gobama!!!!!!!!!!!!!

on the eve of super tuesday, i think i should deliver on my promised increased volume of political posts. this was prompted by a conversation with s about why i voted obama in the primaries and why i really really hope he will be our general election candidate and next president. now, i am not going to turn this into a "hate on hillary" post. but hopefully i will be able to sway a few of you who are busily postmarking your absentees or getting ready to head off to the polls tomorrow to vote for my guy. in fact, since politics is all about "messaging," i'll play like the politicians and give you my top three reasons to gobama tomorrow, and in the general.

1. the change candidate. okay, i am going to have to qualify this one. after 5 years of living inside the beltway, i have to tell you that i don't think being a washington "insider" is such a bad thing. realistically, any serious candidate, in order to be "ready on day one," needs to have a good understanding of the district's bureaucracy and connections that will make it possible to move policy along at a pace faster than a snail's crawl. but there's a reason that so many people have a problem with the "insider."

i'd submit that the problem isn't the knowledge of the bureaucracy or connections to it -- these things are necessary to function in washington, and if a candidate doesn't have them upon setting up shop at 1600 pennsylvania, he or she definitely will by the end of four years in office. the problem is the paternalistic nature of these connections and their manifestation to the general public. i am inspired by obama because he has convinced me that as an individual, i matter to the political system, and that, beyond that, even though the political elite controls so much out of necessity, if i speak with other citizens, i really do have the power to effect change.

that's the nice, sweet, heartwarming reason to love obama. but it goes a little deeper than that for me. hillary's campaign is, to say the least, a little nixonian (there's a great economist article on the subject that i wish i could link to here, but alas, i cannot). and while i understand the strategic need to stay on message, which is most easily achieved by controlling everything that every staffer says, there's a certain amount of information that i as a voting citizen feel entitled to. when the campaign denies me that information (ex. won't tell me who the environmental policy advisor is -- the only one out of 9 presidential campaigns that i contacted to do this) i start to get a little concerned.

it's that icky feeling again, the same one i've had for the last eight years: a clinton II administration thinks there's certain information i just don't need to know, and they're more than willing to tell me so. and it's not critical information, like where our nukes are hidden. it's information about who is influencing important policy decisions. it's information that affects how i'll choose to vote. and when i don't even need to call the obama campaign because that same information is prominently displayed on his website, i feel a glaring difference in style that might just make all the difference to me as a voter. which segues nicely to my second point...

2. the change candidate. no, not the same as my last point. but it is connected. my biggest problem with the present administration (and believe me, i've got many) is the blind adherence to one policy and the refusal to change even with a striking amount of evidence and public outcry suggesting that this isn't the way to go. i want a departure from that mentality over the next four (and hopefully eight) years.

it's true that being president requires you to set policy and to stick to that policy while seeing it through. but it also requires some reassessment of strategies and policies at each step of the way. obama seems willing to undertake these kinds of assessments, and moreover, to (see above) be more transparent about the decisions that he is making and more willing to take into account a variety of opinions before making a final decision. i worry about hillary mostly because i think that she can be very rigid in her approach and unwilling to admit that she might have made a mistake (why it really bothers me that she still won't say that voting for the war was a bad call -- but you may disagree with me on this point). anyway the upshot of this is that my concern is that she will approach things the same way this administration did, just starting out with policies that i happen to like quite a bit better. but extreme operating style isn't ever the best thing, no matter how much i like the initial policies.

3. the dynasty effect (aka billary). it really spoke to me when ted kennedy endorsed obama last week. here's a guy who has worked pretty closely with the last clinton administration and knows the inner workings of that machine as well as anyone in washington. he also happens to be an incredibly well-respected senator. and he's saying that, having lived through a clinton I administration, he's not really interested in the sequel.

i have to say that i'm not that interested either. as much as i thought certain things about clinton I were great, bill seems to have gone a little nuts lately. and there's something to be said for the theory that just as bush I fans saw this administration as a chance to get in and correct the mistakes they made on the first run (and add a substantial number of their own), clinton I fans want a shot at eight more years sans lewinskygate. but times have changed and just as the bush II administration was a bit anachronistic, the dynastic swing might stick us back in 1992...the problem being that it's not 1992 anymore.

there's a lot to be said for the considerable experience that both bill and hillary have in their unique positions. but experience only takes you so far, and can sometimes hinder a fresh perspective on events. i'm not sure if we really want to spend the next four or even eight years looking at the world through billary-colored glasses.

so there you go, that's my two cents. but as i pointed out to mcn earlier, this is just my primaryspeak, and i'm sure i'll have a whole new set of issues once we roll around to general time. i can't really believe i wrote all of this out. i also feel like it's not as articulate as it could have been. but i usually feel that way about things i write. oh well. it is late and this is but a blog. try not to be too critical...

and with that, it's back to climate change reports and fisheries subsidies! and on an unrelated note, i should build on a's post re: illness by announcing that this apartment is apparently a den of sickness. after spending six hours in the hospital last week getting a CT scan and having various IVs pumped into me to determine whether or not i had appendicitis (i didn't) i am relatively convinced that things have to start getting better in the health department because it doesn't get too much worse. knock on wood, i don't actually want to end up with appendicitis here.

okay, now climate change reports and fisheries subsidies.