NYT/AP: Obama Presidency a 'Stretch' for Voters
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 21, 2007
....''The challenge for us is to let people know what I've accomplished at a time when the campaign schedule is getting so compressed,'' Obama said in a recent interview. ''I just don't have much time to make that case.''...
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''... People have to feel comfortable that, 'You know what? This guy can handle the job,''' he said between campaign stops last weekend in Iowa.
''It's a stretch for them because I haven't been on the national scene for long and haven't gone through the conventional paths that we traditionally draw for our presidents, so they've got to stretch a little bit during a period where there's a lot of stuff going on internationally, right?'' said the unusually self-aware Obama....
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''I think it's fair that I've got to earn the confidence of the electorate,'' Obama told AP. ''What we've tried to do over the course of the last six months is make the case for change, and the American people are desperately hungry for change. The next four or five or six months will involve me making the case that not only am I the most effective change agent but I'm also equipped with the experience and judgment to be the next commander in chief.''
On the campaign trail, Obama gently reminds voters that Clinton and Edwards are not so experienced: She is a second-term senator who has never run a government or business. Edwards served one term in the Senate....
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''I want to make sure that during the course of these next four or five months we talk about experience and judgment, not just in the ways that Washington has defined it but in the ways the people outside Washington understand it,'' Obama said....
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Obama-The-Stretch.html