Claire McCaskill: Obama a leader of vision and courageBy CLAIRE McCASKILL
Special to The Star
Once in a generation, a leader emerges with the unique vision and courage to rally Americans around a common purpose. Barack Obama is such a leader, and our party and our country must not miss this opportunity.
Here in Missouri, we know what’s at stake in this election. Too many families are struggling to afford health care, to give their children a quality education, to own a home, and to live their American dream. Our troops are fighting tour after tour of duty in Iraq. Meanwhile, Americans are fed up with the partisanship and special interests in Washington, and have lost faith that fundamental change is possible.
Barack Obama gives us a reason to believe again. He began his life in public service more than two decades ago, bringing jobs and hope to laid off steelworkers as a community organizer.
As a state senator, he brought Democrats and Republicans together to expand health care and to give a tax cut to working people. And in Washington, I joined with Sen. Obama as he took the lead in fighting for, and passing, the farthest reaching ethics reform since Watergate.
To make a difference in people’s lives, Barack Obama knows that we need to have a different Washington. He is not committed to winning the partisan food-fight that has become business as usual; he wants to put an end to it so that we can start doing the people’s business.
To finally make health care affordable and accessible for all Americans, we need to push back against the special interests and bring Democrats and Republicans together — that’s what Sen. Obama has done throughout his public life.
To end the war in Iraq and keep America safe, we need leaders with the judgment and courage to reject the politics of fear that has infected our national security decisions — that’s what Sen. Obama did when he stood up and opposed going to war in Iraq.
On issue after issue, I have been impressed by how Barack Obama draws on his intellect, integrity and optimism to bring people together. Where some focus on our fears, he appeals to our hopes; where some focus on our difference, he speaks to our common goals.
It was my 18-year-old daughter who helped convince me to support this extraordinary leader. In seeing how this candidacy had helped awaken her hopes and her commitment to her country, I realized what Sen. Obama means when he quotes Dr. King’s “fierce urgency of now.”
We have a chance to choose a leader who can inspire our daughters and sons, and turn the page to a new chapter of American politics and policy.
Now is the time to stand for change. Now is the time to stand for Barack Obama.
Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator from Missouri.
http://www.kansascity.com/618/story/461433.htmlJean Carnahan explains why backing ObamaBy Jo Mannies
01/21/2008 2:29 pm
Former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., said today that it was a tough decision for her to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“He’s the man for now,” Carnahan said in a conference call with reporters.
Here’s the guts of her statement, released Sunday to the press:
“While I know and admire all the Democrats running for president, I am convinced that Barack Obama is the candidate best able to unite our nation and restore our moral leadership in the world,” said Carnahan. “As president, he will be a strong voice and a powerful force for change during this critical time in our nation’s history. Barack Obama is an inspirational leader, who embodies the ideals of our democracy and the hopes of a new century. I heartily endorse him for president of the United States.”
Carnahan relayed that she had delivered the bad news herself to former President Bill Clinton, who apparently called her last week to lobby for her support. Carnahan said she told him that she would support Sen. Clinton if she wins the nomination, but that she’d decided that Obama was the best choice.
She wasn’t sure what the Obama campaign may ask her to do in Missouri on his behalf, but she added that she’s prepared to do some traveling.
Unclear what the fallout will be from some women’s activists. I heard from several at Clinton’s rally last Saturday in Florissant, who said they had made clear to Sen. Claire McCaskill — either in person or in writing — that they were angry over her decision to go with Obama.
Carnahan, as many know, was the first woman to serve as a U.S. senator from Missouri. She served from 2001-2003 (and was replaced by Republican Jim Talent, R-Mo., who defeated her in the 2002 election.)
Jean Carnahan’s two sons — lawyer Tom Carnahan and U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan — endorsed Obama months ago.
Jean Carnahan said her daughter, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, won’t be endorsing anybody because “she counts the votes.”
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/political-fix/political-fix/2008/01/jean-carnahan-explains-why-backing-obama/St. Louis Post-Dispatch EndorsementBarack Obama: The new generation
01/26/2008
In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.
Thus did Barack Obama, in his campaign book "The Audacity of Hope," touch on a fundamental problem in today's American politics: It's too much about yesterday's American politics. In too many ways, it's still about Vietnam. It's still about hardhats and hippies. It's about Watergate and Iran-contra and Whitewater. It's about the past.
Barack Obama is aware of yesterday, but he is about today and tomorrow and next year. In a strong field of Democratic presidential contenders, he offers the best hope of transforming the debate and moving on to what America can be in the 21st century.
He is unlikely in many ways: He is young, only 46. He is the junior United States senator from Illinois, only a little more than three years out of the Illinois state Senate — as unlikely a forest for presidential timber as ever was. His middle name is Hussein. He spent his boyhood in Indonesia and Hawaii. His mother was a Kansan; his father was a Kenyan.
Did we mention he is black?
If America can get past all that, if America can unload its baggage and get on with the trip, there is no telling far and how fast it can go.
It's true that Mr. Obama's legislative portfolio is slim, although he has been strong on ethics reform and the disclosure of lobbyist influences. He's never managed any organization larger than his Senate staff, and he admits a weakness when it comes to paperwork and organization. The nice thing is that a president has people to do those things, and Mr. Obama has surrounded himself with a cadre of seasoned professionals. Mr. Obama can do things that better managers can't.
The toughest part of any president's job is to inspire and to lead. Think of Franklin Roosevelt and fear itself, of John F. Kennedy challenging America to go to the moon "because it is hard," or Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster. Mr. Obama, by virtue of his life story and his compelling gift for oratory, has that kind of capacity.
Already he has energized thousands of voters who had written off politics or never bothered to get involved. It's exciting to think of what that might mean.
"I've said only half facetiously that one of my jobs as president would be to make government cool again," Mr. Obama told our editorial board in a conference call on Friday. "And the reason is we've got to recruit a whole new generation of the best and the brightest to go into government. We're still living to some degree on the inspiration of the Kennedy era, and now those baby boomers are retiring."
We disagree with the details of some of Mr. Obama's legislative proposals, particularly his heavy reliance on insurance companies as part of an overhaul of national health policy. But we are comforted by his legislative career in Springfield and in Washington, where he worked diligently across party lines, seeking common ground and, often, finding it. He offers a welcome return to civility and cooperation.
We're afraid that wouldn't be the case with his principal opponent for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. She has been a diligent senator since her election in 2001, but she is a lightning rod. There is a difference, too, between seeking consensus and "triangulating" core principles into positions palatable to campaign donors.
And we confess to a certain "Clinton fatigue." The emergence of the former president as the Luca Brasi of the campaign trail reminds us of the worst of the Clinton years: the divisiveness and the bickering; the too-casual, if artful, blend of truth and half-truth. We're not eager for the replay.
As to John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, he is the right man at the wrong time, a star whose light is eclipsed by the tail of a comet.
Comets don't come around that often. In January of 1961, Ann Dunham Obama was six weeks pregnant with Barack Obama Sr.'s child when President Kennedy said at his inauguration that "the torch has been passed to a new generation." It's that time again.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/121FA9A750C5E018862573DC0003A07F?OpenDocumentMISSOURI-KANSAS SEIU ENDORSE OBAMAFrom NBC/NJ's Tricia Miller
The Missouri-Kansas SEIU state council decided this morning to endorse Obama, per the group's president Lenny Jones.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/10/18/418179.aspx
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