This is an excellent post on Burnt Orange Report by PI Lawyer. Whenever you're defending your support of Sen. Obama to various skeptics, be sure to have some of these following points memorized.
The great irony is lots of folks right now are curious about Obama, and the more they learn about the him, the more they will like him. The skepticism will brew curiosity which will brew grassroots support. The hopeful and inspiring story of Barack Obama gets better with each new chapter, so if you haven't read his two books yet, then do yourself a favor. Many of the questions that Obama skeptics often ask can be answered in the books. Obama isn't hiding anything, and he doesn't represent business-as-usual DC thinking. He's an open book, and he's laying all his skeletons on the beach, bleaching in the sun. He's made mistakes, and he's learned from them. He has the ability get people working together to get results. He isn't overly-ideological, he's practical. This is a refreshing change from our current administration that stubbornly refuses to admit that Iraq was a mistake.
Obama's not a temporary "shooting star", as the Clinton camp claims. Instead, he's quickly demonstrating that he possesses enough depth, intelligence and charisma to lead our nation.
Oh the irony... It is slightly ironic that all those who worry about Professor Obama being a creation of the media are parroting a skeptical line created by that media itself. The "What will he do when the polish comes off" or "He doesn't have any experience" whispers have gotten most of their play precisely because of the punditocracy. I think a lot of people's concerns are definitely worth exploring, but we should also remember that there is almost no narrative that isn't encouraged by the media itself. I think that if you look closely, there is plenty of data to answer concerns over Professor Obama. First of all, his oratory is more than a matter of charisma. Obama is one of the few politicians today who actually writes a lot of his own speeches. He authored a well-reviewed book years before he entered the political scene, and his latest book drew praise from the tough NY Times critic Michiko Kakutani. Writing well is a reflection of intelligence that goes beyond merely speaking well.
Second, people seem to forget that he has had quite an accomplished career prior to the US Senate. At UChicago, many of my professors and classmates, including the famously conservative Federalist Society types, spoke in glowing terms of Professor Obama's intelligence and detailed knowledge of law and policy. His classes were among the most popular at the law school. As a young man, Obama led numerous successful community organizing efforts on Chicago's Southside. And as I mentioned in my other comment on the Obama announcement yesterday, as a State Senator, Obama authored and passed numerous pieces of landmark, progressive legislation, including a huge expansion of CHIP, a state Earned Income Tax Credit, a bill requiring the collection of racial statistics in all police stops, and a bill requiring the videotaping of all murder interrogations. The last of these he negotiated a unanimous passage through a closely divided State Senate, and along the way, he convinced police organizations and state prosecutors originally opposed to the legislation to come out in support of it. He also once convinced the NRA to switch positions publicly from opposition to endorsement of a bill. He also worked closely with the team that crafted the death penalty moratorium bill, and authored a bill to publicly finance judicial elections.
If you talk with anyone in Illinois politics, they'll tell you that Professor Obama had an uncanny ability to sit down and discuss an issue so thoroughly, reasonably, and intelligently that numerous opponents would come out of meetings with him wondering how they could have ever opposed him. If anyone has had the chance to sit and talk with him about the issues, you know that his grasp of policy detail is astonishing. You can't be a law professor at a school such as UChicago without being able to hold your own in daily policy and legal debates with the likes of Richard Posner, Richard Epstein, Cass Sunstein, and Geoff Stone.
In short, before Obama was the media darling of today, he was already well-known as the brainy, thoughtful, and astoundingly persuasive liberal scholar-statesman of Illinois. When we were gathering petition signatures for Obama and he was third or fourth in all the polls, everyone acknowledged he was easily the most qualified, but many worried he couldn't defeat money and the machine. As people got to know him, though, the enthusiasm for him grew, not because the media loved Obama in February of 2004, but because you can't meet with Obama without seeing leadership. He would say tough, honest things in response to questions, answers the questioner didn't want to hear, and yet people would say afterwards that they thought of him as a true leader because he didn't pander to them.
Finally, I think Obama understands the dangers of failing to plan for the worst in politics. Remember that he bounced back from a brutal drubbing in his primary challenge to US Congressman Bobby Rush to win the Senate; Professor Obama often talks about the lessons he learned from that experience.
So lack of experience? No substance? By 2008, Obama will have had over 10 years experience as a state and federal legislator, a substantial academic career at one of the most scholarly productive law schools in the country, experience as a grassroots community organizer, and experience as a practicing civil rights attorney. His policy positions on issues from civil rights to government reform to fiscal matters are well-known and consistent.
Of course I worry about the tough fight ahead. But if it's a choice between a less perfect candidate with more well-known flaws and one of the most inspiring candidates the Democrats have had in decades with less publicized faults, I'd much rather fight for the latter then settle for the former.
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican." – H.L. Menckenby: PI Lawyer @ Wed Jan 17, 2007 at 15:19:29 PM CST
