Change and Iraq

Barack Obama's win in Iowa seemed to come down to a matter of change and Iraq. Hillary has the Iraq albatross around her neck of having gone along with authorizing Bush's invasion of Iraq, and people seem to want a bigger change than simply the difference between the Clintons and the Republicans.

Of course this was Iowa and it is always dangerous to extrapolate from Iowa to the rest of the country, but it is also dangerous to underestimate the American people when they get fed up with the status quo and want a more dramatic break with the past.

I personally do not blame Hillary for "going along" on Iraq and I do think that she really is a significant agent of change and would likely be able to accomplish more change than all the other candidates put together, but I also have been too close to Washington over the past ten years and I can sympathize with the difficulties that average citizens have when trying to make sense out of Washington and trying to discriminate between apparent differences and real differences.

Now let us see what the people of New Hampshire think. I have lived in New Hampshire several times in the past three decades, but I was not a "native." I always loved the "Live Free or Die" slogan.

-- Jack Krupansky