Charlie Rose

'twas a nice interview, see?!  11/10/2008 10:56 AM Report

i think the interview was fine.

however, one thing about the new liberals (or liberals of today) and the conservatives is that they share the same capitalistic or globalization ideology. i heard thomas friedman wrote a book called "the world is flat" which championed globalization from the elite society perspective. but with market democracy, the humans whose rights are really being protected are executives of large corporations slated to reap the main profits of trade legislation and the new foreign policy emphasis on the market. will obama change that?

sock puppet  11/07/2008 01:21 AM Report

Didn't watch this. This is a reaction to the reaction of Blacks re Obama's election. It seems overdone and worse misguided. Obama may be 50/50: W/B genetically, but he's closer to 80/20 ideologically. Hopefully, they are relishing the symbolism as much as substance. They are being gulled by their own optimism if they think the election makes us a post-racial culture. Their hope is too much to fulfill. A needless let down is bound to follow. Unfortunate.

John Villanueva  11/06/2008 10:13 PM Report

Barrack Obama is one of those rare individuals whose progress is based solely on his ability and talent rather than his pedigree, class privilege, or wealth. In this election Americans embraced, respected and rewarded the core principles of meritocracy. Obama was simply the best man for the job and I wish him well.

TABS  11/06/2008 02:41 PM Report

Mr Clyburn has always struck me as a man of common sense and common decency.

RE Mant  11/06/2008 12:33 AM Report

I hope the quotation is not the full extent of Tom Friedman's knowledge of American history, but in any case, it is also clearly wrong as race played almost no part in this election, nor was there anything remarkable about some of the "red" states, going "blue" since this was mostly the result of demographic change taking place over several decades. It should be remembered too that in addition to its populism, Iowa abuts both Kansas and Illinois. Pew says that there is no clear ideological pattern in the vote. It seems to me that the Demos made inroads over time into the Reagan side of the GOP as the latter lost its reform focus and increasingly abandoned the intelligentsia, while "bobo" hypocrisy saw a kindred spirit in Obama. However the party's downfall was its fundamental corruption, not just in govt, but by relying on debt to sustain the country. Classic Gibbon. Recall Rome's republic was replaced by a dictatorship and ended ruled by her former slaves. As Pope had said before him: "Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly." True, the war was misguided, mishandled, expensive and perhaps unwinnable, but I do not think it the essential problem. That party needs to reform itself along the lines Ron Paul and others have been urging and recover the social and financial virtue it had before Reagan, who I think should be seen as a Democratic party reformer and never a true Republican. Republicanism of this type has always relied on education, and while a good amount of that takes place in religious estabs, it is time to push for reform K-12 plus college, where we are woefully behind other nations, and it seems particularly among our legislators. In any case, the path we have been on leads to fascism. So while this election may have laid to rest "the color of their skin issue," we need now to take care of "the content of their character" part. There are, btw, really three different political characters not just two: aristocrats, capitalists (for want of a better word), and republicans. That we always have two major parties is only dictated by our constitution, but how their alignment depends on how the three characters are distributed. What we are usually asked to consider in an election is only the division between capitalists and would-be capitalists, all consideration of excellence and community never seriously taken. Having voted for Kerry (Dean in the primary), I was among those sent a DNC questionnaire on Dean's ideas for this election. Since I had thought it a mistake not to contest countrywide in 2004, I readily affirmed that idea, and in the box for the most important policy objective I wrote "end inflationary monetary and fiscal policy." Since we have seen the fruits of the one, I am hoping now to see the fruits of the other.