Since Michelangelo it's been a challenge. (Perhaps since Michelangelo nobody worth their salt would dare rise to that challenge - me, for instance. Death, Suffering, Passion and Sorrow are just so much more universal - and therefore easier moments to capture.)

In literature, art, and film, there have been many attempts to depict, sometimes metaphorically, the moment of birth.

Here's my quick, crude attempt to depict political birth;

Déjà vu anyone?

My god - your gift for dressing up the obvious in august overtones is truly underwhelming. Perhaps a post or two on Gainsborough might be more appropriate.

(modern era)

It's a marker, nothing more. Do you know how many times between now and November that Obama's gonna walk McCain (et al) over to that turd and say, Here, sniff this, boy? (lots!)

Obama's gotta get himself elected, first. Have some faith. I do.

that Obama was going to be a different kind of politician.

I have asked several times what evidence there was for that in his service in the Senate and the Illinois Legislature to support that.

Everytime I ask that, all I hear is cricket chirping.

In Auguste, of course. Lesson still unlearned.

Obama is a quick study. His handling of Church 1 was terrible, n'est pas? But his handling of Church 2 was downright........ what is the word? - Clintonesque. Bravo.

But never underestimate the opposition. And never underestimate how such mistakes can be made by someone who's been in office for quite some time and therefore what they reveal. It wasn't his first. Only his first since.......

more easily. That men buy into the "hope" and "change" message only means they see Obama as they do a woman - and their admiration is intense, but temporary. It's a hormonal thing, they tell me.

He'd have my vote, if I were alive. But the better candidate lost (in my opinion). That's nothing unsual. The system isn't guaranteed to produce the best candidates.

Still, the subtle impact of both racism and sexism played their roles in this campaign.

If I were alive, I'd never forget the heaping praise placed upon Obama for the that passionate but passionately wrong speech about his church.

I'm so awfully sorry.

In my defense, faith in any man by any woman is misplaced. Surely you are not the last to notice?

Fuck!

I say that damned few of us men would ever have any chance of marriage (at least of the hetorosexual form) if a significant number of women did not believe in hope and change!

(heteroxexual) Men believe in hope and change only when in lust. That's why they are treating Obama, so far, like a woman.

Ironic - no? - that they wouldn't treat Madame Clinton like a man!

he's different in that he has millions and millions of people believing that he's different enough to be the antidote for what's ailing America.

and this is no small thing, in that the President's job is really no more or less than making Americans feel good about themselves and America. (it is that simple, Americans feel good, they work hard, they trust each other and are magnanimous towards others, they take a few risks and invest in their future, the economic engine is fueled, they exalt in their greatness, the rest takes care of itself.) Bush's main sin wasn't the Iraq War, it was losing the Iraq War*.

of course the likelihood is that Obama will blow it, be sucked into the morass, end up looking like some hapless goofball. but you never know, he's got a chance.

----

'thought' out to ex-Frayster Moloch, who might interject here that those are one and the same

but Hillary had an equal number believing the same thing.

Maybe it is like a belief in god.

Obama supporters take it on faith. I kind of need to see the evidence.

There's never any evidence.

What preps you for terrorists taking down the twin towers, a hurricane flooding a city, choosing whether or not to go to war, not being rendered silly by the power.

Nothing. Otherwise, we'd have a formula for picking it.

(You could be President.)

you are both surprising and offending me here.

I guess you're thinking something along the lines of "there is no answer therefore there is no way to pick; therefore its a faith decision."

The only times Obama went down in the polls is when the press (and internet) began looking at him.

The fact is it's not a matter of "you've gotta have faith", it's a matter of "you want to have faith this time."

The last straw for me was hearing how, on vacation with his family, they all had to sit down at the table and read the bible together.

I like him, but I'm offended by this willingness to pretend he's something other than what he is. It's not him that offends me.

I knew Auguste well enough to know that he knew better.

thought of that when I read this (it really is an on-the-job training thing, his comments about Bush senior notwithstanding) ...

Commentary

It's not what McCain and Obama have done, it's what they'll learn

JOHN IBBITSON, globeandmail.com

June 18, 2008 at 6:40 AM EDT

The biggest concern over the possibility of Barack Obama becoming president has been his complete lack of executive experience.

History tells us, however, that this may not matter. What matters is whether Mr. Obama or John McCain has the capacity to grow.

The U.S. presidency is a very tough assignment. It helps to have had on-the-job training. George Bush Sr. was one of the most successful foreign-policy presidents of the 20th century. He ousted Manuel Noriega in Panama, expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and negotiated the unification of Germany. His background as an ambassador, Central Intelligence Agency director and vice-president had a lot to do with that.

Other presidents have arrived on the job manifestly unprepared. Most of them stumbled at first. Some improved.

Abraham Lincoln was the least prepared of all. This self-educated lawyer from backwoods Illinois had served a few terms in the state House of Representatives and one in the federal House. He inherited the presidency during the Republic's greatest crisis.

And he did very badly. Lincoln appointed one incompetent or vacillating general after another. His war secretary, Simon Cameron, was spectacularly corrupt. And Lincoln only narrowly averted war with Britain, which was the very last thing the Union needed.

But Lincoln learned. He found generals who could win battles, he cleaned up the corruption, he proved himself an adept manager of men and events. If the first two years of his administration were a near-disaster, the next two transformed him into the republic's greatest president.

Harry Truman came to office feeling as though "the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me." He was clearly overwhelmed by the job, and voters administered a shellacking in the 1946 midterm elections.

But Truman was slowly figuring out whom to trust and how to work the Congress. In the second half of his first term, he implemented the policy of containment, which eventually won the Cold War; he pushed through the Marshall Plan, which rescued Western Europe; and he forged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Today, we recognize Truman as a great president.

John F. Kennedy started out abysmally, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Nikita Khrushchev positively mauled JFK at their first summit. He watched helplessly as the Berlin Wall spread across Germany, and he vacillated on the civil-rights issue.

But by 1963, he had the measure of the Russian Bear and of the governors of the Southern states. His handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis was masterful and he had gotten behind the civil-rights campaign of Martin Luther King. He could have been a fine president.

From gays in the military to health-care reform, Bill Clinton committed one blunder after another, and lost Congress to the Republicans in 1994.

But he, too, learned on the job. He changed political tack, outmanoeuvred the GOP's congressional leadership and took credit for an unprecedented peacetime economic expansion. Despite the scandals, he left office as one of the most popular of presidents.

A pattern emerges. A new president arrives clearly unequipped to meet the demands of the office. He makes mistake after mistake, his popularity wanes and the pundits prepare his political obituary.

But the president has the capacity to analyze each failure with a clear head. He discovers which advisers he can trust, which policies he should jettison or embrace. He figures out the Congress. The successes of the second half of his first term vindicate the learning curve of the first.

Other presidents obstinately determine to stay the course, and we get what we have now.

So, in any election, voters should be asking themselves: Would this candidate learn from failure, or would he reinforce it? Mr. McCain's decision to fire his campaign staff and retreat to New Hampshire when all seemed lost suggests that he can adapt his tactics and keep up his spirits in the midst of political adversity.

Mr. Obama tried to place his attachment to Rev. Jeremiah Wright within the context of race and religion in America. But when Mr. Wright renewed his outrages, the candidate repudiated the pastor entirely.

Both examples are encouraging. What each man has on his CV is really not that big a deal. The big deal involves judgment, objectivity and a sort of political humility, which in a politician can be the most important, and most elusive, asset of all.

un autre miracle de l'art et la nature peut-être plus intéressant que cela.