Obama is definitely more qualified to be President than George W. Bush was, and is definitely more qualified to be President than McCain. How so? Well, on the former point, one only has to look at Bush’s history to have that question answered. If Bush was qualified for the job, then Obama certainly is. On the latter, one only has to look at McCain’s lack of grasp of economics & foreign policy, & his continued blunders, plus his rather shady history in the Keating 5.Obama has served 11 years in elected office, including 8 years in the Illinois Senate and 3 years in the U.S. Senate. He is the only candidate to begin a presidential bid with experience at both the state and federal levels. He brings more elected experience to his presidential campaign than Ronald Reagan (8 years as California governor), Perot (zilch), George W. Bush (6 years Texas governor), Hillary Clinton (7 years as senator), John Edwards (6 years as U.S. senator), Giuliani (8 years as NYC mayor), Mitt Romney (4 years governor). Obama has much more foreign policy experience than either Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan had when they were elected.
But if the best candidates are those with the most experience, then you surely believe that Strom Thurmond should have become president.
Remember: The three presidents who historians consider the greatest of all time (Lincoln, Washington, and FD Roosevelt) all had much less legislative experience Obama. Abraham Lincoln served but a single term in the United States House of Representatives and less time in the Illinois Senate. Even Eisenhower had virtually no political experience.
Experience? 30 years in the senate will not necessarily mean you will make good decisions on foreign policy, or will choose smart, pragmatic advisors/cabinet members. There are few people with more experience in public life over the past 40 years than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – and George W. Bush was around politics his entire life. Have they done a decent job? Do you trust ’em? If so, you’re a chump.
I’ve been shy to post very much about the coming US election, mostly because I no longer have a dog in that fight. I’m not really in the Tank for Obama; I think he’s a good guy but still really a “Politician” Politician, who would sell out his own morals for votes. I’m not really saying that as a negative; it’s probably a virtue in a politician. However, I’m infinitley more interested in Obama than I was in Hillary or McCain. Both of the latter candidates strike me as people who could be trusted to simply enact their own personal policies, whereas Obama appears to blow with the wind, which (as Bill Clinton showed) can make for a memorable and light presidency.
All that said; I don’t dig on the “Obama is too new to be President” arguments; thus I present this compelling argument from a Digg comment I read today.
US Politics are Sexy: Foetus Freedom Forever!
Published by NiteMayr on August 27, 2008The US election continues to turn on a wheel that maddens me and confuses me all at once. Faced with a choice between a young black guy who (for all intents and purposes) represents little change from the status quo and an Old White Guy who represents more of the same, they choose more of the same. The reasons behind this are fairly clear (crazy as they are) and not the least of which is “Invisible Men”
The folks I’ve posted here are nice people, and I’ve held them up for some ridicule, but only because of their motivations, not their goals. Their goals (though I disagree with them) appear moral on their face: “Saving Babies.”
Who can honestly argue that babies shouldn’t be saved, babies are so cute, right? They come from their mom and need all the care and comfort in the world just to survive and represent the hope for the future, right?
So there we have the sensible and secular motivation to save babies, they are cute, they have potential and represent the ongoing future of humanity.
That is almost never the face presented by the anti-abortion folks, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one protest that used that kind of sane reasoning it’s always the same: “Abortion is Murder, Let’s Pray”
The folks at the DNC are no different. Wrapping yourself in a selpuchure and walking out to say that this or that is moral or immoral because this book written by mushroom addicts in the early centuries says so is kind of crazy. They want to be a political force (and they are) but they want to do so by imposing their belief structure on the world as a whole. They believe that they are moral and upright and that their morals and uprightness are how the reat of us should behave. It’s that imposition that annoys the same about the behavior of extremely liberal people, the extremely liberal or lassiez-faire types would allow everyone to behave as they may (within reason) and of course let anarchy reign (in the markets, etc). Both ends of the spectrum, both axioms of ethos, life.
As we (in the north) watch the elections in the south; we should remember these folks, and how often they team up to do their “best” to impose their beliefs on all of us.