Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: "We cannot return to the past. We cannot simply be about defeating Donald Trump," Beto O'Rourke [View all]emmaverybo
(8,144 posts)the awful, awful press, is still popular.
I believe a political leader like Obama comes along once in a century maybe.
I once had a list of his accomplishments, of on how many fronts he succeeded, but this more by his genius for choosing the great idea or synthesizing from many or getting people to come together than by sitting alone dreaming up stuff. And he certainly did not put detailed draft plans of policies up when he was running.
He, the character, presence, dreams for us were inspiring.
Yes, the ACA was a plan, almost whole cloth, from one he had studied and seen work at a state level.
There is another gift he possessed which few do in public life. He was a gifted speaker. Although his style was different than MLKs, one of the greatest speakers and writers in history, he had an oratorical but contemporary flair second to none. He had speech writers, yet always personally collaborated, often working an entire speech over so that it was in his own words, many passages, and bore that stamp of his personality. He wrote books, memoirs, that stand up as lyrical and eloquent biographies giving the measure of the man way before he ran for president.
Biden is not an Obama. But Obama turned to him for wisdom, guidance, and effective support.
Biden is, in image, more pedestrian, and never was the legal scholar Obama was. There is not a comparison to be made and Biden begs none.
I did not mean to undermine Obamas accomplishments, but to say that it is often conviction and personal courage that puts ideas into action as well as the wisdom to take ideas that may have failed to come to fruition in the past, and marshall the means to make them realities. Such was the case with the Iran deal.
Obama also understood ideas and could test them. So when the pentagon had a tactical plan to get
Bin Laden, based on his utter dedication to finding him, he saw a logistics problem what if the helicopter developed a problem, failed? He understood, though he was not a military guy, how easily the mission could be scuttled. So they had another helicopter standing by, which they did have to have use.
Originality so often is a more subtle matter than, as I try to show, is reinventing the wheel.
Great ideas that Republicans have scrapped or never would pass came out of Obamas administration.
One of these came out of Eric Holders department, DOJ, a plan for police department accountability. I believe DOJ acted on what was a priority for Obama and Holder took charge of developing the plan. How much input did Obama have? This is what I am saying. We dont know.
A leader sets the priorities based on a vision, and finds the best people and the best way to carry out that which otherwise would be a dream. He or she must make a number of Americans believe
in that idea, trust her.
The leader can not be tied down to a drawing board.
To me, an insistence on ideas replete with facts and figures, fully fleshed out as though a bill ready to go, is based on a misguided concept on what a president does.
Yes, many feel Obama was too middle of the road, not revolutionary in his ideas, and that by working within existing systems, betrayed their vote. I am not one of those.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden