L.A. Times columnist Rosa Brooks endorses Obama: Obamania in action

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Rosa Brooks
Obamania in action
His good judgment and experience are winning over party stalwarts.
January 31, 2008

Is endorsing Barack Obama the new cool? Not long ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton was the seemingly inevitable front-runner for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Obama was the insurgent. He was pulling in young voters, independents and new voters, but he lacked the blessing of the party's heavyweights.

That's changed. Obama's success in moving beyond the traditional party base -- combined with serious Clinton fatigue -- is leading many seasoned Democratic leaders to rethink their earlier assumptions. John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, Claire McCaskill and Tom Daschle, among others, have lined up behind Obama, and the last few days brought Obama a surge of new, high-profile endorsements from such luminaries as Ted Kennedy and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

His endorsers are right to see Obama as their party's best hope for 2008. Though skeptics contend that Obama lacks "experience," this concern makes sense only if you think you have to be a Washington insider to be qualified to run for president. Obama began his career as a community organizer and civil rights attorney in Chicago -- relevant background for someone who will have to deal with tough economic and social justice issues as president. He was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 and the U.S. Senate in 2004; in all, he's spent 11 years being directly accountable to voters (that's four more than Clinton).

Is that "enough" experience? Remember that if you never develop good judgment, racking up "experience" just tends to make you older, not necessarily smarter. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were "experienced," and they brought us the Iraq war. Clinton, who's billing herself as the "experienced" candidate, voted for that war....

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Obama's background and message are enabling him to reach beyond any narrow demographic slice of the electorate, and this bodes well -- both for his ability to beat a GOP rival and for his ability to lead effectively and without divisiveness once elected....

There's been such a rush to endorse Obama that I'm starting to feel a bit left out. Admittedly, I'm not a senator or a Nobel laureate, but ... I'm starting to think I should endorse him myself. Why should Ted Kennedy get to have all the fun?

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-brooks31jan31,0,1285764.column