Ideals vs. Experience
Think what you will about Barack Obama, either that he is a “candidate for change” or that he is full of platitudes, but any way you look at it, at least he is not as see-through as Hillary Clinton. I really don’t understand the people who continue to support her, except to think that they’re either misguided or racist. I hate to resort to such reductionism, but Mrs. Clinton is such a raving fraud that it’s hard to think anything else. You wanna talk platitudes? How is it that practically every person who comes out onto the public stage to endorse her says one version or another of the same stump speech about her “strength”, or how she’s a “fighter”, and about her “years of experience”.
Michael Nutter, high Fraggle-lord of Philadelphia, when interviewed in the aftermath of the Pennsylvania primaries, may just as well have read a transcript of one of Mrs. Clinton’s many similar speeches about strength and experience. When people endorse Barack Obama, maybe they’re as full of shit as his detractors would accuse him of being, but at least they’re somewhat original, at least their endorsements refer to some specific reason why they support him. It is so utterly ironic that Clinton has ever accused Obama of platitudes, when the truth is that they both use them. The difference is that at least Mr. Obama has a variety of them in his arsenal, whereas Mrs. Clinton reconfigures the same few sentences over and over again.
In trying not to be so biased, I really wonder what Clinton supporters see that I do not. Do they really buy all of her fluff? As an Obama supporter I am not so enamored with him that I forget that he, as President, would not have the power alone to bring about all the “change” he claims he will. After all, lest we forget, it is not the President who makes public policy. At best, he will stop blocking the progressive legislation that has tried to pass in recent years.
In spite of the likelihood that not too much will change even after 4 years of an Obama presidency, the reason I support him really is about things as simple and idealistic as “hope” and “change”. If he can get millions of people who were disillusioned with American politics to become interested again, or for the first time, then perhaps things could – by virtue of our power as citizens – truly change. Barack Obama becoming President would suggest to many people that things don’t have to remain the same, that our sustained hopes for something better for this country are not necessarily for naught.