08AMA DAMMIT!

Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear. -- Publilius Syrus

Zorn nailed it.

Whenever I see someone trot out the familiar list of reasons why Barack Obama could never be elected president in '08 -- "his minimal foreign policy experience, his lack of any major accomplishments on the national stage, his apparent unwillingness to spend political capital on unpopular positions" -- I am struck by the same thing:

George W. Bush is apparently not the President of the United States.

• As a candidate for the 2000 election, George W. Bush had almost no foreign policy experience. I believe that it consisted solely of eating Thanksgiving dinner with Saudi princes.
• In the run up to 2000, George W. Bush lacked of any accomplishments on the national stage -- major or otherwise. Mr. Bush's sole accomplishments as governor of a weak-governor state were having his father's name and setting the record for executions.
• And when it comes to "unwillingness to spend political capital on unpopular positions" Mr. Bush did his best to hide all of his actual positions -- pro-oil, pro-war, pro-rich tax cuts, theocratic totalitarianism -- from the American voters.

If Obama can't become president in '08, Bush must not have become president in 2000. And Bill Clinton was never president during the 1990's either.

No, Barack Obama is not the perfect candidate for President of the United States -- but who is? There is no ideal candidate and there never has been. So, lacking an ideal candidate for president, we would be damn fools to pass over Obama in a fruitless search for an imaginary, perfect presidential candidate.

And there never will be a perfect candidate. No amount of waiting will ever make Obama the perfect candidate. So if he is waiting to perfect his candidacy before running, Obama is fooling himself and doing the nation a disservice.