Obama: Don't 'lecture' me on change

[jefferson_dem]

Obama: Don't 'lecture' me on change
Email|Link|Comments (0) By Scott Helman, Political Reporter

DES MOINES -- Barack Obama had a pointed message this morning for his opponents in the Democratic primary race: Don't tell me what it takes to make change.

Delivering a newly freshened stump speech designed to sum up his case for the presidency, Obama sought to counter two distinct arguments that his rivals have used against him in the run-up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

The argument from John Edwards is that Obama lacks the toughness and the fight to truly change Washington. The argument from Hillary Clinton is that Obama is merely hoping for change and not tested enough to see it through. Obama, addressing several hundred supporters at a banquet hall in downtown Des Moines, today offered a forceful rebuttal, saying he didn't "need any lectures about how to bring about change."

But the battle over the next week, Obama said, will be about more than just the meaning of the word change. It will be, he said, about the meaning of hope.

"Some of my opponents appear scornful of the word. They think it speaks to naivete, passivity, and wishful thinking," Obama said. "But that's not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task before us, or the roadblocks that stand in our path ... I know this will be hard. I know it. But I also know this. I know that hope has been the guiding force behind the most important changes this country has ever made."

Obama accused Clinton, although not by name, of having it both ways in trying to run as the experienced Washington hand while promising to usher in what she calls "a new beginning."

"You can't at once argue that you're the master of a broken system in Washington and then offer yourself as the person to change it," he said. "You can't fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and then offer yourself as the leader who's best prepared to chart a new and better course for America."

<SNIP>

Obama said the high stakes were precisely why voters should look past the more conventional choices in this election and reach for something transformative.

"The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result," he said. "That's a risk we can't take. Not this year."

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/12/obama_dont_lect.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Yep--'zactly.

[babylonsister]

2. Gobama-great speech! nt

[Cameron27]

3. It's easier for someone who's mastered the system

to know how to go about changing it. Obama's as embedded in the Washington political culture as anyone running, and if he wasn't a conventional thinker he wouldn't have chosen Joe Lieberman to mentor him in that system.

[Cha]

4. Yeah, hillary is a master

of enabling bushit. She'll go far.

[Cameron27]

5. They're all masters of bullshit,

every one of them.

[JackORoses]

15. but all Hillary's got is Bullshit, there is no there there

and I find it really telling that you are so quick to accept that Hillary is a master of BS.

The new Hillarite stance, "So what if Hillary does it, everybody does it"

That is bursting at the seams with principles, don't you think?

[Cameron27]

16. No, that's not true,

but it's all some posters rely on when they run out of facts. :-)

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. this has been Dodd's arguement since day 1

you have to know how to deal with the system to make it work, and Dodd has plenty of accomplishment to prove he knows who to do it.

[Cameron27]

7. Yes, and he and Joe Biden have the creds

to make that connection.

[peoli]

8. When you come from the gutter

and rise to the top, believe me, you understand change. Obama knows this more than anyone.

[Cameron27]

10. It's great to understand change

but when it comes to a complicated system like Washington politics, what matters most is knowing how to get it done. I think Biden, Dodd or Clinton stand a much better chance of being successful.

[Benhurst]

12. Obama hardly came from the gutter economically. He went to a

private school, then Columbia University and Harvard. Yeah, poor Ivy League graduate makes good, despite the odds. Sure.

If you mean he comes from the gutter morally, I think you have some apologizing to do. Whether you are for him or not, that's an absurd accusation.

[Adelante]

18. Not from the gutter economically

It's true, as his education was taken charge of by his grandparents in his adolescence and they paid for private schooling, but it's also true that Obama attended public school up until then. He was a transfer student to Columbia having gone to Occidental College in Los Angeles before that, which is not Ivy League. Except for his teen years when they lived with her parents in Hawaii, he and his mother were not so well-off. So it's not the gutter, but it's not simply "poor Ivy League graduate makes good" either.

[babylonsister]

9. Make up your mind; one day he has no experience, now he's

embedded in Washington political culture? You can't have it both ways.

[Cameron27]

11. You don't need experience to ingratiate yourself into the system,

with the help of the right mentor you can move right to the head of the class. :-)

[Evergreen Emerald]

13. poor whiney 12 year old getting lectured by the big guys again.

STop that, says Barack, as he stops his feet.

[durrrty libby]

17. It seems a wittle temper tantrum can't be helped

:cry: :cry: :cry:

[durrrty libby]

19. dupe

[msongs]

14. pious self-righteous obama lectures EVERYBODY; please, do not lecture him or oprah will get you nt