Obama is trying to bring back the glory and charisma of JFK with his "10 year plan" (which is twice a "5 year plan"). Anyway, JFK's 10 years to the moon plan worked because everyone wanted to get to the moon. It was an American goal, not a Democratic or Republican goal. Therefore, I find it sort of absurd that Obama, who, assuming he wins this election as he hopes, will not even be president in 10 years is trying to compare his energy independence plan to JFK's plan to get to the moon. Yes, everyone in America wants energy independence and wants solutions to other problems; however, unlike getting to the moon, each person has their own ideas as to how to achieve those goals. It will be extremely difficult for Obama to have success in implementing plans that will acheive energy independence by 10 years from now when much of America disagrees on how to achieve such a goal and when he will not even be in charge in 10 years. I think what he needs to do for America is set benchmarks of where he hopes to be in 4 years and not in 10 years. However, the problem is that 4 years from now, America probably won't have seen the change it wants, so Obama must set 10 years from now, when he won't even be in charge, as the time he hopes to see the change he promises; the change for which many people are going to vote for him to lead the country for the next 4 years.
Sorry this is a very biased post. McCain is harder to listen to. He doesn't have such catchy speeches. I haven't picked up on any words I can be nit-picky about. Hopefully soon I will post a more even handed post.
And I'm just being picky about the idea of "10 years." I agree that we need to achieve energy independence.
3 comments:
Even I, the big Obama supporter I am, agree with you. JFK's moon thing was definitely not political, and so everyone was on board. That, and the fact America didn't want the Soviets to get there first. We're such competitive people, aren't we?
A thing like energy independence requires a lot more discussion and compromise and yada yada yada. I would love energy independence. Love it. But it's going to take a lot of work to get there. And as we all know, things in politics take so long to get accomplished.
Do I think Obama could make great strides in energy independence? Yes. Whether or not that can be done in 10 years, I agree, is debatable.
It's just a game. All of it.
I think ten years is just an estimate; Obama needs to push his energy independence thing to separate himself, but if he doesn't put a time limit on it then pundits would relate him to the Bush/Cheney "we'll get it done eventually" stance (that hasn't really worked); Obama just needs to throw out time to convince people that he would actually hit the issue hard instead of empty promises, which, admittedly, it might be empty anyway
hillary - exactly. "it's just game." totally agree.
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