Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Not Giving Up on Hillary

Team Obama scored its tenth consecutive primary win last night after sweeping through the Wisonsin and Hawaii polls; for those of us watching from the sidelines, its tempting to tow the party line and say "fine, we'll vote for whatever Dem wins the primaries."

But, as Madonna, I mean, Evita, (supposedly) said: "bad moments come but they go, that doesn't mean we should give up our dream, don't you forget what I've been through and yet I'm still standing." So, yes, Barack is scoring big wins, but let's not forget that we've seen a "defeated" Hillary before. And she always bounces back.

I understand Americans want a movement they can belong to. That's super. But if its a revolution they want, then I hope they're ready to ride out the foibles of untested leadership (and please, spare me the JFK references). I'm sticking with Hillary.

3 comments:

CJ said...

Hey there. So I'm just curious -- where is this "tested leadership" of which you speak? Because if we're taking her candidacy as evidence of "leadership," then I'd say evidence is lacking. She's mismanaged this thing, period. When things started to go wrong in Iowa, then again in South Carolina, why did Clinton keep plowing ahead with the same strategies? If you're looking for "the foibles of untested leadership," I'm not sure that Obama is Exhibit A. He's untested in a lot of ways, sure. But if these campaigns are *part* of the test -- and I think they are -- then so far he's passing. And she's failing.

Anonymous said...

The government isa business and we wouldn't hire a CEO who only worked in an office for a few months. Obama is a junior 1 term (if that) senator who would be best served as an influencer; not a leader. Hillary has a lot more experience and the fact that she is a politician who knows her way around Washington should not be a liability. We're looking for someone who can run a country -- not a spiritual leader or motivational speaker.

CJ said...

And...you didn't respond to my comment. I asked if you think that the way in which these candidate are running their campaigns is any reflection on, you know, their ability to lead a country. Obama's campaign is, by almost any account I can see, far better organized than Clinton's. She and her campaign managers have made some really disastrous decisions in terms of strategy -- worst of all, they appear to have neglected formulating some kind of Plan B in case the initial "inevitability" thing didn't work.

My point is that Clinton's management of her campaign does not bode well for her management of the federal government. Simply tallying years of experience doesn't make someone more qualified; if we did that, we would all be voting for McCain. I think it's more sensible to look at the evidence at hand: which candidate is actually showing us that they know how to lead?

I know that you just want to write Obama off as some naive motivational speaker who doesn't understand the world, but that's the very mistake that Clinton's been making all along.