Obama: The Real Change
I could resist a post about politics. My apologies. Flame away. This one was just too good.
This last Saturday, SNL ran a hilarious opener skit spoofing Joe Biden who (say what you will about Palin) I believe to be the best material to come along for political humorists since… Dubya himself. The skit was Biden rambling inanely with various prophecies about the future. I’ve been in a bit of a cave the last two weeks but I knew this was too funny to be made up, had to come from somewhere. Here’s the skit.
I decided to look up a few sources about the speech referenced here. Whooooaaaa, whoa whoa. Did anyone read this or listen to it?
Here’s what he said…
“And here’s the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”
Umm…
“Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you, not financially to help him, we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they’re made if they work, then they weren’t viewed as a crisis. If they don’t work, it’s viewed as you didn’t make the right decision…”
Uhhh…
“We don’t need anybody denying us, this is gonna be tough. There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go ‘whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision.’ Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”
Wow. (My main thought about that last sentence was that Obama’s current platform is pretty darn popular right now… and McCain’s isn’t.)
Translation:
A major crisis going to happen. A world power is going to test us, and we’re going to respond in a way that…
Now I can go one of two ways with this.
- That makes us look an awful lot like republicans.
- Make us look like maaaybe WE might be the bad guy after all.
Either way, the real change we are going to see with Obama in office is not one of sudden peace, prosperity and hand-holding happiness.
Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said… The real change you will see with Obama is his stance on how to deal with foreign issues. When he really realizes that politics is, in fact, the art of the possible, as he so often says. And Eden, Utopia, Camelot, Shangri-la, call it what you will, is IMpossible in this world.
Will McCain do much better? Doubtful. My hope with McCain is actually that not much changes. History shows that the less the government interferes, the better. The sweeping changes we need in Washington are not simply an administrative change. We need to close down many many many departments, programs, bureaus. End many government jobs. Free up people’s money to invest in the market. Give people with a lot of money the freedom and ability to pump it into the economy (rather than stealing it from them to give to various programs to “help” the… less… able… to… buy stuff… you know, like, cell phones… (did you know you can get cell phones with Wellfare??))
