"My own sense is that in many ways the drama and anxieties of the first decade of this century make public anger and fear more politically potent — but also generate a yearning for calm and stability at the centre. Sixteen years of Clinton family melodrama and Bush global brinkmanship have led Americans to appreciate a certain cerebral calculation in the White House. No Drama Obama remains something of a relief. And that’s especially true as America’s news media continue to devolve into more and more populist partisanship."

Go Fourth is a campaign run by and for its supporters that's dedicated to fighting for the re-election of a Labour government committed to the same principles and values which have won us an unprecedented three consecutive victories.

Go Fourth was founded by John Prescott, Glenys Kinnock, Richard Caborn and Alastair Campbell in September 2008 to create a broad grassroots movement to secure a progressive Fourth Labour Term. 

The campaign's main aims are to:

 

1. Proudly defend the record of the Labour government since 1997

2. Actively support the government in promoting policies that will build on our successes

3. Encourage greater participation in the Labour Party

4. Highlight the damage a Conservative government will do to Britain

Every Go Fourth member will have an equal say in the direction of the campaign through regular communication by email, Facebook and Go Fourth events.

 

Our supporters are positively encouraged to set up their own local groups to deliver their own campaigns with help and assistance from Go Fourth.

 

Membership is free and anyone can join Go Fourth as long as they subscribe to the four campaign aims.

 

You can read our original campaign declaration in the New Statesman here.

Labour must check this bandwagon before the wrong Miliband takes over

(To read the whole article, click on link below...)

"...What the electorate desperately wants is politicians who can talk clearly about how we might deal with these issues. Miliband, though, is much happier with abstractions. It means that we have no idea what would follow from his beliefs.

There was a classic example of that in September when an interviewer asked what Miliband meant by his "deeply progressive" "empowerment agenda". Miliband's reply is worth quoting in full.

"You can't stand for empowerment unless you are an egalitarian. That's the platform we then use to stand up for a strategic role of government, but also stand for decentralisation. We stand up for social mobility, and we see public service reform as critical to that, and welfare reform. We stand up for the diversity of Britain, but we know it has to be founded on strong rights and responsibilities. And, very importantly, although there's no point in pretending it's popular, you have to stand up for internationalism, and you have to stand up for the need to share power in Europe, to be influential in the world. That's basically my pitch."

Speeches like these have no clarity, no conviction, and communicate nothing except a kind of arrogance in the speaker. That is Miliband's principal problem. Not only is there no sign that he is thinking deeply about politics, but he isn't a natural communicator. That, in our multimedia era, is a fatal flaw. We're no longer just in an era of 24-hour news. We're living in the era of the 60-second minute, where effective politicians must be comfortable with the instant responses, informality and unguardedness of tweeting, blogging, YouTube and Facebook. The public still want their leaders to have big ideas. But they will warm only to those politicians who are so at ease with what they are and what they think, and so interested in engagement with others, that there is no sense of a barrier between them and the people they are trying to reach.

Miliband is not of this model. It is, however, critical for Labour that the next leader should be, especially when David Cameron is learning to do all this with ease. The party doesn't seem to have grasped the crucial importance of communicating in every way. It learned the wrong lesson from its disillusionment with Tony Blair. Because he is now condemned as a smooth communicator, too many people concluded that charm was an unnecessary quality in a leader. In fact it's vital, though not sufficient. What was wrong with Blair wasn't charm, but policy..."

Just brilliant. Thanks to Robin for sending this along.

The data in this report shows a consistent pattern for conservatives to trend towards “homey”, familiar, comfort foods and meat-heavy options. They are more likely than liberals to indulge in fast food and enjoy splurges like cheeseburgers, hot dogs, deep dish pizza and sugar soda. Their idea of international food is a “mainstream” option such as Italian.

Liberals are more likely to be adventuresome eaters, choosing international options such as Japanese or Thai. They eat fast food less frequently than conservatives, and when they do splurge on fast food they have a tendency to favor specialty, regional chains. Liberals are more likely to be vegetarians and to choose healthier options such as whole grain bread, darker greens of lettuce, and more frequent servings of fruit.

The food preferences expressed are no doubt heavily influenced by the regional tastes of areas which are relatively more conserative or liberal. For example, fried chicken is a staple of the conservative American South. “In-N-Out” burger, favored by liberals, is a popular chain in the liberal state of California.

By Mure Dickie, Japan bureau chief

Here’s an interesting question ahead of Barack Obama’s arrival in Tokyo on Friday for the first leg of his Asia tour: would Mao Zedong have approved of the US president’s itinerary? Or would he have worried that Obama was not doing enough to make sure that Japan felt loved?

It might be surprising to some, but the late Chinese chairman was an astute observer of the impact that trip scheduling could have on sensitive Japanese sentiment. So much so that he discussed the matter in forceful terms with Henry Kissinger way back in 1971.

I wasn’t following international affairs back then, but I remember well the doubt and concern that swept some Japanese policymaking circles in 1998 when then US president Bill Clinton skipped Tokyo on an Asian tour that included a long multi-stop visit to China. That itinerary was taken as the sign that that the Japan-bashing of the 1980s trade wars had morphed into an even more worrying “Japan passing”.

Mao would certainly have chastised Clinton, had the great dictator not long since been transformed into a waxy corpse on grisly show in a Tiananmen Square mausoleum.

As Kenneth Pyle describes in his 2007 book “Japan Rising”, Mao lectured Kissinger on his slighting attitude to the status-sensitive Japanese leaders, ticking off his US visitor for not spending enough time in Tokyo when he visited the region.

“You only talked with them for one day…and that is not good for their face,” Mao said.

As Pyle points out, Mao knew well that Japan was not to be taken lightly and should not be made to feel neglected.

So what of Obama? The US president has trimmed his time in Japan to a mere 24 hours and plans to linger much longer when he gets to China – a fact already noted with dismay by some Japanese observers.

But I think Mao might have forgiven the Obama administration its scheduling (which involved a late cut of a day in Japan because of the recent US military base shooting). Japanese officials I’ve talked with in recent days didn’t seem too upset.

Crucially, the Obama administration has taken pains not to “pass Japan”. And Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama himself has stressed that Japan is Obama’s first Asia stop (as indeed it was for Hilary Clinton on her first Asia tour in office). And the first foreign leader to win a coveted White House meeting with Obama was Hatoyama’s predecessor Taro Aso. Put together, that should be enough face for the moment.

 

"Storytelling is Obama's best talent. It's what worked for him so well in the campaign. Telling stories is effective because it follows the simple rule of good writing: Show, don't tell. You can talk about dedication and selflessness; or you can tell the story of Amber Bahr, who "was so intent on helping others that she did not realize for some time that she, herself, had been shot in the back," or the story of Francisco de la Serna, who treated the police officer who ran toward the gunfire as well as the gunman who was trying to kill her."

-- What He Said, By John Dickerson.