Levees Not War

‘America, this is our moment.
This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past . . . to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face . . .to offer a new direction for the country we love.’

Photo: T. C. Worley / NYT

After 16 months and 54 contests, Barack Obama has clinched the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. He gave a stirring, uplifting speech to a raucous crowd of some 18,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota—taking the fight to the city where the Republicans will hold their convention in September—but Hillary Clinton has not yet conceded or endorsed him. Speaking to a fervent crowd of supporters in the basement of Baruch College in New York City, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe introduced her as “the next president of the United States,” and Hillary claimed, “Thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the last word,” when Montana voters were still pulling the levers.

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We are voting for Senator Barack Obama in the primaries—as many times as possible. The more we see of him, the more we like. But first, we want to take a parting glance at the contributions our First Favorite, John Edwards, made to the presidential campaign of 2008.

We pushed hard for Edwards, and it’s hard to let go, but we’re grateful to him for returning the Democratic party to its populist roots. Our strongest gratitude is for the attention he brought to New Orleans and for the bold ideas he proposed, which, to the public’s benefit, Obama and Clinton have incorporated to some extent into their own campaigns.

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We couldn’t bear to listen to the president’s State of the Union Speech Monday night, but we were happy to find this in the transcript:

“Tonight the armies of compassion continue the march to a new day in the Gulf Coast. America honors the strength and resilience of the people of this region. We reaffirm our pledge to help them build stronger and better than before. And tonight I’m pleased to announce that in April we will host this year’s North American Summit of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the great city of New Orleans. [Applause.]”

New Orleans, 1936 (detail) by Walker Evans. Library of Congress.

The Presidential Debates commission in its wisdom deemed the great city not ready to host a presidential debate in the fall—not ready like, say, Oxford, Mississippi, with its thousands of hotel rooms and convention infrastructure. But the leaders of Canada and Mexico and the United States will come for the annual “Three Amigos Summit.” [See our friend Oyster’s take on this news, “Thank You for That,” at Your Right Hand Thief.]

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