But what has he done?

It's beginning to look more and more like Barack Obama is going to be the Democrat nominee for President (this is, of course, barring any dirty tricks from Hillary Clinton, and you'd have to be a complete idiot to ignore that possibility). He certainly looks and sounds the part - he's telegenic, an excellent speaker, witty, has a magnetic personality - it's easy to see why so many people have compared him to John F. Kennedy, a Democrat that had strong support among Republicans. One can only speculate what kind of Presidency JFK might have had if his life hadn't been cut short, but there's no denying that he was a leader. He was by no means perfect - there was the Bay of Pigs, getting us into Vietnam, not to mention his womanizing (I can't condone that, but he did Marilyn Monroe - I mean, damn!) - but he had the balls to stand up to the Russians and Castro during the Cuban missle crisis, and how many "leaders" today would've not blinked if faced with the same threat? My guess is very few. Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi? Give me a freaking break.

And, JFK was inspiring. People still speak of "Camelot" with a gleam in their eye.

Obama is inspiring also, no doubt about it. He resonates, strikes a chord with voters. People find his message of hope and promise of change (the buzzword of this campaign season) to be something to which they can hitch their wagons. And if I weren't such a cynic, I might do so myself. Fortunately, I learned a long time ago not to drink any candidate's Kool-Aid without taking a close look at what he or she has to offer.

It seems that there is one big problem with Obama that everyone not in the candidate's camp has with him - experience, or lack thereof. I do know that he served in the Illinois state legislature and is in his first term in the US Senate. And I remember him delivering the keynote speech at the 2004 Democrat national convention. Beyond that, nothing. A quick look at Wikipedia (if it's on the internet, it must be true!) tells me that as of less than a week ago he's sponsored or co-sponsored 570 bills since joining the Senate. Only fifteen of these bills have been passed - less than 2.7 %. In all honesty, I have no idea what the average success rate of bill sponsorship among Obama's colleagues is, so I don't know how to gauge that statistic, but maybe someone reading this post does. Please respond if you know this; I'd love to find out.

What tells me Obama has an issue with being inexperienced is that even his prominent public supporters have no answer when the question of his resume comes up. This clip from "Hardball" with Chris Matthews illustrates this perfectly. At the 1:33 mark you can almost hear crickets chirping as Matthews waits for an answer. And I apologize in advance for exposing you to Keith Olbermann at the end of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj4VK9wVAi0 (You may have to cut and paste this link)

What's shocking about this is not that Chris Matthews, a partisan hack if there ever was one, is taking on a Democrat (in this case Texas State Senator and former Austin mayor Kirk Watson) like a rabid pit bull, but that Obama's been a declared candidate for a year now, and his supporters still don't have a talking point to answer the question of "What has he done?" If his advisors didn't know this would be an issue at the start of the campaign, it should be obvious to anyone with even the most casual interest that it is now.

I personally think that politics and political campaigns have become too scripted and structured, that what we see of a candidate is more of a product than a person, but I suppose that's a trade-off for living in an age of 24/7 information, when it takes literally mere seconds between an event occurring and coverage being dissimenated worldwide. If the Obama campaign is deliberately not providing their supporters with an answer to the $64 question in an effort to keep things organic and spontaneous, I applaud their efforts, but not their judgment. I never thought I would find myself agreeing with Hillary Clinton on anything, but this will have to be an exception. The office of President is not a position in which on the job training is a suitable option.