Why Obama is Like Bush

I have a revelation for some of you out there: Barack Obama is not God. And since he is not God, I think it’s unfair that he is running a campaign which asks us to vote for him based totally on faith, rather than on tangible ideas. In his campaign style, Senator Obama bears a remarkable resemblance to our current president, who also campaigned by making popular, catchy statements but had no experience or plan to back them up. How different is Senator Obama’s United States speech from the Bush “I’m a Uniter” speech?

Senator Obama said in his Iowa victory speech, “You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.” He likes people to believe that his is a grassroots campaign, driven by the little people. The truth is, though, that he is a masterful campaigner who has generated huge amounts of campaign funds and that he outspent every Democratic candidate in Iowa to ensure victory in a place where 200,000 votes nearly doubled the previous voter turnout record. Why? So he could make that speech about how the will of the little people can trump the cynics and, in turn, a wave of optimism and hope would carry him to the White House. How cynical of him.

In his victory speech, Senator Obama said, “The time has come for a president who will be honest about the choices and challenges we face…who won’t just tell you what you want to hear.” Challenges? Democrats tend to agree on the challenges we face. Choices? The only choice Senator Obama has told us about is the one where we choose him. What exactly is he talking about? Are we really a nation of people who will fall for his empty rhetoric? No, we are not a collection of blue states or red states, as Senator Obama likes to say, just a collection of moronic states, once again choosing image over substance when it comes to the most important job in the world.

Senator Hillary Clinton won the debate in New Hampshire this past Saturday night and cast aside the doubts she previously generated with her wrong-headed vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. She gave specific examples of what she had accomplished in the past when Senator John Edwards and Senator Obama could not. She has demonstrated again and again that she is prepared to lead this country in a new direction, to repair the damage that Mr. Bush has done to our reputation around the world, to end the war in Iraq, and to implement the universal health care that she would have liked to have provided all of us 15 years ago. She is clearly the best choice for the Democratic nomination; yet, pundits drive the dialog in a direction that makes it sound as though she’s fighting for her political life in New Hampshire.

Senator Edwards’s populist message and his fight for the middle class have deeply moved me in the past, but he failed miserably in the debate on Saturday night. He relied on his stump speech to answer questions, and when asked to name one accomplishment during his senate years, he named the Patient Bill of Rights. Senator Clinton pointed out that the Patient Bill of Rights, while a worthy goal, had never become law because it failed to pass both houses, demonstrating Mr. Edwards’s inability to get even one thing done during his six years in the senate. I thought it was a fatal moment for Mr. Edwards’s campaign and certainly marked the end of my support for him.

One of Senator Obama’s beautifully spoken phrases is, “We are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come.”  I hope he’s right. I hope we shall vote with our minds instead of our guts this time. Maybe we can learn from that election where people voted for the alcoholic with whom they’d most like to share a beer, and we can vote, instead, for the most experienced, most accomplished person who happens to be married to one of the smartest men of our time.