We are so lucky...

...to have a Presidential candidate of the caliber of Barack Obama. From the first time I heard him speak, I was hooked. He is smart, he is kind, he makes sense, he doesn't spend much time blaming, berating or scolding, he is full of thoughtful and doable plans for how to responsibly address complex issues such as global warming and health care. There is a wonderful editorial piece in The New Yorker this week outlining exactly why to vote for Barack Obama. I will readily admit they nailed me and my reason for loving Barack with this: "Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism." I still want to believe our country is capable of living up to its own ideals: the ideals trotted out by the Bush Administration like "freedom" but then trampled in every way possible - respect for human rights, balance of power between the branches of government, separation of church and state, respect and support for international organizations.

The next president is likely to make three Supreme Court appointments. If it is McCain, we can say goodbye to Roe vs. Wade, to restraining executive power, to keeping the separation of church and state and to having any legal checks whatsoever on corporate power. And to think these decisions could fall into the hands of Palin! I'm going to quote the New Yorker again: "In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on "Saturday Night Live," but as a vision of the political future it's deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a Presidient of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility."

But, friends and family, we are in luck! We don't even have to vote for whomever is running against her - we can actually just vote for this wonderful man who happens to also have chosen a respectable, bright running mate. More from the New Yorker: "...Obama's first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. "Dreams from My Father" is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama's own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself."

And more: "Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics...We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama - a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first century America - would, at a stroke, reverse our country's image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting - rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader's name is Barack Obama."