why I'm voting for Obama

I think I need to write this. I think I need to put into words the inclinations and assumptions that've been floating around in my head for weeks (months?). More than anything, I need to check myself: are my motives really pure? Am I actually one of those wishy-washies who just don't want to elect the cranky dinosaur, exclusive of any real substantive arguments? I hope not.

1. Obama's policies more closely reflect my own priorities.
I'm not in love with every new government program Obama's proposing; in fact, it worries me a little that he plans so many new ones (it kind of feels like alphabet soup all over again--but hey, that kind of worked, right?). But really, so much of what he says makes sense. Go read the "Issues" section on his website and see if you feel the same way about his policies. Really, I think this is the most subjective and personal reason anyone should choose to support a politician, and the most important: do his or her beliefs align with yours?

2. Obama is articulate, logical, and non-inflammatory about what he plans to do.
I'm basing much of my opinion on each of the candidate's personal campaign websites--because where better to get accurate, unbiased information about what a candidate believes or wants than from his own mouth?--and these two sites alone are enough to completely turn me off of McCain. Look at Obama's website. It's clean, approachable, and actually discusses Obama's specific political strategies and beliefs right off the bat. In contrast, McCain's front page is visually cluttered and periodically pasted with self-contradictory attack ads against Obama. You have to dig to find out what he actually believes himself. Once you do find his "Issues" page, only 8 or 9 topics are discussed, and the discussions are windy, circumlocutious, and full of political hot air. From the analytical standpoint of an English major, the writing is terrible: poorly organized, difficult to follow, and the majority his arguments aren't backed up by any sort of authority other than his own opinion. Now go back to Obama's "Issues" section. For each of 20+ matters affecting the country, he identifies underlying problems causing the concern, often citing externally-sourced statistics or field-expert opinion, and outlines specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound plans for starting to fix each problem. In my book, this is a Good Thing. I may not be the world's biggest fan of all of his specific strategies, but look! He's trying to identify what's not working and offer specific ways to help. McCain's often too busy running ridiculous attack ads to bother with any of that meaty political stuff.

3. Obama's infinitely more likeable than McCain.
Yes, this actually is a legitimate matter. When we elect a president, we don't elect just a set of personal beliefs--we also elect the most powerful personality in the world. George Bush, for all of his (what I believe to be) good intentions, has tarnished the United State's reputation internationally because of not only his policies, but also his character: he's seen as bullheaded, mulish, often uncooperative, and worst of all, unintelligent and buffoonish. I'm not necessarily saying McCain falls into the same category (although anecdotal evidence tends to lean that direction); rather, I'm saying that Obama's July trip around the world was incredibly impressive for the personal connections he was able to build with other world leaders and the cooperation they've already promised. This doesn't just include leadership that has supported the U.S. in the past (like Great Britain)--it also includes some of the U.S.'s most strained relationships, like those with France and Iraq's leadership (such as it is). America needs a president who can bring a sense of pride, dignity, and cooperation back to the office of President. I believe Obama will do a better job of this than McCain . . . by far.

4. A "change" of pace.
The c-word has been thrown around so much already that it nearly turns my stomach to bring it up, but you know what? Obama's right. It may not hurt things to get a radical shake-up going in this country's leadership. When Bush entered office, gas was under $2 a gallon, New Orleans was a fully-functioning city, world opinion was generally favorable towards the U.S., we weren't involved in a massive (and massively expensive) colonial land war drawn-out struggle half a world away, Americans' pride in their country wasn't at post-Vietnam all-time lows, the U.S. government had a balanced budget, and the national debt was around 5 1/2 trillion dollars (instead of today's more than 8 trillion). Granted, I don't know if you can put even a majority of the blame for each of these things on Bush, but there's at least a weak causal relationship there. And granted, McCain isn't Bush. They are very different men with different opinions on some issues. But I can't help but feel that the country is ready for something drastically different, for better or for worse.

5. Education, plain and simple.
This should probably fall under the bit about "policies" up around the top somewhere, but it's important enough to me that I want to single it out. Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself to be politically moderate: I feel like I'm pretty conservative about some issues and more liberal about others, but that I don't align myself with either party. With that said, let me state that I believe the Republican way of approaching education is entirely flat-out wrong. (They're right about a lot of things; this isn't one of them.) I've spent four years of my college education reading and studying and analyzing (and conducting, actually) research about educational best practice and what makes good schools and good teachers good. It's what my degree is in. I feel passionate about the subject, and here's some of what I (and the body of educational research out there) have concluded:

Capitalism works really, really well for businesses and free markets. But guess what? Schools aren't markets! If you get a bad batch of supplies as a business owner, you throw them out or ship them back to the sender. But if you get a bad batch of students, you take them part and parcel, with just as open arms as the A-listers.
Competition works if you want the best to succeed. It's what makes American companies some of the best in the world. But competition sucks if you want everyone to succeed, witch is the foundational principle of American education. You can't run schools like you run markets!

I could give you a 20-page report about the statistics that show that No Child Left Behind has done astronomical amounts of damage to not just individual schools and students but to educational practice as a whole and the miserable state that 8 years of Republican policy has left our schools in. Here's just one: 70% of American 8th graders now can't read at an 8th-grade reading level. Seventy percent! The basic idea behind NCLB is flawed. Punishing schools that aren't doing well makes them do worse: removing resources removes solutions to problems--end of story. McCain wants more of the same, and it scares me spitless for my kids.

6. Palin? What the heck?
Let's take a candidate who would be the oldest man ever to take office as president if elected--a man with troubling health problems, no less--and pair him with a VP candidate who has been a state-level (not even national-level) political figure for a mere 24 months. Brilliant. You can shout all you want that Obama has no experience, but the comparison is just silly. Despite the Republicans' fascination with the pat phrase "community activist" (spoken, of course, with prideful disdain at the thought of serving one's community), Obama's actually got a lot more formal training in the way America runs (i.e. a Harvard Law degree, etc. etc.) than Palin does. How could a person with no degree in law or policy be expected to run the most powerful political entity in the world, should McCain keel over? And if you want to compare VP to VP, it becomes a lauging matter: Biden's got just as much "experience" as McCain. Plain and simple, Palin was chosen as a token to get women to vote for the Republican ticket, and everyone knows it. It's the same get-elected-at-any-cost kind of attitude that makes me so nauseated about Hillary Clinton, and it's very disappointing.

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With all that said, I have to remember that the election is still a long way out and a lot can change in a couple of months. But I guess those are some of the things I've been thinking about. For the record, those last two points sound a lot snippier than I mean them to; really, I think McCain is a good guy with good intentions. He's just not my first pick this time around. And no, this doesn't mean I've suddenly transformed into a rabid Democrat; on the contrary, I think my friend Michelle hit it right on the head when she said, "I don't want to pick a party. There are just too many issues to have only two sides." A two-party system, for all its benefits, really does oversimplify a lot of the most important things to talk about.

Are these . . . reasonable reasons? Thoughts? I know that there are plenty of things I'm not thrilled about when it comes to some of Obama's ideas. No one wants to pay more in taxes (although if you read up on Obama's actual statements, his plans aren't half as drastic as McCain & Co. make them sound), and I don't really like either candidate's solution to all the healthcare issues. What do you think?