Obama, on Hillary-as-divider:
"
I think it is fair to say that I believe I can bring the country together more effectively than she can," Obama said. "I will add, by the way, that is not entirely a problem of her making. Some of those battles in the '90s that she went through were the result of some pretty unfair attacks on the Clintons. But that history exists, and so, yes, I believe I can bring the country together in a way she cannot do. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be running."
As Jason Zengerle points out, this is a reasonable, even charitable, assessment. But Hillary's people freaked out:
Asked for a reaction to Obama's comments, Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said by e-mail: "It's unfortunate that Senator Obama is turning away from the politics of hope and employing attack politics instead. That's certainly not going to bring our party -- or our country -- together. It's Senator Clinton who has the strength and the experience to make the change this nation needs."
Boy, I can't imagine why people think Hillary is a divisive figure.
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Add one more vote endorsing Rod, Zengerle and the previous posters.
This country desperately needs healing (and I mean that term at least somewhat in the religious/spiritual sense) and Obama, IMHO (though I realize this is Rod's limit, LOL), is the candidate best able to do that.
I'm not sure that being a "uniter" is necessarily better than being a "divider."
Abraham Lincoln was a divisive figure, but was perhaps America's best president because he was divisive. If Lincoln had not called slavery a moral evil, perhaps the American South would not have viewed him as divisive.
The real question is this: is this or that candidate for president trying to move the US in the correct direction? On that basis, almost all of the candidates for president (of both parties) are not divisive enough. In order to move this nation in the right direction, you have to be willing to take on the "consensus" assumptions that are, in fact, wrong.
That's what Ronald Reagan did and this nation benefited from his divisive leadership.
Your country has suffered from having two duds in a row - Clinton I and Bush II. I suspect that Clinton II would make it three. Perhaps you should take a punt on Senator Baghdad Osama - he was much wiser about the Iraq adventure that Little Madam Cattle-Futures was.
Abraham Lincoln's whole Prtesidency was based on unification. In his case, he had to fight to make it happen.
But he was not averse to compromise. He wold have been willing in the early stages of his Administration to allow the continuance of slavery in order to preserve the unity of the country, and he clearly said so.
But, once the war was fully joined, he saw abolition as both a moral and military imperative. He knew that the nation could not endure "half slave and half free" and that the slavery issue had to be resolved. So he resolved it in the only way that made sense.
Why is Hillary any more divisive than Obama? I personally find her to be more boring than divisive.
Even assuming Hillary is "divisive" today, won't the Republicans smear any Democrat enough to make him or her divisive? That was certainly true of Clinton.
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