Columnists

I’ll be damned if I can figure out why Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums doesn’t appear to like question-and-answer sessions with the media. He is usually the brightest guy in the room and almost always well-prepared, with a better command of the details and the implications of various policies and decisions than the people asking the questions. He’s a good listener—rarely misunderstanding the point of the question—and knows how to deflect away from uncomfortable places with humor, usually humor that is aimed at himself. More than once, I have seen the mayor charm what could have turned into a hostile crowd of citizens by standing and patiently answering questions, one by one. He does it regularly at citizen meetings, and he’s one of the best at the business that I’ve seen. He does it at press conferences as well, but it doesn’t seem to be something the mayor feels comfortable with. But at Tuesday afternoon’s press conference announcing Deborah Edgerly’s retirement, he ducked out of questions when he shouldn’t have, and when a couple of answered questions could have satisfied most of the reporters’ concerns. -more-

Now that Barack Obama has finally secured the Democratic nomination for president, it’s time for a candid assessment of his chances. To defeat John McCain in November, Obama must respond to three challenges. -more-

Where do you start with the University of California? Decades of happy accommodation to the military-industrial complex (see Gray Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco.) Construction mania: geographer Richard Walker calls UC and Stanford the two worst developers in northern California. Torture apologists on the faculty. -more-