Law Students

Please, Barack?

By Pete

This post about (surprise) a liberal that doesn’t understand how to run a military not withstanding, I’ve been considering voting for Obama in November.

I will allow time for those that have fallen out of their chairs to return.

Okay, so why would I do such a thing? It’s simple….

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll agree that Obama is a politician. He’s demonstrated that time and again (say, for example, taking credit for all sorts of stuff in the IL legislature that he actually had nothing to do with). He has, quite skillfully, sucked in the young, despondent, omg-I-hate-bush-so-much-I-could-just-explode crowd and wooed them with vague, but inspiring, double-speak about “hope”¹.

But he has, in fact, made some very bold and quantifiable promises. Ending the war in Iraq. “Fixing” health care. Eliminating dependence on foreign oil. They’re great ideas, for the most part… and if he accomplishes them all, he’ll have done us a great service and will deserve another four years in office.

But he won’t. Because it takes far more than just a President to enact the sorts of sweeping change that he’s looking for… and in the end, he’s going to accomplish what most presidents accomplish: virtually nothing.

Which is really the only way our country has survived as long as it has.

But my point is not that I think “hope” is a catchy campaign slogan, but crappy public policy. My point is this… Obama has a pretty substantial chunk of voters right now that an average democrat (See, for example, John McCain) would not probably have gotten. If he now turns around and invites Hillary to join his campaign as VP, he’ll lose a good portion of them.

Any thought I had of voting for him will be extinguished the moment she gets on the ticket… and I’ve got a hunch that I’m not alone on that. Hopefully someone in his campaign is focus-grouping this issue against the moderates.

We don’t need Hillary to be one heartbeat from the oval office.

1. Hope? Hope in one hand, shit in the other. Tell me which one gets filled up first.

Full post as published by PeteHoliday.com on June 06, 2008 (boomark / email).