I Endorse Barack Obama

And, I voted for him yesterday.

There, I’ve said it. For months I’ve said to my temporal friends, and written a bit to my cyber friends, that I could never vote for Senator McCain and, when she came along, Governor Palin. I couldn’t. But, I honestly wasn’t ready to vote for Obama.

I’d love to sit this election out, vote for the Libertarian candidate. That cop-out, that I’ve been taking for the last three national elections, is foreclosed for two reasons. I know a bit too much about Bob Barr and could never vote for him. More importantly, I live in Georgia. My state doesn’t matter. Better said, it hasn’t mattered in a national election since Jimmy.

This year it seems that it may. So I can’t throw away my vote. Yet, I cannot cast it unless I believe that I am doing the right thing.

Some history for you. Despite what my conservative friends say, I am an objective, independent person. I’ve never been and I don’t think I will ever be a member of a political party, as none that I’ve seen has a perfect slate whose lever should be pulled (I’ve never actually seen such a voting machine, for you younger people, read a book or do a Google search). I’m eclectic in my voting choices. McGovern, Ford, Carter, the Libertarian, Clinton, the Libertarian, the Libertarian, the Libertarian.

That brings us back to this year. It is time to not cast a protest vote.

I don’t believe all of what Obama says, as eloquently as he says it. I actually don’t think he is as radical as he has been portrayed or as he has talked. He is a pragmatic politician, Bill Clinton without some of the character flaws. He cut his teeth in Chicago politics.

He is a very intelligent person. You don’t get to be the president of the Harvard Law Review if you are a dullard (nor do you get admitted to the law school). I am prejudiced in favor of smart.

I could give you a litany of social reasons why I’m going to vote for him. I could list some of my reservations about some of what he, coupled with a totally liberal congress could do. I won’t. Instead, here is why it is time to vote for Obama.

He is, and I hate to say this, the Tiger Woods of American politics. Tiger is the cultural descendent of Muhammad Ali. Stay with me here.

Tiger was a prodigy that delivered on the hype. He had smarts, physical ability and an enormous talent. More importantly he had, and has the will to use his smarts, physicality and talent to become the best golfer in the history of the game, see that he needed to change the way he played to remain the best player, a couple of times, and then, last year, play a major tournament with a serious injury and win.

Ali was the forerunner of what I just said about Tiger with an attitude attributable to his era, the Sixties.

Tiger and Ali have another quality. They aren’t any one thing. Ali is a black man though he became early on, and remains, a world man. Tiger is a mix of races and cultures. Black and, I believe, Tai.

Obama with his racial and cultural diversity and his studied, practical bent is uniquely qualified to deal with the world we face.

Most of us are one thing, not really, but we see ourselves and each other as a “something.” I’m white, middle-aged, upper middle class. I could add a few more categories. Most of you reading this, will categorize yourself.

Ali, Tiger and his generation, and I think, Obama don’t see themselves that way. We don’t live in America any more. We live in the world. What we do affects the rest of the world, it always has. More recently we’ve learned that what the rest of the world does, affects us.

Obama understands that last part. I don’t think McCain does. I’m sure that Palin does not.

It is time to pass the torch from the generation of people that are older than me to the generation of people that are younger than me. I’m quite happy to skip my generation, to a generation of people that see themselves as a part of the world, not needing to defend themselves from the world.

I’m not talking about terrorists. I’m talking about rational people in the world dealing with each other rationally on economic and security issues, together protecting themselves from irrational terrorists. I’m talking about people who are willing to talk to those that oppose them “without preconditions.” The alternative to talking is fighting. If the talking doesn’t work, and you are steadfast in your view, then fight. But throwing a punch first is not the way to win the hearts and minds of people around the world, the people that live and die with you economically and socially.

John McCain doesn’t understand that, Barack Obama does.

For those of you on the fence, take a shot at a fresh, intelligent, modern thinker. Stale, plodding, mid-twentieth century non-thinkers have not done us well, security-wise or economically.

It is indeed time for change, not the change that Obama advertises; but for the change that he may well bring. An America that doesn’t rail against those that are different, those that seem to be economically ascendant. Rather, an America that participates in an inevitable world economy that needs security against those that would try to destroy all of us.

Is Obama the messiah? No. But he is the best choice for the world we have just recently found ourselves living in.