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Marsha in MD Proudly Supporting Obama in Spite of all the False and Erratic Charges Against Him (Lanham, MD)

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Eloquent Obama Article

By Marsha in MD Proudly Supporting Obama in Spite of all the False and Erratic Charges Against Him - Oct 22nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm EDT

Obama Will Be One of The Greatest (and Most Loved) American Presidents

Great presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with
character, temperament and intelligence. Like firemen, cops, doctors or
soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine.

Obama is one of the most intelligent presidential aspirants to ever step
forward in American history.. The likes of his intellectual capabilities
have not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put
pen to paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart,
America: we have the leader for our times.

I say this as a white, former life-long Republican. I say this as the
proud father of a Marine. I say this as just another American watching
his pension evaporate along with the stock market! I speak as someone
who knows it's time to forget party loyalty, ideology and pride and put
the country first. I say this as someone happy to be called a fool for
going out on a limb and declaring that, 1) Obama will win, and 2) he is
going to be amongst the greatest of American presidents.

Obama is our last best chance. He's worth laying it all on the line for.
This is a man who in the age of greed took the high road of community
service. This is the good father and husband. This is the humble
servant. This is the patient teacher. This is the scholar statesman.
This is the man of deep Christian faith.

Good stories about Obama abound; from his personal relationship with his
Secret Service agents (he invites them into his home to watch sports,
and shoots hoops with them) to the story about how, more than twenty
years ago, while standing in the check-in line at an airport, Obama paid
a $100 baggage surcharge for a stranger who was broke and stuck. (Obama
was virtually penniless himself in those days.) Years later after he
became a senator, that stranger recognized Obama's picture and wrote to
him to thank him. She received a kindly note back from the senator.
(The story only surfaced because the person, who lives in Norway, told a
local newspaper after Obama ran for the presidency. The paper published
a photograph of this lady proudly displaying Senator Obama's letter.)

Where many leaders are two-faced; publicly kindly but privately feared
and/or hated by people closest to them, Obama is consistent in the way
he treats people, consistently kind and personally humble. He lives by
the code that those who lead must serve. He believes that. He lives it.
He lived it long before he was in the public eye.

Obama puts service ahead of ideology. He also knows that to win
politically you need to be tough. He can be. He has been. This is a man
who does what works, rather than scoring ideological points. In other
words he is the quintessential non-ideological pragmatic American. He
will (thank God!) disappoint ideologues and purists of the left and the
right.

Obama has a reservoir of personal physical courage that is unmatched in
presidential history. Why unmatched? Because as the first black
contender for the presidency who will win, Obama, and all the rest of
us, know that he is in great physical danger from the seemingly
unlimited reserve of unhinged racial hatred, and just plain unhinged
ignorant hatred, that swirls in the bowels of our wounded and sinful
country. By stepping forward to lead, Obama has literally put his life
on the line for all of us in a way no white candidate ever has had to
do. (And we all know how dangerous the presidency has been even for
white presidents.)

Nice stories or even unparalleled courage isn't the only point. The
greater point about Obama is that the midst of our worldwide financial
meltdown, an expanding (and losing) war in Afghanistan, trying to
extricate our country from a wrong and stupidly mistaken, ruinously
expensive war in Iraq, our mounting and crushing national debt, awaiting
the next (and inevitable) al Qaeda attack on our homeland, watching our
schools decline to Third World levels of incompetence, facing a general
loss of confidence in the government that has been exacerbated by the
Republicans doing all they can to undermine our government's
capabilities and programs... President Obama will take on the leadership
of our country at a make or break time of historic proportions. He faces
not one but dozens of crisis, each big enough to define any presidency
in better times.

As luck, fate or divine grace would have it (depending on one's personal
theology) Obama is blessedly, dare I say uniquely, well-suited to our
dire circumstances. Obama is a person with hands-on community service
experience, deep connections to top economic advisers from the renowned
University of Chicago where he taught law, and a middle-class background
that gives him an abiding knowledgeable empathy with the rest of us. As
the son of a single mother, who has worked his way up with merit and
brains, recipient of top-notch academic scholarships, the peer-selected
editor of the Harvard Law Review and, in three giant political steps to
state office, national office and now the presidency, Obama clearly has
the wit and drive to lead.

Obama is the sober voice of reason at a time of unreason. He is the
fellow keeping his head while all around him are panicking. He is the
healing presence at a time of national division and strife. He is also
new enough to the political process so that he doesn't suffer from the
terminally jaded cynicism, the seen-it-all-before syndrome afflicting
most politicians in Washington. In that regard we Americans lucked out.
It's as if having despaired of our political process we picked a name
from the phone book to lead us and that person turned out to be a very
man we needed.

Obama brings a healing and uplifting spiritual quality to our politics
at the very time when our worst enemy is fear. For eight years we've
been ruled by a stunted fear-filled mediocrity of a little liar who has
expanded his power on the basis of creating fear in others. Fearless
Obama is the cure. He speaks a litany of hope rather than a litany of
terror.

As we have watched Obama respond in a quiet reasoned manner to crisis
after crisis, in both the way he has responded after being attacked and
lied about in the 2008 campaign season, to his reasoned response to our
multiplying national crises, what we see is the spirit of a trusted
family doctor with a great bedside manner. Obama is perfectly suited to
hold our hand and lead us through some very tough times. The word panic
is not in the Obama dictionary.

America is fighting its 'Armageddon' in one fearful heart at a time. A
brilliant leader with the mild manner of an old-time matter-of-fact
country doctor soothing a frightened child is just what we need. The
fact that our 'doctor' is a black man leading a hitherto white-ruled
nation out of the mess of its own making is all the sweeter and raises
the Obama story to that of moral allegory.

Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who
have had to work for everything they've gotten and had to do twice as
well as the person standing next to them because of the color of their
skin. His experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social
background and prejudice could have been embittering or one that
fostered a spiritual rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama
radiates the calm inner peace of the spirit of forgiveness.

Speaking as a believing Christian I see the hand of a merciful God in
Obama's candidacy. The biblical metaphors abound. The stone the builder
rejected is become the cornerstone... the last shall be first... he that
would gain his life must first lose it... the meek shall inherit the
earth.

For my secular friends I'll allow that we may have just been
extraordinarily lucky! Either way America wins. Only a brilliant man,
with the spirit of a preacher and the humble heart of a kindly family
doctor can lead us now. We are afraid, out of ideas, and worst of all
out of hope. Obama is the cure. And we Americans have it in us to rise
to the occasion. We will. We're about to enter one of the most
frightening periods of American history. Our country has rarely faced
more uncertainty. This is the time for greatness. We have a great
leader. We must be a great people backing him, fighting for him,
sacrificing for a cause greater than ourselves.

A hundred years from now Obama's portrait will be placed next to that of
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Long before
that we'll be telling our children and grandchildren that we stepped out
in faith and voted for a young black man who stood up and led our
country back from the brink of an abyss.

We'll tell them about the power of love, faith and hope. We'll tell them
about the power of creativity combined with humility and intellectual
brilliance. We'll tell them that President Obama gave us the gift of
regaining our faith in our country. We'll tell them that we all stood up
and pitched in and won the day. We'll tell them that President Obama
restored our standing in the world. We'll tell them that by the time he
left office our schools were on the mend, our economy booming, that we'd
become a nation filled with green energy alternatives and were leading
the world away from dependence on carbon-based destruction. We'll tell
them that because of President Obama's example and leadership the
integrity of the family was restored, divorce rates went down, more
fathers took responsibility for their children, and abortion rates fell
dramatically as women, families and children were cared for through
compassionate social programs that worked. We'll tell them about how the
gap closed between the middle class and the super rich, how we won
health care for all, how crime rates fell, how bad wars were brought to
an honorable conclusion. We'll tell them that when we were attacked
again by al Qaeda, how reason prevailed and the response was smart,
tough, measured and effective, and our civil rights were protected even
in times of crisis...

We'll tell them that we were part of the inexplicably blessed miracle
that happened to our country those many years ago in 2008 when a young
black man was sent by God, fate or luck to save our country. We'll tell
them that it's good to live in America where anything is possible. Yes
we will.

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Volunteer not Contributor

By Marsha in MD Proudly Supporting Obama in Spite of all the False and Erratic Charges Against Him - Apr 14th, 2008 at 10:04 pm EDT

I received email today that the bitter comment was BHO's response to an Obama volunteer campagn worker who was planning to come to PA to work his campaign and that she was simply asking him for a situational report on the tasks ahead. Does anyone know if this is true? It seems this would make a difference if he was talking to his own volunteers and not making these comments in his speech to a roomful of elitist contributors?

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