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I was feeling quite ill this morning, and while trying to figure out if there was anything I could do (in the end, I drank lots of water and slept), I found that Google has been helping the CDC track outbreaks of the flu:
“We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.”
Chris,
Although I’m no expert on either FDR or Clinton, you’re right—I did have particular events in mind when I suggested that Obama might fall in line with their kind of politics.
When FDR first campaigned against Herbert Hoover in 1932, his campaign pledges looked something like this:
“immediate and drastic reductions of all public expenditures,” “abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating bureaus and eliminating extravagances, reductions in bureaucracy,” and … a “sound currency to be maintained at all hazards.” (from Wikipedia)
Yet, as we all know, FDR ended up doing the exact opposite. He increased public expenditures (including $3.3 million spent through the Public Works Administration) and added more offices and bureaucracies to government (including the invention of Social Security). Obviously, I’m not a big fan of what he did, but that’s beside the point: his campaign simply didn’t match his actions.
Moving on to Clinton: I don’t know if you can leave aside his lying (particularly when you said you find him a “likable and reasonable guy” – can you really trust those impressions when you know they’re of a pathological liar?), but that wasn’t what I had in mind when I wrote my initial post.
That event (and unfortunately, I don’t have specific dates or footnotes) was mid-to-late during his second term, when Clinton shuffled some bombs into Iraq for a few days to give the press something to talk about other than his sexual misconduct.
Both presidents were primarily interested in keeping hold of their power (especially Clinton, since in America, popularity is power). They could say one thing, but what they did was something far different. And it strikes me that Obama has so far (according the voting record and conduct that Freddoso lays out) done much the same. Let’s talk about emotional things like hope and change, but God forbid that we should actually try and tackle the hard issues. Let’s leave things the way they are. Yeah, that’s hope and change alright. Give me four years of that.
@F – When I said Bill Clinton “seemed” like a reasonable and likable guy, it was carefully calculated. The similarities I see between Obama and Clinton accommodate my measured distrust of both men.
As a very cynical aside, the campaign promises that you quoted sound much more like republican talking points over the last decade or so than they do democratic ones. Bush, 9-11, Iraq and the War on Terror could all sit snugly alongside your criticism of Clinton; our most recent and supposedly conservative administration has outspent FDR beyond what he could have ever imagined. American Politics rely on celebrity, and the art of distraction has been a staple of campaign methodology for quite some time now.
The fact that our politicians almost universally over promise and under deliver isn’t so much a black mark against them as it is a sober reminder that the American People are the noodle-headed amnesiacs that persist in electing them.
Fair points all, except that I am no Republican. Never have been, never will be. If I am arguing for any coherent thesis, it’s that politicians should be universally distrusted. How’s that for cynicism?
@F – So what should be our attitude toward the nation-state, do you think?
I try to think about that as little as possible.
Daniel Larison responds to Peter Hitchens’ analysis of an Obama presidency:
I don’t know how many other people outside Chicago know these things, but I would be willing to bet that if all Obama voters knew his close ties to the Daley machine and his relationship with Tony Rezko they would not be very troubled. That may be more bothersome in its way than mass ignorance, but I think Mr. Hitchens here mistakes their lack of response to Obama’s cues for some cynical acknowledgement of the less glamorous details of the man’s career. It was, I suspect, silence kept out of deference to the President-elect combined with amazement that he had, in fact, won. Mr. Hitchens is falling into the trap of believing the hype about Obama, but interpreting it in a negative way. I suppose I might be inclined to the same interpretation, if I believed it, but I don’t. It is important to bear in mind that Obama’s election may be historic in certain respects, but it is not nearly as significant as his foes fear and his friends hope. As I have been stressing all year, the thing that disturbs me about Obama is not that he represents some dramatic change in American politics, but that he represents depressing, miserable continuity.
I think I agree with Larison. Comments?
I’d like to disagree with Larison.
While I may not necessarily agree with all of Mr Hitchens’ comments, I do think he understands American votes better than Larison. Because the Obama supporters I’ve heard speak and talk to around here (average Joes, city councilmen, etc.) all voted for Obama because he reminded them of JFK. Or because they were thrilled by his promise of hope and change: they sincerely believed that he would be a different kind of politician. And when names like Rezko, Axelrod, etc., were brought up, they didn’t ring any bells.
Also, I don’t think that Peter Hitchens was believing the hype. The man lives in Great Britain and has lived through Tony Blair. He knows more about political crazes than we do. Yet.
And you thought this last election season was loooong. Campaign 2012, here we come!
Yay.
Great piece from Peter Hitchens’ blog on Obama, Palin, and the US media.
Excerpt:
How many of my critics have actually read David Freddoso’s measured, forensic ‘The Case Against Barack Obama’? Or, come to that, how many of them have opened David Mendell’s earlier but still telling critical study ‘Obama – from Promise to Power’? Or how many have read the Chicago Tribune’s interesting and revealing pursuit of the vague and partial stories in Mr Obama’s own interesting and engaging but not wholly candid memoir, ‘Dreams from my Father’? Anyone can do this. I do, admittedly, have the slight advantage of having spent some fascinating days in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois, speaking to individuals (some of whom wished to remain anonymous) who had encountered Mr Obama early in his political career. But I didn’t keep it to myself. The results of this were published in the Mail on Sunday in February and can still be found on the web.
So, for instance, my views have nothing to do with Sarah Palin, and her (deserved) evisceration by Katie Couric. It’s good to see that an inadequate and ill-prepared candidate can still get herself disembowelled by the US media, but shouldn’t people ask themselves if they’ve ever seen Mr Obama subjected to this sort of treatment? Most Americans don’t even known that Barack Obama smokes cigarettes, so how can they be expected to know what his grasp of foreign policy is like? How would he cope with foreign potentates in the hurly burly of real life? See Freddoso again, for some hints.
Why don’t people start their letters with Dear So-and-So anymore? Every letter or e-mail I receive is all “Hey Austin,” (punctuation tip: it’s “Hey, Austin”) or just “Austin,”. Forget that! I use Dear as salutation in personal and business correspondence and I refuse to kowtow to the forces of awkwardness.
What do you think? Am I just being my future crotchety older self again?
Yes, dear.
(Ooh, I hate to point it out – and I’m sure CMOS will back me here – but “Hey Austin,” [one comma] is grammatically correct and stylistically preferable.)
Not only did your wife demonstrate why I don’t use “Dear” when emailing you, but she also confirmed what I suspected about your punctuation complaint. My MSN and email habits shall not be broken!
Shazam! You always need a comma after Hey. Even “Hey Jude” is wrong, and I don’t call the Beatles ‘wrong’ lightly. Although I couldn’t find any websites on it in the thirty seconds I looked.
Prove it.
Laura is discussing. 
F, 
Laura 11:20 pm on November 12, 2008 Permalink
No way! Two weeks + Google + “pukey feeling” = medical breakthrough! I love it. So sweet.