Of late, reporters have been asking more pointed questions about Senator Obama's specific proposals and policies should he be elected president. Such scrutiny is appropriate and welcome. It speaks to the Senator's increased stature and to the real likelihood that he will win.
Underneath the questioning, though, is an implication that Obama supporters are unduly swayed by his charisma, and that his gullible followers are swept up in a cult of personality that lacks substance. There is the implicit argument that America elected an appealing guy last time around, and that we shouldn't be seduced again.
If the Obama campaign is a cult, it includes a remarkable number of notably ungullible, notably non-follower-type people. His advisors and supporters include many of the nation's most distinguished economists, legal scholars, and political scientists. It includes a striking number of policy experts and elected politicians who worked closely with both Clintons.
Senator Obama's personal qualifications do not call to mind the towel-snapping frat boy who now occupies the nation's highest office. Senator Obama has taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and was president of the Harvard Law Review, two notable non-starstruck arenas of personal advancement. He has held elective office longer than Senator Clinton has. The two hold very similar policy positions and would employ many of the same experts in the next administration.
When you look past the position papers, I don't see that Senator Clinton has the surpassing record of legislative mastery she claims to possess. I don't see that she has greater substance as a manager, either. Hard-nosed journalist Joe Klein notes that Obama has run "a smarter, more rigorous campaign." Based on the campaign, "Obama has proved himself the best executive by far."
Today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal , the largest paper in Wisconsin, endorsed Senator Obama. Its editorial board concluded:
The Obama campaign has been derisively and incorrectly described as more rock tour than political campaign and his supporters as more starry-eyed groupies than thoughtful voters. If detractors in either party want to continue characterizing the Obama campaign this way, they will have seriously underestimated both the electorate's hunger for meaningful change in how the nation is governed and the candidate himself. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board on Wednesday, the first-term senator proved himself adept at detail and vision. They are not mutually exclusive.
Speaking for myself, I have some very practical reasons to celebrate Barack Obama's ability to inspire people behind progressive causes. You have a better chance of being a fine candidate and president if you have this talent than if you don't. Charisma isn't necessary in a candidate, any more than height is necessary to win an NBA championship, but it helps. Hillary Clinton has had four years as the dominant front-runner to make her case. Although she began with every advantage, she has not done this as well as Senator Obama has.
This is only partly due to his superior eloquence and electability. It also reflects the reality that he is offering something important that Senator Clinton cannot.
Don't just take my word for it. Here is what many of the nation's leading historians say:
Historians for ObamaOur country is in serious trouble. The gap between the wealthy elite and the working majority grows ever larger, tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance and others risk bankruptcy when they get seriously ill, and many public schools do a poor job of educating the next generation. Due to the arrogant, inept foreign policy of the current administration, more people abroad mistrust and fear the United States than at any time since the height of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, global warming speeds toward an unprecedented catastrophe. Many Republicans and overwhelming numbers of Independents and Democrats believe that, under George W. Bush, the nation has badly lost its way. The 2008 election thus comes at a critical time in the history of the United States and the world.
We endorse Barack Obama for president because we think he is the candidate best able to address and start to solve these profound problems. As historians, we understand that no single individual, even a president, leads alone or outside a thick web of context. As Abraham Lincoln wrote to a friend during the Civil War, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
However, a president can alter the mood of the nation, making changes possible that once seemed improbable. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and kept the nation united; Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Americans to embrace Social Security and more democratic workplaces; John F. Kennedy advanced civil rights and an anti-poverty program.
Barack Obama has the potential to be that kind of president. He has the varied background of a global citizen: his father was African, his stepfather Indonesian, his mother worked in the civil rights movement, and he spent several years of his childhood overseas. As an adult, he has been a community organizer, a law professor, and a successful politician -- both at the state and national level. These experiences have given him an acute awareness of the inequalities of race and class, while also equipping him to speak beyond them.
Obama's platform is ambitious, yet sensible. He calls for negotiating the abolition of nuclear weapons, providing universal and affordable health insurance, combating poverty by adding resources and discouraging destructive habits, investing in renewable energy sources, and engaging with unfriendly nations to ease conflicts that could otherwise lead to war. He takes more forthright stands on these issues than do his major Democratic competitors.
But it is his qualities of mind and temperament that really separate Obama from the rest of the pack. He is a gifted writer and orator who speaks forcefully but without animus. Not since John F. Kennedy has a Democrat candidate for president showed the same combination of charisma and thoughtfulness - or provided Americans with a symbolic opportunity to break with a tradition of bigotry older than the nation itself. Like Kennedy, he also inspires young people who see him as a great exception in a political world that seems mired in cynicism and corruption.
As president, Barack Obama would only begin the process of healing what ails our society and ensuring that the U.S. plays a beneficial role in the world. But we believe he is that rare politician who can stretch the meaning of democracy, who can help revive what William James called "the civic genius of the people." We invite other historians to add your name to this statement. You can do so by contacting mk8@georgetown.edu and/or Ralph Luker, ralphluker@mindspring.com .
Manan Ahmed, Cliopatria*
Shawn Leigh Alexander, University of Kansas
Catherine Allgor, University of California, Riverside
Laura Anker, SUNY, Old Westbury
Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles
Ray Arsenault, University of South FloridaRobert Baker, Georgia State University
Lewis V. Baldwin, Vanderbilt University
Christopher Bates, California State Polytechnic, Pomona
Rosalyn Baxandall, SUNY/Old Westbury
Robert L. Beisner, American University
Doron Ben-Atar, Fordham University
William C. Berman, University of Toronto
David Blight, Yale University
Ruth Bloch, University of California, Los Angeles
Daniel Bluestone, University of Virginia
Edward J. Blum, San Diego State University
Carolyn A. Brown, Rutgers University
Mari Jo Buhle, Brown University
Paul Buhle, Brown UniversityRandolph Campbell, University of North Texas
Charles Capper, Boston University
Clayborne Carson, Stanford University
John Chavez, Southern Methodist University
William Cohen, Hope College
Dennis Cordell, Southern Methodist University
Mary F. Corey, University of California, Los Angeles
George Cotkin, California Polytechnic Institute
Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University
Daniel W. Crofts, The College of New JerseyRobert Dallek, Boston University
Jared N. Day, Carnegie Mellon University
John d'Entremont, Randolph College
Dennis C. Dickerson, Vanderbilt University
David Doyle, Jr., Southern Methodist University
David V. Du Fault, San Diego State University
W. Marvin Dulaney, College of CharlestonGretchen Cassel Eick, Friends University
Carolyn Eisenberg, Hofstra UniversityJ. Michael Farmer, University of Texas, Dallas
Michael Fellman, Simon Fraser University
Antonio Feros, University of Pennsylvania
Peter Filene, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Kenneth Fones-Wolf, University of West Virginia
William E. Forbath, University of Texas, Austin
Shannon Frystak, East Stroudsburg University of PennsylvaniaMatthew Gabriele, Virginia Tech
Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers University
David Gellman, DePauw University
James Gilbert, University of Maryland
Toni Gilpin, Chicago, Illinois
Rebecca A. Goetz, Rice University
Warren Goldstein, University of Hartford
Linda Gordon, New York University
Anthony T. Grafton, Princeton University
Will Gravely, University of Denver
James Green, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Sara M. Gregg, Iowa State University
Robert Griffith, American University
Michael Grossberg, Indiana University
James Grossman, Newberry Library
Carol S. Gruber, William Paterson University
Joshua Guild, Princeton University
Roland L. Guyotte, University of Minnesota, MorrisDavid Hall, Harvard University
Kenneth Hamilton, Southern Methodist University
J. William Harris, University of New Hampshire
Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers University
Jonathan Holloway, Yale University
Jeffrey Houghtby, Iowa State University
Tera W. Hunter, Princeton University
Harold Hyman, Rice UniversityMaurice Jackson, Georgetown University
Lisa Jacobson, University of California, Santa Barbara
Randal Jelks, Calvin College
John Jentz, Marquette University
Benjamin H. Johnson, Southern Methodist UniversityDavid A. Johnson, Portland State University
Robert KC Johnson, Brooklyn College
Jennifer M. Jones, Rutgers University
Patrick D. Jones, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Peniel E. Joseph, Brandeis UniversityMichael Kazin, Georgetown University
Ari Kelman, University of California, Davis
Richard H. King, University of Nottingham
Sarah Knott, Indiana UniversityMelinda Lawson, Union College
Steven Lawson, Rutgers University
Jackson Lears, Rutgers University
Alan Lessoff, Illinois State University
Edward T. Linenthal, Indiana University
William A. Link, University of Florida
James Livingston, Rutgers University
Paul K. Longmore, San Francisco State University
Ralph E. Luker, CliopatriaJ. Fred MacDonald, Northeastern Illinois University
Chandra Manning, Georgetown University
Norman Markowitz, Rutgers University
Kevin Mattson, Ohio University
Martha May, Western Connecticut State University
Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Harvard University
Joseph A. McCartin, Georgetown University
Robert S. McElvaine, Millsaps College
Marjorie McLellan, Wright State University
James McPherson, Princeton University
Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Walter Moss, Eastern Michigan University
Todd Moye, University of North TexasJoan Neuberger, University of Texas, Austin
Michelle Nickerson, University of Texas, DallasDavid O'Brien, College of the Holy Cross
William L. O'Neill, Rutgers UniversityWilliam A. Pencak, Pennsylvania State University
Claire Potter, Wesleyan University
Michael Punke, University of MontanaDavid Quigley, Boston College
Stephen G. Rabe, University of Texas, Dallas
Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University
Monica A. Rankin, University of Texas, Dallas
Janice Reiff, University of California, Los Angeles
Leo Ribuffo, George Washington University
Natalie J. Ring, University of Texas, Dallas
Ruth Rosen, University of California, Berkeley
Peter Rothstein, Juniata College
Edward B. Rugemer, Yale UniversityDouglas C. Sackman, University of Puget Sound
Leonard J. Sadosky, Iowa State University
Nick Salvatore, Cornell University
Brian Sandberg, Northern Illinois University
John Savage, Lehigh University
Martha Saxton, Amherst College
Ellen W. Schrecker, Yeshiva University
Rachel F. Seidman, Duke University
Brett L. Shadle, Virginia Tech
James Sidbury, University of Texas at Austin
Daniel J. Singal, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Manisha Sinha, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Harvard Sitkoff, University of New Hampshire
Daniel Soyer, Fordham University
Paul Spickard, University of California, Santa Barbara
Brian Steele, University of Alabama, Birmingham
James Brewer Stewart, Macalester College
Jeffrey Stewart, George Mason University
Mary Stroll, University of California, San DiegoDavid Thelen, Indiana University
Jeffrey Trask, New York University
Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs, Helena, Montana
Bruce M. Tyler, University of LouisvilleSiva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia
Kara Dixon Vuic, Bridgewater CollegeDavid J. Weber, Southern Methodist University
Barbara Weinstein, New York University
Richard Weiss, University of California, Los Angeles
Kathleen Wellman, Southern Methodist University
Daniel Wickberg, University of Texas, Dallas
Craig Steven Wilder, Dartmouth College
Margaret Williams, William Patterson University
R. Hal Williams, Southern Methodist University
David W. Wills, Amherst College
Charters Wynn, University of Texas, AustinSusan Yohn, Hofstra University
Eli Zaretsky, New School for Social Research
*Institutional affiliations are listed for identification purposes only and, of course, do not indicate an institutional endorsement.
Follow Harold Pollack on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@haroldpollack
Has Obama ever held a single job for more than 4 consecutive years?
Has Obama ever worked (in any number of jobs) for more than 7 years without taking a multi-year break?
This guy might survive the campaign, but his record suggests not a lot of horsepower on the job. Nevermind executive experience, this guy has a serious deficit of work experience of any kind.
At best this guy might be qualified to be a bureaucrat or work for some sleepy not-for-profit.
http://tinyurl.com/2mb5f4
Obama gets all his strength from having DIAGNOSED AMERICA'S ILLNESS CORRECTLY.
MAY I suggest to you that you give him a second unprejudiced look.
Obama when up against McCain and McCain's history, the immaturity and lack of depth to anything Obama has to offer the American people in a time of great trial as our nation is now in - it's a no contest as to who has the character to be President. McCain.
Hillary Clinton has been tested and she has seen the valley's and the mountaintop and is not decieved by either. She has character.
Obama is a fraud and it will be a rude awakening for many folks in a few years to realize how easily conned everyone was. The Democrats are going to go into hiding after this embarrassment of Obama's fraud.
It is as embarrassing as all the folks who voted for GW Bush thinking he could do not wrong in 2004. You would think the intelligencia would be smarter than to make the same mistake 4 years later and pick another fraudulent guru.
I have been getting very irritated by the condescending, dismissive tone of Hillary supporters who seem incapable of believing that a candidate can have a superior platform, AND be inspirational. Looking at their un-inspriational candidate, i can see why, but the fact remains that Obama is a FAR better candidate (and democrat) than Hillary. Most of those whom support Obama, are informed voters, who support him based on the ISSUES, the wealth of information regarding policy- that can be found on his website, and his record, (which is longer than Hillary's, thank you very much).
He had the audacity to berate Clinton for avoiding the issue. He had the audacity to pretend like he was going to give the people some straight talk about it. And then he had the audacity to dance around the issue without offering any meaningful solution.
He says he is against cutting benefits. He says he is against raising the retirement age. He says he is against private accounts, or other 'risky' attempts to increase the return on money in the trust fund. That leaves only one option, which is to raise taxes.
And then he says he is in favor of 'raising' the cap on payroll taxes. What he doesn't tell you is that even if the cap was completely eliminated, it would only add 7 years of solvency before the system inevitably goes bankrupt.
If that's what Obama considers to be 'solutions' and 'straight talk', then there's even less to the man than I originally thought. An empty suit, through and through.
by Black agenda Report Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
Journalists and leading Democrats have done shockingly little to pin Obama down, to hold him specifically responsible for anything beyond his slogans of "yes we can" and "change we can believe in". What would holding Barack Obama accountable on war and peace, on social security, health care and other issues look like, and is it possible to hold a political "rock star" accountable at all?
On the DLC's “100 to Watch” list for 2003, Barack Obama was prominently featured as one of the DLC's favorite “rising stars”. This was ominous news because the DLC was and still is the right wing's Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party.
The DLC exists to guarantee that wealthy individuals and corporations who make large campaign donations have more say in the Democratic party than do flesh and blood Democratic voters. The DLC achieves this by closely examining and questioning the records, the policy stands and the persons of officeholders and candidates to ensure that they are safe and worthy recipients of elite largesse. The DLC also supplies them with right wing policy advisers beholden to those same interests, and hooks up approved candidates with the big money donors.
Then as now, the DLC favors bigger military budgets and more imperial wars, wholesale privatization of government functions including social security, and in so-called “free trade” agreements like NAFTA which are actually investor rights agreements.
Evidently, the giant insurance companies, the airlines, oil companies, Wall Street, military contractors and others had closely examined and vetted Barack Obama and found him pleasing.
Add their names to your list , as well, Mr.Pollack!
Sheesh!
this intense conflict between obama & hillary could be blinding us all.
What will happen if there is a significant national security threat? It has worked for the republicans before....
How will Obama's prognosis look then? It is such a horse race & we're all so caught up in it, moment to moment. We might be a bit too smug.
I certainly hope not.
Another terrorist attack before the election and bush becomes dictator. But hey, look on the bright side - at least the bickering between the 2 democratic candidates would be over.
You would think that someone among all those history professors would have objected to "a Democrat candidate for president" instead of the proper, non-Rovian "a Democratic candidate for president".
Also, isn't it about time we retire the Hillary was a Goldwater girl argument as indicating anything about her current beliefs? I grew up in a Republican household, carried Goldwater signs in high school and, as a freshman in college was a Young American for Freedom and had posters of Ronald Reagan and William F Buckly on my dorm wall. Thank goodness college and the women's movement had a liberating affect on me, as I'm sure they did on Hillary, and I never embarrassed myself by actually voting for a Republican for president. So give Hillary a break; there are other real reasons to oppose her.
By the way, I voted for Obama in the CA primary.
When anti-war sentiment was high in Chicago, he made an anti-Iraq-war speech and put it on his website. Then, when Bush's war became popular, he took it off, and said that he and George W. weren't so very far apart in their respective positions, he voted to fund the war. Finally (maybe) when public opinion turned against the war, he put the anti-war speech back on his website and claimed to be the anti-war candidate.
He said that the people had a right to be heard in Florida, until Florida voted against him. Then he said that Florida should be excluded.
He says he's new and different, but uses second-hand speeches.
He was funded by a crook, had his house partially paid for by a crook. He's been friends with this same crook for many years, but claims he knew nothing about an impending federal indictment against this crook, even though all the local papers covered the story. Now he says that all that was just "a mistake". Nice mistake, if he gets away with it. Then he said that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko's business interest. When the press found out otherwise, that in fact he wrote letters to help Rezko get $14-million from taxpayers, Obama said that yes, he'd written these letters, but that he'd never been ASKED to do so. And he never had sex with that woman, either, I guess.
You voted for an uplifting Coca-Cola commercial and are probably still singing, "I'd like to give the world a song..." but I guess you've yet to notice you've only bought empty calories. With a Coke, you could burn it off in a few days, but a President will most likely stick around for 4 years and leave a very bad taste in your mouth.
And Obama paraphrased about four sentences from a Deval Patrick speech, and Patrick has stated that he and Obama swap ideas all the time, AND Patrick has endorsed Obama.
These Clinton folks are starting to lose it. It's this desperate, hysterical response to Obama that tells me all I need to know about Clinton and what sort of a leader she'd make.
--George Santayana
Tacitus the historian observed that, "... detraction and spite find a ready audience. …malice gives false impressions of being independent.
I suggest you take some of the historian's books to the beach. We study the past to understand human nature. Ignorance of history causes tragedies, like Iraq.
Mrs. Hillary Clinton, has not only had four years, as front runner to make her case, she has had 16 years, since her husband was first elected president, to endear herself to the nation.
Sadly, it comes down to substance and core belief. It is hard to make a case for someone who when they started out in life, was a leader, in college, no less, of “Young Republicans for Goldwater".
We did not need Martin Luther King's inspiring words, to be on the right side, the side of justice. We seem to have been born that way.
You can fool the people some of the time;
and she had me fooled. I wanted a woman president; but Hillary lost me the day she came to endorse Carl McCall for governor of
The great State of New York. From then on I started listening, and looking past the fluff,
and the bells and whistles.
If she was truly about improving people's lives, now that she is so close, to the golden bowl, she would look so secure, and sound so full of conviction, that Barack Obama would not even be a blip in the radar, eloquence and all.
Enough said.
It is time we stood up for something.
Yes, We Can!
I'd argue that it's more a case of "If You Can't Build It, Buy It."
I. Obama's contributions to superdelegates outnumber Clinton's by more than 3-to-1:
SOURCE: http://www.capitaleye.org/superdelegates.asp
II. "Yet it is also startling to see how quickly Obama's senatorship has been woven into the web of institutionalized influence-trading that afflicts official Washington...Obama immediately established a "leadership PAC," a vehicle through which a member of Congress can contribute to other politicians' campaigns—and one that political reform groups generally view as a slush fund through which congressional leaders can evade campaign-finance rules while raising their own political profiles".
SOURCE: Barack Obama Inc.:
The birth of a Washington machine
Ken Silverstein
November 2006
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/11/0081275
Only in the modern Democratic party would trying to help other Democrats be viewed as a liability. It's just plain silly.