And The Winner Is...

Hey. I'm voting for Barack Obama. Here's why:

1) Communication -- I put this one first for a reason: I think communicating well with everybody from American citizens to political rivals to world leaders, with intelligence, eloquence, and candor, is any President's most important job. In order to be effective, earning-and-spending citizens and keep our economy moving, Americans (especially McAmericans) need a President they can listen to, who they both like and respect, who can speak to them in a language and tone they can relate to. Hillary Clinton can't. Barack Obama can, does, and is better at it than any candidate we've had in 25 years.

Men that history describes as successful or even great presidents -- FDR, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton -- are the ones who were able to do this extremely well. Historically unremarkable or "bad presidents" -- Nixon, Ford, Carter, both Bushes -- are the ones who, besides questionable policies or criminal actions, were not good communicators. You can argue the merits of who was or was not a good or bad president based on many things, but the one common thread has always been their ability to communicate with and inspire the American people. I'm not saying Barack Obama will be historically considered to be a "great president", by any means. I'm just saying that, unlike Hillary Clinton, he has one of the main litmus tests already well in his favor.

2) Divisiveness/Uniteability -- Hillary Clinton (and Bill's and her many enemies) will keep dividing the country into yet another four year, "red state vs. blue state" stalemate. This is much, much less likely to be the case with Obama in the White House. The Republicans and conservatives hate the Clintons so much that they won't allow them to accomplish anything, no matter how good her ideas may or may not be, Democrat-controlled Congress or not. They will block any Clinton judge nominees, not because they are unqualified, but simply because Hillary Clinton nominated them. She just won't be able to be effective. All the best ideas (or "solutions", which is Clinton's mantra right now) aren't worth jack squat if you can't implement them. But Obama is a liberal bipartisan -- he's able to "disagree without being disagreeable", and in both his book and the things he says, he's able to give credence and value to almost all opinions, even if he disagrees with them. One of the best things I've ever heard him say is, "I want people around me who will tell me 'no'." A direct about-face from Bush's isolationism and the Clintons' crony-ism.

3) The issues -- Obama and Clinton are virtually the same on most issues, with small variances.

a) Health care -- This is the one real policy difference between the two of them, and I like Obama's idea better. Basically, Clinton wants to force people to buy health insurance, whether they want it or not, and will use some sort of punishment like garnishing your wages if you don't. Obama's plan will, by definition, "leave some people uninsured", because his plan doesn't force people to buy it who don't want it. And because of this, it stands to reason that his plan will also be cheaper to purchase than Clinton's.

b) The war/foreign policy -- Pretty much the same for both. Both want to end the Iraq war and start pulling troops out, but neither is willing to pull them all out immediately, or give any definite date when all troops will be out. Which is smart on their part. Otherwise, as far as general foreign policy issues, just remember that Obama actually has more foreign policy experience from his 2 years in the Senate than did Bill Clinton, G.W. Bush, Reagan, and Kennedy when they took office. And G.W. Bush had a supremely experienced foreign policy team with Rumsfeld and Cheney, and look where that got us. It's about character, vision, and judgement, not just experience.

c) The economy -- The only thing I really know about the economy is that "consumer confidence" plays a major role in it, dictating how much money people are willing to spend, and how stable or unstable the stock market is. Our consumer confidence is high when we are happy and comfortable with the economy as a whole, and aren't afraid the country's spinning out of control. I think all the bickering that a Clinton presidency will cause will put consumer confidence at an almost permanent low. But "hope" is one of the biggest boosts that we can have for consumer confidence (and therefore the economy as a whole), and Obama gives lots of people an abundance of that.

d) Immigration -- This is one issue I haven't delved very far into, and the Democratic candidates have barely touched on it other than a short back-and-forth months ago, when Clinton said (of the NY governor's sanctuary city plan) that she "voted for it, but I hoped it wouldn't pass". What?? What kind of bullshit backroom crony politics is that?? You can give Obama all the grief you want about his "present" votes in the Illinois legislature, but at least he didn't vote for things he disagreed with just out of party loyalty. The Clintons are a crony-first, two-backed political beast to the core. As with most other issues, immigration reform will require the type of level-headed, practical, bipartisan solution that Obama can broker, but Clinton will put politics first and fair solutions second.

4) The country is better off with Obama in charge, with Clinton advising him, rather than the other way around. People who are backing Clinton keep harping on the fact that she "has plans", and that's why she should be president. But the thing is, even if she's not president, she's still the Senator from New York, and her plans aren't going away anytime soon. She will be right there, putting forth bills and serving on committees every day, where her "nuts and bolts" strengths could actually be better utilized than in the presidency. What would you prefer, Clinton's plans with Obama to tell us about them, or Obama's plans with Clinton to tell us about them? I think the country is better off with the former.

5) He's not "too good to be true" after all. One of the things I was wary about with Obama was the fact that he's almost too inspiring. It was sorta creepy, really. I hadn't felt actual inspiration from a presidential candidate since 1991, and that was mostly just college-age idealism for Bill Clinton on my part. The fact that a politically jaded cynic like me finding was myself all fired up about a candidate was kind of freaking me out -- I didn't care for it. Is this guy some political Tony Robbins, or what? It was just weird. So, I got his book, "The Audacity Of Hope" -- and I felt better. Not because I loved the book, but because I didn't love it. I liked it, it was fine, kind of dry, kind of boring (especially the chapter on the Constitution -- he taught Constitutional law, for crying out loud), funny in places, inspiring in others, just a generally OK book. More of a history lesson in American politics than anything else, really. But if I had rifled through the whole thing in two days, put it down, and said, "this dude is AWESOME!!", that would have been a bad thing. It would reinforce the "too good to be true" vibe I was getting before, and I would have started moving away from him. But instead, I felt better about him afterwards, because it didn't knock me out of my boots. It was just a pretty good book. He's an actual person, a cool guy, a little nerdy really, with a dry wit and a hell of a lot of knowledge and good ideas. I suggest anybody who thinks he doesn't have enough knowledge about politics and the world economy to be president, give that book a read.

One of the knocks on Obama is that he's "all show, no substance", or that he doesn't give details about his plans on the issues. For some reason, that doesn't bother me like it should. We all hate when politicians dance around an issue and never give details about what they want to do, but Obama doesn't really do that. He gives pretty straight answers to questions, I just think he knows well enough that numbers change; situations fluctuate, and plans become compromised in order to get them through the process. Why give this- percentage and that-10-step-plan when you know very well that very few White House-initiated pieces of legislation actually get signed into law, as-is? I think that's why he focuses on the overall goals and the best methods to implement them, rather than getting roped into a bunch of numbers that are going to change anyway. I know that sounds like a big, fat hunk of justification for politicians being bullshitters, but it's not. I just don't think he's so starry-eyed that he's just come up with a bunch of pretty-sounding ideals with no details. He's 45, not 25.

So, for all the reasons stated above, I've voting for Barack Obama. I can't believe that Texas is going to be one of the big states to decide the nomination this time, since we haven't mattered politically in a decade -- basically, if Clinton loses Texas or Ohio, she's practically done. Because of this, If you're listening to any politics stuff at all, you're probably hearing the word "firewall" every five minutes regarding Clinton's stake in the Texas primary. You're also going to hear words and talking points like "arrogant", "young", and "speeches don't fix problems" being thrown around when Clinton surrogates talk about Obama, and they're going to start harping on the "present" votes he cast in the Illinois legislature. She even started Texas-pandering on day one, when she came to El Paso: "There's a phrase down here in Texas, called 'all hat, and no cattle'....", talking about Obama's alleged lack of substance. Blah, blah, blah. You're not fooling anybody,Tex.

Obviously, there's a healthy portion of "anti-Clinton" in my Obama-ward leanings. But it's not that I dislike the Clintons -- as I've said before, I campaigned for Bill Clinton in '92 and was for him in '96. I think Hillary's a razor-sharp woman and a decent Senator (although her voting to give Bush the same unilateral powers in Iran that he had in Iraq was baffling). I just think that, because of her mountain of baggage and her strength in "brass-knuckles politics", she makes a better senator than president. The Republicans are frothing at the mouth looking forward to hammering the Clintons if she's the nominee, and every hour of every day for 4 years if she's president. Because of Obama's lack of baggage, his communication ability, and his willingness to be bipartisan (and ability to do it, as the number of "Obamacans" have shown), he has a much better chance to win the general election than Clinton. Even in head-to-head polls right now, Obama beats McCain by about 8 points, and Hillary only beats McCain by 1 or 2 points, if at all. I also believe a McCain vs. Obama race would be much more civil and honest than McCain vs. Clinton, and I think Obama vs. McCain could be a huge win for Obama, a blowout of a size that hasn't been since Reagan/Mondale. It could also be neck-and-neck, for all I know, but I know that a close race would definitely favor John McCain, especially if he's running against Hillary Clinton.

As has been said many times, especially lately, Obama's campaign is as much about a movement as it is about a candidate. The word "change" doesn't adequately describe it, though -- every non-incumbent candidate talks about change. It's about a different, better way to play the game of politics. Which is why Clinton's having such a hard time beating him -- she's spent a lifetime building and perfecting this game, and Obama's just decided to play a different game altogether. The Clintons' game is about old-school politics, back-room meetings, "political capital", the giving and recieving of political favors, and working a network of old friends, cohorts and cronies. Not that Obama is above all that -- he is a politican, after all -- but he favors a style that seems to be more pro-citizen than pro-politician, leads people back into the political process, and makes people feel like there's some transparency and relationship between themselves and the government. He makes people believe that he understands why we're all so jaded about politics now, and is just as jaded himself, and that's why he wants to do it differently. The bottom line is that, for good reasons, Americans are as sick and distrustful of Washington as we've ever been in our history, and we need a different kind of politics -- badly, and now. Hillary Clinton can't provide that, but Barack Obama at least seems to have the will and the talent to actually get it done.

Roger