After 22 months of campaign and multiple debates, time has come for all responsible people to vote. Those of us who sincerely believe that we are better off today than we were eight years ago – or even eight weeks ago – must vote for four more years of the same. But those of us who are not that satisfied must vote for positive change that may move the country forward.
Some observers have sensed this clear difference from the very beginning. In March 2008, NBC News reported that in the April issue of Fast Company, Ellen McGirt “examined the Senator Barack Obama’s campaign as an emerging successful business model. McGirt investigated how Obama’s campaign approach challenges both conventional political assumptions and conventional business assumptions and also challenges ‘any forward-looking business” to examine the campaign’s successes’ from marketing strategies and leadership styles to the future of the American workplace.”
More recently, John Quelch, a professor at the Harvard Business School, commenting on the two presidential candidates said: “McCain is a maverick. Obama is a manager. Mavericks are loners who break ranks, who love to be different and irreverent. Obama is a better manager than McCain. His campaign has been a model of teamwork. He has selected good people who have worked well together.”
On October 13, 2008, in ‘Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama’, the conservative/libertarian Christopher Buckley, the son of the late conservative icon William F. Buckley, says, “Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy ‘We are the people we have been waiting for’ silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even a great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for. So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.”
In the editorial endorsing the candidacies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, The Miami Herald wrote, Sunday, October 19, 2008: “ His resume is thin [Obama’ s], but he surrounds himself with experience advisers – as evidence in his choice of Sen. Joe Biden to be vice president – and with people who offer differing point of view. His style is to build consensus and seek workable, pragmatic solutions – a refreshing change from the last eight years.” Then, to conclude: “The nation is fortunate to have good candidates and a clear choice. Senator Obama represents the best chance for America to make a clean break with the culture wars and failed policies of the past, and begin to restore the hope and promise of America as the world greatest democracy.”
In his endorsement of Obama last Sunday, the prestigious General Collin Powell, former Secretary of State of the first four years of the Bush administration, has made the same analysis and reached the same conclusion. It was also the same opinion expressed by well respected commentator Fareed Zacharia. These are people who do not commit themselves lightly, but, as they said themselves, they ponder seriously and make critical analysis before they make an endorsement.
Now, we are pleased to join these personalities and so many others and encourage all Americans, and particularly the Haitian-Americans, to vote for Barack Obama, a leader with vision, as the next president of the United States. They will initiate a more promising future for themselves and their children.

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