A Picture's Worth

Michael Phelps gets caught, and ends up apologizing for, a picture being circulated in which he's using a bong.  (Yes, you got me; I read Perez Hilton.)  

I've often wondered what's going to happen to all those ill-advised Facebook pictures when my generation starts holding political office.  It's starting right now, actually.  I'm 24, and the youngest congressman currently in office is Adam Putnam, the 27-year old from Florida's 12th district. [The GW Hatchet] I'd say he qualifies as being in my generation.  

So was Putnam just more forward-thinking, wiser than the rest of us in his college days?  Those pictures of Joe or Jane doing a keg stand don't just disappear.  My guess is if they don't catch up with Mr. Putnam, they will start haunting other young people with political ambitions very soon.

The next question is this: How will that type of picture be categorized by the public?  Will they be brushed off as a mistake of youth, something that most of us engaged in and then grew out of, or will they be blown up and held as evidence that a particular person is unfit for office?  President Obama didn't have to deal with the proliferation of cameras that are around now, but he was candid about his drug use, and now he's president.  That's evidence that the public is holding public officials to the lower, albeit more realistic, standards to which most of us hold our peers.  

But photographs have a different effect on the senses than words do.  Would a picture of President Obama snorting that line of white powder have had the same effect as his verbal admission?  The picture would have had a more powerful negative effect, right?

I guess we'll see in the next few years.  The moral of the story?  It's the same as my dad always told me growing up: Don't do anything that you wouldn't do with your parents standing behind you.  My own addendum: For goodness' sake, don't do it in public.  

Inauguration Day!

Did you watch the inauguration today?  I watched parts of it on CNN while I paid my bills this morning.  But what I really, really wanted was to be there.

From the time when I was 12 until about 3 months ago, my parents lived in a suburb outside of Annapolis, MD called Severna Park.  It was about an hour's drive to DC.  Let's see, that means they lived there during W's first and second inauguration, and possibly during Clinton's second inauguration.  I remember having an all out fight with my parents because they wouldn't let me take a day off school to go to the inauguration.  Oh well, it'll happen one day.

As for the speech, I thought President Obama did exactly what he needed to do: he managed expectations.  (Here's the text of the speech, via BizJournals.com)  Right now, people see Obama as a savior for whatever ails them, and I think it was realistic and practical for him to address that and say that the road to a healthy nation is difficult.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. 

He did two things here. He managed expectations by invoking the values of hard work and courage. But he also very successfully combined his vision of "change" with the older "values" of loyalty, fair play and patriotism.  Obama's a master communicator, and with these two sentences, he brought together the old and the new way of doing politics (according to him -- I'm not sure the "new" way is all that different from the old).  

He also didn't shy away from religion.  I especially like these two sentences: 

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.

That "patchwork heritage" can only be an asset if we can recognize the value in other ways of life. If tensions still exist that will cause disputes or violence, the asset turns into a liability.  But I think the fact that we elected a man of darker skin color than ever before shows that we're willing to try a new way of life in that respect.  Differences as an asset.  I hope it can work.  

Overall, I think the new president did a great job.  I hope he can make the positive changes that he was elected to make.  

"My friend."

Fred Thompson peppered his Saturday speech in South Carolina with the phrase "my friend." Other politicians do this as well. It's another appearance of that calculated, folksy, fake-intimate type of speech that baby-kissers seem fond of lately. Anytime a politician says the words "my friend," I shut down and stop listening. It triggers my defenses because it sounds so disingenuous.

No, I'm not your friend. You're not my friend, and you're not going to convince me that we're friends. Stop saying it.

And no, you can't kiss my baby.