History, Art & Science

 

Anne --

One week ago, President Obama made history.

If you haven't already, stand up with the President on marriage equality:

http://my.barackobama.com/Marriage

Thanks,

Messina

 

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The   Times, April 2, 2011

 

CHICAGO — For two years, Jim Messina worked 41 steps from the Oval Office, a distance he counted when he first arrived at the White House. His next assignment — in an office 700 miles from President Obama — will test whether proximity is the key to power.

.... Mr. Messina, previously a White House deputy chief of staff, is running the president’s re-election campaign...

... the job comes with an extra challenge: overseeing the first re-election effort by an incumbent to be run from far outside Washington, separated from the candidate both by distance and focus.

The move, Mr. Messina said, is not just symbolic. It will allow the campaign to tune out the know-it-all clatter of the capital and focus wholly on politics, without having to juggle the demands of governing. And it will put Mr. Messina and his team closer to the grassroots supporters whose enthusiasm was vital in 2008.

“The president and I have discussed the challenges — and there are challenges,” he said. “But I want people in the Chicago headquarters who live and sleep and eat and breathe re-electing Barack Obama as president.”

[....]

“I really believe that the president is the art and I am the science,” Mr. Messina said.

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Very revealing remark: " ... the president is the art and I am the science." I suppose this means Obama's the poetry and Messina's the prose ... Obama is the rarified, ethereal, otherworldly guy ... Messina is the down-to-earth meat-and potatoes character who can translate the Transcendent One into language mere mortals can understand. Or -- in plain English -- there's nothing solid or real about Obama; he's as fanciful a fabrication as Gawain or Galahad or Launcelot or any of the other heroes of the Round Table -- and Messina has the impossible task of making him seem authentic and believable. The poor guy -- Messina, that is -- is to be pitied.