Where’s the beef?

As I listened to the speeches at the Democratic Convention this week, one of the biggest things I was listening for was the beef. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know Obama is the hope and change guy, we know he’s supposed to inspire us to great heights with his lofty rhetoric, but what has he DONE, in other words, where’s the beef? Repeatedly his supporters have been asked the question “what has he accomplished” and repeatedly they take on the look of a deer in the headlights and are unable to answer the question.

So, I looked hard for an answer to what Obama has done. Was it in Hillary Clinton’s speech. Well, no. Not even close. Seriously, nada, zero, zilch.

How about Bill Clinton’s speech? Here is the closest Bill Clinton came to relaying some accomplishment as a legislator by Obama:

Now, he has a remarkable ability to inspire people, to raise our hopes and rally us to high purpose. He has the intelligence and curiosity every successful president needs. His policies on the economy, on taxes, on health care, on energy are far superior to the Republican alternatives.

I have nieces and nephews, who at the age of 5, were curious and intelligent but they weren’t presidential material. And policy statements, while they may give us insight into a candidate, certainly aren’t established accomplishments. And Obama policies, as we all know, certainly aren’t carved in stone.

He has shown — he has shown a clear grasp of foreign policy and national security challenges…..

Really? His official comments regarding the Georgia/Russia situation certainly didn’t convince me of that. Or his comments concerning Iran.

His achievements are proof of our continuing progress toward the more perfect union of our founders’ dreams. TRANSCRIPT

What accomplishments, Bill? The one’s you didn’t mention?

Ok, so the Big Dawg was a little short on examples and facts, but one would think that Kerry, who jumped out and endorsed Obama early on in the primaries (against the vote of his state, by the way), could give us some great examples of Obama’s experience and accomplishments…right? Wrong.

About all Kerry could come up with was Obama’s stand against the Iraq War…a stand which he never had to confirm with a vote and when faced with a decision he voted to fund the war. Oh, and Obama said the U.S. should talk to it’s enemies. Ok, I had to laugh that Kerry seems to think the Bush administration has started talking to Iran because Obama suggested it….like he was the first one to ever suggest diplomacy.

Surely Biden, Obama’s VP pick, could do better. And to give him credit, Biden was actually able to glean a few at least minimally significant accomplishments to pad Obama’s resume.

He chose to go to Chicago, the South Side of Chicago. There, there, in the South Side, he met women and men who had lost their jobs. Their neighborhood was devastated when the local steel plant closed. Their dreams had to be deferred; their self-esteem was gone. And, ladies and gentlemen, he made their lives the work of his life.

Ok, he met people. I guess you could stretch things and call that an accomplishment.

Because Barack Obama — because Barack Obama made that choice, 150 more children and parents have health care in Illinois. He fought to make that happen.

I’m happy for those people…I truly am, but 150 people? That’s not what I would call a major accomplishment.

And because Barack Obama made that choice, working families in Illinois pay less taxes and more people have moved from welfare to the dignity of work. And he got it done.

If I remember correctly those were bills that other people worked hard on and Emil Jones saw that Obama got credit for.

And when he came to Washington, when he came to Washington, John and I watched with amazement how he hit the ground running, leading the fight to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation.

The bill that was intended to limit lobbyists influence on Congressional members doesn’t seem to have stopped any of them from receiving bundled money from lobbyists. It seems to me it’s more about perceptions than actual reform.

He reached across party lines to pass a law that helped keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

Well, FINALLY, someone gets to something that could be considered a serious, large scale accomplishment; however, the bill was modeled after the Nunn-Lugar program of 1991, which probably means Lugar did the most work. But, I’ll give Obama the benefit of the doubt….bravo, Barack, for actually accomplishing something besides campaigning for president while a U.S. Senator.

So, after listening to and then reading all of the speeches, this is what I came up with for Obama’s accomplishments. In 8 years in the Illinois Senate he managed to get 150 more people in Illinois have health care. And 4 years in Washington as a U.S. Senator he co-sponsored a couple of bills…one which doesn’t appear to have made a dent in the influence of lobbyists on legislators and the other built on Lugar’s 1991 work.

Ok, there’s the beef folks….a tiny little burger couched in a big, cushy bun of hope and change.