As a confirmed Obamacan, the new portmanteau for Republicans who are supporting Barack Obama for president, I found the Obama-McCain Charisma-Experience cartoon on your Friday, Feburary 15th, editorial page to be rather simple-minded and obtuse. One might think that a defecting Republican would be more inclined to support a DLC-type Hillary Clinton than a left-leaning Obama, but for those who are concerned about the long-term future of the country rather than the politics of the moment, Barack Obama offers a lot more than mere charisma.
John McCain and, of course, Hillary Clinton are very experienced politicians. Indeed, they are just a little too experienced as 20th century thinkers constrained by worldviews, ideologies and political practices from an era gone by. They and the other first wave Baby Boomers and their elders who cohabitate with them in America's political institutions are prisoners of the past. Their ways of understanding problems and addressing them politically are outmoded by the demands and challenges of the 21st century.
We are in a new era that demands transformational leadership, an era in which Hillary Clinton wants us to ask, Who is ready to be president on Day One? Barack Obama is ready to be a transformational leader on Day One. Hillary Clinton and John McCain are not, and charisma is just one small piece of the difference between their abilities and those of Barack Obama in this respect. Hillary Clinton and John McCain would like for us to understand the idea of experience on their terms. It's time we started to understand experience in a different way.-
17 Archives
Letter to the Editor
