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If President Elect Barack Obama is to really bring the change he promises to America, then he will also have to change the criteria as to who gets chosen for key posts in his administration.
What Mr. Obama needs is to break with historical trends. Barack Obama should not follow in the footsteps of his predecssors in choosing the already privileged, coming from sheltered lives, who have neither studied the realities (despite some having academic degrees) nor have they really lived the struggles faced by the majority of "we the people".
Instead he should choose those who know.
Imagine a nation where health is led by someone who knows how tough it is for the poor to get good care. Someone who knows what a profit motive does when it comes to placing a price on human life and quality of life. Housing led by someone who knows the slum and ghetto realities. Someone who knows how hard it is in much of America to get and keep a decent roof over a family's head. Someone who knows about the never ending conflict of landlords and tenants. Education by someone who knows how prejudiced, tainted and unprogressive education in America often is. Someone who has read and understands Thoreau. Someone who has taught underprivileged, poor, children in America. Someone who has educated in today's decaying urban inner city schools. Environment by someone who knows how short sighted much of modern commerce with Nature really is, and who knows not only the horrors hidden behind the hyperbole and propaganda of environmental responsibility, but who knows the hidden solutions that remain suppressed because it isn't competitive enough and it isn't good business, and it isn't cost effective enough. Someone who knows how to listen to the many oppressed scientists and engineers who have answers to offer but who have been silenced, like political prisoners in a totalitarian regime. Silenced by stigmatization. Silenced by lost funding. Silenced by threat.
We could go on mentionning every major department in the government that needs the appointment of new leadership. It is the principle that needs changing. Barack Obama, please choose men and women who are good, wise, and true. Break with the trend, and bring real change to America and the world that it endeavours to lead. In that way reassert that lagging leadership with what is right, not what is most expedient, popular, or easy to do. Traditional choices have always failed because they are inherently conservative and aimed at reducing or thwarting change. Traditional choices, methods of selection, were never meant to be catalysts of real change.
Barack Obama the risks you have already taken are larger than most men have ever endured, and in a world of international strife among various irrational and passionately fought for extremes, you continue to take an even greater risk. That already given fact allows you, Barack Obama, to choose differently. You are the first who has won the opportunity to take greater risks than any who came before you. Risks to faciliate positive change in America and the world.
Robert Morpheal
Anyone may reproduce, distribute, copy, publish this article in any form by any means and is in fact encouraged to do so.
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