Ivory Tower

Today we offer a little ditty to Barack Obama, courtesy of Hillary Clinton: “Are You Experienced?”

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Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., seems to be scoring plenty of heavy blows against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination by suggesting that Obama is just a babe in the woods and the nation needs somebody with more experience than he has.

If that’s the case, then shouldn’t Clinton herself step aside and throw her weight behind someone with real experience, like Joe Biden or even Al Gore?

Think about it: Who really thinks Clinton has more experience than Obama, other than experience yapping at reporters and spinning bad policy decisions?

After all, Clinton has just entered into her second term as a U.S. Senator, but that’s the only political office she has ever held. No, being first lady doesn’t count. She just happened to be married to the guy who got elected.

Obama is in the middle of his first Senate term, so his time in Congress isn’t that far behind Clinton’s. He also served eight years in the Illinois Senate representing a large and diverse district in the Chicago area. Obama first went to Chicago as a member of a religious-based organization that worked to improve living conditions in run-down neighborhoods, and after receiving his law degree and passing the bar, he specialized in civil rights law. We hope that ingrained in him an understanding, and an appreciation, for the Constitution and the freedoms and rights it was written to protect.

Would Barack Obama be a better president than Hillary Clinton? We couldn’t know unless both were elected and we compared their administrations. We do know that the one time Clinton’s husband tried to work her into the administration, by putting her in charge of a group charged with reviewing the feasibility of national health care, the effort fell apart amid public anger over the group’s secrecy and reported problems within the group from her alleged heavy-handed leadership. Obama appears to be more graceful if not more gracious when dealing with opposing views. Clinton and others have scored points against him when he has answered questions with honest answers rather than indefinite political say-nothing responses.

Frankly, we prefer hearing real answers instead of the convoluted rhetoric we get from other candidates, including Clinton. If that’s why they consider him a neophyte, we’d rather they learn a few things from his inexperience.