jayber crow

3 Comments to hope springs eternal every once in a while

1. 

   zoomcynic says:

   February 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am

   If Black Eyed Peas think we can, then I believe them!
2. 

   Rach says:

   February 8th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

   I love it! I liked Obama but feared he was too inexperienced and too good to be true, let’s hope real life mirrors West Wing!
3. 

   Van Peebles says:

   February 12th, 2008 at 10:12 am

   Hmm…. Obama 2008=Blair 1997?

   The interesting point in the Yes You Can speech is his questioning of the value of “experience”.

   Francis Ford Coppola is an “experienced” filmmaker but not even he would pretend that recent efforts such as The Rainmaker and Jack trump radically inexperienced brilliance like The Godfather and The Conversation. Intuitive genius and raw enthusiasm can beat familiarity with procedure.

   Furthermore, what type of “experience” are we looking for?

   The executive powers of the White House are so limited that, to quote some guru whose name escapes me, “the power of the presidency is the power to persuade”.

   Thus, the ability to capture national imagination, define the mores and weather of Washington, and broker understandings across partisan lines is a key skill – and one that Obama has already demonstrated in spades.

   Clinton’s defining moment of legislative experience was the catastrophic top-down attempt to impose a healthcare programme which was rejected by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

   But to her credit this humiliation has not frightened her off the subject of healthcare in the way that Gore stopped talking about the environment once he was branded a tree-hugger.

   The scandal of the US healthcare system and the link between fear of unemployment, prohibitive healthcare costs and poverty is criminal. At a time of economic anxiety, a potential president who promises to introduce free-at-the-point-of-need universal coverage will offer the hope of real change to millions of Americans? Can you afford to see the doctor? Yes You Can!

   And Clinton has a real edge over Obama in this area. She wants to make it mandatory to have healthcare insurance; Obama simply wants insurance to be cheaper. But what makes insurance affordable is compulsion. It’s the fact that young, healthy people in Europe pay into national insurance schemes that allows the sick and elderly to be cared of. It’s a fundamental building block of the cooperative society.

   To quote Rowan Williams:I think righteousness is about cooperation. It’s about learning to work together and not leaving people outside, drawing people into a venture that needs everybody’s talents and skills. That’s a vision for a country that’s well-worth pursuing.”