This is what I’m talking about …
So tonight, Barack Obama is asked in a debate whether he would meet with Cuba’s Raoul Castro. His respone:
“I would meet without preconditions…but with ‘preparations’ first…We have to talk to our enemies, not just to our friends…” Wants loosening of restrictions on remittances and travel restrictions. “I wouldn’t normalize relations until we saw change…I support the eventual normalization.”
Preparations but not preconditions? What does that even mean. It’s this kind of stuff that drives me crazy.
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Hmmm. This makes perfect sense to me. Preconditions and preparations are very different things, especially in the context of the question, SenC’s statement, and his larger statement. (I’m watching the debates right now and remembered this post when I got to this place)
My point with Obama is that when he has opportunities to explain what he thinks, he instead chooses ambiguity over clarity. His statement sounds wonderful, but what the heck is he trying to say? What kinds of “preparations”? I’d hope he’d be prepared. Why not preconditions? This is where the rhetoric breaks down. Tell us what you will DO.
Hmmm…maybe it comes down to a difference in communication preferences…like the ones I’m learning about in marital counseling…what you focus on (fact, thought, feeling, meaning, values) in any given sentence will change the direction of the conversation entirely. There’s no doubt that Obama and Hillary, when talking about the same thing, focus on different parts (those I listed in my previous parenthesis) and are appealing to the people who tend to focus on those things as well.
But I don’t think it comes down to actual difference or lack in either of them, really. Just in communication mostly, and personality.
IMHO.