Yes, it’s true. The press speculation has been deafening. Sure, you’ve heard about Caroline Kennedy, the almost shockingly full-throated endorsement of her Uncle Ted, and the more refined thoughts of Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison — though perhaps not L.A. congressman Xavier Beccara, the “highest ranking Latino in the House” whose district includes, among other neighborhoods, Korea Town, Little Armenia, Historic Fillipinotown, Silverlake, and Echo Park, representing more ethnic and cultural constituencies than I care to name.

Still, the question on the lips of the punditocracy is: Who will Forward to Yesterday throw it’s support behind. Which Presidential candidate is best for the cinephile American community? And what would this blogger exact from a potential _____ Administration. “Secretary of Obscure Musicals and Sword Fight Films” sounds good to me. Seriously, however, I do want to take a moment away from what has lately been the predominantly entertainment-oriented agenda around here and discuss my reasons for my support of Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.

Now, just about everyone who knows me knows that I was wavering for a long time between Senator Obama and John Edwards. I liked Edwards’ populism, but was perhaps even more taken with Obama’s intelligent persona and his sustained and ongoing ability to galvanize large numbers of people with an appeal to our better natures — something I haven’t seen in U.S. politics in my lifetime.

Watching Obama’s Democratic Convention speech in 2004 was not quite as powerful as seeing Nelson Mandela speak on his post-freedom U.S. tour, but it was close as I’d come since. Still, he was new on the scene, he was somehow letting Hillary Clinton successfully run to his left and I’m a regular Hamlet when it comes to even ordering off a menu sometimes, much less choosing a leader in a crisis. However, with the Edwards campaign apparently fizzling, with the choice boiling down to Senators Obama and Clinton, and with the California primary just over a week away, it is time to make a stand.

Friends and maybe even close readers of this blog know that I have been unenthusiastic regarding Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions from day 1. I feel this way in spite of the fact that I am convinced that the United States is more than “ready” for a woman president, and I have a great deal of highly qualified respect for her. I believe that Senator Clinton and her recently extra-voluble husband are, most of the time anyhow, brilliant and probably two of the brainiest people to ever occupy the White House. I also understand from an nearly endless variety of sources across the Democratic political spectrum that, in person, Hillary Clinton is apparently a very warm and likable person who seems to genuinely care about the problems of ordinary people. Nice to know, for what it’s worth.

However, I see the achievements of the Clinton Administration largely in terms of bad things that didn’t happen rather than good things that did. They talked like leaders and looked like leaders, but they didn’t lead, they followed — too often they followed us nowhere or even backwards.

On the positive side, through a combination of smarts and luck they oversaw a healthy economy — albeit on in which the gap between rich and poor begun under Reagan continued apace. Health care was abandoned, though it certainly could have been tried again in a second term, the trend of regressive tax breaks continued, a welfare reform widely seen as a sop to Reaganism and a potential disaster for the poor (though I admit it hasn’t turned out as badly as some liberals warned) was hailed as the Clinton’s primary accomplishment; and, worst of all to my turn of mind, the administration destroyed important international initiatives, including Kyoto but especially the International Criminal Court.

The Clinton Administration could not bear to antagonize the likes of Neanderthal paleocons Jesse Helms and, even worse, the sociopathic, ideologically trashed neocons. The Clintons seemed only too eager to be seen as (to use a term that has become loaded indeed) “serious,” i.e., ready to start a war without much forethought or any concern for the human toll, especially as it applies to foreign civilians. Fortunately, they mostly resisted the urge to actually do so — a major plus.

All things considered, I was hopeful back in 2001 that Senator Hilary Clinton would chart a somewhat new political course once she was in office on her own. I had this crazy idea that she might be the more genuinely progressive of the two Clintons, but over the years I was consistently disappointed. In particular, I was sometimes deeply angered by a few of her votes, with the obvious low point being her vote to authorize President Bush to use force in Iraq.

Nor did her hairsplitting defense of these positions inspire confidence, then or now. Her recent statement that she was glad that a credit-industry written bankruptcy bill she voted for in 2001 eventually failed to pass calls into question even her basic political abilities, with its shades of John Kerry’s tortured self-defense of his Iraq vote. Whatever she was thinking or not thinking when she said it, it is endemic of the kind of self-defeating inner conflicts that have threatened the Democratic Party with irrelevance since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

And that reference takes us up to last week’s sniping, this weekend’s surprisingly strong victory, and the heart of my support for Senator Obama. Good, thoughtful, Clinton-leaning, friends of mine that have cast me in the role of cockeyed optimist and wacky idealist for my support of the presumably inexperienced and ethnically risky Obama. Here’s part of why I disagree: Though an ability to understand policy and a certain amount of common sense seems like a requirement (but sadly and obviously isn’t), a certain amount of wisdom, principles, and courage are at least as important. So far, Senator Obama has shown that, up to a point at least, he has all of those traits — though, as I implied above, it would be nice if he had courage enough to be more specific. (At least his South Carolina speech was very encouraging on that score.)

I admit, Senator Obama remains a somewhat unknown quantity, though perhaps not nearly as much of an enigma as John F. Kennedy was in 1960. I’d put my assessment of the risk in the same category as the choice between walking off a cliff or getting into a shiny new car; it looks outstanding and seems to be well put together, but it hasn’t been tested as much as others and might eventually get you into an accident, but you know the results of walking off the cliff — though you may unsure of how far you’ll fall. Senator Obama is the car and Senator Clinton, sadly, is the cliff. (Republicans are varying sizes of vast, yawning chasms.) She has proven, time and time again, her innate timidity and, on Iraq in particular, what is either very poor judgment or a severe lack of integrity, take your pick.

Things are bad and I don’t think there is anything romantic or idealistic in my assertion that we have no time for incremental improvements and action so slow it starts to resemble inaction. Just as important, there is no need for it. After Katrina, an utterly disastrous foreign policy based on brain-dead and amoral precepts, and a war that we were told would last for a few months has lead to a violent occupation some want to continue indefinitely, people across all sorts of spectrums are not just ready for a change, they’re starving for it.

If I may put my toe in the treacherous water of judging political appeal, the reason the current congress’s popularity ratings are even lower than those of the worst President in American history are driven not because Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are doing too much, but because they appear to be doing almost nothing. “Change” is the buzz word of the day because things kind of suck, people know it, and they’re looking for leaders who will actively take them away from the sucking. Someone closely associated with an administration best known for its managerial aplomb, caution, and some bad personal decisions is not going to be seen by ordinary people as an “agent” of anything, other than a less calamitous version of what’s already happening. For most of those largely younger voters who, very wrongly, tend to believe that there is no difference at all between the parties, Hillary Clinton’s nomination will be seen as confirmation that their fears are correct. At least the appearance of a radical break is needed.

Moreover, I have heard the argument that Senator Obama needs time to mature and grow. Well, I wish there were someone with vast experience who has learned the hard way that eight years of an extremist right-wing regime requires some boldness in reframing issues and aggressively seeking solutions. Well, there is someone, but Al Gore is now officially too busy saving the world, and being happy and sane, to be President.

I honestly wish we had time to place Senator Obama back in the Senate or in the Vice President’s office to mature like a fine wine. However, there are a number of issues that demand our aggressive attention not in 2016 but now, starting with global warming, repairing our utterly broken relations with the world, and fixing our insane health care system which is slowly killing us in more ways than one. Senator Clinton will work on all of these, but I have plenty of evidence to show that she’ll likely do it much too slowly and/or give up on half of it if she faces real opposition.

To deal with these issues with the FDR-like speed that is necessary, a groundswell is needed. Whoever wins will greatly benefit if they can cobble together a sizable majority. Senator Clinton’s campaigning style so far seems to be heading very closely toward an at best 51% victory, mobilizing traditional Democratic constituencies and not daring to go beyond it. I doubt she can expand much further in the general election. I have no idea how many “Obama Republicans” and independents they’ll be exactly (there is ample evidence that there would have been quite a few “Edwards Republicans”), but I feel pretty sure that there will be very, very few “Clinton Republicans.”

Barack Obama shamelessly panders to the fanboy-American community, also Jerry Seinfeld.

Fairly or not, Senator Clinton’s “negatives” are relatively high even among liberals, with a large number of people like me in the “she’s way better than any Republican” camp — which is not the amount of enthusiasm you might want in a crucial Presidential campaign. Conversely, most of the people I know who say they’re leaning toward Senator Clinton seem to have plenty of nice to things to say about Obama — so nice, in fact, that I wish I could return the compliment about Hillary Clinton. In fact, the arguments of my Clinton-backing friends are in favor of her as the pragmatic choice, not the inspiring choice.

My reply is this: In the world of modern day, media-driven politics, inspiration and pragmatism go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. I’m not talking about electability, I’m not talking about the day after the inauguration.

The new President’s job is not merely assembling policy, it’s enacting it. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were both able administrators and to varying degrees and for varying reasons were largely ineffective one-term Presidents because, while devoting themselves assiduously to the fine points, they were unable to inspire the country. Jimmy Carter, who I greatly admire almost to the point of hero worship, has basically admitted that micromanagement was a major flaw in his administration.

Bill Clinton did better because, perhaps uniquely, he was equally adept at talking to the public as he was at administering policy. This is a media world we live in and it seems to me that, in the modern context, the President’s first job is selling the public on his plans. If he’s unable to do that, nothing else will follow, no matter how knowledgeable and downright smart she or he might be. While I feel Bill Clinton’s plans were inadequate, in his prime he was a sublimely skilled salesman, and that is no backhanded compliment. Being a great salesman for the right product is a crucial public service. If he is going to perform such a role again in a new administration, however, he’ll be hamstrung in a number of ways. The strain is already showing.

There are no true certainties in anything, especially politics. Barack Obama is a politician and, therefore, I can tell you right now he will disappoint, especially considering the hopes he’ll likely be raising. But merely avoiding disappointment is not any kind of a goal. On any number of levels, John F. Kennedy was, in retrospect, a very disappointing president. His achievements in his too-short time office weren’t all that many, his unduly war-like proclivities created and continued problems and atrocities around the world, and his reckless personal life directly threatened U.S. security. However, all of that was largely counteracted by the sense that he stood for certain principles which I think actually meant more to him than his office.

While JFK was very much a moderate in the political terms of his day, he was never perceived as simply splitting the difference with the sometimes insanely foolhardy pronouncements of Barry Goldwater. He resisted Goldwater and others, but made compromises when he deemed them acceptable. He also had the courage to undertake bold initiatives, including the Apollo program — which I only wish we had continued longer and more ambitiously.

Certainly JFK had the right formula when it comes to dealing with adversaries: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate” applies as much to internal politics as it does world affairs. For twenty-eight years the Democratic party not only been negotiating out of fear, but doing pretty much everything out of fear. It is time for politicians to stop acting out of fear, and it is time for the rest of us to stop voting out of fear.

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One more comment on a more down-’n-dirty tack in regards to the political hijinks of the last week or so. Without cogitating and/or grousing on morality, and whether it’s good for the country or the party (I’ll leave that to others), I’m actually glad from the perspective of an Obama supporter that things have been getting just a little vicious, though we may see a reduction in hostilities over the next week.

Why? I think the “experience” issue is overplayed — it’s not like Senator Clinton was a sitting governor of New York or California for the last twenty years and it’s also not like Senator Obama spent the last two decades drinking Jager shots and watching Petticoat Junction reruns. However, it is true that the youngish Senator has been unduly lucky in his electoral campaigns up to now. Except for his losing race for the U.S. Congress against Bobby Rush, most of his opponents have had the disadvantage of being embroiled in horrific scandals or, much worse, of being Alan Keyes. Now he’s playing with the big girls and boys and undergoing a fairly nasty hazing to boot. It’s good practice for bigger, nastier hazings to come.