1 post tagged “elections”
I hope all my American readers who live in states holding primaries today are voting. I've been following this year's race very, very closely, but unlike the 2004 presidential race, I haven't been writing about it much. I will say that overall, it's been a pretty fantastic primary, all things considered, and that we've wound up with two fairly exceptional candidates. I do think Hillary Clinton would make a pretty good president at the end of the day, and up until a couple of months ago she was my preferred choice for the nomination. But today after work, I'm voting for Barack Obama, because he's got a shot at being not just a pretty good president, but a great one.
I don't really have the focus or the mental acuity needed to try to make my point today, but the simple fact is that a Clinton presidency represents an ironclad guarantee of at least four more years of the same kind of red-state / blue-state liberal / conservative infighting that's poisoning this country's culture down to its very soul, and I honestly don't think I'm being alarmist about the level of that threat. Americans are turning on each other with a ferocity and abandon that I find disgusting. Barack Obama is not an immediate cure for that problem, and honestly, there's a good chance that the sickness will defeat him and he won't transform our political culture. But there is half a chance that he will, because he really is an insightful, talented, and level-headed politician who's thoroughly prepared to take a new approach to the business of government. I do believe that he's every bit as capable and experienced as he needs to be to do this job, and I do believe that he has a better chance than any other candidate of commanding the cross-partisan respect that's needed to communicate with both his ideological opponents and the full breadth of the American people.
No matter which nominee we end up with, I'm confident that the Democrats can win the White House in November. But I'd like to win more than the White House: I'd like to win a lasting victory over the negative forces that are tearing our national culture apart, and it's plain to me that Obama is the only candidate running from any party with the ability to get us any closer to that goal. So: he's got my vote today, and with a little luck, he'll get my vote on November 4th as well.
For an excellent collection of Obama links (although frankly, I think he's taking the anti-Hillary position too far), don't miss Kevin's post today at Ghost In The Machine.
(And yes: You can count me among the pathetic fanfic millions who'd love to see an Obama/Clinton ticket, or even a Clinton/Obama ticket, at the end of the nomination process. The odds are terribly slim, but the Democrats have too much to lose from splitting the party at a time like this, and I worry that some of the more gung-ho supporters of each candidate will be unwilling to jump aboard with the other if things don't go their way.)
