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HILLARY AND BARACK COULD CHANGE THE WHOLE GAME TOGETHER

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SAINT AUGUSTINE, MIAMI, Feb 19 2008 (IPS) - Rather than risk an ugly fight over their essentially similar positions, Clinton and Obama can make history by publicly stating again that they will support whichever one is the nominee, writes Hazel Henderson, futurist and author of Ethical Markets: Growing The Green Economy and other books. In this article, Henderson writes that the result would be electrifying and would baffle the pundits and the media now feasting on the conflict by exacerbating their trivial differences. Supporters of both candidates would approve of this win-win approach to really bringing the country together. The harm would only be to the pocketbooks of political contributors hoping for future favours, pollsters incomes, pundits and consultants fees and all those betting on the continued in-fighting. The good news is that such a win-win strategy might do much to change the game of United States politics which most citizens deplore.

How? Remember at the height of the Cold War how Mikhail Gorbachev changed the game on the US Pentagon and President Ronald Reagan? Gorbachev began to play the familiar diplomatic tit for tat game in a new way: he kept offering to co-operate! Baffled US negotiators and President Reagan began to respond, and the rest is history.

Today, with Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama neck and neck, most Democratic voters like and admire them both equally, as the polls and results so far show. Many long for a dream ticket with both caring little whose name heads the ticket. Most say they will happily vote for whomever is the nominee.

So both Clinton and Obama can make history. Each could publicly state again that they will support whichever one is the nominee. Further, each can try generosity, magnanimousness, and cooperation by reiterating, as Senator Clinton has done, that they will fully support the other. What if they went even further and each offered simultaneously to the other to step aside for the sake of party unity ( as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney did on the Republican side )? Senator Clinton has already stated that she loves her role representing New Yorkers in the US Senate and would be happy to resume it for the good of the party and the country. Likewise, Senator Obama has a generous, magnanimous spirit and might well be happy to serve a few more years in the Senate.

The result would be electrifying and would baffle the pundits and the media now feasting on the conflict by exacerbating their trivial differences. Supporters of both candidates would approve of this win-win approach to really bringing the country together. And, all of us would be saved the tedious, drawn-out squabbling that now otherwise dominates and preempts other news until the convention in July.

Internationally, would be welcome news, since in many other democracies, the spectacle of political campaigns funded by billions of dollars of campaign contributions is itself seen as undemocratic. Many in the US find it equally abhorrent, as well as all the TV and radio ads selling the candidates like toothpaste.

What would be the harm in this win-win strategy? The harm would only be to the pocketbooks of political contributors hoping for future favours, pollsters incomes, pundits and consultants fees and all those betting on the continued in-fighting. The good news is that such a win-win strategy might do much to change the game of United States politics which most citizens deplore.

Why not give it a try? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

 
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