Barack Obama announced his campaign for Presidency today from Springfield, IL.
I watched the speech with Kita at the gym. Man, was it inspiring in the way no other Presidential candidate or political leader of any sort has ever been! He has Reagan or Clinton’s gift for oratory, but that is further coupled with deep credibility, which makes you want to march forward with and for him.
In particular, I liked this about his speech:
All of us know what those challenges are today – a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren’t learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We’ve heard them. We’ve talked about them for years.
What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.
The issue with government is far beyond just policy today, though most politicians really only ever talk about policy. The issue is less about what government does, but how it does it. Obama is one of the first to really address that. He would be the first to say that many leaders on both sides of the aisle are smart and reasonable. But it is because of how we go about our process of governing that citizens are so dissatisfied and our country remains so far below its potential.
I’m eager to participate. His candidacy could really change America for the better.
Wow, it’s bizarre to imagine we could have an articulate president one day!