Not the Experience We Need Right Now

It has been said over and over that John McCain has experience and Barack Obama does not. John McCain grew up in a privileged home and has been a senator for over 20 years - through the entire “Cold War” when the US and former Soviet Union repeatedly rattled their sabers and occasionally took each other to the brink of nuclear war. Barack Obama grew up in a not so privileged home and has spent his career thus far on city level committees that work with people at the grass-roots level. Many have said that this “lack” of experience means that John McCain is more suitable for the position of the Presidency. I think that it is this “lack” of experience that is exactly what we need. Let me explain.

The world that we live in is much different than the world in which John McCain has experience. This is not the cold war, there are no Soviets who supposedly want to destroy our way of life, aside from a few groups of terrorists who we have helped in recruiting new members by creating more anger and hate by our invasions. This is not the time for war hawk paranoia - we have seen what that kind of thinking gets us. John McCain’s experience has been how to be the bully in the sandbox - how to not let others play unless its by our rules, how to control all the toys and only give them to the friends that do what we tell them, and how to manipulate those friends into pushing others out of the sandbox altogether. McCain has demonstrated his manipulative strategies throughout his campaign - using pop culture icons in a political ad, pretending that an average Joe is what this nation needs to lead it out of trouble, jumping on silly comments taken out of context and using minimal connections to invite suspicion and fear. Suspicion and fear is what our current president used to manipulate public opinion into support for the war in Iraq. Suspicion and fear is what will push us into another cold war scenario where we are forced to dig deeper and deeper into our resources to maintain an illusion of control over other countries. McCain is indeed experienced, but it is not the kind of experience we need right now.

Barack Obama may not have privileged, senate experience, but that does not mean he is not a good leader. His experience lies with helping average people, with working his way through college, with raising a family. If anyone who has ever run for president truly knows what it is like to be an average American, Obama is it. He is not part of the Baby Boomer generation that has sacrificed the morals and values of the Greatest Generation to stay “on top”. Unlike McCain and many others of his generation, Obama can indeed see a scenario where the United States is not the world’s only superpower - where the US may just have to play fair with others in that sandbox and compromise just like everybody else. Obama knows that playing fair is not unpatriotic, it is human. In this world it is necessary to maintain a level of respect and moral superiority that, although US leaders have wasted no time in using to push their agendas, they have not banked a single bit of it in the last 20 years - ironically the time of McCain’s tenure. Keeping the United States in a position of power now requires fair dealing, negotiations and conservation - yes, I said the “C” word - not the brinkmanship, immobile, refuse to negotiate, “you are either with us or without us“, mentality that has permeated our foreign policy and has taken us to the lowest level of respect among other nations in recent memory. I, for one, am craving someone who is not part of that Washington, Cold War “experience” .

A recent mailing by the McCain campaign cites the fact that if Obama was a doctor, you would find a new one. On the contrary, I appreciate immensely the new knowledge and perspective my very young doctor has and I appreciate the talents and knowledge of younger generations, even if it means they don’t know how to bully other people around.