Obama and Competence

If Barack Obama has exhibited one attribute during the last grueling 18 months, it’s competence.

Everyone keeps focusing on experience. Well, Obama has already done what the “experienced” George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole could not do: beat the Clintons.

He did it by running a highly competent and tightly managed campaign. Obama and his team figured out that to win the Democratic primary they needed to keep a steely gaze focused on the prize: the delegate count. Meanwhile his “more experienced” opponent wrongly focused on a swift win on Super Tuesday and couldn’t change course even when the mistake was obvious to all.

Obama has the same management team today that he had when he announced in Springfield, Illinois. Hillary had to replace her management team. McCain has replaced or reorganized his twice.

Obama keeps his cool. His opponents keep creating drama. You can disagree with Joe Biden, but no one doubts the competency of Obama’s selection process.

The Obama campaign is modern, integrating new communication technology like social networking and turning it into real world results. His campaign has mastered the tools of the trade, traditional and new. The McCain campaign has at the top a leader who doesn’t know basic skills like email or Google. His campaign doesn’t seem to know the difference between Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Walter Reed Middle School.

Obama has displayed prized superior management skills: visionary leadership, clear direction, strategic focus, expert implementation, the ability to communicate clearly in a way that mobilizes the masses. All skills we would expect in a capable chief executive.

Experience as defined by McCain and status quo Washington has given us Katrina, the intelligence disaster of pre-Iraq war and the planning disaster of post Saddam Hussein Iraq. All the experience of Washington hasn’t been able to capture Osama Bin Laden.

I don’t agree with Barack Obama on all of his policy positions, particularly on domestic policy. But in these dangerous times, I want a chief executive who is competent and who can lead others to implement his vision.. Obama has demonstrated that type of competence through this campaign and throughout his adult life. He is a rags-to-riches story personified – born in a broken home and rising in racially divided America by pulling himself up by his own bootstraps to national prominence. It’s a story that should be celebrated as solidly American – to be successful through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others.




Consider the GOP’s founding president, Abraham Lincoln. Born in poverty to an illiterate and unsuccessful farmer, he rose by willpower and wits in 1860 to be the toast of what would now be called the liberal media, earning the praise of the east coast press after an eloquent and inspired speech at Cooper’s Union in Manhattan. Today’s Republican Party would call him an elitist. After all, he represented the powerful corporate railroads in Illinois and lived in a fancy Springfield home.

Like most people, and unlike the current leadership of the GOP who sneer at Obama’s Horatio Algers success, I was taught that if I worked hard, used my brains and applied true grit, I could be successful in life. The Republicans can sneer all they want to, but Obama’s life’s story is just a good old fashioned American success story about competence.

And let’s add that Obama’s competency isn’t the soulless nuts and bolts efficiency of a mere technocrat. Added to Obama’s skills is a vision he has articulated in a way to inspire millions to his cause: one united America that looks past the differences that divide us. Here too he emulates Lincoln, who, on the brink of the civil war, didn’t appeal to northern anger by demonizing southern aggression. Rather, Lincoln called on us to listen to “the better angels of our nature.”

Obama doesn’t have the type of experience the McCain campaign thinks he should have.

He has something better, which he has demonstrated over and over.

He has competence. The competence we need in an American president in the 21st century.

Here's the Beef

WaPo Business Columnist Steven Pearlstein says that when it comes to substance, Obama's got it:

Now that Obama is sprinting toward the finish line in the Democratic marathon, his opponents are suddenly asking, "Where's the beef?"

If it's beef you like, all you have to do is go to http://barackobama.com, where you will find a refrigerator case packed with prime policy meat. That may come as something of a surprise to you, considering how utterly lacking in substance the reporting and analysis has been over the last year. But it's all there -- as much as or more than is offered by other candidates and certainly as much as any voter would require.

Perlstein points out you'll find:

• An 11 page, single spaced energy plan that features a cap and trade system

• A 15-page, single-spaced health-care plan, including 65 footnotes. You'll find a cogent analysis of what ails the health-care system, along with the best thinking of Democratic health-care reformers on how to fix it: disease management, computerized medical records, radical reforms of the insurance market, tax subsidies for low-income families and federal reinsurance for catastrophic illness.

• A 40-plus-page economic agenda that outlines Obama's proposals for avoiding a recession, helping homeowners avoid foreclosure, restoring the rights of workers to form unions, improving public education, combating poverty and shifting the tax burden from the middle class to the upper class.

There's more of course. And Pearlstein compares Obama substance to McCain:

[McCain's]"comprehensive" health-care reform program consists of two pages of platitudes with no specifics and no way to pay for itself.

Oh, and this:

...he has written two books (all by himself, unlike a certain other candidate). The first offers a compelling personal narrative...The second book is a thoroughly readable, intelligent and well-reasoned discourse on politics and policy that offers a fresh perspective on a wide range of issues.

So when some one asks of Obama, "where's the beef?" tell 'em Obama's got not just the hat, but the whole herd.

Experience Matters

Jenn writes that experience is important in the next President. Here's the type of experience she thinks matters:

I want experience in being able to speak in a way that makes people listen.
-I want experience in the real world, not just the secluded world of politics.
-I want experience in being trustworthy.
-I want experience in being lower- or middle-class through at least part of adulthood.
-I want experience in cultures other than ours.
-I want experience in mediating, negotiating, and modifying a bill so it works for people on both sides of the aisle.

Do you think we can elect a candidate who has this type of experience? Yes, we can.

The Sum of 35 Years of Experiece

Broke.

A friend last night asked over drinks about Obama's experience. I pointed out that he was able to organize and manage a national campaign, defeat two of the Senate's most experienced pols (Biden and Dodd) and stand up to withering attacks from the two Clintons and not only be solvent but bringing in impressive amounts of cash from donors.