Candace

Talmadge

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February 18, 2008

Why I Will Vote for Barack Obama

I no longer have a shot at voting for my first choice for president.

I wanted to cast my ballot for former South Carolina Sen. John Edwards, whose “two Americas” campaign highlighted the economic devastation that four decades of knee-jerk free marketeering have wrought on blue-collar and middle-class Americans, and offered specific proposals to solve many of the problems confronting this country.

Having been denied that option through electoral attrition, I nonetheless still can vote with a happy heart for one Democratic candidate: Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. He gets my vote in the March 4 Texas primary for many reasons.

First and foremost of those reasons is Obama’s prescient leadership. While an Illinois state senator back in 2002, he publicly denounced the rush to invade Iraq. His main Democratic rival, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted to authorize President Bush to use force against Iraq and then later claimed she “never imagined” he might actually do so.

Really? She must lack even a basic imagination. It was obvious throughout 2002 (and even in 2001 to those paying attention) that Bush was determined to invade Iraq and was casting about for any excuse to do so.

We Americans have short memories. We already seem to have forgotten what it was like in the months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Few public figures or journalists dared question the Bush administration, and those who did paid a heavy price in smears and retaliation (think Dixie Chicks or Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame).

In early October 2002 the U.S. media (with one or two notable exceptions) resounded with many of the Bush administration’s 935 specific lies designed to get public opinion behind an Iraq invasion and conflate Saddam Hussein with the 9/11 attacks, even though he had nothing to do with them whatsoever.

Yet on Oct. 7, 2002, Obama stood on the Federal Plaza in Chicago and told listeners, “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the cost in lives lost and in hardships borne.

“What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.”

Obama saw through the lies and obfuscation then, and he can see through the lies and obfuscation after he becomes president.

My second reason for choosing Obama is his electrifying ability to inspire. Like an insatiable magnet, his campaign is attracting all manner of political novices, especially young ones, into paying attention to the elections and, most important, voting. Anyone who motivates Americans to fulfill our basic obligations of citizenship is invaluable to a country obsessed with trivia like celebrities and sports. Yes, we can!

Obama’s chief Democratic opponent and his likely Republican rival in November can rightly claim more experience in public office. Experience is important, but frankly, there is no real preparation for the office of U.S. president because it is unique. There are certain personal characteristics that make some people more suited to hold that office than others. Bush sorely lacked them. Obama has them and then some – intelligence, courage, imagination, persistence, flexibility. Unlike Bush, I doubt we’ll ever hear Obama whine over and over on television about how the presidency is “hard work.”

My third reason for my selection: Inauguration Day next January will mark two full decades of someone in the White House named either Bush or Clinton. Enough already. The presidency is not the exclusive domain of only two families. It’s long past time to pass the mantle of leadership on to someone with a different last name.

In the end, I just want a person I can respect to occupy the White House, even if I cannot fully agree with that person’s opinions and choices. Is that really so much to ask?

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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