(no subject)
Six reasons why president-elect Barack Obama is more awesome than other democrats:
- He can fully represent both the left and the center. His policies are moderate and practical, he doesn't need to do anything radical. And he has no need to attack the right or try to undermine them in any way. He refuses to treat conservatives as the enemy. Yet his policies, though centrist in practice, are rooted in progressive values and ideals. He can compromise and conciliate and still effectively stand for the kind of government that liberal-leaning citizens hope to see. I predict we will not be seeing the kind of complaints that Clinton garnered with his "triangulation", wherein liberals feel sold out.
- He doesn't owe anybody. Instead of getting funding from corporations, lobbyists, special interests, political machines, or any other kind of sugar daddy, most all his massive campaign funding has come from grassroots donors. This lets him stick to a clear, consistent, well articulated policy vision without shoehorning in a thousand favors on the side. As Rachel Maddow points out, he did not cobble together a majority out of "a mosaic of minorities" -- he won office by appealing to the whole electorate, and this leaves him beholden only to the people as a whole.
- He was able to run on his real agenda, without disguise or euphemism. Most democrats have had to try to dress up their policy agendas in apologetic weasel words so they wouldn't be attacked as socialists. They've usually had to try to find ways to fudge what they were saying so it sounded more acceptable to kneejerkers than it might have been if expressed more bluntly. But Obama has been able to say exactly what he's going to do in plain blunt terms, and let people go ahead and react. By doing so he kept hs campaign steady, consistent, clear, honest, and was never put on the defensive by phony outrage. This served him very well in campaigning and it will serve him even better in office.
- When asked a question, he gives a real and thoughtful answer, not spin. This is related to the previous item. Most politicians have to choose their words carefully so as to put their policies in the most inoffensive possible light. Barack Obama responds to questions by giving them truthful, straightforward, and often extemporaneous answers about what he'll do and why he'll do it. And they're intelligent and well thought out answers, not emotional reactions. His cool and cerebral temperament in the face of a political environment that usually rewards irateness will, I think, do a lot to improve the climate of public debate. Not to mention that he doesn't hide being intellectual.
- His election puts the lie to huge amounts of anti-American rhetoric. The random fact that he is dark skinned and has a Muslim name, let alone his agenda to end the Iraq war, shoots a huge hole in all the hostile propaganda and hatemongering that has been raised up against the United States in the last decade. He proves to the world that our claims about democracy and opportunity are no fairy tale, no exaggeration -- that the promise of America is for real, and not just empty talk. When he won the election, the ability of organizations like Al Qaeda to recruit a new generation of suckers and fanatics was probably cut in half in one day.
- And finally, I personally believe that his agenda is focusing on exactly what we most need to do. I've never felt so strongly before that a new president was clearly directing his energies to just the issues that really needed to be tackled, instead of toward distractions or bogus wedge-issues that people get riled up over. Any number of things that have been neglected by one administration after another, from short term crises such as the mortgage meltdown to long term ones such as alternative energy, may finally get real work done on them. Not to mention restoring our law and practices to those consistent with the Constitution.