Harvest Time

It's been the longest political campaign in U.S. history, and it appears to have more deeply involved and excited the population than any in recent history. Despite the fierce partisanship that the party bases adhere to, the choice, as I've often said, is between two moderate centrists, at least at the Presidential level.

Last night, I posted Obama's speech, rather than continue with my tedious "3 E's" series of essays. My intent was to point out that fully six months before the meltdown on Wall Street, Obama was warning that it could happen, and recommending a series of regulatory initiatives that might have prevented it.

Few paid any attention to this speech. Cable TV was too transfixed between the horse race between Clinton and Obama to recognize a brilliant example of statesmanship even when it occurred right before their eyes. Of course, there were no sexy soundbites, no political attacks, no rhetorical excesses.

Rather, the speech is one only a deeply intelligent, thoughtful person could write and deliver. Reading Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope," is something every citizen should do -- before deciding how to cast your vote. The speech and the book do a better job of capturing this man and how he thinks than all the TV coverage you may have gotten in the past year.

Leadership requires not only a vast knowledge about the revolutionary ways the world has been changing the past decade, it takes some serious intellectual heft. We could do far worse than listen to some of our wisest professors on many, many issues that seem confusing and contradictory.

Why is our economy teetering on the brink of disaster? But it is, as President Bush made clear last week, in what was by far his best speech since 9/11.

Why are gasoline prices so high?

Why are the polar ice caps melting and what does that mean?

Why is there a global food shortage?

Why is a worldwide water shortage developing?

Why is the U.S. so deeply in debt to China?

This list could go on and on, but my point is that this isn't your Grandpa's world any more, and he wouldn't have known what to do about it, even if he was still here. The old ways are outdated, at least most of them.

When virtually everything is changing, simply chanting cliches and chants and no-nothing politics isn't good enough any more. Maybe you would feel safer with a rash "man of action" who more resembles a bull in a China shop at the controls; a man likely to lead us into additional pointless wars, and bankrupt our economy -- just has been done the past eight years.

I suspect a majority of Americans want someone better than that -- calmer, more observant, less impulsive, and much, much more intelligent. What we need is a professor who finished at the head of his class, not yet another playboy loser who finished at the bottom of his class.

If Bush and McCain remind you of your fraternity brothers, that's because that is who they are. Do you really want a frat boy holding your family's fate in his hands, whooping it up, drunk, celebrating a football victory driving down the wrong side of the road?

Think about it. This election is about moving beyond your comfort level -- and by that I mean all of us. We need decisive, moderate, centrist, persuasive leadership. We do not need more pandering, or Dick Cheney-Karl Rove dirt ball criminality at the top. It's time, finally, to put a professor at the head of state.

Our children and their children will thank us, sooner than you might imagine.

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