There is not really much disagreement about what the important issues are. Get out of Iraq. Stop using fossil fuels. Get everyone affordable health insurance. Inflation and stagnant wages. There is a general consensus now that these are the U.S.'s big problems and we need pragmatic solutions to them. (The other consensus is that the Republican party has collapsed and needs to be removed from power as soon as possible.)
What Obama is offering is a way out of the broken record of baby boomer liberal vs. conservative rhetoric. If Hillary wins, we're in for 4 to 8 more years of the same old partisan story line that has played out since her husband was elected. Many Americans are more than sick of that and that is what Obama is appealing to and that is why he won.
And I think his attitude is basically right. More than specific policy proposals at this moment, Americans need a new mindset.
Well it's not alright.
These are the politics that got us the Iraq war. These are the politics that got us illegal wiretapping. These are the politics that make it legal for the government to kidnap you in the middle of the night and torture you until you're nothing but a shell of a man.
This isn't truth, it isn't change, it's bullshit demagoguery and it's more of the same.
He has a town hall meeting on Sunday in Exeter,NH. Ask him yourself. Failing that, wait for him to come to your state. All else fails, assume he doesn't care. :)
I understand him that in pushing more transparency in government, accountability becomes more obvious. The real problem with the wiretapping is that no one was accountable because no one knew it was happening. As soon as it became public there was an extensive push to correct things.
Any case, I was simply responding to the claims that a candidate is "hiding their agenda". There are promises being made. The extent to which any politician gains or loses trust is the extent to which they're consistent with their promises - previously and in the future. All these things should absolutely influence your vote. But I think folks lose the right to complain if they don't participate in the process.
I don't have a problem with most of Obama's opinions, but I realize that that's mostly what they are. Opinions. Not plans.
The section on fiscal responsibility basically says increase taxes on the wealthy and reduce wasteful spending. That's not a plan, it's a talking point. It tells me next to nothing about whether he even wants to balance the budget and pay off the debt, let alone how he is going to accomplish it.
Even the detailed PDFs available in some sections are rather tenuous. I just read through the one on education. It talks a lot about making improvements in certain areas and increasing funding in certain programs, but it doesn't really go into what those improvements would be or what that funding would buy. It seems to be strongly influenced by the KIP program for educating low-income minorities, but other than that I'm having trouble picking out any specific pedagogy.