The Obama Psyche: Big Tent (Vs. Harry’s Tent)

I think I will watch WALL-E over and over again until I finally get it. I think I’m kidding, but at this point I am not sure.

The big O is probably aware of the LDS’s genealogy intent and the questionable religious endeavors which follow.
The Controversial Practice of Mormon Posthumous Conversion Ritual
This practice of baptism has generated controversy with Jewish groups representing holocuast survivors and recently caused the Vatican to issue a statement telling priests not to let LDS members have access to Catholic parish records.
People often use it to trace their roots, but the information is kept for religious reasons
Temple workers give a person going through the temple a name when he goes through the baptismal font. The person who goes through the ceremony gets baptized by proxy
http://mormonism.suite101.com/article.cfm/lds_baptism_for_the_dead

Sorry about the nitpickiness…but it’s “genealogy.”

um, okay, moving on …
Being inclined to “reach out” and also performing strategy are not, as someone else pointed out, mutually exclusive, particularly in politics.
The key to Barack and Michelle Obama’s success — and the ARE the package deal — is how well they understand that the personal is political. They key to selling big policy is in connecting it to your own (semi-private) worries and aspirations — the organic garden, the “Fatherhood Town Hall”, the endless “community gatherings” staged around issues like health care and the credit crisis where Obama gets to talk about his student loans and his daughter getting sick with meningitis and others get to, in a sense, talk about “common” problems with the POTUS.
It helps, of course, that they’ve also become or are in the process of becoming folk heroes and role models because of their place in history. They are very aware that their mere presence has a tendency to ignite emotion; their willingness to embrace the folk hero status, to be admired and yet to “belong” to everyone in a very familiar way, means that they have an automatic “in” with a lot of people despite the fact that they may have fundamental disagreements with the Obamas’ (perceived) politics.
So, yeah, Obama seems like he can summon the intellectual curiosity for meeting with the LDS for the hell of it, but this curiosity works to create a connection with a group he might need later, so what the hell …

I think, in this pic, Dallin Oaks is saying, “See, Mr. President, at the top is Cain.”