145 Days to Find Out

Newsweek political sage Howard Fineman makes interesting sense of Obama's jettisoning of Jim Johnson as Veep Vetter. To wit: we don't know much about Obama, but this episode tells us something. Fineman delineates the lessons as:

• Obama is more concerned with soothing the establishment than starting a revolution.
• Obama hasn't yet learned to keep his cool when questions get hot.
• Obama has learned to cut his losses by instantly cutting off associates with problems.

We'll add some other observations of our own (why else have a blog?):

• Obama's choice of a multimillionaire dealmaker to vet his veep belies the populism that he has begun to take on as the candidate of the party of Jackson and Bryan.
• Obama's choice of the manager of Mondale's 1984 disaster to vet his veep evinces that like most Ds, he believes that his party's success depends on continuing to do what it has done in the past, whether those things worked or not.
• Obama's failure to anticipate Johnson's fatal flaws suggests, as did the Jeremiah Wright imbroglio, a surprising level of political naivety in an otherwise highly accomplished politician.
• Overall, the profile of Obama that emerges is of one more consumed with the significance of his own person than with the ideas that he espouses.

We stress that this last point is a part of the makeup of many successful politicians, whose success depends on their indomitable will to power. We do not suggest that John McCain, to cite a timely example, is free of such. We simply observe that Obama is no less a classic politician for all the perceived newness of his candidacy, and that "hope" attached to his fresh personage is therefore likely doomed to disappointment.

Finally and most importantly, we have a bone to pick, an ax to grind, a cause to champion, with Mr. Fineman. The esteemed journalist in this column employs a simile that labels vanilla as "bland." Those who revel in their food enough to prepare it for themselves and others (e.g. SWNID and many gentle readers, we assume) will declare immediately that vanilla is a flavor both powerful and ubiquitous. A little vanilla goes a very long way,* and it's in just about everything that's sweet, including chocolate stuff.

Mr. Fineman, we would consider our life worthwhile if it could even in the tiniest of aspects be fairly compared to complex, adaptable, savory, invigorating, soothing, tantalizing vanilla, the World's Favorite Flavor.

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*For those who don't care enough about their food, we note that vanilla is not white, as it is sometimes inaccurately characterized in metaphorical speech, but a deep brown that rivals cocoa. Vanilla ice cream is white, in contrast to chocolate and other flavors, precisely because so little vanilla is needed to flavor vanilla ice cream. With so tiny a proportion of the recipe's ingredients being tawny vanilla, the confection's color becomes that of its chief ingredient, namely cream.