Who Would You Want to Answer The Phone At 3:00 AM? UPDATE

UPDATE 1: From the New York Times:

" On the argument of which candidate was better prepared to protect the nation – an issue Mrs. Clinton raised with the advertisement featuring a telephone ringing in the White House at 3 a.m. – Mr. Obama suggested that Mrs. Clinton has not explained why she would be better prepared to take such a call.
“It’s important to examine that claim and not just allow her to assert it, which I think has been going on for quite some time,” Mr. Obama said. “What exactly is this foreign experience that she’s claiming? I know she talks about visiting 80 countries. It is not clear, was she negotiating treaties or agreements, or was she handling crises during this period of time? My sense is the answer’s no. I have not seen any evidence that she is better equipped to handle a crisis. If the only criteria is longevity in Washington, than she’s certainly not going to compete with John McCain on that.” "


The electorate of three states have spoken, more or less, on that very subject. In doing so, the voters stopped Obama from running the table but the overall picture of delegate count is pretty much the same. As usual, the mud flew and some of it stuck for long enough to confound the undecided.





If I have anything to offer to the Obama campaign it is this: In the words of Joe Hill, "Don't mourn for me. Fight like hell and organize."


I know who I'd want to answer the phone at 3:00 am, and it would be the person who's been honest and upfront right from the beginning about the recent war and his opposition to it. That's the person who's not easily confounded by the advice of the experts and listens to his own heart and acts out of his deeply held moral convictions about what is right and what is wrong.

Why's that?


What you get at 3:00 am is likely to be pretty much the same as what you get all day long. Problems aren't different at 3:00 am, and who you are at 3:00 am isn't any different than what they are and who you are at 10:00 am or at lunch. What matters is who you are, and your character- and that's a function of who you've been and where you've been and what you've done all your life. John Gotti at 3:00 am is the same John Gotti at high noon, and that is a fact.



I would not want the person who answered the phone to have a voice in her ear saying "Honey, here's how you should handle this-just like we did with Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, Web Hubbell, Vince Foster, Paula Corbin Jones, Gennifer Flowers, NAFTA, I didn't inhale, impeachment, late night cruising down in the law student slave cabins and the odd suicide, and the trip from dreary southern-bourgeois Fayetteville to D.C. You can handle it, dear, just like we've always done. Stonewall it and scare the dickens out of people. They're morons and they'll forget about it."





When you lie down with dogs, you'll almost always get up with fleas.





I also do not want the person answering the phone at 3:00 am to say "OK-one hundred MORE years of war should take care of it. While you're at it, say something about gay marriage-that oughtta keep 'em busy." and then roll over and go back to sleep.