http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/12/18/523098.aspx?p=2 As FirstRead reports above: "The New York Times’ David Brooks takes a look [December 19, 2007] at the two Dem front-runners, and suggests that Obama would make the better president. 'If Clinton were running against Obama for Senate, it would be easy to choose between them. But they are running for president, and the presidency requires a different set of qualities.'" Here is my two cents on the Obama-Clinton issue. Below is “A Letter to Patricia,” written last February as something of an open letter, by a participant in Obama's announcement in Springfield, Illinois, that he'd seek the presidency. I got the letter last August from a former colleague and saved it because I thought (and still do) that the integrationist argument in the letter regarding having BOTH Obama and Clinton is compelling. It’s courageous, and probably original. I happen to think this campaign season needs a refreshing sense of greater wholeness: More of "us and us," and much of "us vs. them." The letter speaks of a Clinton/Obama team of shared leadership. Happy holidays! Ben A ‘BOTH-AND’ LETTER TO PATRICIA ––Jim Boushay Dear Patricia, The day after the Friday that you and I met and talked on the free shuttle, I was lucky to travel by bus to Springfield, a trip arranged by the office of Illinois Senator Don Harmon, head of the Democratic Party of Oak Park. I was actually thinking of you when Senator Obama made the expected announcement that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president. At the Historic Old State Capitol where Abraham Lincoln served as a legislator for two years—-and where he gave his famous speech saying a house divided against itself cannot stand—-my companions and I excitedly heard Obama's compelling entrance into the political race. We were fortunate to be up-close and thus I, challenged by a lifelong hearing impairment, was able both to hear better and to read Mr. Obama's lips. Much more important, the crowd had come from everywhere—-Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, all over. Our feeling of great excitement amid the people there was a feeling like we had all known each other for years. There were several among the reported 17,000 champions there, wearing woolen winter head caps marked with the logo and name of a Des Moines disabilities agency. So I thought of you and the work you do in Illinois as a job coach at OPRF high school with students struggling to overcome lifelong intellectual disabilities. Partner Rickey Sain and I got back by charter bus at 3:30 that Saturday afternoon. I also was fortunate on the ride back, during which time I reported to my bus mates what intriguing things I was hearing them say—-you know, things said amid the natural back-and-forth conversation about the future and about who in particular would play the key leadership role as the nation's chief executive, following the 2008 elections, assuming of course the realization of a hoped-for win by the Democrats. I said that most of the bus conversations I was hearing and “over-hearing” seemed to focus on voters being forced to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as though the citizens would be forced to have but one only of the two strong leaders. But I offered an alternative, a bit nuanced. I said on the bus, "With the need for decisive long-term leadership to fix the national mess that took us years to create, we therefore need long-term, determined, sustained, cooperative leadership, and over many years.” Mindful of what you told me Friday on the shuttle about how difficult it has been to get attention paid to the low wages earned by job coaches and other care givers of people vulnerable and poor, I said to the group, "This election campaign does not have to be either/or. Instead, it can be both/and. It can be both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama." I asked my bus mates not to fall into the trap of thinking we can only have one or the other. With both, the future can be stronger, brighter. I said, "That way, we get more good things done through two excellent people, representing an even stronger combined and unified political power base over the long haul.” And a long haul it will be. I urged: "Get that newer entrepreneurial idea into the system." I told them to talk it up with friends and in their neighborhoods. We have to find ways to cross boundaries, to step out of the box. To me those two commonly used phrases are more than vague, abstract, gnostic slogans. To me, the idea of truly crossing boundaries means something practical and compelling. It took us as a nation 50 years to get this sick: Wars, poverty, political disengagement, social isolation, no affordable housing any longer, a rising income gap, all kinds of discrimination toward people fragile and in distress, 47-million without health insurance, education under siege nationally for being unreal and ineffective, children and young kids at risk, un- and under-employment, immigration debated accusingly in a nation of immigrants, corporate corruption big-time, unfairness, politicians who don't know how to listen genuinely to the people about what the people actually face every day, identity politics everywhere that separates out, ideological screeds attacking the other, too much "us vs. them" thinking along with not nearly enough "we are in this together" thinking. The citizenry must win back our Democracy. More crossing of boundaries will bring us further along toward that goal. For example, as we discussed on the shuttle, your being willing to give public testimony in Springfield on your nine years' experience with people with disabilities is but one good example of citizens getting more involved. In doing that you can make a difference. Re-engaging the political process is a new way is the way. It will take at least 25 years for us to get well again, at least that long. For example, it took the national public health campaign against tobacco more than 35 years to succeed. And there are still many smokers. The massive prevailing problems facing our culture means there utterly is the need for LONG-TERM, sustained leadership on behalf of the Union at war with itself. That essentially peacemaking political effort will mean all of us having to put together in our minds things that never before have been put together, never before reconciled—-like Obama and Clinton on the same ticket, for example. At this very early date, 19 months before the national election, I care much less about who is at the top of the ticket in November of 2008. All I really believe at this point is that the nation needs both of them and their formidable gifts...and needs many others like you and me and still others working furiously yet thoughtfully and powerfully to make things better. The terrible dysfunctional mess we're in demands no less in the divided nation. Let’s skip that all-too-usual stuff about "either/or." The trap is meant to divide, to push us to either one side or the other, allowing little room for the haunting and more real human complexity. The trap often leads to even more family dysfunction. The answer often lies in the more complex and therefore more reconciling middle. I've never apologized for use of approaches that are essentially of a type that one might call militantly centrist. If all of us are in this together, then all of us are in this together. That is the enduring promise of democracy. Dr. King and many other compelling moral leaders through the last 200 years have consistently and persistently talked of our “inescapable network of mutuality.” The key word there? Inescapable. The country often does much better in the middle. As I repeated to almost everybody on the bus, “We can have both.” It will take creative and inventive thinking and action in moving forward, a lot of hard work. The time is now. Putting those two formidable, talented, experienced, charismatic leaders together on the same political ticket means we will then take the first major step—-among many more major steps needed toward greater concentration of political effort—-in getting LONG-TERM solutions underway. Our children (Rickey Sain and I have nine, all now post-college adults) and our grandchildren deserve and should demand no less from us wiser Americans. We have to be smarter. I call the effort "smart growth." Ain't no easy answers out there right now. We kid ourselves if we think fixing the mess is gonna be easy, especially as we grow more pluralistic and therefore more complex. God help us! We need really to think politics in new ways because the old ways of bringing about solutions have mostly brought about grossest dysfunctional systems, seemingly everywhere in politics, law, education, health, housing, disability and human rights, and all the rest. Yes, things are much more complex than ever before in a time of ever-increasing pluralism. You indicated as much on the shuttle. We can't be thinking any longer about merely winning just one election. We have to think winning many elections in a row, all while building stronger and newer leadership into the future. A sustained strategy has to be, well, strategic. We have to think and look long-term with this 2008 election coming up. I said on the bus, "Let's not just talk about stepping outside the box. Let's not just talk about crossing boundaries to bring people together. Let's do it. Let's work to get the idea into the system that the nation needs both political leaders for the foreseeable future." Immediately but perhaps not surprisingly in response, there was complete silence. I saw the reflective silence as a good thing. I let it hang in the air for a few seconds. Then before sitting back down in my seat, as the bus rumbled home toward Oak Park, I ended my remarks by saying: "Maybe? Maybe let our local and national conversation be about those two elected leaders working out with each other who between the two of them will be at the so-called top of the ticket and who will be in the vice presidential spot. We can have both. Perhaps it is only with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama transparently working together as two on behalf of a deeply divided nation that the people will have more undivided moral will and more political strength to get done what needs to get done. No question that we need the talents, skills, experience, and determination of both. Now's the time like no other time to get that compelling idea into the system…and really mean it." Patricia, thanks for your time and for listening here. I say that Clinton and Obama are two of Chicago's (and now the nation's) very own. Clinton was born in Chicago and Obama moved here after college. The night I got back from Springfield, on WGN TV's "Chicago's Very Own," there was a story about Gregory Cox and his efforts to overcome drug addiction and about him having been reunited with his family, which had been feuding over his illness and dysfunction. Rickey and I know Gregory fairly well. If you listened carefully, his local story pulls together the national story here, and then takes us in a new direction—just what’s needed. Right now the nation is a "feuding family." We’ve got to do the work of fixing some of that family dysfunction. We've got to make peace in the family. We’ve got to get back to the right idea of all of us as a family, all of us family members in this together. Again, a pleasure to meet you. We talked about a lot in a short period of time together on the shuttle. What fun! Jim Boushay P.S.: A humorous aside. A few minutes after I spoke on the bus, an old friend approached me to say, "Thanks for saying that. You observed the three commands of good speech-making: Be clear, be brief, be seated." I have to laugh right here in this special letter to you. I guess I went rumbling down too-long of a road, with just too many words. A big warm smile of apology. On the other hand, at work almost every time I simply outline three key points (you know, like a one-page summary), then trustees and staff inevitably ask me to expand on those points in order to make the case thoroughly. There's no winning, in a manner of speaking, unless really I do BOTH. February 20, 2007 Home