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Comment Of The Day: The Politics Of Going Home

At the Stump, Mike thought Obama's choice of Hawaii for a vacation spot could hinder his ability to deflect charges of elitism.  But in the comments, icarusr defended Obama's decision to return to his childhood home:

It is McCain, if I am not mistaken, who is married to an heiress and who has seven houses, right?  And a private jet?  And you think Obama's choice of an AMERICAN STATE where he grew up is going to be made into an issue, because Hawaii is far from the "heartland"?  This is the same thing as Kerry windsurfing?

Incidentally, had he chosen a "nice cottage beside some Illinois lake with a wholesome name", you and Tep would have reminded everyone that he grew up in Hawaii, and that his choice of Illinois might appear to some as "pandering and preening" and appearing to be like the Common Folk, when in fact he is anything but, with the "wholesome name" held up as yet another example of Obama playing hypocritical politics even with his kids' vacation time.

Man, Derida was right.  If you are "always-already" within a particular framework, anything and everything will fit into specific and predetermines patterns.  And so Obama goes on vacation, and the hand-wringing and second-guessing and monday-morning-quarterbacking starts ...

P.s. Kerry lost the moment he got onto that podium at the Convention, saluted and said, "ready for duty".  A hokier, more inappropriate opening to a campaign I cannot remember.  He sounded fake and his entire campaign a stunt.  Right then, it looked to me as if his testimony on the war thirty years earlier has been prepared with an eye to the Convention.  And of course he was an aweful campaigner, and Bush-Cheney outdid themselves in lying and cynical politics.  That's why he lost, not because of showing some leg on a surfboard.