Why I support Barack Obama

As many of you know, I have supported Obama from the beginning and now I see that he has a real chance of winning. But he is up against a very well organized Clinton campaign. I urge you to volunteer, send money, do whatever it takes to help Obama win the Democratic Party nomination.
Here are my reasons for supporting Obama:
1. Because he is both African-American and Caucasian, and spent at least a few years in Indonesia, he represents a new face to the world. We are no longer a superpower, or the lone superpower. It is essential that we show the world that we are no longer governed by a narrow-minded minority who have very little knowledge of the real world and are only interested in world domination.
2. He is inspirational. The Clintons and much of the media have done everything to make this seem inconsequential, but inspiration is not a small matter. If you create cynicism in a democracy, which is what Rove and the Clintons do regularly by nasty campaigning, you create more than minor trouble. You undermine the essence of democracy, which is that people will believe in their ability to vote, elect and participate. Inspiring people as a leader means causing people to believe in themselves and their ability to create a movement independent of the candidate. Obama is not creating a “cult of personality,” as one pundit put it, but instead is creating a movement of persons, especially young persons, who are entering and revitalizing the political process.
3. Obama grasps how to lead and he has plenty of experience. I have never bought H. Clinton’s “experience. Being the spouse of a president is not at all the same as being president. My husband was VP of a major clothing company. Does that make me qualified to do that job? I don’t think so.
Mike Huckabee said about why people are voting for Obama instead of Clinton: "People don't want someone who can fix the carburetor. They want someone who can drive the car."
4. If Hillary Clinton is elected, we will never know what part Bill is playing in the presidency. This is dangerous. Gail Collins wrote an excellent column in the Times about the “chaos” of their relationship.
5. I attended a wedding last summer of one of Obama’s young staff persons and the daughter of an acquaintance. Lest you think I have a personal connection to the Obama campaign, you would be wrong. I was only there to help serve the Eucharist in this particular Episcopal church. Obama’s staff person is African-American, and the bride is Caucasian. I was moved beyond anything I had expected by these two persons and their families, especially his family. His father had raised him and his brothers by himself. His aunts were there, and one of them read the passages from Amos about justice flowing down like a mighty stream. I saw, in those moments, why it is more important to elect an African-American man than a woman. We have not healed from the years of segregation in this country, in every part of this country. We have the right candidate. Now is the time to begin.
6. If you want to know more, I urge you to read his books, but especially his first book, written before he was running for office: Dreams from My Father.