And you demonstrate the problems that we have here on the SDMB- people who refuse to back up their own assertions when called on them. If *you *claim that “leadership, courage, and all those things that Obama has never been called on to demonstrate” are what makes a good President, *you *get to explain how, exactly, having those things results in one being a good President. There have been plenty of examples given here in this thread, alone, that show that there’s no correlation between your so-narrowly-defined “leadership” and a successful Presidency.
It can be just as easily argued that years of the type of experience you’re looking for merely results in a candidate who’s beholden to special interests. And as for your candidate’s vaunted military courage? How the hell is that even useful to the Presidential office?
Obama’s courage in being the first black candidate seems a HELL of a lot more useful to the office.
And for the record, I just *knew *that you would duck my question. I wasn’t a bit surprised.
So, whatever suits you we can discuss? Sorry, Homey don’t play dat game. If you want to compare the experience of sitting in a Vietnamese prison with the experience of rescuing Ameican neighborhoods from disaster, then you need to show how the former somehow trumps the latter. Empathy with torture, I will grant you. But this notion that McCain is immune to any and all criticism just because of his Vietnam experience is ridiculous, and you know it.
Bullshit. I realize that the average American idiot cannot undersand the nuances here, but you can. Even if we ignore charges of suspicion about his particular case and how much or little he suffered, it isn’t like he was charging into a prison camp to rescue a bunch of prisoners, an act we could all agree would be courageous. Instead, he simply was captured like any other prisoner, and endured whatever it was that he endured because he had no choice. It seems to me that choice is a critical component of courage.
Unless you mean to say that every former POW is qualified to be president, I don’t know what you’re on about. Are you saying that Obama would not be qualified unless he were lynched and dragged behind a pickup truck? If not, what the fuck does your ignorant remark about him and his church have to do with anything?
Yeah, God knows the Vietnam War politicians were fucking saints.
I guess now we won’t mention fathers and grandfathers anymore, since it doesn’t suit your argument — whatever it may be. I think it might behoove you to spend some time in an inner-city slum with all your hope and whiteness stripped from you, so you can languish for years in poverty, violence, and hunger. Maybe then you would not trivialize their experiences.
I guess it depends on what you’re looking for. And apparently, you’ve settled on McCain. Otherwise, you might be bringing up such stupid shit as his divorce to indicate a kink in his judgment and leadership qualities. Who knows.
Look, I haven’t tended to be dismissive of Obama’s experience. I don’t think it would be wise to dismiss McCain’s out of hand. In doing so, you would be making the same mistake as, well, McCain - when he tried to dismiss Romney’s own rather broad experience as completely inappropriate for the job at hand.
Like I said before, everyone brings different life experiences along with them here, and I think we ought to view these fairly instead of dismissively. And frankly, I’d say the same thing to Shodan.
I hate when people of Shodan’s intelligence become so desperate that they stoop to Obama’s church arguments. Why not argue that McCain can’t be trustworthy since his own wife doesn’t trust him? She made him sign a pre-nup. That’s the kind of crap Republicans are trying to stir up.
Nah, you’ve had your nose rubbed in it often enough that citing it again isn’t going to do any good.
It’s quite like Lightnin’'s foolishness about how courage and leadership haven’t been shown to be valuable skills. These aren’t serious requests for cites; they’re an attempt to sidetrack a debate about qualities that do not redound to St. Obama’s credit.
It’s fine, don’t get me wrong - what else have you got, after all? Obama is black, he’s pretty, he’s a good speaker, and -
The one thing he did which was inarguably heroic was to turn down a deal to be released because he refused to go unless his fellow POW’s could go with him.
But in the rest of my post I explained why I thought that was relevant. If we are going to discuss experience, then naturally the discussion must be about what kind of experience is important, because as you point out, every candidate has experience, they aren’t newborns. So the question isn’t who has experience, but who has relevant experience (and of course it is not the only thing). A fair question, and in my mind the idea that someone who has been in government longer is therefore more expereinced holds no water. My interpretation is actually that McCain’s govenrment experience is too narrowing because it is all he has known for 30 years.
And I’ll thank you to at least show me the courtesy of looking me in the face when you deliver a backhanded insult like that.
I would seriously like for you to show a correlation between the type of experience you’re looking for and a good President. Hand-waving and saying “it’s obvious” doesn’t cut it around here, Shodan, and you know it.
You’re basically saying “McCain’s got IT, and IT is a necessary thing for a good President to have. Obama doesn’t have IT, and therefore can’t be a good President”… while never accurately describing IT or showing how it relates to a good Presidential seating. Is this seriously the best you can do?
President is a unique job. Only an ex president has had real experience.
Senator,governor ,judge, nice jobs but not relevant. The job is far too big for a man to run by himself. No occupational background will tell you what kind of president a man will become. It is about his staff. When they start picking VP and discuss cabinet positions, you might get a better picture.
It’s not so tortured and new-fangled as you think. Second-in-command in most military units is the Executive Officer (XO) which strongly implies that there are some executive duties to perform somewhere. This is a term that has been in use for a very long time across all service branches.
McCain served as the squadron XO before being promoted to its CO.
Like I said, lots of personnel and equipment to run. That’s executive experience of some form. If Diogenes can claim that running the Law Review should count as some sort of executive experience (a claim I have in no way denied) then this experience has to be taken into account as well.
Can we not suppose Obama is exhibiting a form of courage right now?
IIRC when General Colin Powell was considering a presidential candidacy his wife tearfully talked him out of it over concerns of assassination. Those concerns seem to be shared by the Secret Service who have provided Obama with extra security (or security sooner than usual for a candidate).
I do not know but I’d bet money Barack had that discussion with his wife and chose to go forward and has to be a legitimate concern of theirs.
So, to stand up in the face of that exhibits courage does it not?
So you ask if we can discuss it, I say Yes, you say No you don’t want to.
Like I said above, I understand why Obama supporters might shy away from discussions about his experience.
I don’t remember posting that McCain is immune to any and all criticism. In fact, I didn’t. But, to give you credit, I suspect you did not know that. Which, of course, is one of the problems with debates on the SDMB, especially with the Obama supporters. It is not beyond the realm of decency to compare McCain with Obama and conclude that McCain comes out ahead in some area or other. And these screams of moral outrage whenever someone questions St. Obama the Great remind me less of a political campaign and more of a personality cult. This is a political campaign, not the Second fucking Coming. And Hilary was not the Whore of Babylon any more than McCain is the anti-Christ.
So you are saying that it took no courage to refuse preferential treatment, and early release? He had no choice there? I think you are mistaken.
I am comparing the backgrounds and experience of the two major candidates for President.
As mentioned, I was comparing their books.
No thanks. A North Vietnamese prison camp either. Of course, I’m not running for President.
If you want to bring up McCain’s divorce, go ahead, if you think it’s relevant. If you don’t, then don’t drag it and and try to blame it on me.
No, that’s all it is.
Over the Internet? Not sure how you expect me to bring that one off.
How about if I resort to argument via capitalization - would that help?
