We’ve heard a lot of chest-thumping Bravado from Saint Senator Barack Obama, mostly focused around how he’ll bring the country together and make those pesky right wingers stop scaring everyone. He’s going to make the tough calls and level with us. Like adults. And he won’t use politics. Like adults.
In yesterday’s debate, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards both ripped into the Senator for his use of “present” voting, effectively calling him impotent. The Obama campaign immediately jumped to their site to tell the world, in the words of the Chicago Tribune, that if you criticize the process of voting “present,” you don’t have a good understanding of the process.
Except that apparently, the NY Times and some people cited there don’t “understand” this mystical process either. Here’s one example of the NY Times apparently not understanding the process just like most normal people wouldn’t…
In Illinois, political experts say voting present is a relatively common way for lawmakers to express disapproval of a measure. It can at times help avoid running the risks of voting no, they add.
“If you are worried about your next election, the present vote gives you political cover,” said Kent D. Redfield, a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “This is an option that does not exist in every state and reflects Illinois political culture.”
The vote on the juvenile-justice bill appears to be a case when Mr. Obama, who represented a racially mixed district on the South Side of Chicago, faced pressure. It also occurred about six months before he announced an ultimately unsuccessful campaign against a popular black congressman, Bobby L. Rush.
State Senator Christine Radogno, a Republican, was a co-sponsor of the bill to let children as young as 15 be prosecuted as adults if charged with committing a crime with a firearm on or near school grounds.
The measure passed both houses overwhelmingly. In explaining his present vote on the floor of the Senate, Mr. Obama said there was no proof that increasing penalties for young offenders reduced crime, though he acknowledged that the bill had fairly unanimous support.
“Voting present was a way to satisfy those two competing interests,” Ms. Radogno said in a telephone interview.
Thom Mannard, director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said political calculation could have figured in that vote.
“If he voted a flat-out no,” Mr. Mannard said, “somebody down the road could say Obama took this vote and was soft on crime.”
Mr. Obama’s aides said he was more concerned about whether the bill would be effective rather than with its political consequences. They did not explain why he did not just vote no.
So, in other words, the great candidate of change did exactly what every other politician does… Make a political calculation based on how it would affect him in an election.
That’s exactly the kind of leadership we need in Washington. A guy who votes “I’m here!”
