Obama

Obama:

I heard Obama on a short interview on NPR last night. He said something that impressed me, although the veracity of it is suspect. First, let me admit to a certain bias:

I don't like Illinois politicians and, given the number of governors recently who were indited (or should have been), I don't trust Illinois politicians. This is doubly true for the ones from Chicago. Obama is both.

Apparently, the candidates were asked what was their biggest weakness. Obama said he is not the most organized person and his desk is perpetually messy and, thus, he needed good staff to keep him organized. Clinton said her biggest weakness was her impatience to get America back on track. Edwards said his biggest weakness was his zest to improve the lot of America’s working class. NPR asked Obama if he wanted a redo on that question and he said, as best I can recall, that he did not. He felt he had answered the question that was asked honestly (as he had made a point of doing during this campaign) rather than trying to twist it by taking a laudable sounding strength and disguise it as a weakness.

Now I don’t agree with a lot of Obama’s politics or positions on issues.

He also made the point that, in the last ten years or so, the average family’s income has not kept up with the rising cost of living, especially when they have to pay for healthcare and so forth. In this I think he is correct, sort of. If you take out some of the big ticket items like health insurance costs, and look at just consumer goods, and compare the cost of those goods in terms of percent of earnings in 1988 vs 2008, I think you would find that the prices have not significantly increased; in fact many of them may have dropped, especially for computer related electronic products or long distance communication. But when you add in the cost of healthcare or retirement savings, more of which is being laid on the average family, then before, Obama may be correct. Further, gasoline prices have come up sharply and that affects the price of everything. So, he may have a point here, although not as simplistic a point as he pretends it to be.

He also tried to differentiate his proposal for Healthcare from “Hillarycare” though he wasn’t too clear on the distinction. He seemed to feel that his proposal would be more targeted at the “lower income families who need it.” That phrase make me nervous because it boarders on a god-term/devil-term concept.

Since, I believe the race for the White House will be resolved with the Democratic Convention, these issues will be important. Likewise, even though I really probably want Guiliani to win, just because I would support almost ANY moderate Republican over someone supported by the religious right, I don’t see that happening. And if the GOP takes the shellacking this Autumn that I think it will, I don’t want the religious right to be able to hide behind the excuse that it was because the GOP did not offer a sufficiently God-oriented candidate. They got the GOP into this and they need to suffer the consequences. Not that it will crack their delusions.

At this point, Obama is my favorite viable Presidential candidate and I really cannot believe I’m saying that.