First post

I'll explain the purpose of this blog at a later date. For now, let me just reference one of the strongest arguments for Obama's presidency that I've read to date:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama

Andrew Sullivan is an openly-gay, married (in Mass.), HIV-positive, conservative (!) writer. Hard guy to pigeonhole. He argues persuasively that Obama is the one candidate who can bring our country together. Giuliani or Clinton would continue the political culture war that we've been entrenched in ever since Reagan.

I think this is one of the most valuable qualities in a leader. The presidency isn't student council, but the personal charm that most student council presidents get elected on is a valuable asset to a national leader who has to persuade members of Congress as well as the American public what policies are needed. On policy, Obama and Clinton are hardly distinguishable. But in style and tone they are worlds apart, and that's what I think would give Obama an incredible advantage in the White House.

Here's I think the key thesis of Sullivan's article:

"Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a mo­mentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce."

Well said, Sullivan. Go Obama go!