John_Schwada's Blog

Writing a blog you have to decide which one of your personas is going to make a guest appearance.

Will it be the overly-caffeinated demon, the easy-going story-teller, the even-handed journalist….the father of two boys, the husband of an Iranian-American, the child of the Midwest raised on tales of hardship, the rabble-rousing Berkeley student?

All of these little voices are talking in my  head, vying for the post-position when the fingers hit the typewriter. Right now, I’m not sure who’s winning…

But I do need to blog. I have ruefully ruminated in this space before that we Fox folks do this for no extra pay, only, in my case, to quiet the cacophony of voices hurtling around my brain like so many asteroids. Call it therapeutic.

Onward…..

The first time my wife met Barack Obama she told him: "Gosh you're such an incredibly nice man. I’m just worried that you're too nice to be president." He laughed, embraced her and said something immemorable. His speech that afternoon, to a roomful of potential supporters was very professorial…sincere, thoughtful. (I was also there, not wearing my reporter hat that day, nor a partisan hat, just my trained observer hat - which looks like something Sherlock Holmes would wear in the London slums, looking for Moriarty. I was also loading up on the Rivkin’s hor d’oeuvres).

I left thinking: I wouldn't mind taking Obama’s class in college...but, like my wife, I wondered if he'd be good as commander-in-chief, especially if you were looking for Jack Ryan, the Tom Clancy kick-butt character played by Harrison Ford as a CIA-type who then becomes president….Am I telling you anything new?

Anyway…last Saturday, after his win in South Carolina, my wife said she saw a flash of steel in Obama’s victory speech. (Being a dutiful husband, I quickly saw it too). What I saw was a grim determination, a new tilt to his jaw and head. The professor had left the Ivory Tower. Obama seemed like the fighter who was still standing in the ring, victorious, battered by a veteran, desperate rival; Obama’s choice of words, his demeanor, so it seemed to me, showed that he had endured and learned some useful lessons about politics - about head-butts and below-the-belt jabs - that would not soon be forgotten….

The amazing thing about South Carolina was how it left the seemingly brilliant Hillary and Bill Clinton team reeling. Bill Clinton may have actually neutralized himself as a force in his wife’s campaign with his controversial remarks about Obama and race. It seemed to me, as I have blogged before, that the ex-president did the nation’s political dialogue a huge disservice by saying it was “understandable” and to be expected that blacks would vote for Obama, women for his wife. Does the former president condone the kind of tribalism that has turned Iraq, Kenya, you name it, into hell-holes.

The latest trick in the Clinton’s game is to suddenly try to make Florida matter. It was thought that Florida was off the table, in the Democratic race, because the state had moved its primary forward in the election schedule, in violation of the national party’s rules. All the Democrats then pledged – in keeping with the party’s rules – to boycott Florida, to not campaign there. This seemed to take Florida out of the mix…even its delegates are – as of now – not supposed to count at the Dems convention.

But Hillary Clinton is now saying Florida’s primary is important, that she’ll push at the convention for its delegates to be counted. It should come as no surprise that she is also believed to be the big-favorite of Florida’s Democrats. If Clinton can steal a march on Obama, win Florida, get its delegates seated at the convention, then Florida – as in 2000 – may once again play the role of king-maker.

Although there’s been a lot of pundit talk about the fractured Republican party, the Democrats are also struggling with that unity thing.

Just take a look at the New York Times. 1) The Times editorial page endorsed Hillary last week; 2) former first-daughter, Caroline Kennedy, on Sunday wrote an op-ed piece in the Times endorsing the character, judgment and inspiring leadership of Obama; 3) also on Sunday, Frank Rich, the Times’  resident-yellow-dog-Democrat (that would be a Democrat who would vote for a yellow-dog before a Republican,) could be found on the same op-ed page gnashing his teeth over the prospect of a crippled Hillary-Bill team winning the Democratic nomination. Such a result, according to a worried Rich, might very well produce a Republican victory in November – if John McCain were the Republican nominee.