Obama For President

Now that John Edwards is out of the race, I am endorsing Barack Obama for president (I had been deciding between the two). While of course I don't agree with Obama on every issue, I like his candidacy, and the more I see, the more I like.

The smear campaigns against Obama, which unfortunately seems to be working, are astonishing. One otherwise highly intelligent friend of mine told me that terrorists would want Obama to win. Nothing he has said or done makes me feel that he would be sympathetic to or supportive of terrorists.

I recently had the privilege of hearing Alan Dershowitz speak, and he said that he had had Obama as a student, and "there isn't an anti-semitic bone in [Obama's] body", and also that pro-Israel candidates could vote for Obama with a clear conscience (Dershowitz himself supports Clinton).

There's also the rest of the candidates to consider. While policy-wise, I could probably live with Clinton (her voting record is almost identical to Obama's), I feel like her campaign has been much more cynical and divisive, and that she, McCain, and Romney represent the American incumbency: the entrenched power structure that has allowed so many Americans to go voiceless and powerless (Huckabee does not, but he's nuts**). Obama really does seem to represent something new: his so-called "lack of experience" (my favorite line is that the person in Washington with the most experience is Dick Cheney) is an asset in my opinion. He will bring fresh ideas and perspective into a Washington that desperately needs it.

--YY

* JFK himself came from a power family, his father being a Senator.
** Huckabee completely lost me when he said he wanted to rewrite the Constitution in God's image.

p.s. I wrote earlier about how, of all the candidates, Obama is the most Kennedy-esque*. And if you'll indulge me to toot my own horn a bit, this was weeks before Obama actually received the Kennedy clan's endorsements. Ok, done bragging ;-)