Thursday, March 6, 2008

Netscape founder on Obama

Right before Obama set off to become a presidential candidate, the founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, got to chat with him for over an hour. Andreessen raises one obvious point which Obama supporters would do well to use as a reply to Hillary's attacks:
We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

1 comment:

charles said...

Exactly! So true. You read about it all the time, but no one ever makes the point that this is the _only_ example we have of actual executive ability in action.