Democrats: Pick Barack Obama
Article Launched: 02/02/2008 06:05:00 PM PST
WHO is the best candidate for president to represent America to the world in these times? There are other qualifications California Democrats should consider in the Feb. 5 primary. Who has the best ideas about the domestic economy? Who understands the need for promoting sustainability during a time of global warming? Who can unite an increasingly diverse America from Hawaii to Maine, from Washington to Florida? Who can work with a divided Congress on a variety of important agendas, from shoring up the nation's infrastructure to grappling with immigration?
But no consideration is as important as that of leadership on the international stage.
Democrats are fortunate on that front. All of their front-runners have the intellect, grasp of history and gravitas to represent America's best ideas and principles to the world at a time when our standing among nations has fallen dismally.
But the Democratic candidate for president who would send the most resounding message about the ongoing, untarnished promise of the American republic is Sen. Barack Obama. As California voters make their voices heard next month, a victory for Obama in the nation's largest, most important state would be part of an extraordinary message to the world.
Obama 's parentage and upbringing are the least of what he brings to the table. But symbolism can and should be important in politics. A Kenyan father. An American mother. A youth spent partly in the Hawaiian islands.
A half-sister with an Indonesian father, and time spent in that country and its schools. A university career from Occidental in neighboring Eagle Rock to Columbia in Manhattan to Harvard Law School.
From community organizing to a private law practice to the Illinois state Senate to the United States Senate, Obama 's career arc is a common one in American politics. And he's still a first-term senator. But at 45, he's also a young man. He came from nowhere, with no wealth or connections to get him ahead in life.
And his foreign policy concerns could not be more mature at this crucial time. Most importantly, he wants to bring "a responsible end" to the war in Iraq and focus on broader Mideast issues. He would oversee the building of a 21st-century U.S. military, and supports an expansion of the Army by adding 65,000 soldiers as well as 27,000 Marines. He would rebuild alliances and construct new partnerships to meet the common threats of international terrorism. He sees that the focus of that fight needs to be Afghanistan, where he would deploy two additional brigades, and in Pakistan, where we have missed opportunities to deal decisive blows to terrorist networks.
From his call for assertive action against the genocide in Darfur to dialogue with Syria and Iran to foreign aid that supports "the pillars of democracy" in developing nations, Obama would be an internationalist president of whom Americans could be proud.
On the home front, he stands for a dynamic free market that leads to entrepreneurship and upward mobility. As the first president conversant with the possibilities of the digital age, he would appoint a chief technology officer for the nation. He would invest in early childhood education and math and science curriculums to restore our lost leadership there. He would work to restore the balance in a tax code that unfairly taxes income from our jobs at nearly twice that of gains by investors. He supports market-based cap-and-trade systems to restrict carbon emissions and investments in new energy sources to reduce our dependence on imported oil.
Democrats couldn't do better than to vote Feb. 5 for Barack Obama to lead a new America.
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_8152118
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