Politics – Obama vs Clinton – leadership vs. micromanagement

As an approaching-middle-age male, I would say your analysis is spot on. I respect Mrs. Clinton for her efforts and passion, but her speaking style and mannerisms have always turned me off, and I never could put my finger on exactly why. I think you nailed it.

I used to be a right-leaning moderate, but Bush has pushed me to the left. The comic below sums up how I feel:
from “Get Your War On” I’m starting to like the idea of business-hostile, tax-and-spend Democrat.

There a lot of us yearning for an honest-to-God leftist who’s smarter than your average Joe, and knows what’s best for this country. We’ll elect a “do as I say” leftist President, that President will tell people what to do, and things will improve.

You’ve described two candidates trying to appeal to those leftists using different strategies. Obama’s strategy seems to be working better. But not all of the country is made of leftists and exhausted moderates ready to try anything different. So I think it remains to be seen if Obama’s message will appeal to voters outside the Democratic base.

You got my vote on this post!

I don’t care about any of the details at this point, I just honestly can’t imagine having to listen to her caterwauling for the next 4 (OMG, 8?) years.

I’m an independent, so my vote rarely amounts to anything for the presidency, but if I had to choose between the major parties, I think I’d go with Obama at this point.

If nothing else, I think he’d be a great “face of the nation” for those both inside and outside of our country.

I think this post gets the dynamics of each candidate’s self-presentation quite right. The rhetorical presentation from Clinton is “what I’ll do”, and from Obama, it is “what we/you will do”.

I see in Hillary a kind of bipolar mix of courage and timidity, predicated on her own calibrated assessment of whether she is in a position to out-argue the people in front of her and avoid any risks to herself. Give her a policy issue she has considered at length, and she’ll offer a commanding and detailed rundown. She’ll beat Obama, or at least pull a draw out of such discussions.

Give her an awkward situation, like a homophobic general with whom I’m sure she disagrees, and her instinct is to hold her tongue until the media pin her down and demand that she comment (see http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/14/clinton.gays/index.html)

I find this kind of moment emblematic of her style. I presume that every politician calculates and calibrates each statement in light of the question of “who might I offend now?”. However, Hillary seems to let those calculations bog her down to the point that everyone is left a bit confused, offended, or just vaguely annoyed.

But sometimes leadership requires courage in the absence of perfect mastery of events. It’s another analogy from medicine that may or may not apply to politics, I guess.

I too feel that Hillary Clinton lacks some sort of leadership quality that a lot of us would like to see in our future president. Although she makes good arguments on some points, she seems give people a certain distaste when she speaks at the campaigns. Obama on the other hand is very easy-going and is gennerally likable towards his fans an voters. Although I am trying to keep an open mind about Obama and Clinton, because either way we finally get some diversity in our Presidential election. It would be great to either have our first colored president or our first woman president. Even though I can’t vote cause I’m only 13…

I’ve been aware of who Hillary is since the Clinton era. I recall watching an old film clip on national TV in the early 1990′s, featuring a college cheerleading Hillary at the lecturn leading the charge to the listening minions, drunk with power stupidly denouncing corporations generally – the “in politics” of the hippie era. That got me thinking that she is phony. And came Health care, which is why I voted the first Clinton into Office. What a phony issue that became, under Hillary’s charge where the issue was placed into devisive limbo. Now I really don’t care for Hillary after that fake election promise. Then came her carpetbagging move to NY to become Senator, to position herself for a presidental run – cheesy and phony too. And now she claims 35 years experience, including guiding peace in Northern Ireland. Well, I just read articles from the UK, where they interviewed the real peace making players on that issue, who are baffled by just what role Hillary played in their peace process. They recalled her to have flow in one day for a photo op there, nothing to do with the peace process at all – she was not remembered as being one of the players at all. So, again what goes around comes around – a big phony, Hillary Clinton. Thank god the thinking voter of the caucus’ as opposed to the shallow thinking voter of the primaries has shown Hillary the door teens of times now in the state’ caucus’. Am I missing anything? Oh, I understand Hillary had a distain for military uniforms at the WH before? And according to the 1st Clinton admin staff, her presence sent a chill across the room of the staffers, you know not that warm fuzzy feeling, but that cautious silent socializing feeling. What a great leader she would make, leading this nation to hell her way.