Obama No Bureaucrat

You've been introduced to the 4th, less well known branch of the government. Now, a major presidential candidate discussed how he won't be one.

Do you want a president to be the supreme manager of the system or something else?

Reno Gazette

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama freely admits he doesn’t have the experience to run a bureaucracy. But he’s banking on the fact voters aren’t looking for a “chief operating officer” in this election.“I have a pretty good sense of my strengths and my weaknesses,” he said today during a meeting with the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board.“I am very good at teasing out from people who are smarter than me what the issues are and how we resolve them,” he said. “I don’t think there is anybody in this race who can inspire the American people better than I can. And I don’t think there is anybody in this race who can bridge differences ... better than I can.“But I’m not an operating officer. Some in this debate around experience seem to think the job of the president is to go in and run some bureaucracy. Well, that’s not my job. My job is to set a vision of ‘here’s where the bureaucracy needs to go.’”

The final days of the Nevada caucus largely have come down to who has the experience, who can bring about change or whether one candidate can do both.Obama spent the day traveling Northern Nevada to rebut rival Hillary Rodham Clinton’s argument that he doesn’t have the substance to back up pie-in-the-sky rhetoric. “You got to ask yourself, ‘who is best equipped to bring about this change you are hoping for?’” he told a rally of more than 1,100 people at the Reno Events Center. “Hope is not being ignorant of the roadblocks that stand in your way.“I know how hard it is going to be to provide health care to every American ... to fix our schools or reduce poverty. I know because I fought these fights.”

“We’re ready for refreshing change,” said Susan Compton, a Spanish Springs voter who came to the rally with her husband, Craig.“For eight years, we’ve gotten nothing,” Craig said. “I worry about my grandkids.”Ruth Salas, a 17-year-old Galena High School student, said Obama is the right person to lead the country.

“He’s half African-American,” she said. “He has more ethnicity. He represents the U.S. And he’s someone who will consider young people.”Obama spent about 45 minutes with more than 1,000 people, some waited nearly two hours, in the Churchill County Junior High School gymnasium in the afternoon and was 80 minutes late arriving in Carson City, where more than 2,000 people waited at the community center gym and theater with 200 more outside.

Obama did not use his stump speech to attack Clinton. But in a 40-minute round-table discussion before the Reno rally he blamed the nation’s housing slump and accompanying foreclosure crisis, which has hit Nevada harder than any other state, on Washington, D.C., leaders who listened more to lobbyists than their constituents.“Ten of the country’s largest mortgage lenders spent$185 million lobbying Washington so they could keep engaging in these destructive practices,” he said. “And they got what they paid for.”

His chin resting on one hand, Obama listened to the stories of struggle from the four Reno residents at the table with him, interspersing the discussion with points from his economic plan.He wants to provide tax credits to stimulate the economy, revise bankruptcy laws to protect people from losing their homes and create a foreclosure fund to aid those who can no longer afford their mortgages.

At one point, Obama wrapped his arm around the shoulder of Skye Steffens as she told of a traffic accident that seriously injured her husband soon after he was treated for cancer.“You’ve had your share,” he said. “I don’t think anything else is allowed to go wrong for the next four or five decades.”