Obama '08?

Former Sec of State Powell said Obama handled the Wright situation very well and that Rev Wright has done some very admirable things.

Kitten with a Whip wrote:

Former Sec of State Powell said Obama handled the Wright situation very well and that Rev Wright has done some very admirable things.

He also said that there were WMDs in Iraq...

''You're sure?'' Mr. Powell is quoted as asking Mr. Bush in the Oval Office on Jan. 13, 2003, as the president told him he had made the decision to go forward. ''You understand the consequences,'' he is said to have stated in a half-question. ''You know you're going to be owning this place?''

Kitten with a Whip wrote:

Former Sec of State Powell said Obama handled the Wright situation very well and that Rev Wright has done some very admirable things.

He also said that there were WMDs in Iraq...

04/09/08
McCain 45%
Obama 46%

fishin wrote:

Kitten with a Whip wrote:

Former Sec of State Powell said Obama handled the Wright situation very well and that Rev Wright has done some very admirable things.

He also said that there were WMDs in Iraq...

Didn't you as well? So where does that leave us? Other than with some tentative but compelling conclusions regarding the judgement of the both of yas.

by Frank James

Colin Powell on Good Morning America today sounded like he was giving Sen. Barack Obama's talking points when it comes to the experience question.

ABC News's Dianne Sawyer asked Powell what he made of "relative lack of experience" at the national level, when it comes to envisioning the political phenom as president.

"He doesn't have experience at the senior levels of national government. But I've seen other individuals come along who didn't have that breadth of experience and what they do is surround themselves with people who do bring that experience.

"With Sen. Obama, he didn't have a lot of experience running a presidential campaign, did he? But he seems to know how to organize a task and he seems to know how to apply resources to a problem at hand. So that gives me some indication that (with) his inexperience in foreign affairs or domestic affairs, he may be someone who can learn quickly."

This is a point Obama has made repeatedly, that he should be judged by voters in large part on the presidential campaign he has put together whose success can't be denied.

One of the individuals Powell probably had in mind an old boss, the man who put him on the road to becoming one of Washington's most powerful players, President Ronald Reagan. Reagan had little foreign policy experience when he came to Washington in 1981 but did exactly what Powell talked about; he surrounded himself with a circle of experienced old Washington hands.

Powell, ever the diplomat and shrewd inside-the-Beltway navigator, said he liked all three presidential candidates, calling them good friends.

But he really sounded like an Obama man.

Whether or not Powell (damaged goods) is an "Obama man" or not, he is talking sense about how the Presidency works. No one should realistically expect any candidate to be expert in every policy field which impinges on the office. Leadership and organizational skills are what matters first, and then what one intends to do with those tools. The reason i don't trust Clinton is that she is likely to surround herself with people from her husband's administration, a dubious proposition. The Shrub surrounded himself with former Reaganites, and look where that has gotten us.

The reason i don't trust McBush is not because he doesn't necessarily have leadership and organizational skills, but because of what he will likely do with them. I see no prospect that his policies would differ materially from the Shrub's.

I like Obama more and more, although by default. I guess i see him as the least of the possible evils. I'd vote even for Clinton, though, to keep McBush out of the White House.

Setanta wrote:

Whether or not Powell (damaged goods) is an "Obama man" or not, he is talking sense about how the Presidency works. No one should realistically expect any candidate to be expert in every policy field which impinges on the office. Leadership and organizational skills are what matters first, and then what one intends to do with those tools. The reason i don't trust Clinton is that she is likely to surround herself with people from her husband's administration, a dubious proposition. The Shrub surrounded himself with former Reaganites, and look where that has gotten us.

The reason i don't trust McBush is not because he doesn't necessarily have leadership and organizational skills, but because of what he will likely do with them. I see no prospect that his policies would differ materially from the Shrub's.

I like Obama more and more, although by default. I guess i see him as the least of the possible evils. I'd vote even for Clinton, though, to keep McBush out of the White House.

I'm in agreement with you here. My support for Obama has largely rested on the idea that he is the least likely to be a repeat of previous administrations. Whether or not that actually will hold true remains to be seen but neither Clinton or McCain hold much hope in that regard.

Q: Do you have any regrets about the South Carolina tour? People there are still sort of mystified that you gave Donnie McClurkin the chance to get up on stage and do this, and he did go on sort of an antigay rant there.

A: I tell you what, my campaign is premised on trying to reach as many constituencies as possible, and to go into as many places as possible and sometimes that creates discomfort or turbulence. This goes back to your first question. If you're segmenting your base into neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them together and you just speak to them individually -- so I keep the African-Americans neatly over here and the church folks neatly over there and the LGBT community neatly over there -- then these kinds of issues don't arise.

The flip side of it is, you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with them and our campaign is built around the idea that we should all be talking. And that creates some discomfort because people discover, gosh, within the Democratic Party or within Barack Obama's campaign or within whatever sets of constituencies there are going to be some different points of view that might even be offensive to some folks. That's not unique to this issue. I mean, ironically, my biggest … the biggest political news surrounding me over the last three weeks has been Reverend Wright, who offended a whole huge constituency with some of his statements but has been very good on gay and lesbian issues. I mean he's one of the leaders in the African-American community of embracing, speaking out against homophobia, and talking about the importance of AIDS.

And so nobody is going to be perfectly aligned with my views. So what I hope is that people take me for who I am, for what I've said and for what I've displayed in terms of my commitment to these issues, but understanding that there's going to be a range of constituencies that I'm reaching out to and working on issues that we have in common, even though I may differ with them on other issues. And that's true, also, by the way … well, I think that's going to be true so long as I'm reaching out beyond the traditional Democratic base.

Setanta wrote:

Whether or not Powell (damaged goods) is an "Obama man" or not, he is talking sense about how the Presidency works. No one should realistically expect any candidate to be expert in every policy field which impinges on the office. Leadership and organizational skills are what matters first, and then what one intends to do with those tools. The reason i don't trust Clinton is that she is likely to surround herself with people from her husband's administration, a dubious proposition. The Shrub surrounded himself with former Reaganites, and look where that has gotten us.

The reason i don't trust McBush is not because he doesn't necessarily have leadership and organizational skills, but because of what he will likely do with them. I see no prospect that his policies would differ materially from the Shrub's.

I like Obama more and more, although by default. I guess i see him as the least of the possible evils. I'd vote even for Clinton, though, to keep McBush out of the White House.

I'm in agreement with you here. My support for Obama has largely rested on the idea that he is the least likely to be a repeat of previous administrations. Whether or not that actually will hold true remains to be seen but neither Clinton or McCain hold much hope in that regard.

God it's hilarious to see the reactionaries talking about someone and claiming they're socialist. Obama may be to the left of Francisco Franco, but that's about it. People like Okie seem to think that not being as far right as Genghis Kahn makes you a pinko . . .