Why Obama Matters

While McCain's always been pretty much the only interesting Republican to me, he's a half-generation older and IMHO past his prime time (2000).

Clinton is an extension of my older boomer cohort that resulted in disappointment under Bill and disaster under Bush. She's also deeply embedded in the divisions of the last decade or so; divisions we need to get past. (This is the first time my wife and I are divided politically - she sees Clinton's experience and connections as a benefit - I see them as problems, or at least the source of more divisive obstacles to success.)

Obama's a half a generation younger, and not tied to the old boomer paradigms and prejudices, as Andrew Sullivan points out in Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters

....if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.

Read the whole thing. Sometimes symbolism is important. This is one of those times.

Experience

Lot of talk these days about the relative merit of experience versus the symbolism of change. I think I've come down on the side of change.

Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes. - Oscar Wilde

One of my mistakes - back in 2000, as Bush took office, I was clearly unimpressed with his lack of eloquent leadership, but took solace in the "experience" of his advisers - Cheney, Rumquist, and Powell. Little did I know that they were to prove to be an anti-constitutionalist, a self-impressed managerial prima donna, and a wishy-washy follower. So much for the value of experience.

Another problem with experience is that when it is gained in times of strident, non-productive partisanship, the result is experience in strident, non-productive partisanship, and along the way, enough enemies are made to prett much guarantee that most of what you try to accomplish will either result in more division or succumb to insurmountable roadblocks.

As a "child of the 60's" boomer, I've got enough experience not to expect miracles from the promise(s) of newcomers and relative outsiders (that's for sure), but I still have some hope that things can change, and maybe we can get away from at least some of the divisiveness of the past 15 years.

We just need someone who wasn't at the center of it.