I’m logging this one under “Mind Control” because I think this is one of the best essays in recent memory about what is really going on in the mind’s of politicians. We, as a country, and the media, have become so obsessed with taking sides on debates that we’ve really blinded ourselves to what makes a good leader. It is not their policies.[^1] It is not their stances on certain issues. What is the ultimate test of a good leader is how they run their organizations. Chip Collis makes the excellent point that the one respect in which W and HRC are alike is in the fact that they favor cronyism over being open-minded and diplomatic. And cronyism is what really did damage to this country over the last eight years, from “Rumsfield to Brownie.” Do we want more of that?

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The whole change vs experience dichotomy in the media is a lie and an oversimplification. And the media’s constant churling that there are no real policy differences between the democratic candidates is a lie and an oversimplification. There could not be more of a difference between a candidate who stood against a popular but mistaken war, and one who made a politically calculated vote to support the war because she knew she was running for president in a few year’s time, and didn’t want to get caught on the losing side. But if the media going to make change versus experience their war drum then I could not agree more with will.I.am at the Huffington Post. No one has the experience to deal with the atrocities and global crises we are facing today. No one. And in lieu of that, we need someone with “desire, strength, courage, ability, and passion.” Not a cynic who voted for a war so that she couldn’t be labeled as a peacenik or a dove. We need hope and we need someone who genuinely believes in it, someone who has written a book on the audacity of it.

> “Martin Luther King didn’t have experience to lead… > Kennedy didn’t have experience to lead… > Susan B. Anthony… > Nelson Mandela… > Rosa Parks… > Gandhi… > Anne Frank…”

America! Translate the word experience for what it means in politics: “I know the game. I can play the game. I will not change the game.” Experience brought us a war. Experience has us locked in a partisan game in which only the American people are the losers. The list of heroes above didn’t need experience. They needed courage and passion and ambition. Barack Obama has these qualities. And we need him. ((And despite what the media keeps repeating about Obama’s “vagueness,” you need only read his policies to alleviate yourself of that myth.))