by Uncle Ludwig

Created on: November 08, 2008   Last Updated: December 02, 2008

I voted in my first presidential election in 1976. In all the elections since then, I have to admit that when I voted for
Barack Obama this year, it was the first time I voted for qualities I liked in a candidate instead of against traits I disliked in all the other candidates. It was easy to feel good that Barack Obama is a member of a minority, of course, and that he's young,

and a family man. It was also a delight to consider that we might once again have a
convincing, coherent speaker representing the United States on the world's stage. Certainly, his educational resume and published books offered authentic intellectual credentials.

But these were the easy and obvious things to like. Obama was a phenomenon, however, that required looking into more carefully. I was happy to find, after some preliminary research into his policies and background, that it was worth the trouble of getting to know him a little better. I appreciated his decision to forgo an obvious, high-flying path out of Harvard to go instead into a more foundational career path as a community organizer in Chicago. Sure, cynics might argue that this was merely window dressing to pad the resume of an ambitious man intent on a career in politics, and it might have been true if Obama had only stuck it out for a brief a time. But that tidbit of information told me that here was a man who was willing to start at square one to really "learn the business" in the old sense of the phrase, even if that business was politics. I have no doubt that his experiences there helped him to develop his talents as a bridge builder
and to hone his desire to help the middle class.

Obama
chose a path that kept him away from the traditional corridors of power. Even though Chicago is anything but weak on politics, being
the home base of both Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson, and has been described for some time as a center of black politics in America,
Obama was still not a Washington insider. As a result, Obama was not a too safe candidate
when he threw his hat into the presidential ring, which I found appealing, mainly because he demonstrated a clear understanding of who he was and how he fit into the mainstream political spectrum, while still retaining some of edginess of Chicago politics.

All of this blends together to emphasize what I perceive to be Obama's
greatest strength. Obama is a systems thinker.
He sees the big picture. His campaign demonstrated a significant capacity to build organizations from the ground up, just as he has built his own career from the ground up. Obama beat McCain with solid organization and leadership, and won hearts by describing clearly the things that he knew needed fixing. To me, that's what makes a great Chief Executive.

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