Obama's speech tonight

provided a good demonstration of many of the reasons I will be voting for him in November. That he's intelligent and can speak well go without saying, and though both things are very, very important to me, neither is enough of a reason to elect someone to be the President of the United States.

What is enough reason is that I genuinely feel that he believes in roughly the same vision of America as I do: an America where hard work and sacrifice can give you a good chance at your dreams, an America that takes care of all of its citizens, an America that is the best country humanity has yet managed, an America that is willing to tackle and overcome the big, hard problems that face us today.

I also think that there's a small chance that at least part of Obama's soul remains; getting elected will fix that political deficiency, of course, but for now he hasn't been in the system long enough to have lost it all.

It's fun to talk about the historical nature of Obama's candidacy, and I've certainly done it, but you know what? I don't give a rat's ass what color he is. I don't care about his age or the size of his bank account. I don't care about any of those aspects of McCain either.

Bruce Springsteen once remarked about Ronald Reagan that it seemed to him that a whole lot of people's dreams didn't mean much to Reagan. I believe that's the case with most politicians. I genuinely believe that's not true of Obama. I think the dreams of Americans do matter to him, and that's the final reason I'll mention tonight that Barack Obama is my candidate for President of the United States.

I'll do my best not to use this blog to beat the political drum very often, but earlier this evening Obama inspired me, and I had to write a little something about it.

Tomorrow night, I'll ease the brain strain by telling you how I felt about the Vin Diesel flick, Babylon A.D.