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...an unnamed "national security expert," but my take, as one who devours this stuff, and as a voter, is pretty much 180 degrees, as you can guess.
Plainly put, I don't get the reassurance at all that Obama listens -- at least not to anyone other than his own advisers. Don't flame me for making this comparison, as I'm not saying Obama is a madman like Bush, but I get the same vibe of "stay the course" stubbornness from Obama as I do from Bush, as well as the same "I don't pay attention to focus groups" tunnel vision. Yep, a lot of that feeling comes from Obama's dead-set determination not to listen to us gay folks (and certainly not to our biggest and most powerful lobbying group in Washington, the Human Rights Campaign) about the damage of allowing Donnie McClurkin to run amok onstage in South Carolina.
And before anyone jumps me for being a "one-issue voter" or a "take my ball and go home" whiner, let me make something very clear: I did a lot of soul-searching during and after the McClurkin business. I forced myself to ask if I really was just reacting on a solely emotional level, letting my heart lead my head. While I'm certainly angry, I finally realized two things: 1) Had it not been for the McClurkin issue, I most likely would not have taken such a critical look at the rest of Obama's policies (what I can find of them; honestly, I do not see any solid, step-by-step, workable plans I can believe in) on their own merit, and 2) that Obama's hamfisted dealing (or not dealing) with the McClurkin mess was only symptomatic of what I perceive as Obama's general bullheadedness, and -- yes -- arrogance.
Symptomatic, how? Most glaringly: Obama wants to "reach out" -- but his lame handling of the McClurkin issue is a clear signal to me that he's quite selective about who he wants to reach out to. All his nice talk about overcoming homophobia means nothing to me when his actions, no matter how indirectly, no matter how passively, no matter how un-deliberately, serve in the end only to promote homophobia.
I'm being very generous in suggesting the McClurkin deal wasn't deliberate on Obama's part; I do believe it was a deliberate message to Southern religious homophobes that he's on their side, and he's not going to let those horrible, sinful, child-molesting homosexuals tell him what to do.
At the same time, I am not saying Obama is a homophobe -- I am saying that Obama knowingly and willingly used homophobia to his advantage.
As for the other main point of the op/ed:
"Hillary Clinton too, this person said, brings a group of retainers and pols who think they've done it all before -- and don't understand that tomorrow's challenges are more serious and more complex than any of us have perhaps seen in our lifetimes."
What is this guy smoking? It's Obama who doesn't "understand that tomorrow's challenges are more serious and more complex than any of us have perhaps seen in our lifetimes." His empty "hope and change" mantra is evidence of that.
See, I want "a group of retainers and pols" who have done it all before. Forging ahead into the future without a roadmap may seem like a grand adventure to some, but what seems to be lost on many is the fact that the next president, whoever it is, is not going to be able to put his or her own New Deal, or Great Society, into play right off the bat. He or she is going to be spending at least the first term (and probably two terms) cleaning up after Bush. We are so many steps back right now, real progress is going to be "backfill" for a long, long time. Undoing all the damage of the previous eight years (if that is even possible) is going to take generations. Anyone who thinks life is going to be one great, big love-in -- or even easier than it is now -- within the next five, ten years, is naive at best. Deluded is more like it.
You watch and see: If Obama makes it to the White House, his supporters ar going to be most disappointed by his inability to move forward on any great vision of a future America, because he (and Congress) will be sweeping up the Bush debris. It may be progress, but it won't look like it, it won't feel like it, and it won't bring us all into that big Kumbaya circle as fast as we'd all like to be there.
And here is where Hillary's experience, and Obama's inexperience, come into play for me. I want the one who knows the ropes and has the connections to bring us up to at least the point where we were before BushCo dismantled everything. There is far too much at stake to take a gamble on somebody who hasn't been in the thick of it for longer than -- well, since Obama was a schoolboy.
Obama may think he can "reach out" until the whole world is moving together in perfect harmony like one big Mobius strip -- but as nice as that idealism is, it is painfully (and dangerously) unrealistic and naive. Hillary, on the other hand, is going to "reach out" too -- but with Hillary, that's going to mean a lot of arm-twisting of the thugs she knows, and has fought tooth and nail, for decades.
You know, I still enjoy "The Brady Bunch" -- everyone's happy, and clean, and conflict can be solved by building a house of cards or singing a song. But I enjoy it because it's fantasy -- and I wouldn't rely on Mike's seemingly Zen-like but ultimately meaningless homespun wisdom to get me out of any real-life jams. The delusion that playing nicey-nice is what got us into this mess in the first place: It got us Bush.
I want somebody who can get down and dirty on the BushCo thugs and talk to them in a way they understand. I want somebody who's willing to bust heads. Figuratively speaking, of course.
In other words: We don't need the Bradys -- we need The Sopranos.
One last thing:
"According to this policy intellectual, Hillary Clinton's experience led her to affirm the Kyl/Lieberman IRGC amendment, which could have very well been a loophole for another war."
Cheap shot. The writer condemns Hillary for her Kyl-Lieberman vote -- a vote Obama didn't even show up for. (Obama can say he would have voted for this or against that 'til the cows come home, but I can say I would have stopped the REAL ID Act by voting against the troop-funding bill it was attached to -- but you'll never really know, because I never had to make that decision. I can say I would have voted for Adlai Stevenson -- but you'll never really know, because I wasn't born yet. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)
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