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The Politics of Youth

Candidate Obama is currently 45 years old. A prospective President Obama will be 47 years-old if/when he takes office in January 2009. A little historical perspective is appropriate here. This would place Barack Obama in a tie for 5th place with Grover Cleveland on the list of our nation’s youngest presidents. Theodore Roosevelt was a mere 42 years-old at his inauguration, John F. Kennedy was 43, Clinton and Grant were 46, and Cleveland was 47. Clearly, his projected age upon inauguration would not be unprecedented. But questions about Obama’s youth and relative inexperience persist. In response, Senator Obama makes a few important distinctions. He has stated that “I’m not sure anyone is ready to be president before they’re president,” and that Vice President Dick Cheney, a former defense secretary, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "had the best resume on paper of any foreign policy team and the result has been what I consider to be one of the biggestforeign policy mistakes in our history.”

Cartoon Barack

The Senator also draws a distinction between his improbable candidacy and that of one of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, Obama is taking care to announce his bid formally in Springfield, where both he and Lincoln served in the Illinois Legislature. Lincoln served a series of terms in the state legislature in Illinois and only one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet with such meager legislative experience and no executive credentials whatsoever, well, history tells the tale best. So at the very least, these distinctions should question how we size up our candidates. Some of our most deeply-ingrained assumptions and standards about the experiences necessary to be an effective executive should be shaken up by this comparison. In this same vein, Senator Obama offers himself up as a youthful alternative to the withering disputes from the Baby Boomer generation that are being played out among our nation’s leaders. We have modern problems which we can no longer attempt to solve through the lens of the polarized 1960s, with a high-tension civil rights era mindset. Things have changed, circumstances have advanced and so should the ideas and attitudes of our leaders. This comes built-in for Obama, who graduated from law school as recently as the early 1990s. Again, questions about his youth and inexperience remain.

As a college student, I am mildly insulted by insinuations that because Senator Obama completed his college education only this past decade, he is somehow not qualified to lead this country. The five men who governed this country, younger than a prospective President Obama would be, have already proven that it can be done and can be done well. President Kennedy called the nation to hope in the midst of a tiresome war as a young upstart and his successes are still heralded today. Obama echoes that tradition. And finally, President Lincoln handily dispensed with questions about his inexperience by serving as one of the greatest executives this country has ever known. Springfield, here we come.

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Barack Obama Announces Candidacy

Last Tuesday, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 Presidential Race.

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Wahhabi...what?

This makes me sick to my stomach even repeating this. I am hesitant to do so. This is typical of how political campaigns have been run in our country recently. But as the Senator challenges us to not allow "the smallness of our politics affect our ability to address the magnitude of our problems," it does not have to be this way.

The Obama campaign spent the past few days debunking a viciously inaccurate story alleging that the Senator, while living with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia, was educated in a madrassa, schools where an ultra-conservative brand of Islam is taught. This story originated from conservative Insight magazine and was then broadcast a number of times on Fox News and eventually picked up by none other than Rush Limbaugh. Fortunately, credible news organizations not only shied away from the tall tale, but some even went so far as to fact-check (who, the media?) and rebut it. Katie Couric sums up this whole ordeal pretty well by stating the following in her notebook:

It was a shocking story. A story that flew across the country on the wings of a million emails. But it was also a false story.

Obama was never enrolled in a madrassa. And during the years he lived in Indonesia--with a nonpracticing Christian mother and a nonpracticing Muslim stepfather--he attended two schools, one secular, the other Catholic. In fact, Obama has never been a Muslim.

This episode was an important reminder for all of us in the news business, particularly as we enter a presidential campaign.

Let's resist the temptation to repeat unsourced gossip. Let's fact-check first and broadcast second.

In other words: we should report BEFORE we decide.

(http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/01/25/couricandco/entry2399831.shtml)

Kudos to Katie Couric and other fair-minded journalists out there who did their homework and righted a massive journalistic wrong. Shame on Fox News, Mr. Limbaugh and Insight magazine for perpetually tearing down progressive candidates/officials with dishonesty and conjecture. And props to Obama's campaign for fighting back promptly against incendiary tittle-tattle and refusing to allow unscrupulous "news" agencies to swiftboat the man who is our best hope for reclaiming the presidency and restoring some dignity to that office.

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Barack, Law Student

For those of us studying political science, a typically evasive, noncommittal response to the incessant question, "What are you doing after graduation?" will usually, at some point, entail those two dreaded words: law school. Long, sleepless nights locked in the library, vicious competiton from classmates, and high costs for that JD are enough to startle even the most ambitious undergraduate. But at our nation's most prestigious law school, Barack Obama honed his political skills and gained his ideological voice.

There, he learned to navigate the divisive debates taking place between his classmates who quickly ensconced themselves in their own extreme philosophical cliques. According to former classmates, he concerned himself more with the group consensus than with his own personal perspective. So much so that he left even close friends unaware of his actual position on any number of issues and both sides of many a debate believing that he agreed with them or at least, would give them a fair shake.

That's how he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He took a keen interest in hearing out all sides of every fractious debate and easing the tensions that existed. To the point of appearing ambivalent on the issues, Obama walked the line and brought people together and earned the esteem of his classmates, even those with whom he disagreed.

Senator Obama likes to paraphrase the late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois by imploring that, "we can disagree without being disagreeable." For this practice, he was rewarded with a prestigious and history-making presidency. As the 2008 campaign gets underway, the question must be asked: Will history trump itself?

(For more, check out: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html?em&ex=1170219600&en=40d6d49e1bf6ed55&ei=5087%0A)

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Policy

Candidate At a Glance

Name:	Barack Obama
Age:	45
Hometown:	Chicago, IL
Education:	BA Columbia University, JD Harvard Law School
Marital Status:	Married
Children:	Two
Political Party:	Democratic
Current Job:	Senator, Illinois

Websites of Interest:

•	Obama Senate Site
•	Campaign Site
•	Students for Barack Obama
•	Run Obama
•	Wikipedia

Contributors: Paul Perry, American University '07;
Mike Simmons, Amherst College '06