Are They Experienced? by John Ostrander
I was talking with “goldeneye” Glenn Hauman about a week ago and our conversation, as it often does, turned to politics. Glenn told me both presidential candidate Barack Obama and presidential candidate John McCain were asked which was their favorite games of chance. Obama replied “poker” and McCain replied “craps.” Glenn and I both found these choices telling, especially with McCain’s recent choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate which certainly qualifies as something of a crapshoot.
Poker involves a lot of different elements: reading the other player, calculating the odds based on the cards played and the cards you hold and, as the song says, knowing when to hold ‘em and knowing when to fold ‘em. You need to think. Craps counts on luck and your gut feeling. You do your ritual, roll the dice, and hope.
That’s not the main reason I’m for Obama over McCain in the Presidential race but it is indicative of why I prefer the senator from Illinois over the senator from Arizona. We’ve had almost eight years of someone who trusted his gut and rolled the dice and the country has come up craps. We’re neck deep in it. It’s time for a poker player – someone with intelligence and skill.
There are/can be/should be a lot of different elements that goes into choosing the person you want in the most powerful position on Earth. There’s been a lot of talk about “experience” and which presidential/veepal candidate has the most or what kind of experience they’ve had. I’ll tell you a secret, though – everyone has experiences. The real question is have you learned anything from them and, if so, what.
The American poet Emily Dickinson lived most of her life within her house and even her room. Yet from that set of circumscribed experience she distilled 1800 poems and described vividly the “landscape of the spirit.” On the other hand, we also all know people who seem to never learn from their experiences and keep repeating them over and over again to their own detriment.
For example, Wile E. Coyote has lots of experience chasing roadrunners. He never seems to learn much from those experiences. He’s not a quitter; got to give him that. He has lots of tenacity. And he just announced Petunia Pig as his running-mate. I like ol’ Wile E. but I’m not going to vote for him for President. I want the guy who avoids the traps, not the one who steps into his own trap time and time again. (more…)
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