An Empathy Deficit

by E. Christopher Clark | Thursday, June 5, 2008

The other day, I wrote about supporting Hillary Clinton versus supporting Barack Obama, and I’ve made several comments over the past couple of months at my friend Beth’s Website about why Obama just doesn’t do it for me. But early this morning I had an opportunity to watch the video I’ve embedded above, and it’s gotten me a little bit more enthused about the presumptive nominee than I was before.

This informative and occasionally powerful video—I almost shouted ‘Hell yeah’ at the line about our country’s empathy deficit—has also helped me to clarify for myself what it is about Obama that has bothered me so much. And it’s not that I dislike the man or his message. No, my indifference towards the senator has much more to do with the fact that I have no faith that he can deliver on what he promises.

This is probably because I am a glass half-empty kind of person, but I just don’t see how he’s going to deliver change while working within the confines of a government that has proven time and time again that it doesn’t want change at all. I think that, once he gets into that oval-shaped office, he’s going to realize how ridiculously difficult it is to make anything happen as the “leader of the free world.” And when he comes to that realization—when we all come to that realization—we’re going to end up with a country full of cranky people, cranky people woken up from a dream that was never going to become a reality in the first place.

But, I could be wrong. And I hope that I am wrong. I hope that Senator Obama is able to deliver on everything he spoke about to the crowd at Google back on November 14, 2007. If he does, I’m going to be happier than I have ever been to say, “I am a tool, and you, President Obama, you rule.”

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