon seized upon America’s desire for stability in the midst of social chaos and international confusion. Nixon maintained the emotional advantage in his 1972 landslide re-election win.

Four years later, Jimmy Carter exploited America’s desire for decency in post-Watergate Washington. After one term, he lost the emotional advantage to Ronald Reagan, who connected with America’s emotional desire for competence in the White House. Reagan’s emotional appeals—“Morning in America,” etc.—played a major role in his own landslide re-election in 1984.

Moderate George H. W. Bush appealed to those who desired a less partisan nation, defeating a Democrat opponent who seemed to represent hatred of all things Republican. Four years later, Bill Clinton expressed concern for those filled with economic anxiety—and won the White House as a result. The (naïve) belief that things were just fine and dandy in 1996 contributed to Clintons’ easy win over Bob Dole that year.

Emotion led to Al Gore’s defeat in 2000: evangelical voters, disturbed by the behavior of Gore’s 1990s political tag-team partner, rushed to the polls to support George W. Bush, a self-professed “different kind of Republican” whose campaign was a hybrid of Reagan 1980 and Bush 1988. Four years later, America’s desire for security in the face of terrorist threats kept Bush in office.

He who wins the emotions of the day wins the White House. This, of course, is why Obama cannot be defeated.

Obama is not appealing to the intellect of his supporters; rather, he is offering them reassurance that he will heal their emotional wounds. Average Americans are anxious these days—about the war, about the economy, about health care, about the environment—and Obama is promising to remedy these social flaws.

Obama is saying nothing in his speeches---but he doesn’t need to. He has already secured a psychological victory, and that’s all he really needs.

Once a candidate has convinced Americans that he is a good man, he cannot be conquered. Reagan’s enemies threw millions of punches at him, and not one of those punches connected thanks to his emotional connection to the American people. Clinton  successfully beat back his critics through popular appeals (especially during the Lewinsky scandal); Bush did the same for most of the 2000s. When America falls in love, it doesn’t like to fall out, unless there are extraordinary circumstances (Watergate for Nixon, the hostage crisis for Carter, the prolonged Iraq War for Bush).

The senator from Illinois has made millions of Americans believe that he is a fundamentally decent human being. That’s the most important goal of any campaign, and he has achieved it. Americans in all fifty states now seem to believe that he is a man of superior character, regal bearing, humble spirit. He has become what every mother wants their son to be, what every wife wants their husband to be, what every son wants his father to be.

He could very well fail as President, but Americans clearly want to give him the chance to fail. Despite his clear liberalism, he has already won the trust contest. Americans disillusioned (rightly or wrongly) by Bush want a President who they can depend on, whose word is his bond, whose commitment to the people is legitimate. Nothing can stop these Americans from maintaining their negative opinion of Bush….and nothing can stop these Americans from maintaining a positive opinion of Obama.

Is Obama selling the people a bill of goods? Yes—but so many Americans want to make the purchase! They want to see if the claims of hope can be made real. They want to know if the impossible can be made possible.

Reality may hit these people, but it will hit after Obama becomes President. Buyer’s remorse will be as inevitable then as his victory is now. Yes, pro-Obama Americans are operating on emotion—but one cannot be surprised by that, as emotion-based voting is something of a time-honored tradition in this country. That tradition will allow Obama to make history.

Runaway Train

Barack Obama wins again in Wisconsin and Hawaii. More from Karl Rove and Daniel Henninger.

Good Riddance!

Fidel Castro resigns as Cuba's dictator. More from the New York Times.