Obama's approach to politics

In the opening post I discuss linking space activism with Barack Obama's approach to politics. This column by David Brooks of the NY Times (David Brooks of all people!) captures well my observations concerning the differences in leadership style between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- link:

Obama sketched out a different theory of social change than the one Clinton had implied earlier in the evening. Instead of relying on a president who fights for those who feel invisible, Obama, in the climactic passage of his speech, described how change bubbles from the bottom-up: “And because that somebody stood up, a few more stood up. And then a few thousand stood up. And then a few million stood up. And standing up, with courage and clear purpose, they somehow managed to change the world!”

For people raised on Jane Jacobs, who emphasized how a spontaneous dynamic order could emerge from thousands of individual decisions, this is a persuasive way of seeing the world. For young people who have grown up on Facebook, YouTube, open-source software and an array of decentralized networks, this is a compelling theory of how change happens.

Clinton had sounded like a traditional executive, as someone who gathers the experts, forges a policy, fights the opposition, bears the burdens of power, negotiates the deal and, in crisis, makes the decision at 3 o’clock in the morning.

But Obama sounded like a cross between a social activist and a flannel-shirted software C.E.O. — as a nonhierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns.

In my opinion, ESAS was chosen using the Clinton approach as described by Brooks. Dr. Griffin had gathered his data, forged his policy, fought off any opposition and now bears the burdens of defending that policy. But today, lacking a broad base of support (a collaborative consensus as it were) ESAS may very well be faced with a funding crisis as insufficient money is allocated by Congress for NASA to fulfill all of the mandates that have been put on its plate.

John McCain will "stay the course" and embrace the legacy of George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton will also stay a very different course, based on effusive rhetoric about the importance of the American space program combined with a policy that actually accomplished little, other than building Ares 1 to fly missions to LEO and ISS . Barack Obama, the most skeptical of the three concerning the value of human spaceflight might very well - paradoxically perhaps - be the leader who facilitates enough disparate voices to actually craft a coherent and sustainable policy.