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.
It's a shame, yes, but apparently that's what wins elections. What needs to change for that not to be the case? Is better education (better funding people's access to higher education?) the solution? Although it may have some impact if people are generally more knowledgeable, I don't think it'll be a solution.
I think it's a broad enough to be safe to say that what is required is a change in our culture - but what kind of change, and how can it come about?
These are things about which Obama has been pretty specific about. He was, from the start, unequivocally against the Iraq war. He has said simply that the U.S. must stop torturing people. I'm honestly not sure about the exact details of his stance towards wiretapping, however.
So my point is that Obama has been very clear and forthright about a lot of things.
Another thing that impresses me is his ability to avoid pandering. There was a woman who asked him if Social Security could be expanded to cover some specific problem her brother had (sorry for not remembering more specifics) and he simply told her "No, I don't think we can afford to cover that for everyone." Sounds like a simple thing, but politicians almost never give a straight answer to that kind of question.
Furthermore, do you think more detailed policy proposals would have done anything about the current abuses of power we are seeing? Do you think torture and wiretapping would have been in a pdf somewhere if we just demanded more policy details from Bush on his website in 2000? You can give lots of specifics, and that's not bad. But it's not realistic to expect the details of a candidate's campaign proposals will be enacted intact as legislation someday. There will be negotiation and compromise along the way.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01...
"Barack Obama believes we need a business and regulatory landscape in which entrepreneurs and small businesses can thrive, start-ups can launch, and all enterprises can compete effectively while investors and consumers are protected against bad actors that cross the line."
See! Obama wants your start-up to launch! :)