Talk Talk: Doing Nothing

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Doing Nothing. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, February 1, 2009 after watching "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", a Charlie Rose interview and "The McLaughlin Group".   Newman: So, psychologically speaking, this is very misunderstood. We live in a culture which says you have to make something happen. Well, you don't. You simply don't.   Salit: I don't mean to suggest now that Obama is necessarily keyed into the precise thing you're talking about here. But I was struck in the interview that he did on Al Arabiya, talking about dispatching George Mitchell as his personal envoy to the Middle East, when he said that his instructions to Mitchell were to go and to listen to people and that the U.S. has too often begun by dictating rather than listening.   Newman: See, Obama could have cut to the chase here: You want to know what your mission is George? Just go. That's the totality of what we can do    Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.   If haven't already, check out the slide show from the CUIP National Conference of Independents at which over 500 independents from around the country participated.