Obama Addresses Question of Experience

There's not much more Obama can say:

Wooing black voters while tackling questions about his experience, Democrat Barack Obama said Saturday that his years as a community organizer and accomplishments in the Illinois state Senate have prepared him well for the presidency.

Addressing the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Obama touted his successes as an Illinois lawmaker in providing health insurance to children and reducing the price of prescription drugs for senior citizens.

He also told of passing legislation to monitor racial profiling and to require that police interrogations of suspects in capital cases be videotaped.

"I haven't just talked about these things, I've actually done them," he said, adding that he'd worked well with the Republicans who controlled the state Senate for most of his tenure there.

If voters think that the relevant experience for President is how many years one served in the Senate, then Obama's toast.  But I -- and I think most voters -- look at the vast resumes of, say, Rumsfeld and Cheney, and conclude that the more years one has spent in Washington, the most likely one is to have: a) become corrupted by an inherently corrupting system; and b) completely lost touch with average Americans and their needs and concerns.

 

I think Obama has more of the important experience -- and less of the bad experience -- than any of the other candidates.  I can't say it any better than Nick Kristof did in this March 7th NYT Op Ed (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html):

In foreign policy as well, Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.

“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them...

Our biggest mistake since World War II has been a lack of sensitivity to other people’s nationalism, from Vietnam to Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his background, Mr. Obama has been unusually sensitive to such issues and to the need to project respect rather than arrogance. He has consistently shown great instincts.

Mr. Obama’s visit to Africa last year hit just the right diplomatic notes.

Tom Friedman's spot-on here as well (4/18 NYT Op Ed; http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/opinion/18friedman.html):

when was the last time you saw a U.S. president or politician being held up as a role model abroad? It's been awhile. And that got me thinking about Mr. Obama. It seems to me that the strongest case one could make for an Obama presidency right now is rarely articulated: it is his potential to repair the broken relationship between America and the world...

I think Mr. Obama has the potential to force a new discussion. For now at least, he has a certain moral authority because of his life story, which makes him harder to dismiss. And while he is a good talker, he strikes me as an even better listener. It's amazing what people will let you say to them, if you just listen to them first.

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Obama Addresses Question of Experience
By BETH FOUHY 04.21.07, 3:01 PM ET

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/21/ap3637972.html

Wooing black voters while tackling questions about his experience, Democrat Barack Obama said Saturday that his years as a community organizer and accomplishments in the Illinois state Senate have prepared him well for the presidency.