Obama has an undergraduate degree in international studies… he’s not oblivious to the challenges the World faces, or the fact that the U.S. has some work to do in terms of repairing international relationships, or about the international threats we will have to deal with. He will surround himself with a VP and Cabinet that will be more than capable of handling international issues.

When Bush ran, he had no schooling and no clue (literally) about international affairs. America’s diplomatic elite had to tutor this man just so he could get through basic questions during his campaign. Bush was not held to the same standard that people are now attempting to require for Barack Obama. And now we have all of these international problems after Bush has presided over one international calamity after another.

Barack is way ahead (in terms of understanding the world) than Bush was when he started. Bush couldn’t name 5 or 6 World leaders… COULDN’T NAME SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LEADERS ON THE PLANET!!!

And no one saw that as a problem at the time. Because of White priviledge… Americans just assumed that the White candidate would be alright… after all… his last name was “Bush”, so he must be o.k.

Now all of a sudden people want to apply some sort of new standard to Obama?

I personally believe that all candidates should have a basic understanding of the World before they can even run for President…and they should be required to take a basic aptitude test when they apply for candidacy… a test that Bush would have likely failed.

***********************

As for the videos… I thought the first one was great. And this new video just reaffirms the first.

Hopefully I will get around to posting both of them myself.
He provides Americans, like myself who are completely dissilusioned with the American political process…who don’t believe that real Democracy exists, with a different perspective. He forces you to see the few positives that exist within the American system (when you compare it with broken governments & broken hopes and dreams from overseas).

But when compared with other industrialized “Democracies”… The U.S. system is still extremely lacking in political choice, and still lacks a truely Democratic process.

Yet, it is still good to have someone give you some sort of context once in a while. It’s a context that I think most of us are aware of…We know that people in less than Democratic systems overseas have no political representation whatsoever (corrupt or otherwise) and can be killed for even attempting to fight for a right to vote, or to organize politically. But after a while that understanding becomes dormant… It takes people like Derrick to provide a global context and remind us of what this Country is capable of with the system that we currently have… despite all of its inherent & fundamental flaws.

I think Obama is pretty centrist (that is, in the center of the American people) at least regarding the war, the economy, healthcare, and poverty. I wish in fact he were more to the left, but right now we just need to stop the bleeding.

Your fellow Illinoisean (as I like to say),

Matthew

Obama has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. He is to the left of Hillary on every issue except healthcare.

To look at Obama as a potential president, it is important to see how he will forge this ‘unity’ he so ardently preaches. He will need to appeal to independents who are drawn to him personally, but do not hold such hard, entrenched, partisan positions. I am an independent who has reservations about Obama on some levels. I actually voted to send him to the senate in Illinois, but his lack of experience in foreign policy/national security and his far left voting record give me pause to vote for him for president. If Obama has any hope of winning in November, he will need to move to the center. On what issues will this move be evident?

And anyone (this means you, Anon. #2) who takes Leon Wieseltier’s* opinion seriously was never going to vote for Obama anyway.

*He thought thought the invasion of Iraq was a grand idea (see Committee for the Liberation of Iraq) because of all their WMD’s and Saddam’s connection to al-Qaeda- and we should pay attention to his judgement?

they have persistently voted as a bloc to prevent any significant legislation passing in congress. they ALWAYS vote together and then shriek about bipartisanship when we do, and their scare tactics are sufficient invariably to convince a few weak willed pussies in democrat clothes to come to their side.

this is the fact of politics in this country: conservatism as a theory of government has failed. repeatedly. we don’t need to bipartisanly join with those people. it has not worked. period. end of story. new story, new theory, please.

it is only when the democrats appear to be ascendant, only when it looks as if the power may be wrested away from the rethugs for a brief period of time, that everyone begins yapping about bipartisanship.

here’s what bipartisanship means:

democrats bend over
republicans give us a lubeless fuck in the ass

bipartianship. fuck bipartisanship.

please, please people, if obama fails to win the nomination (which i don’t think will happen), INVESTIGATE MCCAIN. the man is an angry warmonger with no knowledge of economics (after how many years in the senate?) and nothing on his mind but more tax cuts for the rich.

MCCAIN IS NOT AN ALTERNATIVE TO OBAMA. never never never. please don’t even joke about it.

that being said, i love this young man’s passion. that inspires me as much as anything.

‘Forever Young’ by Leon Wieseltier

What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world. Different circumstances call for different talents, different sensibilities, different approaches to power. “Leadership” comes in many forms. A sterling individual may be historically inappropriate; and a person whom it is impossible to admire may accomplish significant things. The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not “the politics of fear” to remind Obama’s legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)
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Miracle Man (Jan 30, 2008)

One of the striking features of Obama’s victory speeches is the absence from these exultations of any lasting allusion to the darker dimensions of our strategic predicament. He makes no applause line out of American defense. And jihadist terrorism is only one of the disorders in an increasingly disordered world. The most repercussive fact of our time is surely the transformation of China. The “metrics” are all staggering. Quantities, quantities, quantities. China already has the power to wreck the American economy. However many tanks and fighters it has, its hoarding of American dollars is itself a kind of arsenal. And the bounty of wealth that it promises American business, the fantasy of greed-fulfillment that it represents, makes it almost impossible to conduct a serious discussion of the implications of this emerging world power for American principles and American interests–certainly not in Washington, where, when it comes to the art of dodging debate, Beijing is better than Bandar. What China wants, China gets. Not even the gold medal in tyranny that Beijing will win in its Olympics will make a difference. Meanwhile the authoritarian Putin has punkishly succeeded in restoring Russia to its inglorious heritage, reminding the world of the old formula that capitalism plus state power equals fascism. In Iran, none of Ahmadinejad’s domestic troubles seem to have modified the state’s sense of ascendancy, or its will to nuclearize itself, or its appetite for instability in its region. In Iraq, the streets are safer but the sects are not sweeter. In the Korean peninsula, diplomacy has gone ominously cold. In Palestine there are two Palestines, and one of them belongs to Hamas. In Darfur–well, you know, because everybody knows. In Latin America, the failures of liberal economics have sullied the reputation of liberal politics. And so on.

All this even before we attend to the elimination of poverty. And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world? You might think that in such conditions he is even more of an historical necessity-but why would you think that all that stands between the world and peace is one man? George W. Bush was not single-handedly responsible for getting us into our strategic mess and Barack Obama will not be single-handedly responsible for getting us out of it. There are autonomous countries and cultures out there. The turbulence that I have described is not caused by misunderstandings. It is caused by the interests of powers and the beliefs of peoples. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas-does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in? With what trick of empathy, what euphoria, does he hope to join the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds in Iraq? Yes, he made a “muscular” speech in Chicago last spring; but I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. My problem is not with “day one”: nobody is perfectly prepared for the White House, though the memory of Bill Clinton’s “learning curve” is still vivid, which in Bosnia and Rwanda cost more than a million lives. My problem is that Obama’s declarations in matters of foreign policy and national security have a certain homeopathic quality. He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff.

“False hopes?” Obama told a crowd in New Hampshire. “There’s no such thing.” How dare he? There is almost no more commonplace trait of human existence (and of African American existence) than false hopes. I want universal health care, but I do not want to be relieved of the little that I have understood, and learned to accept, about the recalcitrance of the world. After Bush, who is not for a fresh start? But there is something unfresh about Obama’s movement for freshness. We have been this young before. “She starts old, old,” Lawrence wrote, in his discussion of the Leatherstocking Tales, “wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America.” So can we agree on a ground between cynicism and myth? Or must we have Camelot once more? After all, being young again is also a way of living in the past. There was something mildly farcical about the Kennedys’ endorsement of Obama-of this candidacy that is alleged to signify an alternative to the dynasties, and a break with ideological antiquity; but worst of all was its brazen delight in mythologization. (Thanks to the Obama campaign, millions of Americans now hold that John Kennedy was a great president and that Lyndon Johnson was not responsible for making civil rights and voting rights into law.) I understand that no one, except perhaps Lincoln, ever ran for the presidency on a tragic sense of life; but if it is possible to be too old in spirit, it is possible also to be too young.