Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I am not going to explain why Reverend Wright is a great spiritual leader


Never for a second did I believe Reverend Jeremiah Wright had to be pardoned, explained away, dissociated from, etc. by Barack or anyone. I understood without reading this kind of article both how effective he has proved himself to be as a spiritual leader and how a type of comfort he offers his congregation is to voice some "damn this place is fucked up"-type thoughts.

Because, it is. And everyone knows it. And if not everyone, a whoooole lotta people in the south side of Chicago know it, whether their preacher tells it to them or not.

Anyway, I just wanted to dedicate one post to this link: the full text of his 1990 sermon called "The Audacity to Hope."

This is the painting he's referring to, entitled "Hope" by George Frederick Watts.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

She 'Misspoke' about being FIRED AT BY A SNIPER????

WTF???

HOW TO YOU GET A STORY WRONG ABOUT BEING SHOT AT BY A SNIPER?!?!

I mean, "fired at by a sniper" doesn't have some secondary meaning I'm not aware of, right? Like after a long weekend, when you keep getting what day it is wrong, do we call that "getting fired at by a sniper?" No, right? We use those words to talk about a person with a gun, taking aim, and pulling a trigger and bullets coming out, and the bullets are near you in a bad way.

So how is Hillary gonna be like "my bad, when I said I was getting fired at by a sniper in Bosnia, I really meant...um, that I wasn't getting fired at. I misspoke." ??????????

Hey kids, next time your teachers and parents catch you lying, just explain that you misspoke.

Also, did she think she'd get away with that, both the lie and the explanation (misspeaking)??? I mean, we might be stupid but no one is that stupid. I can't hit the question mark button (control slash control slash control slash control slash) enough to satisfy how baffled I am by her attempt to pull this off.

'Cause like, you know, wouldn't we all remember the headline about a SNIPER IN BOSNIA taking a shot at the FIRST LADY AND TEENAGE DAUGHTER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES? That would have been a really big story, and every time someone did a subsequent story about assassination attempts, the secret service, personal security of dignitaries, blah blah, the SNIPER IN BOSNIA SHOOTING AT HILLARY would have been mentioned. This woman has lost her mind.

Whew. Okay. Calm down, Kate.

Backing up: if you're not caught up, here's the story:

As part of her argument that she has the best experience and instincts to deal with a sudden crisis as president, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recently offered a vivid description of having to run across a tarmac to avoid sniper fire after landing in Bosnia as first lady in 1996.

Yet on Monday, Mrs. Clinton admitted that she “misspoke” about the episode — a concession that came after CBS News showed footage of her walking calmly across the tarmac with her daughter, Chelsea, and being greeted by dignitaries and a child.

And here's the footage of her walking across the tarmac with Chelsea.


Two opinions on the Hillary campaign

...neither of which I can take credit for, but both of which I like.

One is here. It is David Brooks, a conservative who doesn't hate liberals, in today's Times. The most alarming bits are these:

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance....

The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping....

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. NOW MCCAIN HAS A LEAD AMONG THIS GROUP.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

The second Hillary campaign opinion I like is here, from some lovely blogger name Dillon at Backalleymedia.org. Dillon suggests Hillary suspend her campaign for these reasons:

1) Every time she attacks Obama now she seems like a spoilsport in the eyes of a growing consensus of party leaders.

2) Her strategy now... has to be to wait for Obama to make a horrendous mistake.... If she cedes the field and lets Obama battle McCain for a few months, it’s possible that Obama will make such a mistake, proving himself unworthy to face a strong Republican opponent. If he screws up by late August, Clinton can ride to the rescue at the convention.

3) She’s got no money. Actually, that’s not quite true — she’s got a big chunk of money that she has to hold in reserve for the general election. If she suspends her campaign for now, she’ll stop losing funds.


By the way, here the Times reporting on how the Hillary campaign finance problems have her stiffing her vendors, even when she owes them as little $2,500.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Ready for a shock?

Hillary supported NAFTA from the beginning. In November, 1993, she briefed 120 government officials, no press allowed, on NAFTA.

We must be able to assume this wasn't a briefing on why not to adopt her husband's project, right? From Talking Points Memo:

Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a Nov. 10, 1993, entry -- a "NAFTA Briefing drop-by," in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media.

Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program.

But wait, I don't get it. She said in the February 21st Texas debate and the February 26th Ohio debate that she "opposed NAFTA from the beginning!" You mean, she misrepresented her role and position as first lady?

Wait, am I to understand that, her claim to have brokered peace in Northern Ireland wasn't the only thing she's misrepresented about herself?

At least she's been "saying from the very beginning" "as I've said all along" that she regrets her Iraq war vote.

Ay ay ay.



P.S.
By the way, if the NAFTA debate interests you, here's economics journalist Daniel Gross in Newsweek about how NAFTA is a manufactured argument (pun not intended but I'm leaving it there) because the jobs lost in Ohio and Pennsylvania are going to China, not Mexico or Canada. My guess is factory jobs in Texas are still going just over the border, though. Anyway, from Gross's article:

There's something outdated and Kabuki-like about the whole NAFTA drama, which was manufactured largely for consumption in Ohio and probably won't be going on a national tour.

Nationally, China has long since displaced Mexico as the bugaboo on trade issues.

Yes, U.S. imports from Mexico have risen sharply since 1993, from $48 billion to $216 billion in 2006. But U.S. exports to Mexico have tripled in the same period, from $52 billion to $156 billion.

The New Democratic Party?

The message below is from an email from the Obama campaign, who sent it out the day after the victory in Mississippi.

When we won Iowa, the Clinton campaign said it's not the number of states you win, it's "a contest for delegates."

When we won a significant lead in delegates, they said it's really about which states you win.

When we won South Carolina, they discounted the votes of African-Americans.

When we won predominantly white, rural states like Idaho, Utah, and Nebraska, they said those didn't count because they won't be competitive in the general election.

When we won in Washington State, Wisconsin, and Missouri -- general election battlegrounds where polls show Barack is a stronger candidate against John McCain -- the Clinton campaign attacked those voters as "latte-sipping" elitists.

And now that we've won more than twice as many states, the Clinton spin is that only certain states really count.

...For all their attempts to discount, distract, and distort, we have won more delegates, more states, and more votes.

Meanwhile, more than half of the votes that Senator Clinton has won so far have come from just five states. And in four of these five states, polls show that Barack would be a stronger general election candidate against McCain than Clinton.

Now... we move on to the next ten contests. The Clinton campaign would like to focus your attention only on Pennsylvania -- a state in which they have already declared that they are "unbeatable."

But Pennsylvania is only one of those 10 remaining contests, each important in terms of allocating delegates and ultimately deciding who our nominee will be.

We have activated our volunteer networks in each of these upcoming battlegrounds. We're putting staff on the ground and building our organization everywhere.

The key to victory is not who wins the states that the Clinton campaign thinks are important. The key to victory is realizing that every vote and every voter matters.

I'm obviously not claiming that this email represents unbiased reporting or anything, but it accurately reflects the core of Obama's campaign strategy: show up and play to win in every single state. The success of this strategy is one of most important reasons Democrats concerned about the future of the party should back Obama.

Since Reagan got elected, Democrats have conceded the middle and south of the country from the onset, and instead focus on those crucial swings states. This is bad for two reasons:

1) It encourages the Democrats to ignore the needs of people in non-swing states on the campaign trail, which means their issues are more likely to be ignored once a Democrat is in office (footnote: Bill Clinton); and

2) It has put the Democrats on the defensive: having already conceded such a huge part of the country, we spend all this money and time in Florida, Michigan and other "important" states, trying to show that we're tough on crime, or not offensively pro-choice, or are actually kinder to the working class, or are people you'd love to get a beer with... in other words, the red/blue/swing-state electoral map of the past eight years has made the race the Republicans to win and the Democrats to lose.

The Obama campaign's "unity" cry is not just a pretty idea--it's a lean, mean campaign strategy. They don't assume that places like Kansas and Nebraska are out of play for us. There are some states that are not "winner take all" electoral votes in the general election, but they have been 100% Republican the last few times around. There's poll data suggesting Obama counld change that.

One of the biggest problems with Democratic presidential campaigns is the assumption--or, fine, the knowledge--that some parts of the map are irrelevant to a Democratic victory. So when your campaign is deciding where to spend money, man-power, and the candidate's precious time, ignoring those places is probably a sound judgment call.

But when the people in those written off red states start to get upset that their family members are being forced to serve third and forth terms in Iraq, when they, yes, need an abortion, when they see a Will and Grace re-run and the possibility of not being a closeted gay person seizes their imagination--when conservative, christian-right-wing dogma proves insufficient--what political spectrum will be laid out before them?

A great thing about this prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination--and a great aspect of Obama's campaign organization--is that it's brought Democratic visibility to these places. When Kansas and Missouri turn on the news, or pick up the paper, there's Hillary and Barack. And therefore, the issues being batted around are not only the evils of stem cell research and whether exceptions to abortion prohibition are acceptable when a woman is raped, but also, do you have health care? How fast should we bring soldiers home?

The parameters of the debate widen enormously when Democrats come to town in a red state.

Whether he wins the nomination, Obama's campaign is moving the party forward by making Howard Dean's "50-State Strategy" more of a reality. When Hillary asks us to focus on "states that matter" (her campaign's "insult-40-states" strategy) she asks us to view the Gore/Kerry campaign strategy as, not only the best strategy, but the only possible strategy.

And how'd they work out in '00 and '04?

Obama could be for Democrats what Reagan was for Republicans: the person who brings an enormous new tide of voters to the party. Voters who are therefore many times more likely to be voting Democrats for life.

Unlike the most recent injection of voters to the Republican party, Obama's first-time voters aren't the Jesus-loves-guns variety. We're people who are ready for candid discussions of race in America; we're people for whom going to war needs irrefutable justification; we're people who are proud to have read books about something other than the apocalypse; we're people who understand the crucial importance of legal, widely available abortions; we're people who respect the rule of law, civil liberties, and people who live outside America; we don't believe the earth is 5,000 years old.

In other words, we're people who really should be voting in America right now.

The new voters being drawn into the race could become the constituency that allows Democrats to stand up and be Democrats for America, not Democrats for moderate Republicans.

I found at realclearpolitics.com this quote from a Republican media consultant, Alex Castellanos. (He consulted for Bush and Romney.)

"Obama is the hope and future of the Democratic Party, not Hillary, and everyone knows it. He is the one bringing new energy and voters. He could be a Democratic Reagan, invigorating the party for 25 years. If the Clinton people knee-cap Obama, it would be like killing Santa Claus Christmas morning in front of the children. The children won't forget or forgive."

By contrast, I dig up this quotation from October, i.e. a lifetime ago, when Hillary had a 30 point nationwide lead and was, undoubtedly, the front runner in the race.

I am not out to knee-cap the front-runner, because I don’t think that’s what the country is looking for.-Barack Obama, October 2007

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A good idea: move up the superdelegate vote

Tennessee Governor and policy chairman of the Democratic Governor's Association says, if we don't have a clear nominee by the end of the June primaries, we should move up the superdelegate vote, from the August convention to June. This would spare us three months of infighting, precious time much better spent building the race against McCain.

Makes sense to me.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Charles Kaiser on The Speech

The Lincoln quote at the end of this is perfectly appropriate. Thanks, Charlie.

This is required viewing

This speech is not the words of a man trying to win the presidency. The message is from a man with conviction and insight and candor, who, in hoping we hear this message above petty sound-bites and racial baiting, expects more from us than any politician I have encountered in my life time. It's 37 minutes.

Make sure you get to the end. He couldn't have laid out our two choices more starkly.


(Full text of the speech is here. Teachers, assign it to your students. Regardless of the Democratic nomination, this speech was history--history which we're living now. )

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

More than a "wee bit silly"

Hillary: (to CNN last Wednesday) "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."

The Telegraph wrote this in response to Hillary's claim that her experience includes brokering peace in Northern Ireland. (I'm a little late posting it, sorry.)

Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey: (Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province) said Hillary was a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. "I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill going around. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

Hillary: I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants from both traditions...it was only in large measure because I really asked them to come that they were there.

And I wasn’t sure it was going to be very successful and finally a Catholic woman on one side of the table said, ’You know, every time my husband leaves for work in the morning I worry he won’t come home at night.

And then a Protestant woman on the other side said, ’Every time my son tries to go out at night I worry he won’t come home again’. And suddenly instead of seeing each other as caricatures and stereotypes they saw each other as human beings and the slow, hard work of peace-making could move forward.

Telegraph: There is no record of a meeting at Belfast City Hall, though Mrs Clinton attended a ceremony there when her husband turned on the Christmas tree lights in November 1995.

The article doesn't provide a lot of support for the following sentence, but it's too good to leave out:

Steven King, a negotiator with Lord Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party, argued that Mrs Clinton might even have helped delay the chances of peace.


Is it appropriate to launch my first LOL into the blogosphere?

So. There you go. Her experience is not in Northern Ireland but in political spinning.

Latte, anyone?

I am not venturing an opinion on whether the "latte-drinking" characterization off Obama supporters is either a) accurate or b) actually impacting the race, but I have to say, it makes me laugh a lot.

I for one do love a good latte. Cappuccinos, too.

Remember the Republican tactic where something or someone was liberal, ergo VERY VERY BAD? Is it me, or is being a "latte-drinker" Hillary's "liberal." Did that make sense? like,

Republican: "liberal" :: Hillary:"latte drinker"

Hillary, who has come out against "hope," "being eloquent," and "insignificant states," now also opposes warm milk.

I really want Starbucks to issue a report about the flaky unAmerican-ness of latte drinking customers. I imagine the highlights being something like this:

The Starbucks Latte Drinkers Report - March 12, 2008

Of all our customers, Latte drinkers are the most likely to buy the paper, but only for the Arts and Leisure section, because they have so much leisure time and do unamerican things like go see a play.

Latte drinkers are 8% more likely to roll the "r" in "grande latte."

Latte drinkers are 26% more likely to do at least one of the following while ordering a latte:
  • give an unsolicited hug to a Starbucks employee;
  • sing along to the Joni Mitchell album playing in the cafe;
  • tip the barista with more than your 13 cents in change;
  • tell their child "yes you can" when, clearly, the child can't.

(The coffee-vote-for-Hillary corollary: Though Starbucks has not made a formal study of the matter, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that people who order drip coffee black are more likely to have to be at work by 8 am, express confusion at why "tall" means "small," scratch their American balls in public, and vote for Hillary.)

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Hillary's best case scenario not good enough

Her best case scenario still doesn't add up to the nomination. Obama supporters, stay calm, keep running and supporting the incredible campaign he's led.

By the way, all this talk about how she has the popular majority (or popular votes put them "neck and neck") only works if you count Florida and Michigan.

The Clinton campaign has now switched from emphasizing delegate math to the popular mandate, claiming that she and Obama are more or less tied in the popular vote. Back Ally Media pointed me towards a story on TPM, which proclaims: “Dem Popular Vote Race A Virtual Dead Heat [Clinton actually up by ~30,000 votes!] — With FL and MI.


This “with FL and MI” shit again. It's invoking this indignation in me, like someone on the playground didn't play fair and the teacher wasn't looking or told me not to make a fuss. What happened to the candidates' pledge not to campaign there? What happened to the DNC decision to strip these places of all delegates?

How can she even claim to have "won" Michigan when Obama’s name wasn’t on the motherfucking ballot???

Obama asked the state to remove his name from the ballot to comply with DNC rules. Hillary left her name on. Lots of people live in Michigan. And Clinton beats Obama — 328,151 votes to zero.

This is more than a little shady. It's reminiscent of the Republican brand of anything-to-win sliminess. Aren't Democrats trying to brand themselves as the party that plays fair?

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Top Dog/Underdog: The Power of the Story

The story of the moment in Ohio and Texas is dominated by Hillary's take: an underdog makes a comeback. ("I'm just getting warmed up," she said.) Her eleven state losing streak made her underdog, and winning Texas and Ohio shows her campaign is, as the Times' headline announces, "turning around."

Things are turning around for the underdog.

The showman Top Dog is finally being exposed to the voters, and she, the little underdog that could, is going to work work work. Blah blah, story story, spin spin.

“Americans don’t need more promises,” she said. “They’ve heard plenty of speeches. They deserve solutions, and they deserve them now.”

As she spoke, the crowd responded with chants of “Yes, she will!” — apparently an orchestrated response to Mr. Obama’s trademark “Yes, we can!”

Turning one of Mr. Obama’s themes against him, she said, “Together, we will turn promises into action, words into solutions and hope into reality.”

This line of attack is working for her, and we can expect a lot more of it.

But I remind you there's another story:

HILLARY WAS NEVER THE UNDERDOG IN TEXAS AND OHIO.

For the past year, Hillary has shown a more or less 20 point-or greater lead in those states.

Yesterday, he lost Texas 48% to her 51%. He lost Ohio 44% to her 54%

So who's the fighting underdog with the more successful campagin? The candidate who in Texas, barely held onto her lead which was once so assured, or the one who closed a gap from 20 points to 3? The one who lost 10 points of her lead, or the one who closed the gap between himself and his opponent by 10 points?

Also, he is still ahead in delegates. If superdelegates are what win the Democratic nomination for her, please remember her campaign's current complaints about Texas:

Former HUD secretary and Hillary Clinton supporter Henry Cisneros excoriated Texas' arcane electoral process as "a great burden on voters" and said that losing the delegate count on Tuesday because of the state caucuses would be "exceedingly unfair."

Ohio, Texas, and shit's about to get ugly

This really scares me (from today's Times)

The results will also embolden her campaign’s efforts to persuade the Democratic Party to factor in the delegates from Florida and Michigan, her advisers say.

My blood boils every time she mentions her victories in Michigan and Florida. Her, yesterday:

"We’ve won Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire, Arkansas, California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee!”

Remember her ridiculous "victory party" on January 29th? Remember the mockery it (rightly) received? From Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, those distant weeks ago:

Yes, Clinton, as expected, beat Barack Obama by a wide margin in the Florida primary. But all the Democratic candidates had agreed months ago to boycott the contest after the Democratic National Committee stripped Florida of its delegates to punish the state for moving up its primary date. The result was a primary without purpose, a show about nothing.

But in a political stunt worthy of the late Evel Knievel, the Clinton campaign decided to put on an ersatz victory party that, it hoped, would erase memories of Obama's actual victory Saturday night in South Carolina's Democratic primary. "Thank you, Florida Democrats!" Clinton shouted to the cheering throng. "I am thrilled to have this vote of confidence."

Hillary, you want to campaign for each voter yet to cast a vote, go for it. Be democracy in action. You want to get nasty? I think it's a mistake, in the long term for the party, and in the short term for us, but... whatever. But you have NO BUSINESS GOING AFTER DELEGATES WHOM THE WHOLE PARTY--INCLUDING YOU--AGREED SHOULD BE EXCLUDED.

Arrrr.


Apparently, negative campaigning could be working for her:

For Democrats, and particularly for Mrs. Clinton, the contests were as consequential as any to date. To that end, Mrs. Clinton delivered some of the toughest attacks of her campaign over the weekend....There was evidence that the attacks had some effects. Mrs. Clinton did well among the 20 percent of voters in both states who said they made their decision in the last three days. She won about 60 percent of those voters in Texas and about 55 percent of those who voted in Ohio, according to exit polls conducted statewide.



Also, WHY CAN'T THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FIGURE OUT HOW TO RUN AN ELECTION??


Something more coherent to follow.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Techies for Barack Obama!

Marc Andreessen endorses Obama!

This is Andreessen's thoughtful, straightforward endorsement of our boy, which he bases on an hour and a half meeting he and his wife had with Obama early in 2007.

For those behind in your techie celebrity gossip, Marc Andreessen is the silicon valley boy wonder partly responsible for the first big web browser and co-founder of Netscape (that thing you used before Mozilla Firefox came along--I always liked how the stars on the icon were shooting-falling while your page was loading). The tagline quote on his blog is "I've seen the future and it works."

Excerpts from the Andreessen's endorsement:

Obama is smart (techies like smart people)
[I]t's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with one of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart....

Obama is not radical (techies fear extremists on either end)
This is not some kind of liberal revolutionary who is intent on throwing everything up in the air and starting over... take a look at his policy positions on any number of issues and what strikes you is how reasonable, moderate, and thoughtful they are. And in person, that's exactly what he's like... what comes across -- in both his questions and his answers -- is calmness, reason, and judgment.

Obama's world view is not dominated by the 1960s (that irrelevant time period before the letters "e" and "i" were prefixes for "mail" and "pod," respectively)
He's a post-Boomer. Most of the Boomers I know are still fixated on the 1960's in one way or another -- generally in how they think about social change, politics, and the government. It's very clear when interacting with Senator Obama that he's totally focused on the world as it has existed since
after the 1960's -- as am I, and as is practically everyone I know who's younger than 50.

The post-Boomer point is, I think, excellent, and a different way of saying what I've been trying to articulate. Obama's not just slick at acting hip; he seems like one of us because he actually is. I think Andreessen also likes post-Boomers because we know how to restart a computer all by ourselves.

This is an endorsement I would want my Washington DC-based parents and brother to read. None of them is a Democrat but my family has a strong penchant for the tech dork view of the world, because that is what we all are...except me. Marc Andreessen and his wife also gave money to Mitt Romney, whatever that tells you. (Hint: he's not liberal.)

Also, included in this endorsement, are Obama's answers to Andreessen's reservations about Obama, which he straight up asked him.

1. How concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action. [And yes we have, as I posted about here.]

It turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win... By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

This... speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers -- another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point -- well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.

2. We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.

But then he made what I think is the really good point.

He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

He's got my vote.

Awesome.