The Affirmative Case: Jay for Obama

The Affirmative Case: Jay For Obama
By Jay Allbritton
Oct 13th 2008 10:13AM

Like so many others, the first time I heard of Barack Obama was in 2004, when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In his remarkable introduction to the American people, Obama showed he could communicate so effectively that one 20 minute speech made him a national political force. One of the ideas Barack Obama pushed in that speech was that America was not hopelessly divided. He went through a litany of touching anecdotes from individuals living in red states and blue states. All of these people had common problems and common expectations from the government. In the heat of one of the most vicious and partisan election cycles in a generation, Obama sold a lot of people on the idea that the best way forward for all Americans is to find common ground through pragmatic compromises and a deeper awareness of our common interests.

Once the long campaign began, Obama immediately staked his campaign to the belief that he could compete with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards financially while limiting campaign contributions to small donors. In so doing, not only did Obama manage to stay competitive with the approach, he tapped into a movement of mostly younger voters displeased by the campaign finance system that keeps politicians from being directly beholden to the people and instead hands the greatest influence to a few powerful special interests that inevitably become any campaigns' biggest contributors.

Perhaps the boldest change Obama will bring to Washington is a new economic orientation. For nearly 28 years the people running our country's economy have primarily adhered to a "trickle down" approach that has left the middle class in progressively worse condition. Year after year, corporations face less regulation while workers face more restrictions, longer hours and lower wages. Barack Obama promises to change that. That doesn't make him a socialist. On the contrary, that puts him directly in line with an American economic tradition that has gone off the rails just as it did in the days before the Great Depression.

Obama's middle class-first approach to the economy will put more money in the hands of workers through tax cuts, by creating better jobs to that will repair our infrastructure, and by creating green collar jobs that will help us transition away from oil dependence. These forms of real economic stimulus will put a great deal of money in the hands of the people who need it, the people who will spend it and the people who work the hardest for it. Obama will bring a more balanced approach to foreign policy. When he met his former foreign policy adviser Dr. Samantha Power for the first time, the subject of diplomacy with Iran came up. She paraphrased Obama as saying this:

"I'm not afraid of Ahmadinejad. He's a Holocaust denier, he supports Hamas and Hezbollah, he has infiltrated Iraq, he's enriching uranium- and by being in the room talking to him, it's actually being tougher than lobbing these verbal grenades that Bush and Cheney toss from 5,000 miles away. Even if we fail to make progress on any of these issues, we will then have the international wind at our back, and we will have the capacity to mobilize a global response to his regime."

Because the Bush administration's focus diverted our military from capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, one of Obama's greatest accomplishments in his short three years in the Senate has been his commitment to securing loose nuclear material that could easily fall into the hands of al Qaida or the Taliban. In January 2007, President Bush signed a bill called "The Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative." Among other things, the law strengthened the ability of America's allies around the world to seize ships carrying potential weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, in the area of technology, Barack Obama is the only candidate with coherent ideas on how to utilize the massive advances made in computer technology this century to make government more efficient, transparent and accountable. In November of 2007, Obama gave a speech at Google headquarters that simply touched my geek side. In late 2007, the Obama campaign issued a position paper on technology that is nothing short of visionary. Obama promises network neutrality, government transparency, and universal broadband access. He plans to appoint a Chief Technology Officer who would "ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan." Barack Obama often points out that his story could only happen in America.

While that is a hundred percent true, it is not the shifting settings of his life -- Kansas, Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii, California, New York, Chicago, Harvard, The Senate -- that makes him the right person to be the next President of the United States. It is rather the unique mind and personality that have emerged from his amazing personal journey. Very seldom in American history have the challenges facing our country been so complex that they demand the person facing them in the office of the presidency to be so intellectually diverse. Barack Obama is the right person to lead us through these difficult times. More "Affirmative Case" endorsements:

Dave for McCain
Tommy for Obama