Week of July 14, 2008

TERRY GROSS: From your research [I wonder] whether you think [Obama has] used those existing [political] institutions to accomplish things that he saw as representing the greater good or just for self-advancement.

RYAN LIZZA: I think this is one of the most important questions about him…There are certainly important achievements that Barack Obama has under his belt. But at the same time, he’s a very ambitious guy, and he has been, just about every three to four years, running for a new office since 1995. So a lot of his energy has been spent taking another step up the ladder. And I think one of the things I found from some of his critics — and some of them are his earliest supporters who feel a little left behind; that’s one of the things they’ll point out — is that perhaps he wasn’t around long enough in each of his positions to truly make his mark, because he was already climbing the next rung of that ladder. And I think that’s an important dynamic to watch, because if he wins this race, there’s no higher hill to climb.

But if you think about the history, he ran for the state Senate in ‘95, didn’t enter the Senate until January of ‘97. By 1999 he was running for Congress, loses that race in the spring of 2000, and by 2002 he’s already plotting his [U.S.] Senate campaign. He wins that in 2004, and by the middle to the end of 2006 he’s plotting his Presidential campaign. So I think that’s one of the big question marks about him.

Former U.S. president RICHARD NIXON boycotted a performance of LEONARD BERNSTEIN's opera MASS in 1971, because he feared the composer would use lyrics to embarrass him, according to Bernstein's daughter.
Jamie Bernstein claims the F.B.I. tipped Nixon off about a supposed secret message in the opera, that referenced the Vietnam War, which was waging at the time.
Bernstein tells Town + Country magazine,"(It was claimed) there was a secret message disguised in Latin for the express purpose of embarrassing him."
She adds of the line - Dona nobis pacem, meaning give us peace -"It was just a line in the standard liturgical text of the Catholic Mass. But I guess you can't blame the Nixon administration for squirming."

It is typical of the atmosphere in America today that the New Yorker cover caricaturing the Obamas is called offensive by the Obama campaign but virtually no one is talking about how demeaning it is of American Muslims. A little detail like that. Imagine if a US candidate had been depicted as an Orthodox Jewish settler with an Uzi machine gun in the West Bank, the hue and cry that would ensue.

Many have said that part of the appeal of [Barack Obama's] “Dreams [from My Father]” is its honesty, pointing out that it was written at a time when Obama had no idea that he would run for office. In fact, Obama had been talking about a political career for years, musing about becoming mayor or governor. According to a recent biography of Obama by the Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell, he even told his future brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, that he might run for President one day. (Robinson teased him, saying, “Yeah, yeah, okay, come over and meet my Aunt Gracie—and don’t tell anybody that!”)