Barack H. Obama: What's In A Name?

The latest distraction is whether or not Obama's critics are baiting by using Obama's middle name, Hussein.

Get real. Some words DON'T matter.

The name isn't important. The problem Obama is having is he is late to realizing when something is important. With Rezko, he gives the money to charity but only after the press notices. With Farrakhan and his minister, he denounces and rejects but only after the press notices. With Al Qaeda in Iraq, surely he noticed? With the chair of the sub-committee, he should have held hearings but said nothing until the press noticed. He knows there is a puppet government in Russia but doesn't know any details until the press notices and Clinton explains it to him.

What this buttresses is the charges that he is long on rhetoric and short on real experience because all of these are the kinds of details a leader absolutely must be aware of at all times. It's no good to be in California when a hurricane roars into New Orleans as Bush was.

Why will moderate Democrats vote for McCain? At the age of a lot of us, we've been watching "movements' all of our lives. Most failed to deliver so we are very cynical about that and not just a little creeped out by Obamamania. We know by experience this kind of thing doesn't deliver. We don't want 'a dream'. We want a plan. We know Obama may someday be a good leader but these gaffes in judgement are too frequent and too noticeable.

At voting time, we vote for real change, and we do what Obama says we should do: we cross the party lines to get leadership and a practical approach to government based on our perception of the person best qualified to lead. If the Democratic Party has decided it is more important to make a statement than it is to lead effectively, then the Democratic Party has abandoned us to its feel-good politics which we know don't work when the choices are hard and unpopular but ultimately the right choices.

I'm a Democrat and I support Hillary Clinton, but if I have to choose between party loyalty and loyalty to the country, I choose the country. Had the Republican Party done that, the last eight years would not have happened. I didn't make that mistake last time and I won't this time. It isn't that Obama is the same thing as Bush; it is that a choice for Obama is a choice for the same kind of thing: feel good over experience.

It comes down to doing the right thing and if we lose doing that, we lose doing it right. If we win, we won for the right reasons.