He's got a serious crush on Obama - The best person for the job

Readers of this column should know by now that I was the first person to go on the record predicting an Obama presidency and once he’s elected, I’ll naturally assume the title of America’s Smartest Pundit. Was I ahead of the curve? Sure. Do I understand the skepticism of people like Santa Monica resident John McColgan who wondered in a letter to the Editor, “besides getting elected, what major thing has (Obama) accomplished?” Of course I do. I’m a firm believer in the principle of “each one teach one”, so I dedicate this column to the education of one John McColgan.

I have to challenge the premise of his question. He seems to believe that accomplishing a “major thing” is a pre-requisite for being President (but “getting elected” to the U.S. Senate doesn’t qualify). It’s not. For proof, take a look at our last two Presidents.

Besides getting elected Governor of Texas, what “major thing” had W. accomplished? Prior to his campaign for Governor, he had run for a House seat in Texas and lost, was a failed oil speculator, then was managing general partner of the Texas Rangers. As best I can tell, the closest he came to accomplishing a “major thing” was convincing schoolteacher and librarian Laura Welch to marry him and stand by him through his thirties when, by all accounts, he was a hard drinker who was tough to be around when he was drunk.

Before him, there was Bubba. Besides getting elected Governor of Arkansas, what “major thing” had he accomplished before he ran for President? He had also lost a bid for a House seat in his home state; and though he was later elected to be Attorney General of Arkansas, there was nobody running against him. I guess I have to give him credit for being Governor for ten years, but even if the good folks of Arkansas named him their king, we’re still talking about Arkansas.

If we look at the last two Presidents, we find that besides getting elected Governor, neither of them could point to any “major thing” accomplished before deciding to run for the office. Since they both were re-elected, I have to conclude that it’s not what you do before you get to the Oval Office that matters, it’s what you do once you’re sitting behind that desk.

Let’s look at what the President actually does. As best I can tell, he has three jobs: Commander in Chief, Diplomat in Chief, and Domestic Agenda Setter in Chief. There is no job that can prepare you to be the Commander of the biggest, baddest military force in the history of the world. For this job, the most important quality a candidate can have is good judgment. When compared to the other two people interviewing for the job, Barack Obama’s judgment is far superior. In 2002, Hillary Clinton was willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. In 2007, she was still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on Iran, in spite of the failure of his Iraq experiment. These two enormous errors in judgment show that she hasn’t learned anything from the last five years. John McCain thinks it’s a good idea for the U.S. military to be occupying a Muslim country for the next hundred years. Need I say more?

Obviously, neither of them can be trusted with “the Button”.

The jobs of Diplomat in Chief and Domestic Agenda Setter in Chief both require a more elusive skill set: the ability to bring opposing sides together to make concessions at the bargaining table. If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we have to admit that even our allies in the international community have been hesitant to work with us ever since we decided to invade Iraq. We also have to admit that Republicans and Democrats in Washington have traditionally been reluctant to work together to solve the country’s problems if they thought they could blame the other side at election time. Hillary Clinton and John McCain are on the wrong side of progress when it comes to both of these issues. They both voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq and they are both part of the partisan problem plaguing Washington. There is no reason to believe either of them will do anything differently in office. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has shown his ability to get people to work together from the time he was elected the first black President of Harvard Law Review, to his time working as a community organizer in Chicago, his time in the Illinois Senate, and his current term in the U.S. Senate.

I believe in Senator Obama because, when compared to the other two options, he is clearly the best person for the job.