Don’t blow this chance
It has been admitted by scores of pundits that little lies in the gulf between Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s stances on healthcare, education, Iraq… just about every single issue. The electorate is in the envious position of being spoilt for choice. If they wish to, they may pick the grounded, pragmatic, experienced, and thoroughly able Hillary Clinton.
Or an inspirational man. One in whom the ideals of peace, justice, prosperity, pride, freedom, and hope is embodied. He is a man who guides with breathtaking clarity, and stimulates the most jaded to sit up and take notice. Before Barack Obama, we had forgotten the staying power of oratory. Hearing him speak is a call to action not often heard in politics. Winston Churchill, FDR, Martin Luther King Jr, and a few others share this talent, but none of them are running for president. Listening to him speak stimulates orchestral overtures, grand waves of symphonic melody. I know how my imagination reacts to stimuli, and I know this reaction to be a very good sign.
It is no accident that the president of the United States is called the Leader of the Free World. It is no accident that the current president is so fond of the word ‘freedom’. It is no coincidence that freedom and liberty are synonymous.
While this president may have spread freedom across the globe at gunpoint, he did so because no one told him the pen is mightier than the sword. But with Barack Obama, the fiery spirit of Enlightenment liberalism shall burn across the whole country. Through diplomacy, not mindless warmongering, America shall remain the young and vibrant leader of the world. It shall not grow old, mired in the past as other nations have. America shall not lumber through the bog of maintaining a status quo. It shall continue to pioneer, and shall no longer dominate by callously heaving its military heft around.
He embodies leadership in a way no other candidate does. No other candidate tugs at my heartstrings. Fine and praiseworthy comments have been made about all the others, but they remain just that: others. There are candidates whom I can engage with on an intellectual level, but no one inspires me in the way he does.
Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School said ‘he captures the imagination of a generation’. Not just a generation of Americans growing up into healthcare problems, a bankrupt government, and a nation splitting along party lines, but the generation across the world.
The Imams and Mullahs used the ineptitude of the Bush presidency to their advantage and we suffered calamitously. They will continue hating us irrespective of who takes office in 2009, but the rest of the world needn’t hate us. Electing Barack Obama is the clearest way to broadcast a crucially important message: America has changed. It will now take on the role set forth for it by Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, and now, Obama. To lead the world towards the towering peaks of justice and liberty for all.
I thought you were supporting McCain?
“pride, freedom, and hope is embodied”
These are empty words to describe him. All the presidential candidates have these. The whole idea of this article is that Obama as president is a chance for change and to provide liberty. But America already has this, and Obama is relatively unproven.
I vouch for Hilary in that they are both very similar but I am more sure that Hillary wont go starting wars.
Hasan: He is my Republican pick. I’ll write about that, and why, later this week.
Adam: No other candidate has America as hopeful and inspired as Obama. It is his role not to provide liberty, but to reinstate it; that is change. Hillary’s foreign policy is more outward-looking than Obama’s, which means she is far more likely to start wars. Not to mention her support of the war in Iraq, which Obama did not support at any step along the way.
I think he has got you Udayan! And for me that is part of the point. He makes me want to stand up and work for the country and he even makes me want to try to bridge the gap with Republicans and given how wildly liberal I am, that is saying something!
[…] because such extreme phrases inevitably require compromise and future reassessment, but as I have said before, Barack Obama is the best candidate today for the United States, and as I’ll say now: The […]