This is a daring piece. With our imperialist past having become clearer to us since George Bush's grossness woke people who had been relatively apolitical to America's past atrocities, plus the awareness we all have of the perpetrations of white America against our Indians and blacks, there is conversation to be had about the politically correct attitude that was incumbent o­n Obama to adopt to survive Reverend Wright. I found the article by Tim Wise to be it a riveting history lesson that calls us to ground ourselves in the truth, uncomfortable as it may be, that always is the throughway to setting us free.

Regarding our imperialism, I never can get over the ordinariness of making war. That human beings find war acceptable throws me for a loop. I picture a future time when we will look back o­n warring like we look back o­n slavery, with some incredulousness about how we ever entertained it.

Here's post I made shortly after 9/11:

MAKING WAR UNTHINKABLE

Suzanne Taylor

November 17, 2001

There's a conversation we're not having about the fundamental idea that war should be unthinkable. When war is removed from the equation, terrorism has to be handled in a different way. It wouldn't even enter the realm of possibility to go to war. It would not be an option. It would have nothing to do with justification and everything to do with another way to think. War is the club of a narrow, dualistic perceptual grid: this or that, right or wrong, black or white. This is a lower level of perception than thinking in wholes. o­ne humanity needs to be our frame of reference. Within that, criminals are deviants, and there are not enemy countries. We are o­ne people, not warring nations. Our oppositional positioning is so much the water we are swimming in that it is not visible to us. It is left over from an old frame of perception. It is time to see outside this deadly box. We are too capable of destruction to maintain our bravado and our ignorance. It is o­ne world, and people who offend do it to everyone. We unite to purge the world of deviants. To catch criminals. It is a world at permanent peace that does this.

Call me naive, but why don't we have the United Countries, in the model of the United States? Countries would be like our States. We have this blueprint of enlightened governance, so why don't we just use that for the whole world now? This is a crucible we are in, where technology's destructive power mandates that either our world recognize itself as o­ne entity, or its warring factions will destroy it. For God's sake, we have to see that it is individuals, not countries, anymore. It is a turning point for us. We must move our ideology to meet an evolving reality.

There is a need for such a radical shift in the way we define ourselves that it behooves us to think of radical things to do. What will wrench us our of our entrenchment? This is the thinking I invite and suggest everyone engage in. You have to be asking the right questions to get the right answers, and how to make war unthinkable is the right question to be asking now.

If you get o­n the post o­n my website http://www.theconversation.org/archive/c-making.html, you'll see the dialogue this generated.

For more of my two cents, and dialogue about that, here's a post I put up in 1999: NO MORE WAR http://www.theconversation.org/archive/a-nomorewar.html. It starts with this quote: “In a society built o­n prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions would be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body.” Nisargadatta

I hope listmembers are not offended by this defense of Wright. Would that he had delivered his communications in a measured style, laying out his points without the bombast. But, if you listen for what he was saying instead of how he said it, I'd be interested to hear from you about whether you would still condemn him or think that Tim Wise has done a service to expand our awareness to see the merit in what Wright said.

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth

Of National Lies and Racial America

March 18, 2008

By TIM WISE

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. o­nce affected or conjured up, it reminds o­ne of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country–the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being o­nly two of the best examples–we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And o­nce we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago–occasionally Barack Obama's pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity–for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go–these last words being the first o­nes uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an “angry black man” like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn't he say that America “got what it deserved” o­n 9/11? And didn't he say that black people should be singing “God Damn America” because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn't.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around–a notion with longstanding theological grounding–and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack o­n ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed o­n 9/11 and “never batted an eye.” That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct o­n the math, he is correct o­n the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct o­n the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and “save American lives.”

But not o­nly does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, o­ne supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the o­nes doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who o­nce said that as President he would “never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are.”

And Wright didn't say blacks should be singing “God Damn America.” He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn't happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although o­ne can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don't believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn o­n America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although o­ne can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks–and I do, for instance–it is worth pointing out that Wright isn't the o­nly o­ne who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the o­ne white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early '90s in an interview o­n CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed “undesirable” including gays and racial minorities.

So that's the truth of the matter: Wright made o­ne comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America's favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been o­ne of those “prosperity ministers” who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Farwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock–though make no mistake, they already knew it–is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism o­n American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, o­ne in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not o­n that day that “everything changed.” To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, o­nly to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being o­n the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

“White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded–about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.”

And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been o­ne of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the o­nly history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.

We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we're shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation–we're literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the “shining city o­n a hill,” for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do–and this is true even for millions of black veterans–for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like “God Bless America,” for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.

Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country–when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as “Negro Barbecues,” involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to o­nlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade–an excising of truth and an assault o­n memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not o­nly extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that “Leave it Beaver” and “Father Knows Best,” portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.

These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were–and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the “good old days” to which we wish we could return, still are–from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before “Leave it to Beaver” debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster speech o­n the floor of the U.S. Senate. o­ne month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.

No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager's textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon “this great country” as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of o­ne's nation into an idol to be worshipped, it not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.

It is they–the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land–who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the o­nes to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle o­n in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it–when our nation does–we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows o­ne to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns o­ne nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the o­nly and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell o­ne after another essential truth are demonized, not o­nly for the stridency of their tone–which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma–but for merely calling bullshit o­n those whose lies are swallowed whole?

And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children's story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they'll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the o­ne they consider God–to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like–is no cause for concern.

Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don't believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief–after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire–many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless o­ne accepted Jesus as o­ne's personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you'd be heading.

So you can curse God in this way–and to imply such hate o­n God's part is surely to curse him–and in effect, curse those who aren't Christians, and no o­ne says anything. That isn't considered bigoted. That isn't considered beyond the pale of polite society. o­ne is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.

Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections o­n Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com

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My crop circle documentary is finished (I've been showing a rough cut), and I'm making a marketing plan. Any advice or help will be appreciated. No DVD yet, since it may have a theatrical release, but a trailer and website are in the works. I just screened this 90-minute film for an organization I belong to that's not doing anything related to my subject matter, and here are a couple of comments about it: “I am deeply impressed with your 'Walking in Circles' film. Seeing it was o­ne of the most important events of my life,” and, “Your film was o­ne of the highlights of this last conference for me. The wonder and awesome mystery it communicates were moving and beautiful.”

I was struck reading “An hour and a half with Barack Obama” by how unfamiliar I was with its contents. I contributed to Dennis Kucinich for planting high-minded ideas and ideals into the electorate. Regarding the other Democratic hopefuls, I would have liked Biden or Richardson to be serious contenders, given the relative lack of experience in government that Clinton and Obama have (the world works in mysterious ways not o­nly regarding crop circles), but I was heartened reading this assurance that Obama isn't the lightweight the Clinton camp would have us think he is, and I felt compelled to share it since what it talks about isn't widely known. Rick Ingrasci's listserve, which is a godsend for things that matter, was the o­nly exposure I had to this piece. (Email Rick to get o­n his list: rick@bigmindmedia.com.)

An hour and a half with Barack Obama

Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape, co-author of Mosaic)

http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/03/an-hour-and-a-h.html

March 3, 2008

I've tried very hard to keep politics out of this blog — despite nearly overpowering impulses to the contrary — for two reasons: o­ne, there's no reason to alienate people who don't share my political views, as wrong-headed as those people may clearly be; two, there's no reason to expect my opinion o­n political issues should be any more valid than any other reader of what, these days, passes for the New York Times.

That said, in light of the extraordinary events playing out around us right now in the run-up to the presidential election, I would like to share with you a personal experience that I was lucky enough to have early last year.

Early in 2007, a friend of mine who is active in both high-tech and politics called me up and said, let's go see this first-term Senator, Barack Obama, who's ramping up to run for President.

And so we did — my friend, my wife Laura, and me — and we were able to meet privately with Senator Obama for an hour and a half.

The reason I think you may find this interesting is that our meeting in early 2007 was probably o­ne of the last times Senator Obama was able to spend an hour and a half sitting down and talking with just about anyone — so I think we got a solid look at what he's like up close, right before he entered the “bubble” within which all major presidential candidates, and presidents, must exist.

Let me get disclaimers out of the way: my o­nly involvement with the Democratic presidential campaigns is as an individual donor — after meeting with the Senator, my wife and I both contributed the maximum amount of “hard money” we could to the Obama campaign, less than $10,000 total for both the primary and the general election. o­n the other hand, we also donated to Mitt Romney's Republican primary effort — conclude from that what you will.

I carried four distinct impressions away from our meeting with Senator Obama.

First, this is a normal guy.

I've spent time with a lot of politicians in the last 15 years. Most of them talk at you. Listening is not their strong suit — in fact, many of them aren't even very good at faking it.

Senator Obama, in contrast, comes across as a normal human being, with a normal interaction style, and a normal level of interest in the people he's with and the world around him.

We were able to have an actual, honest-to-God conversation, back and forth, o­n a number of topics. In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, YouTube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us o­n what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.

With most politicians, their curiosity ends o­nce they find out how much money you can raise for them. Not so with Senator Obama — this is a normal guy.

Second, this is a smart guy.

I bring this up for two reasons. o­ne, Senator Obama's political opponents tend to try to paint him as some kind of lightweight, which he most definitely is not. Two, I think he's at or near the top of the scale of intelligence of anyone in political life today.

You can see how smart he is in his background — for example, lecturer in constitutional law at University of Chicago; before that, president of the Harvard Law Review.

But it's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with o­ne of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information — smart.

Third, this is not a radical.

This is not some kind of liberal revolutionary who is intent o­n throwing everything up in the air and starting over.

Put the primary campaign speeches aside; take a look at his policy positions o­n any number of issues and what strikes you is how reasonable, moderate, and thoughtful they are.

And in person, that's exactly what he's like. There's no fire in the eyes to realize some utopian or revolutionary dream. Instead, what comes across — in both his questions and his answers — is calmness, reason, and judgment.

Fourth, this is the first credible post-Baby Boomer presidential candidate.

The Baby Boomers are best defined as the generation that came of age during the 1960's — whose worldview and outlook was shaped by Vietnam plus the widespread social unrest and change that peaked in the late 1960's.

Post-Boomers are those of us, like me, who came of age in the 1970's or 1980's — after Vietnam, after Nixon, after the “sexual revolution” and the cultural wars of the 1960's.

One of the reasons Senator Obama comes across as so fresh and different is that he's the first serious presidential candidate who isn't either from the World War II era (Reagan, Bush Sr, Dole, and even McCain, who was born in 1936) or from the Baby Boomer generation (Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, and George W. Bush).

He's a post-Boomer.

Most of the Boomers I know are still fixated o­n the 1960's in o­ne way or another — generally in how they think about social change, politics, and the government.

It's very clear when interacting with Senator Obama that he's totally focused o­n the world as it has existed since after the 1960's — as am I, and as is practically everyone I know who's younger than 50.

What's the picture that emerges from these four impressions?

Smart, normal, curious, not radical, and post-Boomer.

If you were asking me to write a capsule description of what I would look for in the next President of the United States, that would be it.

Having met him and then having watched him for the last 12 months run o­ne of the best-executed and cleanest major presidential campaigns in recent memory, I have no doubt that Senator Obama has the judgment, bearing, intellect, and high ethical standards to be an outstanding president — completely aside from the movement that has formed around him, and in complete contradiction to the silly assertions by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns that he's somehow not ready.

Before I close, let me share two specific things he said at the time — early 2007 — o­n the topic of whether he's ready.

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive — as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign — you'll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer — political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from o­ne of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been o­ne of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win — and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

This speaks well to the Senator's ability to run a campaign, but speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers — another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point — well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy — should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm o­n the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts o­n foreign policy — and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that o­ne.

But then he made what I think is the really good point.

He said — and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am — my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world — parts of the world that we really care about — when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

He's got my vote.

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