Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton

I'm not willing to settle for a mediocre Democratic president if we have the viable option of a great Democratic president.

1) Obama will be viable in the general election. Polls show that he fares better than Hillary in head to head matchups against every prospective Republican contender. He appeals more to independents and to self-identifying liberals. Hillary commands the votes of those who first and foremost identify with the Democratic Party establishment. For this reason, I believe, she also attracts much higher negative ratings in polls.

2) More importantly: words matter.

Americans love to rank things. Colleges. Sports teams. Sexiest people alive. When we rank our past presidents, as we inevitably do, we consistently choose the same man as the Greatest. Over the past century, we've come to the consensus that Abraham Lincoln did more for this nation than any other man.

Lincoln's government experience before winning the presidency: 8 years in the Illinois House of Representatives, and a single term in the U.S. House.

Other experience: lawyer.

What's on his memorial: his two greatest speeches (two of the greatest ever given).

Lincoln was an amazing president because he could unite the nation around great ideas, centered on hope, destiny, the hand of God, and the redemption of a nation. He convinced longtime opponents to work together in his cabinet, he was gracious, solemn, funny, and he channeled for embattled Americans the grave hope that we could one day reunite as one people.

His management of the war was hardly exemplary. Completely unready to "Lead on Day One", he let General McClellan and others get away with far too many defeats. I can only imagine what it must have been like to pick up a newspaper in those days and read of the abysmal failures of Lincoln's latest general. The war dragged on; far more people died than had to.

But Lincoln accomplished what his political opponents would not have: national reunification. How did he do it? With words. Words that still penetrate through history and shake us with righteous morality.

Lincoln's great challenge was a single great war. Alas, our world has grown more complex, and a great war overseas is today but one issue on a presidential agenda. However, we should not fool ourselves. Our response, as a people, to the challenges before us carry as much existential import to the future of America as the Civil War did in Lincoln's term. In times that test the soul of our nation, we should turn to a man with the power to unite us. We should turn to an orator.