http://www.vnews.com/12202007/4450999.htmThe Case For Obama
Transcending Divisive Politics
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Of all the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, only Sen. Barack Obama seems intent on restoring a measure of common sense to the political discourse. He recognizes a simple but powerful truth: that people must come together around the shared values that define the American democratic experience. The message sounds fresh, even transcendent, because for too long the ugly politics of division have cast a pall on government and alienated voters. We think Obama has the sound character, intuitive understanding and charismatic leadership to break old patterns and unify the country.
Too few people, let alone politicians, talk anymore about the commonweal. But Obama does, insistently. As a little-known Illinois state senator at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he stood on the podium before a pumped-up crowd and challenged America to think differently: “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America,” he said. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.” The speech, a personal and direct appeal for national unity, was one of the finest examples of political oratory in many years, and it helped to propel Obama onto the national stage.
Having served barely three years in the U.S. Senate, Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is audacious. But then audacity is the 46-year-old senator's stock in trade. In his political memoir, The Audacity of Hope, he confesses to a certain restlessness -- both for himself and for the nation. The vast majority of Americans, he points out, are weary of the dead zone that politics has become. It's time to think and act boldly, to transform a nation long paralyzed by partisanship and prone to ideological rift.
Obama melds political philosophy and personal history, to good effect. The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama looks beyond racial and geopolitical divides. His upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, as well as his quest as an adult to discover more about his absent African father, naturally informs his global worldview.
A compelling biography, however, is not enough to lead a country. The rap against Obama is that he lacks sufficient experience for the presidency despite an impressive intellect honed at Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American to edit the law review. While it may be true that he lacks some of the conventional qualifications that have led politicians to the White House, it's also true that some of America's finest presidents -- Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson -- did not sharpen their skills long in Washington before taking the oath of office. More to the point, the experience Obama does have should not be dismissed. His work as a community organizer, civil rights lawyer and law professor, in addition to state politician, surely taught him as much if not more about the lives of ordinary Americans than a prestigious posting on Capitol Hill. His time in Chicago's South Side offered him an intimate view of people struggling with the country’s most vexing social problem -- poverty.
Part of Obama's appeal is that he doesn't claim to have all the answers. On the other hand, when he's right, he isn’t afraid to speak his mind to the constituencies that least want to hear it. He traveled to Detroit and told the automakers to make more fuel-efficient cars, a suggestion that Ford Motor Co. didn't take too kindly. And he wasn’t exactly pandering to teachers when he endorsed merit pay at a meeting of the National Education Association. He’s also taken on the lobbyists, helping to write a reform law earlier this year. Like his Democratic rivals, he offers a progressive domestic agenda, including more affordable health care, which would help the working poor and middle class regain equilibrium in a country where the inequality of incomes threatens the social fabric.
Obama has not wavered in his opposition to the Iraq war and would draw down combat troops. But that is not to say he's an isolationist or opposed to a just war. To the contrary, he knows that stability in the Middle East must be part of a U.S. strategy to defeat terrorism and that a strong military is essential to national security. He recognizes the absolute necessity to reduce the threat posed by nuclear proliferation; he is the co-author of a law that aims to reduce stockpiles of conventional weapons and to help other nations detect and interdict weapons of mass destruction.
Ultimately, though, the case for Obama is not just what he proposes to do but how he proposes to do it. Voters who doubt Obama's leadership skills need only look at his well-run primary campaign, which has taken on the Hillary Clinton juggernaut. Clinton is a formidable candidate -- knowledgeable on the issues, a sharp debater, tenacious. She is more polished and more practiced than Obama. But she is less candid and less likely to create the working majority needed to govern effectively. She describes herself as battle-hardened, the candidate most able to beat back the Republicans. But that's precisely the problem: She is an armored warrior in a country weary of partisan and cultural warfare; Obama wears no armor. He seeks reconciliation -- at home and abroad — and steps forward, ready to speak a language of common understanding.
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