Monday, February 04, 2008

Final Thoughts

I have no idea if tomorrow is going to break towards the candidate I support or the other, or if this will all end up in a brokered convention and maybe even leave the party El Presidente Bush united in pieces.

What I do know is that when I cast my absentee ballot last week for Barack Obama, for the first time in ages I wasn't voting for the lesser evil, I actually enjoyed my vote.

There is much to admire in Sen. Clinton but also much that isn't as vetted as she'd like us to believe. There's still no closure on control of her husband, the very notion a foreign one to, say, Michelle Obama. Sen. Clinton has yet to give any resonant overriding rationale for electing her, instead flitting back and forth from "experience" which evidently doesn't include her scandal-tinged years at the Rose Law Firm, to purloining Obama campaign memes, like "change."

In this campaign Hillary has never been a leader except in poll numbers. She followed Barack's announcement to enter the race with a suddenly bumped-up decision to enter as well. She's trailed him on boycotting Fox News. Just this weekend the Obama chant of "Yes we can" was mis-appropriated as "Yes she can." And the difference between those two phrases, in a nutshell, tells you everything you know about this contest.

Oh, and she didn't lead on the Iraq War vote. She followed. President Bush.

Hillary Clinton is running like it's a job interview, look at my resume, me me me. Trust me, go about your business.

Barack Obama is building a movement and empowering people, with a fresh, clear, timely vision of America.

I just saw this little list, not sure how accurate it is, but it does address the experience issue, the resume issue:

This entire idea that Obama is less experienced than Hillary is such a myth. And the truth is that "political" experience is almost never a good indicator of what kind of president a candidate will be. For the record, the most "experienced" candidates for president:

1)William McKinley
2)Lyndon Johnson
3)Richard Nixon
4)Gerald Ford
5)George H. W. Bush

The least "experienced" candidates:
1) Abraham Lincoln
2) Teddy Roosevelt
3) Woodrow Wilson,
4) Franklin Roosevelt


Or as Robert De Niro said when introducing Obama at the Meadowlands today:
"He wasn't experienced enough to authorize the invasion of Iraq."

Right on Day One.

See you tomorrow night.

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