Let’s face it, after the past 7 years of complete incompetence on issues ranging from the war in Iraq to the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, the common denominator of George W. Bushs’ decision making has repeatedly been a complete lack of proper judgement.  I mean, when’s the last time any of us have heard somebody say, “George Bush really hit a home run with his decision to do fill in the blank.” We want our president, when faced with a finite set of facts to be able to discern and recognize the nuance of any given situation and make the right call rooted in common sense. 

The 2008 Election campaign is going to produce a winner and a loser no matter which way we slice it.  It’s how the process works.  Ultimately the voters are the voice of reason and at the end of the day the political system is required to listen and follow due course.  We’re at the point in the 2008 election cycle when the handwriting on the wall is coming into focus on the Democratic side of the contest.  Candidates, at this point, have been vetted and anyone with any sort of connection to reality can usually pick up on either person’s talking points during any of their appearances on a talk show or at a campaign rally.  Obama will mention that he has voted against the war from the start and Hillary will reiterate her 35 years of experience bringing change to America.   Once we get past the rhetoric, we need to look at how each candidate is operating their campaigns at this point in the race and how they are guiding it based on the finite facts at hand.  In essence, we need to be gauging the judgement calls they’re making.

There’s no doubt that Obama has faced the most serious threat to his campaign due to some narrowly reported snippets from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons.  Obama needed to make a serious judgement call given the severity and corrosive nature of Wright’s words.  Obama could have spun away from Wright’s comments and distanced himself from them and probably skated by relatively unscathed albeit a bit bruised.  He made the call to face reality and give, what pundits on both ends of the political spectrum have called one of the most important speech in American politics.  He challenged America to face the oftentimes unspoken rules of disengagement between racial groups in society. 

Now let’s take a look at Hillary.  By all accounts she’s down by about 150 pledged delegates, behind in the popular vote, and her campaign is faltering financially essentially begging her donors just to stay even in getting her message out before she can even pay her outstanding invoices to small business owners who have helped host past events.  Several senior democratic colleagues have urged her to step down and align behind Obama, Gallup is reporting a 10 point spread (the largest this campaign) between candidates, and she’s now dodging questions about her ‘perilous’ trip to Bosnia where she falsely claimed that she was under sniper fire.  So giving these finite set of facts, what would common sense dictate?  To most, if the names and genders were omitted from the above scenarios, it would seem quite obvious.  There is one clearly winning strategy and one that is spiraling downward out of control.  But given these obvious challenges, Hillary makes the judgement call to fight on, with apparent disregard to the harm her continued participation may inflict on her party in November.  She, personal life aside, is showing us how she interprets specific facts, applies her own logic to those facts, and makes decisions in line with her own assessment.  We ask you, America, do you feel comfortable with her train of thought or has it already jumped the tracks?