Obama: "Cool" black man?

It's come to my attention over several conversations with Obama supporters in trying to ferret out exactly what they like about him (since most have no idea what is actual policies are, they just know that he has them and bloggers say they're progressive, but that's a whole 'nother entry) is that he's "cool". I have no objective problems with "cool", though in it's application to Obama and subsequently being a reason to make him leader of America, I have a few bones to pick:

1. Why does the leader of America need to be cool? I understand that politics these days is often a popularity contest and not a debate of ideas with citizens best interests at heart, but this doesn't seem like an important quality for a president to have. I suppose that in being a b-rate movie star Reagan was cool (though by the election he was just old); by today's standards Jimmy Carter's solar power and peanut farming makes him cool to the Whole Foods set (full disclosure: I shop at Whole Foods sometimes. It's a five minute walk from my apartment); Clinton played the saxophone, which is cooler than, say, the flute, but less cool than drums or guitar. But I don't see how any of these things made them better presidents.

2. What's so cool about Obama? As far as I can tell, he's cool because he's black, which seems incredibly racist to me. Does America really assume that being black makes you somehow cooler by default than being white? Isn't that sort of like assuming Obama is good at basketball and likes corn bread? Is this something we're okay with?

3. What advantages will Obama gain by being cool, aside from winning the votes of American hipster kids who wear Che t-shirts and drink organic shade grown coffee? I doubt that leaders in the middle east will be as charmed by him as American seem to be, and that seems to be his main foreign policy strategy. Maybe when he has all those chats over tea with Iran with no pre-conditions they will see that because Obama is cool he doesn't deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth for being a godless westerner. Somehow I doubt that.

Being on the cover of Rolling Stone might be good for the youth vote, but I doubt it's good for our image abroad. I can just see world leaders laughing at silly Americans and their rock star president. God help us.

Why this flip-flop matters

By now we've all heard countless stories on Obama's decision to opt-out of public campaign financing... And countless conservative attacks for being that most dreaded of things- a "flip-flopper"... And countless explanations from be Obama campaign about how he wants to fix a broken system and his campaign relies on small doners.

I call bullshit.

By agreeing to use public financing for their campaigns the candidates agree to something very important to modern political practice- they agree to an equal playing field. Public financing ensures that both candidates will have the same amount of money to spend on their campaign. This year it's a sum of about 90 million dollars. This system was put into action because somewhere along the lines the party traditionally bad at raising money- the Democrats- called foul on the party traditionally good at raising money- the Republicans- for winning campaigns by sheer ability to spend more money.

You can see evidence of this everywhere. Cindy McCain, though herself very rich, can not spend her own money on her husband's campaign because that would be unfair. She hasn't been able to do this since the first time he ran for senate in Arizona. There are limits on what individual donors can give to a campaign. Special interest groups like the healthcare or tobacco lobbies have near unlimited resources and could easily out spend the other candidate by a huge margin and effectively buy the election.

But that's not how we do things here. The American people don't want to be bought. Obama says his campaign relies on "small donors". Bullshit. Do you think Oprah, who managed to bundle $50,000 for Obama is a "small donor"? Do you think paying $30,000 per plate at a fundraising dinner is a small donation? Do you think he's holding special events for Hillary Clinton's moneymakers so that they'll fork over $2,300 each? Don't kid yourself.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with these fundraising tactics and I know both parties use them. I'm saying that it's BULLSHIT for Obama to pretend he's doing something noble by opting out of the system. He's not. He plans to buy this election by outspending McCain, just like he used to demonize conservatives for doing.