i was just thinking.........and after reading this posting, some of you may believe that my opinions generated from the opposite end of my anatomy............

.......at his funeral, Henry Kissinger said of Nixon, "just imagine who he would have been if somebody had actually loved him" during his formative years.

the way things are shaping up in this general election cycle, i was just thinking....... if you took a moment, would you be willing to consider - at least in the very, very abstract - the strong possibility that Obama will be like Nixon BUT-BUT-BUT -- with empathy and a conscience?

(gasp!)

i say this in the most positive way. i mean, if we look back and compare Obama's early unpopular willingness to compromise on certain positions like speaking to leaders of nations with whom we have adversarial relationships, his forward-thinking on things like the war in Iraq (not gonna award him a MacArthur Genius grant for that, but still), and his troubling, stomach-churning support for the civil rights-goosing FISA bill, could there be at least a diffused resemblance to nixon and some of his maneuvering, most notably in comparison to nixon's travel to China?

if the technology were available, **here's** where i'd post a barfbag for those of you who need it now.

we've seen hints of Obama's politician's knack for prevarication and mendacity, although he tends to use his powers for good. i say this as an Obama supporter, through and through. "i was never in the church when Rev. Wright made those types of comments" and "i am not a crook."??? different trees, same yard. i'm just sayin'.

on a certain level, were one to be very, very lacking in generosity, could one reasonably compare Obama's speech on race to The Checkers Speech? after all, they were both important speeches delivered at crucial points in the political careers of both men. both speeches evoked the desired level of sympathy, both were disarming enough to gain both men support they needed to get them out of messy binds. i'm only half kidding here.

but seriously: nixon once said that he saw his job as president to be mainly about foreign policy and overall strengthening of the US' viability as a world power, and that Congress' role was to handle domestic issues, in that congressional representatives are closer to the pulse of We the People.

according to nixon, if a bill got through congress, apparently it was the will of the people for it to pass, so he did not always see it as his job to block that will.

for all of his many, many, many flaws, prejudices, character defects and executive orders, two things are true of richard nixon: 1) more civil rights legislation passed during his presidency than either jfk or lbj, including the famous Title IX which gave aspiring female school athletes equal access to activities as their male counterparts (my baby cousin played flag football thanks to legislation like that -- and SMOKED all the boys on the field, i might add), and 2) up until the time of his death, Nixon was called upon - discreetly, much to his consternation - by every single president besides Jimmy Carter for advice on foreign policy issues.

i am not defending nixon or lionizing him at all. i'm just saying that perhaps kissinger's eulogy of nixon - a man with whom he worked and accomplished much, despite being a Jewish man working closely with a known anti-Semite - is worth considering.

Nixon, Bush II, and Obama all had their daddy issues, although Obama has done the best of them by lightsaber years.

still, during a sever thunderstorm during the wee this morning, the strangest thought came to me: perhaps Bush II is Darth Vader, and Obama is Anakin Skywalker?

men do the best they can with the resources and insight they have at the time. with the amount of love, faith and empathy they feel inside for people who are like them, and for people who are different from them. perhaps if it had been Bush whose mother got up early in the morning to go over his lessons with him, Bush II who could have had the intelligence to match the bravado, Bush II who had grown up in such culturally-rich but sometimes manifestly underprivileged conditions, things would be markedly, joyfully different for our country right now.

predestination philsophy would suggest that Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker created and needed each other.

just a thought.