Has Obama lighted a fire of change?

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In many ways it is too bad that our system works to discourage candidates with the best qualifications and most experience. Connecticut's Chris Dodd in my view has been an excellent senator and has a commendably sane view of the challenges of the presidency. Joseph Biden has a wealth of foreign affairs experience and has consistently been a realist about the possible eventual outcome of the war in Iraq that he strongly opposed. But somehow - perhaps largely the result of underappreciation in TV coverage - neither has been seen as lighting a spark among voters.

Hillary Clinton has received a great deal of attention and in many respects has responded well. It is interesting to envisage her as the first woman president. No one ought to doubt her competence, but her campaign appearances have often appeared tightly scripted and have seemed to lack spontaneity. Because of her position she has been under a microscope more than the other candidates and it is something of a wonder that she has performed as well as she has.

And what then of her husband? Despite his personal shortcomings I have long admired Bill Clinton as one of the most capable politicians of the age. But it is hard for him to remain in the background. If he is too much in evidence as a strategist and adviser, he arouses talk about a Clinton dynasty following a Bush dynasty. If Hillary were to win, voters might have a two-for-one presidency, but is that what they would want? I have heard suggestions that she might get him out of the way politically by nominating him for the Supreme Court. Or he might be sent as ambassador to some African country.

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Back to Obama. His nomination would amount to a leap of faith, for no one can really know what kind of president he would be. Why would many voters seemingly be willing to make such a leap? For a combination of reasons, I suspect, such as a feeling of residual guilt about past failures to accord citizens of color their full equality as citizens. Obama would seem to exemplify in his own person the possibility of black and white working amicably together. He phrased it well Sunday when he said in New Hampshire that "we can do what the cynics said could not be done. We will have the chance to come together, Democrats, Republicans, independents, and announce that we are one nation, we are one people, and it is time for change in America."

After all the high-flown rhetoric, the hard problems will remain - how to get out of an unwinnable war with the least damaging consequences, secure sources of energy, the rapidly increasing environmental challenges, the imperative need to rationalize a health care system no one can afford, an economy that has begun to sag badly. We shall need informed discussion about how better to cope with such problems as the political campaign develops.

Whoever are the nominees will receive all sorts of free advice on whom to anoint as a running mate. The fact that many of the presidential candidates are members of the United States Senate makes one point clear: For balance, the persons chosen probably ought not be active members of Congress. Cabinet members are in a different category, although breadth of experience and a mixture of genders and ethnic backgrounds will remain desirable goals.

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What good news, that East Canaan is the likely site of a manure-to-energy plant using the byproduct of nearby dairy farms. North Canaan is one of the few towns in Connecticut in which working dairy farms have managed to survive, largely because of the efficiency, determination and ingenuity of their operation. The development on the Freund farm of a process of making salable flowerpots out of deodorized dried manure is an example of the possibilities.

But the use of manure to produce burnable methane gas is a much larger opportunity to use a byproduct that, beyond the application to fields as fertilizer, has often result in environmentally vexing disposal problems. With state and federal assistance, help may be really on the way.

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With all the demands on their time, it frequently seems a wonder that our legislators, federal and state, manage to pay attention to their spouses and families, but somehow they do. Thus it was a joy to learn that our new congressman from the 5th District, Chris Murphy, had acquired a wife over the summer, Cathy Holahan, a legal-aid lawyer. Now it is no less a joy to learn that our neighbor and 30th District state senator, Andrew Roraback of Goshen, also took a bride over the holidays in the person of Kara Dowling of West Hartford.

Apart from my longtime admiration for Andrew and gratitude for his work in the Legislature, I have extra reason to congratulate him and Kara, because Mary Lou and I share a common wedding date with them on Dec. 22. When they have been married as long as we have, he will still be a young man of 109.