In an op-ed in today's New Hampshire Union-Leader by Paul Hertneky, the author tries to look at actual accomplishments of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, instead of focusing on the nebulous claims of experience. While I'm guessing that Hertneky is much more favorable to Obama than Clinton, it is a pretty telling list. Obama does appear to have actually accomplished more things directly than Clinton has.
INSTEAD OF COMPARING Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's experience — a vague set of claims — I turned my attention toward accomplishments. Not what they've accomplished for themselves, but what they've accomplished for others.
In doing so, I excluded purely personal gains. I also eliminated all distinctions or honors. For similar reasons, I ignored the elections they've won. These credentials are well-known.
Also, like any alert prospective employer, I am informed by what they support, worked on, worked toward and fought for, but I am more interested in what they have accomplished for their constituents.
After graduating from Columbia, Obama went to work with churches that organized job training and other programs for residents of a massive housing project in Chicago. He persuaded the city to provide summer jobs, remove asbestos, repair toilets, pipes and ceilings. He went door to door, offering help for three years, then went to Harvard Law School.
Upon graduating from Wellesley, Hillary Rodham made a commencement speech that moved her audience. She went immediately to Yale Law School.
Obama returned to Chicago to lead Project Vote, which signed up about 150,000 new African-American voters. He also joined a big law firm.
Following Yale, and a year in Washington, Rodham moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton. She taught at the University of Arkansas and joined a big law firm.
Hertneky is identified as a free-lance writer and a teacher at Antioch College. The paper does not identify whether he is a partisan for any particular candidate, nor does he show up in Federal Elections Commission records. So I couldn't tell you whether he is acting as an operative or not in writing this. But it may change a few mids in New Hampshire. And with Clinton's high negatives, every vote lost hurts.
