On May 2, 2:44 pm, "Greywolf" <greyw...@cybrzn.com> wrote:

"maff" <maf...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:1178098226.214632.258690@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...

Obama and the experience question
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/05/02/opinion/18345.shtml

By Jason Sheltzer
Princetonian Columnist

Absolutely the stupidest criticism that people make about Sen. Barack
Obama (D-Ill.) is that he's too inexperienced for the presidency. I'd
like to devote this column to debunking that common claim.

Is experience a good indicator of a successful presidency? Not at all
- look at this administration for an example. The Bush White House and
State Department have been filled with career bureaucrats like Vice
President ***** Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld '54 and Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz. They may have decades of foreign policy
experience, but they're the ones who led us into Iraq, assuring us
that we'd be greeted as liberators.

As you've often heard: 'Garbage in, garbage out.' Truly talented and
gifted
leaders recognize their own limitations and surround themselves with
'gifted', talented individuals who can do a particular job very well.
These
can even include people who the leader finds personally quite
'disagreeable'. A truly talented leader has just that; 'talent'. It's
something like the gifted artist who hasn't had a stitch of formal
training.
It comes down to this: Either you've got 'it', or you don't. Clearly, our
current President doesn't. And look what he's surrounded himself with;
both
past and present. Pretty pathetic, isn't it? (I'd except Colin Powell and
some officials who have resigned out of disgust.[They get 'points' just
for
*that*.])

Although I'm a Russ Feingold Democrat, I love the 'heart' of Obama. (And
my
'admiration', I admit, is late in coming.) I believe a candidate with a
noble heart and a great deal of sincere idealism will attract people of
great talent to fill the vital positions needed to run our staggering
country. If only because 'good' people want to do 'good'. 'Birds of a
feather ...', you know.

Being too idealistic-minded and hopeful, here? Perhaps. Corruption is
just
too prevalent in our country to do much about. (I speak from *very*
personal
experience!) But pendulums are meant to swing in opposite directions so
maybe, just maybe, an idealist like Obama could change things
significantly.

I'm not too keen on his religious fervor and gusto. But a talented leader
of

His religion is of a secular kind. After all, his formative years was
shaped by his mother who was a 'lonely witness for secular humanism'.

"But to build on these still tentative partnerships between the
religious and secular worlds, more work will need to be done. The
first and most difficult step for some evangelical Christians is to
acknowledge the critical role that the establishment clause has played
not only in the development of our democracy but also in the
robustness of our religious practice. Not only has America avoided the
sorts of religious strife that plague the globe, but religious
institutions have continued to thrive--a phenomenon that some
observers attribute directly to the absence of a state-sponsored
church.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the
dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once
were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish
nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a
nation of nonbelievers.

What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy demands is that the
religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather
than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must
be subject to argument and amenable to reason. If I am opposed to
abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the
practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or
invoke God's will and expect that argument to carry the day. If I want
others to listen to me, then I have to explain why abortion violates
some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including
those with no faith at all.

For those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many
evangelicals do, such rules of engagement may seem just one more
example of the tyranny of the secular and material worlds over the
sacred and eternal. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice.
Almost by definition, faith and reason operate in different domains
and involve different paths to discerning truth.

The story of Abraham and Isaac offers a simple but powerful example.
According to the Bible, Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his
"only son, Isaac, whom you love," as a burnt offering. Without
argument, Abraham takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an
altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.

Of course, we know the happy ending--God sends down an angel to
intercede at the very last minute. Abraham has passed God's test of
devotion. He becomes a model of fidelity to God, and his great faith
is rewarded through future generations. And yet it is fair to say that
if any of us saw a 21st century Abraham raising the knife on the roof
of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle
him down; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we
would expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take
Isaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse. We would do so because
God doesn't reveal Himself or His angels to all of us in a single
moment. We do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham
sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act
in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to
know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true--as
individuals or communities of faith--will be true for us alone.

This is not to say that I'm unanchored in my faith. There are some
things that I'm absolutely sure about--the Golden Rule, the need to
battle cruelty in all its forms, the value of love and charity,
humility and grace."

good conscience would naturally keep such fervor in check. If he truly
respects the views of 'free-thinkers', he deserves respect in turn.

"Obama's mom: Not just a girl from Kansas
Strong personalities shaped a future senator
Advertisement


By Tim Jones, Tribune national correspondent. Tribune correspondents
Kirsten Scharnberg and Laurie Goering contributed to this report

March 27, 2007

MERCER ISLAND, Wash. -- Chip Wall can't help but zero in on the little
stuff whenever he watches Barack Obama on TV.

The turn of the smile, the sharp wit, the comfortable self-
assuredness, all of which he saw up close, a half-century ago.

It's his old pal Stanley.

For Wall and a few dozen others, Obama on the campaign trail often
brings to mind Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother and a strong-willed,
unconventional member of the Mercer Island High School graduating
class of 1960.

"She was not a standard-issue girl of her times. ... She wasn't part
of the matched-sweater-set crowd," said Wall, a classmate and retired
philosophy teacher who used to make after-school runs to Seattle with
Dunham to sit and talk -- for hours and hours -- in coffee shops.

"She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she'd read
about and could argue," said Maxine Box, who was Dunham's best friend
in high school. "She was always challenging and arguing and comparing.
She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn't."

The education of Obama the would-be politician didn't begin, of
course, until after his birth in 1961, in Honolulu. But the parental
traits that would mold him -- a contrarian worldview, an initial
rejection of organized religion, a questioning nature -- were already
taking shape years earlier in the nomadic and sometimes tempestuous
Dunham family, where the only child was a curious and precocious
daughter of a father who wanted a boy so badly that he named her
Stanley -- after himself."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-0703270151mar27,0,3977057,print.story

Boy, I wouldn't want his job!! (If it is, indeed, him, that's elected.)
What
an absolutely nightmarish mess the current President is going to leave
his
successor. Uggghhhh!

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