Barack Obama is a likeable, thoughtful and intelligent young man and is a solid liberal voice in the US Senate. However, as his campaign proceeds, it is increasingly evident that he is not yet ready for promotion to the presidency. He has run his race on the basis of being an agent for change. So far, he has not given much evidence of what change he is advocating and how far his changes will go.
His health plan, for example, does not cover everybody; he is spending time trying to fix Social Security, which most experts agree is in relatively good shape, rather than Medicare, which does need help; he talks incessantly (and piously) about bringing people together without explaining what that really means; he makes naïve claims about his mastery of foreign policy - e.g., that he is "experienced" because he lived overseas for six years as a child - that make him look insubstantial; and for all his touted freshness in global thinking, recently rather than embrace the most important international organization on the planet, the United Nations, he attacked it in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for its "flaws" - something conservatives do all the time.
In my view, he is a good person who simply lacks a substantive enough track-record in national and international issues at this point in his life to handle the presidency. My choice is Hillary Clinton. We who live in her home state, New York, have known and admired her for a long time. We know what America is now discovering about her - namely that she is an unusually tough and savvy political figure.
While she has outshone her competitors in the presidential debates, she displayed similar aptitude and adroitness in her senatorial runs in New York State. In her current campaign, she has presented an array of liberal alternatives to the Bush Administration but again she has done much the same during her time in Congress. She has known defeats (e.g., health care in 1994) but she has now turned her reversals into legislative prowess on the Hill. Her work on the Senate Armed Services Committee and her fact-finding visits overseas belie the notion that she has limited foreign policy experience. Her vote for the congressional resolution on Iraq in 2002 was a vote for continued weapons inspection and diplomacy and in opposition to preemptive war as she clearly stated in her Senate floor speech.
She has had her share of personal setbacks or woes, but she had invariably displayed a poise amidst all of them, which has discomfited her adversaries. Meantime she draws on powerful reserves of support from the minority community and women. Abroad she remains an inspirational leader for the United States. The American primary process once again reveals the strengths and weaknesses of our presidential contenders, despite its costs, its length, and its confusions.
The contest this year has given the American electorate a clearer picture of the formidable presence which Hillary Clinton will bring as the party nominee and which she will surely bring to the chief executive post in Washington.