...but is anyone focused on what we're really doing here in this election year 2008? "My candidate can beat up your candidate!" "Oh yeah? Well my candidate can save the world!" "Yeah? Well mine already did," etc.

We are in the process of electing a President. That is to say, we are in the process of hiring a head of state, a guide, not someone who will actually "do" much of anything, but who will steer us toward certain goals, and who will also try and sell us on the desireability of those goals. The President does not have Ultimate Power, although the current one seems to have fallen for the myth that he does, and has tried to exercise it to the gross detriment of the nation.

The President has, first of all, to be a person of ideas, of vision; he or she (and it doesn't make a tinker's damn to me what sex it is) needs to be able to anticipate what's ahead, not just celebrate what lies in our wake or, in the current instance, perhaps in her wake (or her husband's).

There is a lot to reflect upon, a lot of stories to tell and retell, about the administration of Bill Clinton. We had eight years of peace (or at least were not engaged in any pointless wars) and relative prosperity (does anyone know, anymore, what prosperity really means?) but we were also not challenged greatly during those times. On Bill Clinton's watch a few good things happened and a lot of terrible things did not. I personally would rather have been spared graphic knowlege of his personal pecadillos, but the prurient media will no longer keep a lid on that sort of tabloid reporting as it had previously. The truth is the Clinton team is still looking for a legacy, for something upon which to hang its hat, and that means harking back to the past, to the prior century for god's sake, and the world is different (and a lot more volatile) than it was then. There is no telling how another eight years of Clinton et Clinton might affect the world as it is now after seven-plus years of Bushitis.

The way I see the upcoming election, we can only do better than now. Either a little better (since it would not be the current Worst President in U.S. History), or we could do a lot better. So why Obama instead of Clinton? (I'm not here to anaylyze McCain, as that is moot, and I don't think he can beat Obama anyway).

First, looking at policy, which must necessarily be fairly broad and vague as it is sifted down through the layers of intertia and special interests, Obama, for my money, comes out ahead of Clinton by a significant margin. But that is not the big selling point. It is the visionary aspect of the person who will be leading us, standing up for us, speaking for us, and persuading Congress to do what is best for us -- rather than persuading us that Congress is doing what it pleases and there's nothing we or the Candidate can really do about it.

Ms. Clinton brings 35 years of life experience to the office, some of it spent hanging around powerful people. It is also 35 years of precisely what she says it is: knowing how Washington works. Never mind that Washington does not work. Obama, it seems to me, offers a better chance of changing the very ground we stand upon, the way we approach the problems of Now and the Future, without being weighed down by an acute knowlege of what has already happened, what has not worked especially well, and how it brought us to where we are now. Rather than having lived in the midst of the corrupt system we have known for at least 25 years, Obama is a very bright student, both of history and its failures and of transformative politics. Yes, it sounds all touchy-feely and airy-fairy, and if you are a cynic or what the Soviets used to call a "dead soul" then Obama is not your candidate. If you are terrified of doing things differently than they've been done, frightened of talking to strangers, obsessed with nostalgia for a time when history largely took a break (and like to think it was the doing of the President), then Obama is simply not your guy. Maybe McCain is, but if you're totally tied to the tracks of party-line thinking then you do have the alternative of a Democrat in Hillary Clinton. By all means go for it! It's still (barely) a free country.

If, however, you still believe this is not only the land of the free but also the home of the brave, if you have any faith in a New Possibility, that things are horribly wrong now and conventional approaches and tired formulae are not going to significantly change anything, then you already know which lever to pull, which box to check, which train to board.

As a Republican I am ready and willing and yes, even anxious to change the whole way the game is played. I know how it works, and I know it hasn't worked well for a long time. I know that what worked for us in relatively still waters a decade ago will not work now, in the midst of this changed and changing world in which we find ourselves.

We do not need to hire a CEO. We need to hire someone who has the vision, the leadership ability, the skill to quell mutinies and to steer the ship of state into quieter waters.

We can choose what's been done before, we can choose the status quo, or we can risk it all on clear-eyed, selfless service of the people.

It's a simple choice. Then or now.

If you believe, let go.

I think that Sen Obama and Sen Clinton have pretty similar visions. I just think Sen Obama is the most likely to realize that vision. Ideas like Health Care Reform aren't 50% +1 ideas. They are beat a fillibuster, convince a vast majority of Americans that they are getting the new New Deal, ideas. In order to get them realized we need to have the best possible advocate in the White House. Sen Obama is the best possible advocate right now. I firmly believe he can reach out to Republicans and everyday people who are suspicious anytime the government wants to be involved in their lives, even when the involvment is benificial.

I think if Sen Clinton tried to hand out envelopes stuffed with money a good number of people would refuse on the assumption that they were laced with some sort of contact poison.