Obama is not an empty rhetorician.
I've gotten so tired of all the complaints and criticisms regarding Obama's supposed lack of legislative achievements. It's a meme that is so obviously wrong: How could any candidate rack up so many endorsements -- from unions, to pro-choice groups, to intellectuals, to senators and representatives, to Caroline Kennedy -- without having "substance"? Wouldn't one think that these people - so invested in backing the right candidate because their reputations and careers depend on it - would do their research? How indeed could a candidate work from poverty to attend Harvard Law and then become President of the Harvard Law Review, go on to become a community organizer, civil rights lawyer, a lecturer of Constitutional law, and serve an 8-year stint in the Illinois state legislature to then become a Senator, not have substantive work in his background? And write two award-winning books of his own, without ghostwriters (unlike Bill and Hillary)?
Come on people! No amount of charisma can get a candidate that far unless he or she has a depth and breadth in both knowledge and ability.
I'm tired of journalists who recycle this storyline over and over again because it fits an easy narrative of opposition: Hillary's the experienced, substantive one (even though she's served less time as an elected official) and Obama's just a political cipher. Most dichotomies are false. This dichotomy is even more false than most. As citizens, we ought to be less lazy researchers and more vigilant readers of the narratives the (mostly lazy) media(meat)heads throw at us.
So, here's to reading up on Obama's work as a legislator. And in that spirit, I'm not going to list all his accomplishments here (I hate brief outlines; they don't give analysis and they support more lazy reading). I'm instead going to go ask that people read and research widely and arrive at their own judgment, starting with these links:
- There's an excellent, in-depth review of Obama's work in the Senate from Obsidian Wings' blog today (in fact, Obsidian Wings has several entries on Obama's work, dating back to 2006, pre-Obama-campaign-hype):
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/...
- There's, of course, Wikipedia - which, before you laugh at Wikipedia's reliability as a site for knowledge, Wikipedia's bibliography and set of links for Obama-related articles is immense (hear, hear for open-sourcing):
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
- And, in response to Texas State Senator Kirk Watson's pathetic appearance last night on Chris Matthews' Hardball last night - here's Senator Claire McCaskill on Obama's legislative work in the Senate:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
- And, for those of you who want to know his stance on issues (even though issues are so not an issue at this point because he and Hillary are virtually identical counterparts here and because issues won't matter until we get a real working Democratic majority in Congress), here's Obama's own website. So many people have already put this link up - thank you for posing the reminder to everyone that we should read what the candidate's issues are first before saying he or she has "no details" (such an ironic claim in reference to Obama now because he was criticized last year before and at the beginning of the campaign for being too detailed and long-winded on policy):
http://www.barackobama.com/...