This commentary was written by B. Edwards, an American and professor abroad.

The current frenzy over the extra-marital affair of John Edwards brings to light some interesting facets of the American political scene. Why in all the hubbub of news and events is the most popular point of media interest whether John Edwards has an illegitimate son or not? What stokes the desire to feed upon this man's misdeed?

One obvious answer is the Republican political machine, which like the Democratic one seeks to capitalize on any advantage it can get to win elections.  Elections have become major displays of the power of quantification, with every single element being weighed by a cadre of analysts seeking that one extra percentage point to tip their boss into power.

The back to back dustups over the New Yorker cover and Cindy McCain's remarks on the traveling by private plane has me pondering the familiar phrase "youthful idealism".  Not so much the phrase itself, but the hole it points out in our common lexicon.

Why don't we ever hear the phrase "mature idealism"?

Update: Wow, was I surprised by the tenor of the comments. I shouldn't have been.  They are about 40% "How dare you say something not uplifting", about 40% "That can't possibly be true because I don't want it to be", about 15% name calling without any indication of the specific reason for offense, and about 5% actually addressing my points.

Obama is one hell of a lot smarter and more articulate than I am.  Hopefully he can engage the brains of more than 5% of those who disagree with him.  Otherwise, he's toast.

This should be a Democratic year.  It really, really should be.  The Republicans have destroyed the economy, pushed religious agendas, explored the limits of corruption and nepotism, gutted civil liberties, and gotten us involved in two disastrous foreign wars (one justified but handled incompetently, the other completely unjustifed but also handled incompetently).

Party identification is skewed more towards the Democrats than at any time in history.  The Republican candidate is a 72 year old man with a foul temper and no experience in the modern world, while the Democratic candidate is young, charismatic, and intelligent.

And yet, I think there's a real chance that Obama will lose this one.  Here's why.

In my Politics through Film and Fiction class, I just finished watching a wonderful treat of a movie starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as John Reed and Louise Bryant, respectfully.  A full three hours long, it provides us with an intriguing glance into the lives of American communists during the 1910s.

This is a follow-up to my last diary, A pragmatist looks at FISA.  Thank you to everyone who took time to contribute to that debate.  But within that debate, several of you asked what I mean by "pragmatism," or argued as if I were referring to nothing more than Clintonian triangulation.

As someone who has engaged real policy battles with conservatism for twenty years - from base policy when I was a Marine, to my former church's stand on my community's gay rights ordinance, to authoring and pushing through a human rights amdnement to my law school constitution, to courtroom battles on behalf of defendants, to my involvement in local community committees - I've had many opportunities to learn, often from my own mistakes, how to wage a political fight.  I've become convinced that pragmatism is what gets problems solved.

So please follow this pragmatist over the fold as she explains what she means by "pragmatism."

Recently I struck up a conversation with a person who insisted that Ralph Nader is a saint. No, not of the religious persuasion, but a man with holy ideals, a man worth voting for no-matter-what !

As you sit whining over your beer, your wine or your weed, depending on your persuasion, complaining about being betrayed, may I suggest you take a deep breath and consider what you really want to happen in the election and what you really want to start happening next year?

We all have our ideal public servants; the Liberal Lion who will leap in the path of the majority's Mack Truck agenda to stand up for the little guy.  The Conservative Deficit Hawk who will hold up a popular bill to ensure that the pork is trimmed from the amendments.  The former jurist who wrote an extraordinary dissent decades ahead of its time.  Ideals are important.  They provide a moral compass and guiding principle to our lives and our leaders and in my mind there is no higher compliment one can be paid than to be tagged with the label of being an idealist.

That said ...

Does the Obama candidacy signal a return of "the sixties"? It's possible. What does that mean? Even those us who were there remember the sixties imperfectly. Not because we were permanently stoned. Memory is selective. We remember it as better than it was. We were young, and that makes a difference.Yet, as tristero observes over at Digby's place, the sixties were not just a time of flowering creativity and the securing of new freedoms, but also a terrible, difficult and dark time for anyone who had any political awareness.

As we well know by now, Barack Obama is a new kind of politician who defies immediate characterization and easy pigeon-holing.  This is why a plethora of op-ed columnists, talking heads, political pundits, amateur policy wonks, and their ilk have been seeking desperately to stumble across the bestand the most adequate means of comparison.  The comparison they seek would tether him most effectively to past Presidential contenders, with the hopes that even those not actively involved in politics on a day-to-day basis could have an easily understandable point of reference.  

This is a very human response, but it's also motivated by personal gain.

Since Obama is such an unknown commodity, the press is also diving into the historical record to find policy decisions made by Presidents and political figures past in the hopes that they'll stumble across some kind of blueprint that reveals his overall mindframe in this contest, his  campaign strategy, or other revealing personal traits which might give us all some kind of idea as to how he would govern if elected President.    

I spend so much of my life in high school. Every day I awake at dawn (grudgingly, very grudgingly, for I have never been a morning person, and my choice of career is therefore a lifelong masochistic joke) get myself ready, stop at a coffee shop (because otherwise I'd be sleepwalking until third period) and head off to share my day with hundreds of people a third of my age. Most of them can't wait to grow up, to move on, to graduate and take their place in the vast world. My own place, my destiny, is to live among them, to remain endlessly a fixture in the strange, false, enclosed world that is high school. I see them grow and strive and succeed and fail. I see them laugh and cry and work and play. I see trends and fads come and go. And every day, in every one of their faces, I see the promise and the hope of youth.

Watching the unfolding debacle of Senator Barack Obama's preacher, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has been like watching a slow-motion multiple car pile-up on a foggy freeway. So many folks are eager to throw the "heinous racist" under the bus of the Democratic Party, with Hillary at its wheel, as it chugs along toward some sort of fantastical November victory.

Today, I read a diary over at MyDD entitled The Rise and Fall of Barack Obama, and it got me thinking about the Reverend's comments within the context of the Democratic Party. The eagerness with which many self-identified Democrats are willing to write off Obama's candidacy in light of Wright's comments is troubling, to say the least.

I haven't seen many folks defending Reverend Wright, and perhaps rightly so. However, careful consideration of the Reverend's words is in order, not a blanket dismissal of him simply because he directly speaks to the problem of race in America. As Democrats, we should know there is a difference between Wright and wrong.

"Hope is the bedrock of this nation: the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."

Senator Obama already had me when he spoke these words, but they rang so true that I've been thinking about exactly why his candidacy appeals to me so much. When he speaks about Change, the cynics say "Change what?" When he speaks about hope, cynics say "Hope for what?"

Well, in my mind, he means change everything, and hope for everything. The idea is that you or I, simple human beings existing in a nation of millions, can do something to change the world. The idea is that our voice is just as powerful as his, that our work can change just as many things, and that the nation is ours to fundamentally alter if we will just stand up and do it, if we will just stand up and say "Yes, we can!"

New Politics. It's not just a phrase to be bandied about. It's the bedrock of this website, the bedrock of Obama's candidacy, and our only hope for the future.

This is my first diary.  I will be doing at least two more diaries covering what I want from our new president.  I intend to vote for that individual who best matches what I see as my personal vision of the characteristics America needs in its president.   This first diary covers the topic of Peace, war and restoring Constitutional government.  In subsequent diaries, I will return to the theme of fealty to the Constitution because that is what we must have to restore America’s greatness and our freedom.

Other diary topics will cover our economy, restoration of the Social Contract and equity in America, and on specific great problems that have not been accomplished because of the polarization of our political system and the lack of leadership from our current president.   And the cynicism that uses these issues, not as problems to be addressed,  but ones that can be exploited for political gain such as by placing one proposed solution in the Senate, and another diametrically opposed in the House of Representatives, knowing full well that no agreement can or will be made, just so the issue will remain in the media as a polarizing wedge issue.  So here goes.

As an idealism not seen in politics since 1968 struggles to emerge, what can we learn from the life and death of Lee Atwater?

**I will try my best not to disclose the candidate I support, but feel free to guess**

By these two qualities I distinguish Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton.
 Hillary Clinton, bludgeoned by the world of politics, has become the most realistic of the candidates in the field, on either side.  Possibly the most realistic top tier candidate on the GOP side was Romney, though possibly Giuliani (excepting of course his idealistic view of FL).
 Barack Obama is the epitome of idealism.  His message of unity, change, and hope is a very appealing to everyone on both sides of the proverbial aisle.  His counterpart on the GOP side is Huckabee, with McCain and Paul also very similar.
 Edwards was also running as an idealist, but with more practical roots.  He is probably the counterpart to McCain.

Had the rest of the country been in the audience and heard the talk that Senator Obama gave yesterday afternoon here in Birmingham, the doubts still present in the minds of many voters would have been quelled. Though the overall tone was optimistic and deliberately hopeful, he did not sugarcoat the truth, either. The crowd of 11,000 which had being churned into a frenzy by occasional feel-good platitudes and a few instances of well-placed humor filed out not singing hosannas of praise or excitedly babbling to one another. Certainly some people were in jovial spirits at the end of Obama's nearly hour long talk, but the overall mood was sobering and contemplative.

In 1973, the disastrous Vietnam war was winding down, we were deep in the investigation toward impeachment of Richard Nixon, and Americans were suffering the recession triggered by our first oil shock, which was itself a response to Nixon's policy of unqualified support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

That summer, I graduated from high school, which is supposed to be a happy and optimistic event, into an ominously growing world of shit.

In the midst of this gloom, Paul Simon released his second solo album, There Goes Rhymin' Simon.  For me, for everyone, that album arrived as  a light in the darkness.  Top 40 radio loved Kodachrome and progressive rock radio loved Loves Me Like A Rock and I loved them too, and I played the album over and over;  but as a student of classical music, I especially loved American Tune, inspired by a melody in Bach's St. Matthews' Passion. Every time I heard that song, it lifted me up.

Saturday, Curtis Stigers' live performance of it made me cry.

Grab a copy of Stigers' performance and a tissue and join me overleaf.