I wouldn’t call this an endorsement.
By that I mean that the word “endorsement” conjures in the mind images of newspapers and important people throwing their clout behind a politician in order to get them elected. I am not important enough to deliver such “endorsements” — I’ll leave that to The DP, The New York Times and Ted Kennedy.
In the most humble terms, here is why I think Hillary Clinton should be president.
Senator Clinton has shown consistency in being an effective manager of people in the United States Senate. She has also shown she knows how Congress works and that she is an effective politician in her own right. If she were to try and change anything, or even be a wholesale agent for change, like Senator Obama wants to be, she will know what to change, and how to go about doing it without greatly angering a lot of people who could make life difficult for him.
Universal health care is an issue she has championed for years and I have admired her for it. She made many enemies when she tried back in the early nineties, but now people pine for it, as inequality in wealth in this nation has continued to grow. We know that this is an issue close to her heart and that she will eventually decide to expend the political capital to achieve her vision.
On Iraq, I respect her for not reneging on her original vote. To me, it doesn’t really matter if you were for or against the war from the start. I don’t see why Senator Obama being against the war from the start makes him a better candidate — and his continuing to ram that point home doesn’t build a better picture of him either. What matters is whether or not you are against the war now and what plan you have with respect to your position.
Senator Obama’s “talk to any foreign leader who wants to talk” plan, mentioned again in his DP column, is not well thought out and belies a naiveté with regard to foreign policy which, like it or not, he has no concrete experience in. If he is elected to office now, he’ll be out in four years.
Senator Clinton is not as charismatic as Senator Obama. Not by a long shot. But I would vote for the guy who sounded like Elmer Fudd if I knew he was the best person to deal with Congress, to defend these shores and rebuild America’s tattered reputation. Meeting with Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the best way of doing that.
Hillary Clinton is the ideal administrator with an eye for precision and details — in contrast to Mr. Obama’s rather vague campaign: hope filled with no promise, change in an uncertain direction. It suggests to me an ideas man, whose sense of what he would do with such awesome power is not as precise and honed as it ought to be.
Senator Clinton is prepared now, and knows what it is like to stand up to Republican attacks and deal with the pressures associated with life in the White House. She is ready now, and I would urge those of you who plan to vote tomorrow to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Tags: Barak Obama, hillary clinton
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