So a funny thing happened at the White House press briefing today. Yes. Of course. Our boy Goyal was at it once again. I recommend anyone drinking milk right now to put their glass down so as to prevent the milk from momentarily spraying out your nostrils. Here we go:
Q Tony, two questions. One, there is disturbing news, and the Indian American community is very angry that Senator Obama and his campaign has been calling the Indian American community taboo and other names, calling names, and all that because of the relations with the Clintons, President Clinton and Hillary Clinton. My question is, how does — what does President think about the Indian American community and his relations with the Indian American community?
MR. SNOW: Well, the President, obviously, is proud of our — the growing closeness of the United States and the Indians. Not to be holding a brief for Senator Obama, but I don’t believe that he made comments of that sort. I do believe that was a staff comment for which he issued apologies. But having said that, it is important to realize that the United States looks upon India as the world’s largest democracy, as an important and vital ally in a whole host of things — regional security, global trade, climate change. I mean, the role of — the importance of India is not to be understated. And we are certainly glad that the relations between the nations continue to draw closer. [Link]
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p>I am trying to wrap my head around this one. I mean, why would the White House have an official position about what an Obama staffer wrote about Sen. Clinton? Is this what reporters assigned to a scandal-plagued White House really want to know about? Then it just gets even funnier:
Q Second, just on Sunday I was in Washington, here at the Verizon Center, over 20,000 Indians, mostly Hindu, gathered together there. And their message was peace and unity, internationally and here also. The question is here that President has gone to all the denominations here, but never to a Hindu temple. And he goes to church, I go to temple, but he is a religious man, so am I. What my question is that this weekend —
MR. SNOW: You want to know if he’s going to go to the temple?
Q This weekend there is a grand opening of Hindu temple in Adelphi, right on the beltway, if he can make it there sometime or —
MR. SNOW: I don’t think that’s on the schedule, and I think you do appreciate, Goyal, that Presidents don’t do casual drop-bys.
Q He has been invited.
MR. SNOW: Again, I appreciate the suggestion. [Link]
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p>Yo, that would be tight if W did a “drop-by.” Any D.C. area mutineers going to be in Adelphi who can let us know? And for those still following the D-Punjab soap opera, Rediff got an exclusive with Obama today:
[Obama] explained that “I think what happened was that the people who were writing the memo thought that to quote back Hillary Clinton was clever somehow. They were wrong and I let them know in no uncertain terms that this was unacceptable.”
Obama acknowledged he had no idea about the document that was being circulated by some members of his campaign staff till the controversy erupted, when the Indian-American community was in uproar and his Indian-American supporters contacted his campaign expressing their concern. [Link]
HyperTree:
i guess the thinking is that in a parliamentary system the executive always has a majority. of course, you can say that the US winner take all system leads to less gridlock than proportional representation of parties, but the founders generally tried to discourage radicalism or factions and selfish groups that had no interest in the common good, so they built a system where a party had to get real influence before being represented.
you can see the US constitutional democracy as an elaborate machine designed to contain factions w/o suppressing them, create a majority that believes in the fundamental rights, with safeguards installed to prevent that majority from over-turning those rights. i think this helps explain US stability, as anti-democratic fanaticism has been defanged w/o being outlawed.
yep. trans-fat ban too. even smoking in outdoor cafes. but its a long leap from major to president, although his $$ conveys him some stature, as americans respect self-made billionares.
Manju: what you say — “a system where a party had to get real influence before being represented”, and “designed to contain factions w/o suppressing them” leads to more autocratic and not necessarily liberty-preserving behavior innit? An example of this “system” would be post-independence India; inspite of the parliamentary system, it was real difficult for parties to be representin w/o real influence.
The majority respecting fundamental rights is orthogonal to the system you just described, and is I suspect orthogonal to any system. You seem to be under the same misconception that Bush and Co with their democracy spreading enterprise labor under: that is the structure that gives rise to peoples’ behaviors, as opposed to the peoples’ morals determining how a given system functions.
In India, the constitution has been amended hundreds of times, how can any “system” safeguard against that? It seems like feudalism cannot be destroyed by a wave of the structures wand innit?
I love the way the word “exclusive” is used these days. Apparently Obama is not giving interviews to anyone else.
You wouldn’t say you have an “exclusive” relationship with a woman if she gets to date other men at different times.
The New York Times had two articles on Bloomberg this weekend. One of them was a bit hagiographic, but it is the other article that is really interesting. Even admitting the reality of some of the comments above, it suggests the possibility that the winner-take-all nature of the electoral system and the recent close races we’ve had might allow Bloomberg a very non-traditional strategy for “success”.