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Obama Answers Readers' Questions
In late June, Senator Obama sat in a Miami hotel room and answered questions from Reader's Digest editors. We had solicited reader questions on our website, and we asked him several. Here is what he had to say.Q: The cliché is that anybody could grow up to be president. If you win in November, does that make it true, finally? Does it complete Lincoln's work?
A: There is no doubt that if I win the presidency, then the adage "Anybody can be president" is true. If you took a look at all the babies who were born in 1961, the odds of me being president probably would not have been at the top of the list.
Q: Your mother was a freethinker, but would even she have imagined this? How about your father?
A: My dad might have imagined it because he, from all accounts, was pretty full of himself. [Laughs] And your mother always thinks you're special -- that's one of her jobs -- and so I'm not sure she would have been surprised. My grandmother, who is my only living elder, I do think she's a little overwhelmed by it. She's a very stoic, stiff-upper-lip type of person. If you think about it, this is a white woman from a small town in Kansas who grew up in the midst of the Depression. To imagine, first of all, that she'd end up having a grandson who was African American and then that he might end up being president -- that's a pretty big leap of the imagination.
Q: We keep hearing people say, "My head tells me McCain, but my heart tells me Obama." What would you tell those voters?
A: John McCain is a genuine American hero. He has rendered extraordinary public service to this country, and he has on numerous occasions been willing to buck conventional wisdom in his party. But I also think the country recognizes we're at a critical juncture and that the challenges we're going to face in the 21st century are different from the ones that we faced in the 20th century.
In terms of our foreign policy, we now have multiple threats, very few of which involve the traditional battles of the past. We're fighting not only terrorism but also pandemic, climate change, cyberterrorism, and refugee problems. When it comes to our domestic situation, we're transitioning into a new global information age, and the old solutions aren't going to work. We can't just trot out the old dogmas and somehow expect different results. Part of the reason I think I'm in the position I am in now is that people recognize that we're going to need new leadership in this new environment.
Q: One of our readers asked, "If you had to make one issue a priority, what would it be?"
A: I can't choose one, but I'll choose three. I believe we have to bring the war in Iraq to an honorable close. This is a huge drain on our resources, and it is also an impediment to our being able to lead the world.
The second thing is energy, not just because we have $4-a-gallon gasoline but because how we use energy is having an impact on our national security. It helps strengthen the hand of our enemies, and it is having an enormous impact on our planet, and so it is going to be critical for us to have an energy policy that starts to lessen the incredible impact we are having on the global climate.
And the third thing is health care. We have got a broken health care system. It has an impact on families all across the country. It has an impact on businesses, small and large, that are straining under these enormous costs, and we just don't get a good deal out of our health care system. We spend far more than any other nation per capita, and yet our outcomes aren't any better than in countries that are spending 25, 30, 50 percent less. That doesn't make sense.
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