The decision came suddenly, but I have the feeling it's the right one.
I'm endorsing Obama.
Michelle Obama.
I've always liked "endorsement", because I still don't know who I'm voting for and I don't have to say. But now I might have to vote for Barack to get Michelle into the best possible position for her own run in 2016.
The more I read about her, the more I like her. Largely because the media-anointed field of potential national leaders who are both African-American and female is so small, she invites comparison to Condoleezza Rice. An overachiever, yes, but since she didn't grow up in the South, but in the less polarizing and siege-like Midwest, she seems less overprotected, less intense...more human than Condi. Michelle would also be too young to remember the most dramatic days of the civil rights movement.
I don't like Barack that much, and it's unlikely I will. I think it's just one of those things. Sometimes people don't like people. I distrust bandwagons and rah-rah, and that's certainly soured things. If he had a fictional alter ego, sometimes I think Obama would be an exiled king who has returned home (maybe I'm still not used to the name after a couple dozen WASPs and it seems foreign to me), statesmanlike and dignified, who happens to have a smart, American-raised wife. But in this case, it is the wife who is even more practical, interesting and straight-talking.
I don't want to make race or gender an issue (because it's untouched territory, you know), but looking at the numbers, America needs a black female president on general principle -- we should have had five black presidents by now, just as we should have had twenty-two women presidents. So allow me to indulge in thoughts about knocking down two demographic barriers at one time.
(I'm trying to think of other candidates, but I keep on getting stuck on Angela Davis. That would basically represent a social Year Zero, but probably wouldn't be very good, other than for relations with Venezuela.)
But completely aside from any form of affirmative action or setting the record straight: As long as we (a little less than one in two Democrats) are prepared to vote for a candidate with no foreign policy experience who is a sharp socially progressive, fomer lawyer who is past her prime and seen as corruptible...
...why couldn't we consider someone with no foreign policy experience who is a sharp, socially progressive former lawyer who is in her prime?
Senate experience can be had later, I hear it's like buying a house. And one term will do.
I like Michelle (right now), and she shares a lot of our values.
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7 comments:
I agree about all Michelle's good qualities...but I read between the lines here that it let's you off the voting hook (at least in the US) for another 8 years ; )
PS.
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to you and yours.
Sometimes people don't like people.
I think is what has bothered me most about this election cycle (and the one in 2000). It's more about the individual candidates likeability rather than their positions.
Should it really matter if you'd like to share a beer with the guy if he's competent for the job?
Don't think the likeability factor in US politics (or other politics) is anything new.
1960: Nixon is sweaty, Kennedy remains smooth and dry. TV optics seem to win it for JFK.
1964: LBJ looks really bad and upsets folks when he pulls dog ears. (He did that to senators in washroom stalls, but no one seemed to mind that much.)
1992: Bill Clinton loses the election for looking like an opportunist when he took time off the hustings to return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of lobotomized Ricky Ray Rector.
Oh, hold on -- Clinton won.
Esimene Arnold is a Leninist dope with Leninist prizes, but his grandfatherly image seemed to comfort many an Esto post-USSR. Image wins again! Haircut that passes for a man, indeed. [Hannah and her Sisters]
So, experience as First Lady really is a serious factor in Yankee politics now? Ouch.
"[...] [s]crew your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail."
That said, I actually like Michelle Obama, too. But since I like Barack much better than other contenders (past and standing), I'd plump for him.
Shouldn't the rest of us get a vote by now? During BBC's coverage of Super Tuesday last week, one American expat wrote in: 'Americans may deserve the government they get. The rest of the world does not.'
Shouldn't the rest of us get a vote by now?
What's this? I assumed because you were speaking English that you were American.
But, let me see, you quoted Woody Allen. You are in fact a European, then.
Well, sir, I just saw the movie (film to you) Sicko. One of the central points there is that Canada is denying health care to American citizens, and small groups of Americans have to resort to chartering boats to get medical care in Cuba.
If those problems were resolved, the vote thing might see progress.
God, that last commenter was obnoxious. I don't know where he came from.
Seriously, if everybody could vote in US elections, I think with parts of the world still underdeveloped, it would be too easy for the Republicans to steal votes right now.
Gracie: right, it is a copout. I probably won't get my act in gear to vote, but I have to renew my driver's license before the fall, in person this time. So
Andres, my conversations over beer tend to be nuts and bolts these days and often turns into a debate. Maybe I work too much. With Obama, I feel like it would remain on the light side, like going out for drinks with a charismatic boss and everybody else expects it to stay light. And that's part of the problem.
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