Am I the only Kossack who supports Obama and doesn't hate Hillary?
Wed May 07, 2008 at 11:41:54 AM PDT
I'm just wondering. Not that I have the same amount of time the rest of you do to read diaries and comment on them, but it is hard to miss that there is a high level of animosity against Hillary Clinton in general around here.
This attitude reminds me a bit of our president's attitude. You are either FOR Barack or you are AGAINST him. If you are FOR Hillary, you must be AGAINST Barack. There is no shades of gray.
This is crazy, coming from a community that reputedly agrees that every interaction is a shade of gray. I think Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are great candidates and would be great presidents and overall I see the differences between them as rather marginal. In the end I chose to support Obama, but not because he was a hugely compelling candidate over Hillary Clinton.
My wife has been a Hillary supporter all along, and I never got upset about it. I respect her right to make her own judgments, as she does mine. Either candidate would be a quantum leap over the miserable failure currently in the Oval Office. Both will do their best to get us out of Iraq quickly. Arguably, Clinton would do it more quickly.
Sure I can find faults with Hillary, but neither candidate is perfect. Her stand toward Iran strikes me as very George Bush-ish. On the other hand, some of Obama's early statements, particularly on using forces unilaterally in northwestern Pakistan, sounded half baked and I was glad that Hillary caught him on it.
Both candidates are people with warts and pimples. We will never have a perfect president. Obama won't be one when he becomes president either. If nothing else government is too huge and unwieldy. Obama will make some mistakes, and some will be doozies, once he is in office. So will many of the people he picks to help run the government. There will be corruption and malfeasance. Count on it.
Campaigning, as brutal as it has been, is relatively easy. Governing is the hard part. Clinton has a point: she has been raked over the coals many times and can take the heat. We may not always like her, but most of us should be able to say that we respect her. And for whatever it's worth, she does have some executive experience just from rubbing so many elbows with Bill all these years. She has a perspective on the job Obama cannot have unless he had been first man. That perspective is an asset, not a detriment.
Ultimately we do ourselves a disservice, and the Republicans a service by bashing Hillary as much as we are doing. Better to be like Barack and try to take the high road. See the forest through the trees. Sail above the frays and battles of the moment. Keep the goal in mind.
Either candidate would be effective as president. Neither will be miserable failures. Stay civil. Stay high minded. Barack is. If we truly support him, let's emulate him in the same manner.
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